Workshop description
The number one reason why startups fail is that they create a product that the market just doesn’t want. Nowadays we know that taking the customer’s perspective into account from day one, is essential to create successful business ideas. However, user insights are not the only source of inspiration to generate new opportunities. This workshop will provide you with methods and tools that enable you to craft new ideas that are desirable AND viable by leveraging not only userbut also in-depth market insights.
About:
Jesse Grimes (kolmiot.com) is an internationally-recognized thought leader in the field of service design, Editor-in-Chief of the service design journal ‚Touchpoint‘ and Senior Vice President of the Service Design Network. Jesse has eleven years’ experience as a service designer and has worked since 1998 as a customer experience design strategist and consultant in London, Düsseldorf, Sydney and is now based in Amsterdam.
His clients include a wide range of international brands, including ING, ABN AMRO, Rabobank, Philips, Optus, Vodafone, Orange and AkzoNobel, as well as the Dutch government and several Dutch startups. He has specific expertise in service design for the financial sector and fintechs, on innovation projects, as well as a coach, trainer and workshop facilitator. He is an accredited “Service Design Master Trainer.
About:
Rowan Conway is the Director of Innovation and Development at the RSA. With the intention of focusing the RSA’s research on real world impact, Rowan is driving the focus of the RSA’s work on the emerging model of change “Think Like a System, Act Like an Entrepreneur”.
Rowan ensures that the RSA is undertaking rigorous, profile raising and influential research and innovation projects and she has been instrumental in the set up of the RSA Lab, an experimental space that uses design methods to explore, prototype and test research insights and policy ideas. She has 20 years’ experience in research, innovation and engagement with communities, businesses and government bodies. She has led a wide range of research and engagement programmes that include: enquiry by design processes for urban design, asset based community development, social enterprise development and impact planning, cross sector partnership working, mental health service design, and environmental sustainability research.
Collaborative and cross-disciplinary by nature, she specialises in participatory action research and has worked with local authorities, NGOs, academic partners, NHS Trusts, corporate businesses and social enterprises, as well as a wide range of central government departments. Originally a business journalist and editor, Rowan became an engagement specialist in 2005, with a specific focus on community involvement and participation. Between 2006 and 2011, Rowan designed and oversaw community engagement for London 2012, working with the host boroughs and the Mayor of London in the planning process for the Olympic Park in London. She holds an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice from the University of Bath.
Rowan ensures that the RSA is undertaking rigorous, profile raising and influential research and innovation projects and she has been instrumental in the set up of the RSA Lab, an experimental space that uses design methods to explore, prototype and test research insights and policy ideas. She has 20 years’ experience in research, innovation and engagement with communities, businesses and government bodies. She has led a wide range of research and engagement programmes that include: enquiry by design processes for urban design, asset based community development, social enterprise development and impact planning, cross sector partnership working, mental health service design, and environmental sustainability research.
