Service Innovation & Design

  • Design Thinking: Streamlining Creativity

    A reflection by Alvaro Valls Boix and Erson Halili – Students at Service Innovation and Design MBA @Laurea UAS Defining Creativity is a complex task, since the term is interpreted differently in different cultures and contexts. However, from a cognitive and mental activity perspective, Creativity is defined as the cognitive capacity to develop something new…

  • How can organizations unleash creative potential?

    During the master class we felt ourselves and saw our fellow participants get ignited with a feeling of creativity and gaining a new appreciation of what is considered as creative. Many of us believed to not be creative, but when faced with the right questions and frameworks, most of us realized we indeed are. We…

  • The lone creative genius is dead

    Design thinking can be defined as a human-centered approach to problem solving, creativity and innovation that brings along new and more effective solutions (Kaartti 2022; Brown 2019).  Its definition has evolved since the 1990s; with some viewing it as a cognitive process or a mindset, and others seeing it as a toolkit for innovation processes,…

  • Design Thinking as a Discursive Phenomenon 

    Design Thinking can be described as a discipline, a methodology or more broadly “a human-centered, creative, iterative, and practical approach that is used to find the best ideas and ultimate solutions” (1, 2), or simply a method for innovation, which requires creative thinking (3, 4). Creative thinking is the cognitive capacity of an individual or…

  • Empathy – a Core Competence for Design Thinkers

    The modern business world is fast-paced and highly competitive. Companies must stay innovative to answer the complex demands of the ever-changing market and business needs. Design thinking has found its’ way to larger organizations as an answer to simplifying the challenges of both modern business and technology. (Kolko 2015.)   For business success, an empathic approach of design…

  • One Thousand Experiments Club

    Mind shaking Our Design Thinking (DT) journey started with two days of mind-shaking by Katja Schimmel (Katja). Learning by doing was absolutely engaging. We warmed up with creative thinking skills exercises. While perceptive thinking felt like a hard nut, associative thinking felt familiar and easy to master. In a playful spirit, we got to explore…

  • Empathy is the superpower you need to design truly innovative services

    In today’s world of complex systems and processes, people seek simplicity and real value. At the same time, companies’ competition for people’s attention is fiercer than ever. They face the challenge to differentiate themselves from competitors to gain the loyalty of their customers. Design Thinking might be the way we can add real and lasting…

  • Reflections on Design Thinking: a conversation with Sheena OhUiginn and Anmol Kumar

    As budding Service Designers, coming together with this diverse group for three days of collaboration and problem solving was an incredible way to kick off our studies. After a few days of reading and reflecting, two of us sat down to discuss the experience and share our thoughts…  Anmol: What an amazing and intensive master…

  • Unleashing our inner creativity- the more we practice, the easier it gets 

    Anyone can be creative. That was the key thought gathered from the book Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley. Too often creativity is associated with being artistic. In its’ essence, creativity is about finding solutions to open-ended problems – a natural part of us, that we must just learn to unblock. How does one…

  • Design for Humans

    Design is the transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones. – The Science of the Artificial, Herbert Simon We, humans, are surrounded by an endless number of obstacles. From our evolution, we are designing new tools to deal with such obstacles. We keep on designing and optimizing such tools. We design, test, and iterate every…