Tag Archive | Katri Ojasalo

Wrapping up the “New Service Development and innovative service systems” course

Dec30

During this fall, we have been introduced to various business related topics. In the “New Service Development and innovative services systems” course, we have learned the basics of blueprinting and how to create a business model canvas. Course objectives include; students can create a plan for developing a service concept and also evaluate and improve an organisation’s service development process. Each of us had prepared a blueprint and a canvas for one service and on thursday 12th of December we gathered together to present our assignments to the class and to workshop our ideas further together.

In the morning we had some extra topics in the schedule. First we got introduced to our upcoming final thesis and got a little pre-assignment for the first official thesis workshop in January. Then we had a presentation of the Service Design Global Conference 2013, Our fellow student Katrin Mathis attended the conference and presented her key findings to the rest of the class. Accompanied with comments from another attender, our fellow student Itziar Pobes, the rest of the group got good insights into the event. Katrin’s excellent blog post about the SDN conference can be found here.

The Blueprints and canvases

For our blueprint and canvas -presentations, we were divided into smaller groups. Each student presented his/her project to the group, and together each group chose one project to be developed further in the afternoon workshop. I presented my fictional plan for e-commerce and retail and my idea of the personalised e-shop customer experience was chosen for further development with a help of CoCo tool kit.

CoCo Toolkit

CoCo tool kit is created in co-operation between Laurea University of Applied Sciences and the University of Cambridge. It was a parallel project to VTTs (Technical Research Centre of Finland) ServChange project. Authors include: Krista Keränen, Bernhard Dusch and Katri Ojasalo. We got a special introduction to the topic, since one of the authors Katri Ojasalo is also our teacher on this course.

The tool kit is a collection of five tools and a workbook. And it is designed to help businesses in their challenges in co-creation activities. You can read more about the tool kit here.

1212_10            1212_3

On the left: The Co-creation workbook found in the box. On the right: CoCo author, our teacher Katri Ojasalo (on the left side), presenting tools and toolkit to our group. Antti Kytö and Nanda Kumar (on the right side) are listening.

Re-inventing Retail and other presentations

Continue reading →

Service Design meets Futures Thinking #4

Jun3

A research based series of posts discussing the statement “Futures Research supports the Service Design process in multiple ways and throughout the whole process” by Minna Koskelo (LinkedIn) and Anu K. Nousiainen (Linkedin).

Part #4: We are in the Service Innovation business!

Our three (and a half) previous blog entries have been summarizing the purpose of our study initiated in 2012 and the main findings from the study including the synergies between (Service) Design Thinking and Futures Thinking, and our illustration for Futures Research enhanced Service Design process. After some more investigation (selection of 150 books and articles) and integrating the strategic business thinking into the model with Katri Ojasalo (Linkedin), (our Head of Master’s Degree Programme in Service Innovation and Design here at Laurea University of Applied Sciences) we are proud to announce our forthcoming chapter in an international Handbook of Service Innovation (to be published by Springer in early 2014). Indeed, we have came into a realization:

What we’ve done so far is not only about Futures enhanced Service Design – instead, this is the next chapter in building unique, synergistic and dynamic capabilities for Service Innovation.

teaser

Take a novel path to create new business opportunities and new value

 It has been clear from the beginning of our study that Design Thinking and Futures Thinking share a strong synergy in their principles and targets. Now it is crystal clear that by combining their unique approaches in innovation process results in bright and viable business opportunities (see process framework A. below). While Futures Thinking concentrates on driving forces in complex evolving systems and alternative contexts, Design Thinking embraces the viewpoint of system constraints and people oriented solutions. Not only this powerful combination gives you options for decision making in strategic and offering creation level but it tackles the two critical challenges in today’s (and tomorrow’s) business: Uncertainty and timing in creating Value Roadmaps in the interconnected and changing world. Here, Futures Thinking helps to make uncertainty easier to approach through providing alternatives for decision making and therefore improving organization’s readiness to act. Design Thinking improves the organization’s agility to seize the change with emphatic, adaptive and deep research approach and through iterative co-designing with customers to provide desirable, feasible and viable options for solutions.

Continue reading →

The Finnish Service Alliance: a new collaborative community for service scholars and practitioners

Oct23

The constitutive meeting of The Finnish Service Alliance (FSA) brought 180 service researchers and business professionals from all over Finland to Espoo today. The FSA is a new forum for service scholars and professionals to share research contributions and to discuss about the opportunities and challenges within the service field.

The mission of the FSA is to promote and disperse knowledge on the research contributions made by service scholars in Finland both on a national and international level. Continue reading →