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Faster horses: How design-led consultancies can drive better problem-finding outcomes to help clients escape the core innovation trap

Morris, Kevin (2016) Faster horses: How design-led consultancies can drive better problem-finding outcomes to help clients escape the core innovation trap. [MRP]

Item Type: MRP
Creators: Morris, Kevin
Abstract:

This paper investigates the activity of problem-finding at a corporate innovation level to understand why companies are not achieving their innovation goals beyond the continual improvement of existing offerings and businesses. Through a literature review, the investigation identifies three key patterns happening in the world of design & innovation: the popularization of rapid innovation methods, the nature of increasingly complex problems, and the state of the design-led innovation consulting industry. The paper takes an autoethnographic research approach to collect, analyze, and synthesize data from the point of a view of a design consulting practitioner in order to surface insights about the dynamics at play between the consultant and the client organization. These dynamics are further explored through systems thinking, identifying significant balancing loops and potential leverage points for introducing new models and interventions that lead to better problem-finding outcomes in corporate innovation. The idea of shared value between consultant and client emerges as a primary leverage point, leading to the discovery of potential solution sets for driving new types of consultant-client relationships and business models that fully utilize the power of problem-finding at the outset of innovation projects.

Date: 19 December 2016
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Strategic Foresight and Innovation
Date Deposited: 19 Jan 2017 20:16
Last Modified: 20 Dec 2021 23:15
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/1385

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