BUILDING

A FUTURE
WITH DESIGN
THINKING
CO-CREATIVE
CORPORATE
PLANNING
SUMMARY

3 INTRODUCTION

5 WHY USE DESIGN THINKING TO PLAN INNOVATION

IN YOUR COMPANY?

7 THE DT STAGES IN CORPORATE PLANNING

7 Immersion: Identifying the issues that need to be solved
8 Analysis and Ideation with the Co-creation Workshop
9 Prototyping challenge: encouraging engagement
9 Choice and implementation

10 CASE STUDY

12 CONCLUSION: INNOVATION IS POSSIBLE BUT...

 INTRODUCTION

“To remain competitive and innovative,

companies need to challenge paradigms
and be able to determine the pace of daily
operations and strategic choices.”
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

When it comes to creating a strategic plan, every company needs

to think in a structured and systematic way. This means taking
into account practices, processes and internal values, as well as
the market environment in which it operates, creating a clear view
of the objectives and the actions required to achieve them.

When innovation is a part of these objectives, it is important

to calibrate the vision of those involved to obtain more focus
and efficiency - given that this process often involves several
possibilities and scarce resources. Does your company want to
increase its market share or revenue? Do you need to reduce
production costs and develop new products and services?
Do you want more employee involvement or an increase in
competitive advantage? Whatever the questions related to the
strategic objectives of the organization, its planning must involve
the consequences and possible changes needed, as well as the
impact on the daily lives of your employees.

Thus, in this whitepaper, we will take a look at a specific use of

Design Thinking (or DT) - an approach that focuses on human
beings, which helps create innovative solutions for businesses
through multidisciplinary, collaborative and materialization of
ideas – to carry out the strategic planning for a famous fuel
company.

We hope you enjoy it!

3
 WHY USE DESIGN THINKING
TO PLAN INNOVATION
IN YOUR COMPANY?

Although the term 'design' is often associated with the quality

or aesthetic appearance of products, design is, above all, about
promoting well-being for users. Therefore, design thinkers
perceive everything around them as an opportunity to promote
improvements, simplifications or to create solutions for
problems users might have. This is what sets this methodology
apart from others: it opens a pathway for business strategies
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

to be implemented or modified.

Given that planning guides a company's actions to achieve its

objectives in an organized manner, the main leaders should be
involved in the strengthening of ideas and intentions. However,
it is known that the actions listed in this plan will directly impact
the daily activities of the organization, thus affecting employees.
Therefore, instead of generating a strategic plan that is completely
oblivious to the reality of the company's employees, Design
Thinking’s provocative and collaborative approach allows
multidisciplinary teams with different viewpoints to build viable
solutions to potential challenges together.

So, through the stages of immersion, analysis, ideation, prototyping

and implementation, it is possible to understand the context,
analyze it, generate ideas and test them by observing their impact
before implementing them. Through this process, the company can
get answers to the questions that normally guide planning:

- Where are we?

- Where do we want to go?
- How can we get there?
- Who is involved in the process?
- How is the market in which we operate?
- How can we measure results in the middle
of the process?

4
 Through Design Thinking, we are able to intrinsically study
the web that makes up the implementation of a plan, aligning
the company’s major objectives, its employees’ concerns and
existing knowledge. The process generates a broad engagement
and interaction between sectors, delivering structured results
and higher chances of success. 

Thus, innovation is seen as a safe and guided way to achieve

your business’ real goals, and address the different aspects of
an organization’s ecosystem complexity.

DOWNLOAD THE BOOK: DESIGN THINKING: INNOVATION IN BUSINESS

AND​LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS METHODOLOGY!
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

5
 THE DT STAGES
IN CORPORATE
PLANNING

IMMERSION: IDENTIFYING THE ISSUES THAT NEED TO BE SOLVED

The immersion stage is dedicated to investigating the context

through a research plan, which includes primary research
protocols, lists of profiles of the users and stakeholders involved
in recruitment and a map of the scenarios that will be studied.
The information gathered during the immersion stage should
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

be obtained through semi-structured interviews containing

employee profiles, their divisions and support areas.

IMMERSION IDEATION PROTOTYPING IMPLEMENTATION

understand create test apply

USER
need

BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY
value viability

6
 After the immersion stage, the problems should be exposed and
it will be necessary to organize the results from this survey in
the clearest possible manner. In order to do so, the project team
uses visual tools such as frameworks over the areas’ field of
activity, (Objective, mindset and strategic vision), a view of the
department’s current workflow, and the map of interactions
between the areas that subdivide it. These views are seen as
inputs for ideas and as guiding criteria for the ideation stage.

SHARE THE DESIGN THINKING BOOK WITH

YOUR FRIENDS AND RECEIVE A FREE TOOLKIT!

ANALYSIS AND IDEATION WITH THE CO-CREATION WORKSHOP

BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The period where Ideation takes place is patent due to the union
between the creative minds of design thinkers and the business
expertise, which only the people involved in the business have.
In order to do, Co-creation Workshops are carried out to explore
the findings from the Immersion stage. Thus, the work places
employees and leaders in a collaborative process for innovation
demands, which are associated with the company’s strategic
objectives. This process results in a variety of ideas and
initiatives which are presented through an idea menu.

This can be seen as a way to propose work dynamics that

allow the group to confirm and validate demands and/or topics
that were brought up, however, on the other hand, the main
objective should be to enable the group to envision collaborative
dynamics, empathically experience their colleagues’ questions,
and provide input to propose solutions and actions aimed at
improving their own areas. 

It is important for each employee to feel as if he/she is

part of the whole, and such activities give the voice and the
empowerment needed to raise the team’s level of engagement.
Thus, Collaboration and Co-creation become prerequisites for
promoting collective effort and empathy, and the teams are then
able to reach satisfactory ideas for the company’s internal and
external challenges.

7
 PROTOTYPING CHALLENGE: ENCOURAGING ENGAGEMENT

The prototyping stage of this type of project aims to identify

which ideas can be implemented, which ones require
adjustments and which ones should be tested. However, in
order to select those that will be effectively taken forward, it is
important to establish criteria for tiebreaking.

One possible solution is to create a kind of competition between

the groups of the co-creation workshops, giving way to
project demonstrations, which encourages team engagement,
creativity and exchange among colleagues. The idea menu
aforementioned can be a great resource to guide the selection.

Through voting, or through other forms of selection - such as

level of synergy with the strategic objectives - the best ideas are
selected for testing and analysis in and outside the workplace,
if necessary. The purpose is to carry out quick tests to learn fast
and select the promising ideas or eliminate those that do not
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

represent real value for the project.

CHOICE AND IMPLEMENTATION

After testing and validating the ideas, it is time to plan the

implementation. Small general changes may lead to positive
effects, but how can we make the stakeholders a part of this
change? OWhat interferes with behaviors from internal and
external stakeholders? Factors such as this one should be
taken into account for the planning to have consistency from
beginning to end.

In this stage, it is also key to think about which metrics should

be used to evaluate if the plan is being followed, or if there is
the need to make adjustments along the way. In order to do
so, transition plans, can be created, which should involve the
actions and initiatives that will be carried out, the goals that
should be achieved and key success indicators.

The plan should consider change management that should be

carried out in several levels, taking into account that it is crucial
to monitor impacts and transformations in the daily routines of
the company’s departments.

8
 CASE STUDY

Within the scope of a fuel company with whom we developed a

DT project, we identified that one of the company's departments
had a key role in the company's achievement of general
strategic objectives. The company faced challenges ranging
from employee engagement to the reformulation of internal and
external processes. The project, however, aimed to rethink the
interaction between employees and the company. This objective
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

was aligned with the organization's macro objective, given that

the area needed to reconsider the efficiency of the daily routines.

After the Immersion stage, the Analysis and the Synthesis of

the information collected through the research plan, the project
team proposed organizing a series of co-creation workshops,
in which dynamic activities took place aiming to stimulate
creativity and the collaboration between the teams. Out of the
ideas generated, 38 were pre-selected and 8 were chosen
for prototyping.

One of the prototypes focused on increasing the department’s

visibility through a meeting that should stimulate proactiveness
from the employees, as well as sharing the knowledge with
other members of the area, At the monthly meeting, some
agendas on the status and internal suggestions for innovation
were included. Two employees were selected every month to
present a proposal to change the work routine, while taking into
account the area, department and the company itself.

E-BOOK GAMIFICTION FOR CHANGE MANAGEMENT

9
 The employees had some time to expose their ideas on a topic
of their choice, and they could receive feedback from colleagues
and superiors. In order to guide the presentations, the idea
should contain a problem, how it was identified, the bottleneck
created by it, a proposal for change, how the change would be
carried out, the expected results and how to test/validate
the solution.

In the Implementation stage, the prototype went through a few

adjustments, but today, it has been inserted into the company's
daily routine in a structured and systematic manner. New
ideas arise all the time through the company's new energetic
efficiency proposals, such as reusing any material that was not
used, improvement suggestions for the team, among others.
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

10
 CONCLUSION:
INNOVATION IS
POSSIBLE BUT...

The aforementioned prototype showed how important employee

involvement was, since it brought new ideas from within the
company and issues that were extremely relevant to their
routines. Thus, intense debates followed, opportunities for
leadership arose and everyone left with a more holistic view of
what the department could do. The teams were able to use the
Design Thinking tools to co-create creative and viable solutions.
BUILDING A FUTURE WITH DESIGN THINKING: CO-CREATIVE CORPORATE PLANNING | MJV TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

However, a culture of innovation requires constant

reinforcement and learning in order to effectively be a part
of the employees’ mindsets and become a constant in corporal
evolution. This conscience must be present since the moment
where the strategic planning took place, which should be
constantly revised to guarantee an assertive and
effective execution.

Methods like Design Thinking not only help monitor actions

and objectives, but they also help with the extraction of the
lessons learned, which can be applied in future planning. The
project team’s view on facilitating the process can add to the
internal standpoint through innovative tools to visualize and
structure results.

Moreover, collaborative thinking should be encouraged to ensure

the engagement and empowerment of those responsible for
ensuring that your business’ strategic objectives are achieved.
Thus, Design Thinking allows you to establish points of contact
between different areas of the company, and this integration’s
effect can be seen on the execution of goals and projects, which
works as a seam, ensuring that planning is taken seriously from
beginning to end.

11
ABOUT MJV

CRAFTING BUSINESS TRANSFORMATIONS THROUGH

DESIGN THINKING AND DIGITAL STRATEGIES

Since 1997, MJV Technology & Innovation has been working with
some of the world’s largest companies on their business challenges.
Based out of offices in Europe, the United States and Latin America,
the consultancy now has a multidisciplinary team of more than
300 members.

MJV is composed of three pillars structured in complete synergy:

BUSINESS INNOVATION  development and implementation of

innovative solutions to reduce costs, increase revenue and generate
new business models.

TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING  development and implementation of

costumized services on Business Intelligence (BI), IT and Internet of
Things (IoT).

DIGITAL STRATEGY  Development and implementation of corporate

strategy and user experience in a way that the digital mindset
becomes intrinsic to the business model.

We believe innovation lies in the alliance of design principles and

technology. For us, empathy, creativity and user centered processes
lead to relevant and impacting solutions that generate real value for
business.

Distinct challenges require diverse approaches. Therefore, we

combine diverse expertise – Design Thinking, Service Design,
Gamification, User Experience, Big Data, Lean Methodology, Internet of
MAURÍCIO VIANNA
Things, among others – in order to transform complex challenges into
Global CEO
innovative solutions.
mvianna@mjvinnovation.com

YSMAR VIANNA
President
yvianna@mjvinnovation.com
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