Business Design
Crafting business models that work for customers and make money for clients
Designing new businesses is where the left and right brain come together. Creating an emotionally compelling customer experience is only half of the equation. The business also needs to be financially viable. We design new businesses and help bring them to market by translating creative ideas and customer experiences into business models, imperatives and roadmaps that are custom-tailored to each company’s unique DNA. Our business design team has formal training and experience in marketing, communications, strategy, operations, new ventures and M&A.
Business design capabilities are seamlessly integrated into the creative process during design and innovation projects. This is critical to ensure that neither the customer experience nor business feasibility is sacrificed along the way. We look for white space in the business ecosystem, flesh out emerging opportunities with the data required to support investment decisions and work with clients across functional boundaries to develop plans for prototyping, launching and refining new products and services.
Our integrative approach mixes qualitative and quantitative research, full project and business model prototyping and organizational design in parallel to achieve smart tradeoffs at every stage of development. Techniques include “backcasting” from an ideal solution to identify key intermediate steps that can be launched quickly, and new business prototyping—through pop-up experiences, distributed testing or live pilots—to confirm and refine ideas in the marketplace before a large-scale launch.
Over the last 30 years, we’ve worked with hundreds of companies as they’ve wrestled with the challenge of bringing something new to market and making money in the process. We’ve partnered with three-man startups and some of the largest companies in the USA, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Whether it’s helping turn a napkin sketch into a $100 million business or uniting top-tier players across three industries to build a game-changing B2B service, we’ve proven the power of mixing design with business.
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