Giraffe has trained and consulted with over 100 companies on the commercial benefits of using design at both a strategic and operational level. Our clients include small businesses in the UK and large companies in the UK, and China. Our workshops range from two day booster sessions for entrepreneurs to two week extensive innovation management programmes.
DESIGN WORKS, INNOVATORS WORKSHOP
Giraffe has carried out comprehensive business analysis for the following companies:
- Daler Rowney UK. Artists materials. Managing operations and supply chain.
- Brembo, Italy. Braking systems. High end manufacture. Best practice benchmark.
- DHL, Brussels. Reverse Logistics. From hardware to healthcare.
- Liaoning Energy Management Companies (LEMC), China.
- Warburtons Bakery. North moves South. Culture change.
- FA Football Association UK. Fair game. Commerce v custodianship.
These have been developed into comprehensive MBA case narratives for Cranfield University School of Management.
We believe creativity design and innovation are NOT mysterious, embedded processes. These processes can be managed. Just because concepts at the front end are fuzzy does not mean that management has to be fuzzy.
Innovation depends on good ideas. Ideas are good by virtue of their fit to a well understood context. The challenge is to generate well-honed ideas and tough creativity which responds to tight constraints. Within organisations there is hidden resource of creative skills and ability in employees and managers at all levels. These activities and rehearsals have to be multi disciplinary and based on cooperative teamwork.
Giraffe uses modelling and visually led interactive techniques to draw out and make this inner resource explicit and useable.
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Innovation Workshop
Entrepreneurs given a booster workshop.
“This will change the way we go about our business”
Andrew MacLachlan – Design Director Northcroft Furniture
A select group of entrepreneurs and consultants took part in a 2 day workshop which was set up to supercharge small businesses and guide their new product development activities.
The intense workshop programme revolved around a technique called DART – short for Designing At the Round Table. In the Workshop, the focus of DART was on a few products in various stages of development.
The point of DART is to generate informed multiple perspectives focused on just a few product ideas. It is a way of structuring the conversation- and making sure all angles, technical, professional and commercial are covered.
KEY POINTS
- Strategy re-defined
- Enhanced development process
- Increased productivity
- Better marketing and branding
- Better designs
- Improved product details
- New market opportunities
- Product planning
“This helped our company prioritise what we need to do next and what products to take forward.”
Wei Rose, Director Uplay design Ltd.
“The two days were extremely useful, particularly working with different designers from different backgrounds. This additional input was priceless.”
Cheryl Campbell – CEO Kitten Kit
If you have a business idea and would like to attend our next workshop contact us.
“At best, creativity and intelligence are not condensed into one or two opening moments of inspiration but distributed and infused throughout the whole process. So creativity operates in the smallest details, such as a bolt or fastening, as well as in the first concept, sketch, model or broad schema. Radically new ideas are introduced at a process and component level as well as at the level of inventive principle. Indeed an inventive principle depends entirely upon the detail of process and component design to give it credibility – and ultimately to make it bloody well work.”
David Walker, Engineering Designer March 1998
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Changing Habbits Launch Event 1st Oct 2009 at City Hall
South-East Carbon Footprinting & Sustainable Design workshop
