When TÜV Rheinland was looking to develop new ideas for mobility-related digital services, Dr. Matthias Schubert, its executive vice president for mobility, turned to the experts from Porsche Consulting. At a three-day workshop in the new innovation lab, Schubert’s team identified promising services, applied cutting-edge methods to test them for everyday use, and then simulated their successful implementation in the organization.
Schubert reports that the lab is the perfect environment for the inspection and certification provider to refine its innovations. “We’ve discovered an entirely new form of collaboration, starting with the relaxed atmosphere and the varied content—from working in small groups to simulations and live interviews. Add to that Porsche Consulting’s facilitation and cooperation with my team. All in all we were twice as productive as before in just half the time.”
The lab offers a combination of proven processes for design sprints, the latest technical tools, and Porsche Consulting’s many years of innovation-related expertise. The goal is to define the challenges companies are faced with during digital transformation and turn them into new services and thereby into solid competitive advantages in record time.
At these multiday workshops, the project owner’s team meets with experts from Porsche Consulting, users, and external specialists to critically examine the existing business model and then jointly develop innovative ideas. These are subsequently brought to life with a rapid succession of experiments.
The technical side of the innovation lab includes a package of cutting-edge hardware and software. It enables ideas and interim results to be visualized on large screens instead of a sea of Post-its, all creative contributions and data to be incorporated, and initial prototypes to be tested and refined on smartphones and tablets under realistic conditions with customers.
“If you use the sprint system in a highly digitalized lab, you’ll achieve better quality results in a shorter period of time,” says Porsche Consulting Senior Partner Dirk Pfitzer in describing the first workshop. “All of our clients who have experienced our innovation lab first hand are extremely enthusiastic about the results. They can’t imagine going back to the old analogue methods.
