During a three-day workshop in Copenhagen for Egmont Publishers, we advised and trained 30 of their international Innovation Managers on how to use consumer research as input for their service innovation process. Each Idea Manager is responsible for the innovation process in one of the country companies (from Lithuania to Turkey, and from the Sweden to China) where Egmont operates.

“The GIG wowed me with their understanding of what we were trying to achieve at Egmont. They were a terrific bunch to work with and have helped us start to put the consumer at the heart of our innovation process and everyday business.” (Dawn Cordy, Innovation Resource Director, Egmont International)

The Global Innovation Group hosted a dynamic three day workshop programme that offered hands-on experience with consumer research and idea generation for innovative services. We worked to a dynamic schedule that enmeshed theoretical insight and application through practical and real-life exercises. Instead of a block delivery, we followed a flow-based approach. This spoke both to the managerial roles of participants as well as their needs of a lived experience of innovating.

We strongly believe in the power of moving as far through the innovation process as possible within the course of a training session and we took participants from customer Insight to COSTAR in a day.

The Innovation Bootcamp was commissioned by the Innovation Board of Egmont publishers.

For the international academic publisher Elsevier we conducted a lead user research among academic researchers and organised a series of innovation workshops.

The lead user research in both the United Kingdom and The Netherlands generated insights into unmet needs and potential areas for service innovation. These insights were further explored in co-creative workshops, and modelled into early prototypes for potential new services.

During both the research and the workshops we facilitated conversations between the lead users and the members of the inter-disciplinary client team. The combination of lead user resarch and co-creation workshops is key to the Open Innovation approach that we offer to our clients.

In collaboration with Will Hutton, CEO of The Work Foundation, EDG has provided a series of innovation workshops to inspire and skill the creative sector so they can better respond to changing and increasing complex consumer demands. Whilst innovation is seen as a route to competitive advantage, most businesses do not have clearly defined innovation processes.

The workshop was designed for chief executives, directors, business leaders and senior managers interested in learning how a structured approach to innovation can help them respond to the changing and increasingly complex consumer demands.

The workshops gave participants an understanding of how today’s customer is being transformed and the practical implications this has for the value propositions their companies must offer. Participants integrated theory and practice through the application of innovation best practices to their own projects. The questioning techniques we used enabled them to become better skilled at evaluating the quality of a new idea. They received tools and techniques for developing their own ideas to their full potential and a proven method for dramatically increasing the chance of your idea being accepted.

Pat Younge, President and General Manager, Travel Channel Media: “The workshop provided a tremendous boost to our business. It was the perfect mix of strategy,  teamwork, and hands-on innovation practices.”

As a first point of contact you can choose any of the following offices or people:

Geke van Dijk

Laszlo Gyorffy

Oliver Gyr

The BBC faced profound changes as digital devices increasingly pulled people away from traditional broadcast programming. The world was changing fast; it would require rapid and radical shift of emphasis to keep up.  The company’s challenge was to find new ways of delivering valued content to fragmenting and increasingly demanding audiences while keeping the faith with loyal customers who cherished its core services; its mission was to become the most creative organization in the world.

BBC executives and managers came to Silicon Valley for The Discipline of Innovation workshop at SRI. Following the workshops, EDG facilitated the dissemination of these innovation practices throughout the BBC.  In addition, EDG participated in a number of strategic thinking events to help increase awareness of and engagement with the profound changes involved in shifting from a “Public Service” broadcaster in the analog world to becoming a “Public Value” content delivery platform in the mobile-digital world. Hundreds of employees from throughout the company participated to grasp the impact of this monumental industry transformation on their own work. By organising innovation sessions EDG also helped BBC executives and managers to understand the concrete implications of change for the leadership in their divisions and departments in order to more effectively drive the transformation throughout the organization.

After the sessions, in April 2006, Director-General Mark Thompson published his strategy for a creative future. At its heart were radical new services like the BBC’s on-demand console the I-Player, a new web 2.0 strategy and an emphasis on “martini media” - anytime, anywhere, any place.

Watch this short, inspiring video about the transformation that the BBC is ondergoing and the programms that have been put in place to accomplish this at Radio 1.

The Four Digital Customers
As we studied customers in the emerging digital era, we identified four major mindsets that we will call the “Four Digital Customers” Issues arise when the content providers stop at just satisfying customer Anna, while ignoring the other three emerging digital customers. But there are times when we want to sit back and be entertained. There are times when we want to be playful or interactive. And there are also times we want to express ourselves creatively and when we want to feel part of a community.

Anna, the Analog
Ana is passive-reflective and is happy to plop down in front of a television and simply be entertained, no involvement necessary. Television, movies, radio, books, newspapers, magazines, live performing arts events, and even plenty of online material satisfy this customer. Ana prefers high quality content that is nurturing, that allows her to remain comfortably receptive and that enriches her.

Andi, the Analog-Digital
Andi is playful and interactive. He likes to engage with content created by others, to play, to comment and recommend, rate and rank, mix and match, to add a personal touch and point of view to existing content. Andi is looking for a cool interactive experience.

D.J., the Digital
D.J. is looking to be empowered by a product or service so that he can create more effectively, share knowledge, and have an impact on the world. It is this desire for creative expression, coupled with exposure, that drives D.J. While ten years ago it was nearly impossible to connect directly to an audience, now it takes mere seconds for anything to be available worldwide. Blogs, YouTube, KyteTV, iTunes, Flikr, podcasting have made it possible for every consumer to not only generate original thought, but also have it seen or heard.

Syndi, the Synthesizing and Community-Builder
Syndi is focused on others. Syndi wants to be a part of a community; to belong to a social network.  He or she likes to connect with others to dialogue and co-create.  Syndi is all about synergy, about bringing people together to create something none of them could create alone. Syndi can be a participant in virtual groups or establish personal networks through platforms like MySpace and Facebook as well.

Ana, Andi, DJ, & Syndi help explain why the modern media consumer is no longer happy with just passive-reflective, one-way content. With the exponential growth of digital technology, it is possible for the media to reach all four of the customers — and that is what the people want. Basic human behavior isn’t changing, but the way that consumers can act on their desires is.

What we see today is only the beginning, but Ana, Andi, D.J. and Syndi can point the way to what is coming tomorrow.

Download the article on Anna, Andi, DJ and Syndi.

Watch a short documentary about the Swiss digital audience here