Industrial Design Thinking Boostcamp

We are getting asked this question a lot. This intense training provides a first, enlightening glimpse into the methodology and how to work with it in practice. However, it is not a facilitator’s training and we want to emphasize that participating in any three or five-day training cannot prepare people for being a design thinking coach. We know from educational research that multi-day workshops are limited insofar, as they can only provide basic knowledge and first practical experiments due to time constraints and the restricted cognitive abilities that we, as humans, face. If you wish to certify yourself as a design thinking coach: this program is currently the best in Europe. And don’t forget in all the certification madness: the best way to become good at something is just practicing it over and over and over – with passion. 😉

No. As we are specialized on in-depth, intensive education programs we do not offer “design thinking as an event”. We also value quality over quantity and usually restrict our co:dify workshops to a maximum of 36 participants – at best real product people.

However, we are aware that there are situations where methodological education is not the primary goal. For example, you may want your employees to explore basic aspects of design thinking in a playful way. In these instances, we are happy to support you in identifying a suitable service provider from within our partner network?

No. We only work with coaches and facilitators whom we know from previous teamwork and/or whom we have educated on our own. Thus, we work with client coaches in our standard formats only as a rare exception.

In our experience, it is easier for participants to learn the methodology when they are working on a topic outside their subject area. When working in a subject area where they are experts in, participants tend to jump into concepts and solutions they already know, thus having difficulties to really empathize with customers’ needs. Hence we either recommend a selection of our tried and tested generic workshop topics that work in any organization or we co-design a customized workshop topic informed by your requirements. Here, it is possible to develop a suitable problem challenge from almost any area of life. An essential precondition is that it focuses on creating value for your customer or user (it can be internal employees or B2B customers). Please get in touch to discuss whether your problem space is suitable to be formulated into a design challenge.

What we can already say, is that questions like “How can we increase our sales by 3% in 2017?”, “How can we become a market leader?” or “How can we lower our costs?” are rarely suitable for design thinking workshops. Of course, each innovation initiative has the goal to find answers to those questions, yet in design thinking, it is about discovering possibilities to create value for customers in the first place. It is only in further (iteration) steps that value propositions are translated into viable business cases which can contribute to the growth of sales or market shares.

The spatial environment plays a major role in facilitating team collaboration and the evoking of new ways of working. Operating in established settings makes it hard for participants to immerse themselves in new working styles and mindsets, especially when a change of behavior and roles is essential. Hence, the ‘right environment’ is a central part of the learning experience. Furthermore, most meeting and conference rooms are equipped with a large conference table, which is not suitable for working actively in small teams.

From our long-standing experience with interactive workshop formats in many different spaces, settings and company cultures we know the parameters that make a ‘collaborative space’. To establish the right setting for your Design Thinking Boostcamp, we can either book a suitable space or support you in identifying and adapting your own facilities to suit these requirements.

Today we even work with ‘hybrid spaces’: a combination of IRL working environments and digital collaboration spaces (Notion, Miro, Mural, etc.). This combines the best of both worlds and accelerates projects significantly. Get in touch to learn more about it.

Over the past years, we have studied and experienced the strengths and weaknesses of established formats from academic design thinking institutions as well as those run by consultants and other professionals (design thinking networks, agencies and companies). The co:dify Design Thinking Boostcamp is a best-of synthesis of these formats. Alongside a hands-on focus, we offer additional in-depth background information and methodology reflection, which was often found lacking in the eyes of participants of other workshops. Also, the focus on B2B is special.

All co:dify workshop moderators and coaches are designated experts in their domains. Each of them has in-depth knowledge in specific subjects (e.g. Management Discourse, User and Design Research, Business Model Innovation, Service-Dominant Logic, etc.) and has a minimum of six years of experience in coaching, facilitation and moderation (our core member coaches all have 12+ years of experience).

The Boostcamp builds on our professional education experience as well as our longstanding research on design thinking at high-level institutions (Hasso Plattner Institut, Chalmers University of Technology, Rotman, IE). Beyond that, co:dify experts are in involved in knowledge exchange with the most successful companies and researchers in the field through advisory roles and research projects.