Industry is reinventing itself around digitalization. New technology buzzwords like user experience, augmented and virtual reality, automation, autonomous systems, and Industry 4.0 are all becoming mainstream. But every industry has the same problem: how should the new technologies be applied to deliver value in a disruptive market?
Change is coming
When we go out into the field, customer discussions turn quickly to the biggest fear they face. Fear of missing the boat or losing their competitive advantage. Change is coming but they don’t know what that change looks like, only that someone, somewhere might be about to steal their lunch.
Sun Tzu in the Art of Warfare said “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” We don’t think he had technology wars in mind. But what if we apply his thinking anyway to today’s competitive markets? To combat change you have to become the change. And if you don’t know what change looks like, the best way to predict it is to create it yourself – in collaboration with the right partners.
At VTT, we developed InnoLeap to serve partner companies who have taken precisely this kind of proactive stance towards changing conditions. So instead of waiting around to see what change your industry will deliver up next, why not take the lead and become that change. But how?
Disrupt your own domain
The best place to start is to visualize change by developing new and future-oriented solution concepts. We can work with you to deliver them in ways that are engaging for your customers, the media, and other broader stakeholder groups.
Some of our jointly developed concept solutions have already tested well, with a surprising degree of success. Rolls-Royce Marine piloted InnoLeap and our collaboration journey led us to a whole new vision for unmanned ship operations in 2030. With this shared project, not only did we go together some way towards disrupting the marine domain, but we also caused a shift in thinking towards renewal of the entire industry – in this case, through visualizations of the operation of autonomous ships.
InnoLeap, if we unpack it, is basically a collection of concept design principles to push radical new concepts into the industrial workplace. Backed by our experience and solid research methods, we can go deep into the users’ world and experience while at the same time wowing your stakeholders with previously unimagined designs: with task-analysis methods, we explore what the users need to do and know in order to be successful in their work tasks, both in abnormal and normal situations. Together with the client, we can then combine this understanding with knowledge on technology trends for creating new solutions of the future.
Be your industry’s new thought leader
With Rolls-Royce Marine, VTT was able to work with the media in a third-party capacity, precluding the need for our client to self promote. And in the first three weeks, our concept releases, pictures and video had garnered 250 separate news articles and 40,000 YouTube hits.
Rolls-Royce Marine definitely raised its profile, repositioning itself in the industry as the new thought leader, and the company is now working to influence stakeholders, including maritime lawmakers, to help drive these new concepts forward. Which means, when it comes to radical industry change, Rolls-Royce Marine is definitely not missing the boat.
