Client Stories 

UCLA Anderson & KFAS

Bringing innovation and teamwork to Kuwait

Innovationship partnered with the Anderson School of Management at UCLA to act as the Learning Director and design thinking experts for this inspirational program for the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science. Working within the KFAS framework and collaborating closely with UCLA Anderson, we guided the creative learning journey teams from ten companies in Kuwait, ranging from finance to food service to real estate development. The four-month schedule combined design thinking, team dynamics, and business model innovation over three workshops, coaching calls, and online collaboration with over a dozen teachers and coaches. 

Thailand Management Association

innovating in bangkok's business community

TMA invited us to Bangkok for a workshop with one hundred representatives from the public, private, and academic sectors. The collaborative work focused mostly on strategic planning: how might we design a future that best supports empathic, creative, and collaborative engagement in these three essential sectors? The participants engaged with bold curiosity to discover the power of design thinking to address challenges at scale. The trip was delightful: the venue, TMA’s supporting staff, the warm hospitality, participants’ enthusiasm, and, of course, amazing food… We look forward to our next collaboration.

American Honda Motor Company

Building a cohort of creative collaborators

We delivered a one-day workshop with thirty Honda executives in Southern California, focusing on human-centered innovation and the value this approach can add to Honda’s already outstanding service offering. It was inspiring to work with a diverse group of bright professionals who keep pushing themselves to find new ways to excel. We took a deep dive into the interdependence of empathy, creativity, and collaboration, and by the end of the day, had teams presenting compelling scenarios of potential future developments. We’re excited to continue working with project teams at AHM as their application of design thinking continues to unfold and impact the culture.

Fortune 50 Strategy Consultancy

Business STRATEGISTS LEARN COLLABORATION PROCESS

We were engaged to give this worldwide firm’s staff the skills to innovate in close collaboration with their clients. This program used a blended learning approach that touched over 1000 employees, from new hires to seasoned veterans. The year-long engagement comprised workshops and large-audience events in the USA, Europe, and India, a series of webinars and videos, and ongoing support using their internal collaborative media platform that helped to transform the company culture. (The client's name must remain confidential.)

Venice Family Clinic

NONPROFIT network embraces design thinking

We have collaborated for several years with this remarkable network of eleven community healthcare clinics in Los Angeles that serves over 23,000 patients. We worked with them to apply the design thinking process to the creation of a new clinic that vastly improved care for children. Another project guided the executive team through the development of a five-year strategic plan that is uniquely human-centered. Most rewarding has been to see this group integrate design thinking into their daily work practice, transforming VFC into a creative organization dedicated to “providing enhanced quality primary healthcare to people in need.”

Juniper Networks

INNOVATING next-generation support services 

The Information Experience group asked us to help make a “change in thinking that would take them out of their rut.” The three-month engagement, comprising four two-day workshops and regular mentoring sessions, focused on learning how to apply design thinking to a new product concept, creating something that is “significantly different and better than what we had at the start.” The participants learned new methods for coming up with creative ideas and to develop and manage these ideas. The brainstorming process and client empathy techniques were noted as particularly valuable for the team.

Wedgewood Pharmacy

GETting CLOSER TO DOCTORS, PATIENTS, & PET PARENTS

This long-term engagement with a compounding pharmacy resulted in what the CEO has called “a cultural transformation.” We trained management, pharmacists, and support staff to use insights about customer needs to identify opportunities for innovation, and to apply prototyping as a way to accelerate the journey from ideas to products. Three innovation teams — focusing on medication contexts for humans, companion animals, and backyard horses — explored new ways to connect with human patients, pet parents, doctors, and veterinarians, and ultimately made changes to its training and call-center processes.

Kaiser Permanente

redesigning the PRIMARY-CARE EXPERIENCE

Kaiser Permanente’s innovation studio in Southern California invited us to help them learn and apply design thinking. The team of primary-care and specialist physicians, nurses, and staff, focused on better defining the physician's role in order to maximize their effectiveness with patients. We held six workshops to let the team experience and learn design thinking and apply a human-centered approach to identify and address challenges in the system. The learning resulted in many new ideas and a key prototype that is being tested with Kaiser Permanente management and stakeholders.

St Jude Children's Research Hospital

SUPPORTing A NONPROFIT through innovation

The charitable organization ALSAC is the sole fundraising organization that allows St Jude Children’s Research Hospital to treat life-threatening diseases in children for free, and to fund cutting-edge research for new cures and therapies. A team of about twenty innovation mentors at ALSAC needed a more effective method to generate, develop, and manage ideas for the fundraising process. We ran two innovation workshops several weeks apart, each three days long, during which we guided the diverse team from observation and insights through to brainstorms and prototypes.

Fortune 50 Business Consultancy

APPLYing DESIGN THINKING TO INTERNAL PROCESSES

We were first invited by this worldwide consultancy to teach design thinking to a team that harnesses in-house talent to “tackle some of the biggest challenge the world faces today.” Following that successful engagement, we guided an internal project to help them redesign a new process and work experience for various stakeholders and employees, and another project informed the new-hire on-boarding process. (The client's name must remain confidential.)

UTEC

INNOVATION AGENT CERTIFICATION FOR EXECS in Lima

We are now in our third year working with the executive education division of this technology- and innovation-focused university in Lima, Peru, and our classes have attracted a range of executives who come from Peru and other countries in South America. We now provide an Innovation Agent certification program using a series of workshops (conducted in Spanish and English). Participants who successfully complete this program gain the proficiency to lead design thinking events in their own organizations.

UCLA Anderson & Blue Shield

EXEC ED PROGRAM INTEGRATES A DOSE OF INNOVATION

This year-long program, produced by Blue Shield Foundation California with UCLA Anderson, brought together senior leadership teams from five California community health clinics. These nonprofits face a range of challenges across the changing landscape of healthcare services. We led a day-long "Clinic Dashboard” workshop at UCLA, observation visits to a cruise ship and a chain restaurant, and multiple mentoring conferences. Each clinic was able to apply insights from their work to innovation programs at their clinic, ranging from increasing employee communication to improving the patient experience.