At Shift we follow a three stage framework for creating human-centered and business-viable outcomes. Our framework starts with the identification and framing of opportunities, progresses to solutioning against said opportunities, and concludes with enabling your business to execute the new experience. Over the course of the next several months we will be breaking down each stage, and step, in greater detail. To start we'd like to introduce you to our framework:
Opportunity
The opportunity stage of our framework is akin to what many would consider corporate "strategy.” We tend to avoid the word strategy because it is so often abused, and because it isn’t truly exclusive to upstream or downstream thinking. At all three stages of our framework, strategic thinking is essential.
Opportunity however, is something that comes and goes. If you fail to seize on an opportunity, then it’s gone, and you won't likely see it again. Being able to effectively identify, isolate, and enable teams to activate on opportunities is where some companies become industry leaders, while others are perpetual laggards.
Solution
Our Solution stage is largely drawn from IDEO’s Design Thinking methodology, with a blend of Service Design and Systems Thinking. Solutioning is all about diving deeply into a problem space, understanding what the real root causes are, and finding the insights to redefine and solution against it.
While “solutioning” sometimes has a derogatory connotation for people looking to elevate themselves to a more “strategic” position, we tend to disagree. After we know our business goals, it takes highly strategic minds to discover how to get there. Shift does exactly that: identify the correct opportunity and through deep understanding of human interactions and motivations, create a new experience.
Activation
Activation is where many companies fail. Even if a business has the greatest visionaries on the planet, it’s not good enough to know where you need to go, you have to have a path to get there. When we talk Activation, we mean enabling teams to execute against a vision that was once abstract, but now feels concrete and applicable to their environment.
Activation is also about intelligently implementing new ideas. No matter how far you go to test out a new concept, you can never fully know if it will succeed or fail until it hits the market. We take much of the risk out of executing these new ideas, but also provide the framework for experimenting in-market with minimal risk.
Summary
Shift’s approach to Human-Centered innovation is nothing brand new--we pull together a variety of methodologies that have proven successful into a new cohesive framework that essentially guarantees success.
Stay tuned for our deeper dive into each of the three major stages of our framework, starting with Opportunity.
Interested in learning more? Reach out to Shift to schedule a conversation, we’re always happy to chat.
