Last week Koos was invited for a 2 hour guest lecture at the University of Amsterdam. The course ‘Design driven business innovation’ learns students how design is not only suited to create new products or services, but is able to transform entire businesses.

And of course, we talked about service design. We showed them how the world is evolving faster than ever and how companies should innovate to stay relevant, or to even drive change themselves. We talked about the service design tools we use and how we apply them for and with our clients. It was an inspiring morning to see all these business students explore the possibilities of design and design thinking.

A little background on their course:

“Innovation is an important topic for many organizations. Nowadays innovation is considered as a much broader topic than in the past. It includes not only new products and services or new production processes. It also applies to many other parts and dimensions of a business: revenue models, interfaces with customers, customer relationships, human resources, etc. In this course we take a broad perspective on innovation. For that reason we use the term “ business innovation”. 

One of the recent developments in the field of innovation management is the rise of design and design thinking. Designing new products, services, experiences and business models is becoming a new competence for many organizations. 

In this course you will have the opportunity to learn about what design and design thinking is and how it can contribute to innovation of businesses.”

The Amsterdam Center for Service Innovation: http://amsi.uva.nl/