E-World lecture - energy industry
Develop business models according to a customer oriented prototype
"From customer-oriented prototypes to measurable business models" – at E-World in Essen, europe's leading trade fair for the energy industry, denkwerk offered insights into internal processes and experiences from the agency's everyday work.
The focus here was on the business design sprint, which serves the purposeful derivation of innovations and their validation from a user and business perspective.
Tailor-made: digital business models
denkwerk has been working with renowned clients from the energy sector for years and they all encounter the challenges and opportunities of the digital transformation on a daily basis. Together, we therefore not only implement new digital touchpoints or campaigns, but also support them in holistic transformation projects.
Consistently thinking along with the business perspective, specifically how transformation projects can have a positive impact on the cost and revenue structure, plays a major role in this context. Now we have created a separate contact point for business design: Whenever it comes to the creation or transformation of digital business models, our team of experts from the areas of business strategy, experience design and technology help to develop customised solutions.
Our business design formats offer three typical entry points:
"We are losing customers ..."
denkwerk optimises existing digital products and business models that are not performing as desired.
"We want to invest in the future ..."
We develop ideas and products "from the green field" to the tested business model. The basis for this is proactive innovation management on the client side.
"We already have an idea ..."
We build on existing business ideas and develop them further together.
Based on these inputs, stakeholders and experts become creative together with our business designers in close cooperation and systematically develop solutions.
Creative and business thinking combined
The most important thing for us here is the balance between maximum user-centricity and relevance to business KPIs. For this reason, in addition to initial scribbles and storyboards, we also use methods such as the business model challenger or the value case grid. In this way, innovative ideas that are primarily intended to inspire users can be underpinned with economic and scientific substance right from the start.
The results of the workshop phase, which often lasts 3-5 days, can be very diverse. With regard to the energy sector, they range from a novel energy-saving app to a business model for virtual tokens. Whatever the idea looks like in the end: It is finally prototyped to be tested on real customers. Simple click dummies are often created for this purpose, but other forms such as videos are also allowed – the main thing is that the user understands the processes and provides realistic insights.
Research results from everyday agency life
At E-World, we showed concretely how we work together with our clients. In addition to the exciting exchange on site, we were particularly pleased with the great interest shown by visitors in our presentation. We included exemplary scenarios as well as real research results, such as our trend map. With the trend map, we examined the field of tension between the environment, society, economy and technology with regard to relevant macro trends for municipal utilities and other customers.
AI-based evaluation of user data ("predictive analytics") is particularly topical in this respect, in order to make targeted predictions about network utilisation and peaks in consumer behaviour. In this way, smart recommendations could be made preventively, for example, and energy efficiency maximised.
Brainstorming: trend map as a guide
The question of alternative storage options for renewable energies, for example with the help of private car batteries, will also become more important in the future. The trend map offers many stepping stones and serves to "open the mind" to opportunities in the market. There are many possible starting points for achieving one's own goals: perhaps the sharing app for solar panels? Or a smarter use of collected data?
The trend map as a business design method is used to analyse the market environment, which in turn provides an optimal basis for defining framework conditions and inspirations for targeted idea generation in a further step. Techniques such as customer journey mapping, the blue ocean canvas or value curves can serve as further aids in this phase.
Would you also like to combine creative and economic thinking in order to optimally serve the needs of your customers? Our business design experts can help you! Contact us without obligation and let us advise you.
For more information about the business design sprint, read our blog article on the polymore case or contact us here.
