Carola Verschoor, Founder at groh! Innovation talks about “Research as a co-designer of business strategy”

1. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Research as a co-designer
of business strategy
Carola Verschoor
GROH! Innovation
4th of February, 2016
#NewMR 2016 Sponsors
Media Partner GreenBook

2. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Hello and welcome

3. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Navigating through non-linearity
• A time of change, we’re still
transitioning into a new era of
creative empowerment.
• Increased complexity in systems
as in products, services,
strategies. Need for a new
paradigm and need for a new
creative breed.
• The ability to learn, relearn and
adapt cannot be overstated.

4. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Post-industrialist research…
…is much more than the name of a department or a function.
The industrial paradigm has shifted and the process of assessing,
planning and implementing as planned is no longer relevant.

5. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Business starts seeing what needs to be
done the next step is how to do it…
“
”

6. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Research, design and strategy

7. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
This is a great opportunity for research.
But what is the essence of research?
“Research is about a quest. A quest for
questions, which is driven by curiosity.
Not a quest for knowledge driven by a
need for certainty.”

8. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
A pixelated truth
A complex reality entails many parallel versions of the ‘truth’.
There is no single source of information that is entirely valid,
rather the strategic understanding of the context is a mosaic-like
interpretation of what is.

9. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016

10. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Theory versus practice
• Strategy used to be about defining a plan.
That is like assuming that the charted
journey will equal the actual journey.
• When we are in the waters of context,
businesses must learn as they go, be flexible
and responsive while keeping the desired
outcome in mind,
• Research offers the versatility to navigate
these questions while being directly engaged
in the real world of real people.

11. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Research can address the strategic issues
from multiple angles

12. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Combining both art and science
• Art: empirical research
requires diving in and
experience the situation
from within. It helps build
a ‘sense’ of what is going
on but is not the whole
picture.
• Science: isolating
phenomena to understand
them better requires
knowing what we want to
research (hypothesis)

13. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Scenario planning fueled by research

14. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Research as a co-designer of strategy

15. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016

16. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
To become a co-designer of strategy
• We must embrace duality and pixelated truth.
• We must step up to the challenge of interpreting
findings in order to help activate them so that we are
teaming up with strategy and design.
• We must shift into a role of co-shaping by questioning
versus only ‘investigating’.
• This means we must co-shape the strategic questions
as much as the research answers, helping business get
to the heart of matters.

17. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
”
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18. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Thank You!
Website: www.groh-innovation.com
Twitter: @carolaverschoor
Facebook: groh! innovation

19. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Ray Poynter
The Future Place
Q & A
Carola Verschoor
GROH! innovation
#NewMR 2016 Sponsors
Media Partner GreenBook

20. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Order your copy of
Change Ahead: How Research
and Design are Transforming
Business Strategy.
ISBN: 978 90 6369 398 5
Author: Carola Verschoor
Format: paperback with flaps
Available at online bookstores worldwide.
www.bispublishers.com
Browse through a preview:
http://issuu.com/bis_publishers/docs/chan
ge_ahead

21. Research as a Co-designer of Business Strategy
Carola Verschoor, Netherlands, Festival of NewMR 2016
Carola Verschoor is the founder of GROH! She is
an innovator, growth agent, brand builder, creative
doer, marketing strategist and foodie. Her natural
habitat is where innovation, marketing and design
intersect. She has worked for over 20 years for
some of the world’s largest brands.
Website: www.groh-innovation.com
Twitter: @carolaverschoor
Facebook: groh! innovation