Achilles Design — Innovation & Growth Services

Need an innovation strategy, a portfolio update or innovation talent to help you grow?

Approach

Envision:

To get the most out of the future, you need to define it first. We help you move past fuzzy buzzwords into clear strategic direction by defining how you’ll use innovation to create new value for customers and channel it into competitive advantage. You’ll be set for success with an innovation mission statement that aligns people, projects and decisions around exciting ambitions for the future.

What we do:

Innovation Mission Sprint
Discovery workshop
Trend analysis
Profit pool framing
Future-casting
Whitespace insights

Strategize:

No innovation without execution. We help you make the future actionable by designing innovation as an intentional strategic process. Not a magic formula but an actionable roadmap to systematically point you to new growth opportunities in ever-changing circumstances and make effective trade-off decisions. At all times, you’ll know where to search for new problems and solutions, how to turn ideas into innovation concepts, and what projects (not) to invest in.

What we do:

Innovation Strategy sprint
Opportunity mapping
Competitiveness audit
Resource & capability assessment

Approach

Define

Innovation is creativity solving problems. So, to unlock innovation-led business growth, we look at where the world is heading through a lens that aligns your pains with those of your customers. This helps us spot novel opportunities for value creation before they become obvious and come up with better solutions. To decide which projects to pursue, each concept is scored against benchmarks for viability and revenue potential. The outcome lays the groundwork for a balanced portfolio that makes innovation a predictable driver of growth for years to come.

What we do:

Design sprints
Investigative prototyping
Ideation workshops
Problem fit workshops
Hackathons
Value proposition design

Incubate

Unlike most innovation firms, Achilles can move from idea to execution and put innovation into the hands of customers. Our teams bring together designers, engineers, strategists, marketers and technologists. Together, they sync corporate scale with best-in-class startup methods to rapidly evolve concept into product and business model. This process is driven by knowledge transfer and talent development. Through mentorship, training and execution roadmaps, we empower teams and build entrepreneurial DNA into the heart of your organization.

What we do:

Business modelling
Revenue growth strategy
Product Design
Service Design
Branding
Long-term innovation portfolio strategy
Supplier-managed innovation

Validate:

Our model builds on cold hard evidence to identify the best opportunities, eliminate waste and de-risk the route-to-market. Cycling through qualitative research, behavioral experimentation and rapid prototyping, ideas are systematically verified and pivoted to develop value propositions of which the revenue potential is validated by the time they are ready to bring to market.

What we do:

Prototyping
Experiment design
Customer validation
Feasibility analysis
Viability analysis
Desirability analysis
Usability testing
Performance testing

Grow:

Upon market launch, we set you up to ignite hockey-stick growth with a compounding strategy tailored to your innovation. No laundry list of ‘hacks’ or endless imperative for experimentation, but an actionable roadmap of tasks mapped to measurable outcomes for acquiring, engaging, retaining and monetizing customers. Leveraging proven strategies used by unicorn startups, we help you find ideal channels, define and reach target audiences and craft the right messaging for conversion at scale.

What we do:

Pilots and commercialization
Growth modelling
User acquisition
Demand generation
Conversion rate optimization
Funnel hacking
Retention strategy
Data & analytics

Approach

Training:

The frontier of innovation moves faster every day. We level up your teams to take control of change and become serial problem-solvers. Our training and mentorship programs skip the buzzwords and address the day-to-day nuts and bolts of innovation in corporate contexts. Participants learn creative techniques to find new problems, come up with better solutions and communicate effectively across stakeholders. They walk away as innovation evangelists, sparking wider engagement and transformation throughout the company.

What we do:

Design thinking courses
Innovation mentorship program
Training programs in design & innovation

Knowledge transfer:

Set your teams up for success by giving them access to tailored insights and best practices from our decades of driving innovation across the board. They come as tools, knowledge kits, step-by-step playbooks, workshop and keynotes — whatever works best. We don’t do one-size-fits-all, every deliverable is designed to match your organization’s unique challenges and to be ready to use out of the box. Knowledge materials like these are an effective way to build up internal knowledge and drive corporate entrepreneurship, hardwiring the innovational spirit in the culture of your organization.

What we do:

Custom Innovation playbooks
Toolkits

Staffing:

It can be tough to find the right hires for your innovation needs. We know because we’re always hunting for the best designers, engineers and strategists ourselves. We’ve also spent decades working with innovation teams at companies of all shapes and sizes. That, plus a high-value network and reputation with universities put us in a unique position to find and recruit the creative profiles needed to take your innovation projects to a leading level — be it on a project-based or permanent basis.