The toolbox is an evolving set. It uses several practical and academic sources to populate
and help finding the right approach for the problem at hand. We do reference the work of the
original authors, if they are identified, and encourage the reuse of our own resource. As of this
day, several workshops are identified, not all of them are completely developed or tested.
Each of them is described in a synthetic document, explaining why it is useful, how to carry it
out and what the expected outputs are. The main elements described formally are the
objective, the brief, the content, the output and the follow-up of the workshop. To give a brief
gist of the current content of the toolbox, this is the list of the titles of selected workshops:
“Hunt the stereotypes”, “Shape the future trends”, “Remember the future”, “Create the service
box”, “Build the business model”, “Brainstorming”, “Play the service”.
hal-00616740, version 1 - 24 Aug 2011
Let us explain in briefly two of them that we will describe in more details later in our
applied case studies. In “Remember the future”, we ask the participants to imagine they live in
a distant future. Several scenarios are developed and assigned to different groups (these
scenarios are usually taken from the outputs of “Shape the future trends”). The groups are
then asked to describe the service and its environment as they would have seen it from that
point of view. This forces to observe the future from a more distant future, therefore allowing
to literally “Remember the future”. The service is then described as if it had already been
implemented.
Why is it important? It often is difficult to imagine concretely what the future service
should look like. Several studies in cognitive psychology show that by examining the future
we lack a frame of reference and get easily lost in the possible paths opening up. By reversing
the point of view, the description of tangible elements is clearer, richer and more concrete. It
is also easier to describe what steps were taken to reach the desired service. By selecting
several scenarios, we allow to test the robustness of the service. This usually uncovers the
similarities of the service in radically different settings. On the other hand, by looking at the
contrasts, it also underlines peculiarities that might be essential success factors in given
situations.
In “Create the service box”, the participants are invited to physically design a box that
virtually contains the desired imagined service in order to communicate its characteristics.
This not only allows the expression of the tangible benefits and perception of the imagined
service, but also lets the groups share more clearly the ideas they have about the service.
These ideas will otherwise most of the time remain vague, intangible and difficult to get
across. In this workshop, a service is already roughly imagined (this might be the output of a
“Brainstorming” workshop combined with a “Remember the future” workshop). The process
of “Create the service box” is simple. Give the participants a cardboard box, drawing material,
magazines where to cut up pictures, and ask them to literally design the box to sell the service.
After building the physical box, we invite them to present the result to the group and strongly
encourage a narrative storytelling form. This structures the output, engages the audience and
makes it easier to depict a concrete use. The short presentation of the groups is followed by a
general discussion and a synthesis.
Why is the workshop useful? It mainly allows describing very vividly the service. By
building a physical artifact, people usually come to a point where they stop talking and start
doing. In several cases, choosing images, drawing on the box, or developing a story allow to
more clearly exchange the ideas than only relying on words, without limiting them in their
imagination.
Let us now explain more precisely the experiments we conducted and extract some lessons
learned.