Design-driven venturing

Abstract

This thesis investigates how strategic design contributes to the venturing architecture of New Business Development at Philips Domestic Appliances (DA). Based on eight in-depth interviews and a six-month embedding, a new co-designed venturing architecture is introduced (Figure 1). The proposed architecture guides innovation teams and executives at Philips DA to build the capabilities and processes for venturing into new territories of consumer value. Additionally, the new architecture reflects the newly established vision of the New Business Creation & Scaling (NBX) team and integrates a new ‘value shaping’ perspective, based on original research findings.

As Philips Domestic Appliances was disconnected from Royal Philips in 2021, the need for new ‘ventures’ emerged in order to remain a leading innovator in the domestic appliances industry. The key questions are what new business opportunities to pursue and how to increase success in bringing meaningful innovation, fostering a forward-looking culture, and facilitating the development of new skills & capabilities. Eight in-depth interviews shed light on the current new business development practice at Philips DA. Four baseline results that highlight areas for further analysis were identified: ‘daring culture’, ‘consumer value’, ‘future visioning’, and ‘design strategy.’

Based on these baseline results, an inductive analysis yielded three themes: ‘Using design to unlock new value spaces’ (I), ‘Insight-driven value shaping’ (II), and ‘Visions that embrace risk’ (III). These themes orient venturing as a design-driven endeavor, in which consumer value is not only anticipated but actively shaped. Through co-design, the concept of insight-driven value shaping was developed into a new framework. The framework visualizes how the interface between an insight-driven perspective (e.g. trends, consumer needs), and a value shaping perspective (e.g. visions, value spaces) supports the client to identify new ‘seed’ opportunities.

This thesis adopts a design-driven venturing perspective and positions design-driven venturing as a subdomain of new business development. In discussing how NBX can pursue its vision of becoming an industry-leading venturing arm, the distinction between inbound change (how the environment changes Philips DA) and outbound change (how Philips DA can change its environment) clarifies how change affects NBX. The new architecture allows NBX to continuously adapt its practice and re-align capabilities and processes to cater to changing contexts of new business development, both inbound and outbound.