'Who am iX?'

Abstract

Technology is running faster than ever and, to keep up with its speed, businesses have been adopting design practices to turn the wealth of technology into value for customers. Companies are, therefore, renewing their identities and creating new business divisions to offer design capabilities to clients. Likewise, IBM iX is a department within IBM Global Business Services, that uses design techniques to solve complex business challenges. However, expressing the value of design in a business context doesn’t come without challenges. This especially happens in large organizations, such as IBM BNLX, where the IBM iX department encounters difficulties in defining who they are and proving their value to stakeholders. Specifically, the empirical analysis carried out within the organization demonstrates a lack of a shared vision and a clear positioning of the business unit, which suggests an internal intervention. Therefore, the central aim of this thesis is to help IBM iX enhance and communicate its identity both internally to create shared understanding, and externally to create awareness. The exploration of corporate theory shows that identity transfer is a long process that requires employees involvement in co-creation activities to help them internalize the it. Next to that, the notions of vision and positioning are explored as important elements that describe the core purpose of a business. In particular, a shared vision appears to be an essential element to express the “what” of a business while having, at the same time, the power to motivate employees in their daily work. Analogously, positioning is, by nature, an integral part of corporate identity building, due to his capacity to differentiate the organization from the competition. Based on the above-mentioned observations, and the analysis of theoretical frameworks from the literature, a process for the transfer of the iX identity is outlined and partially executed in the course of this thesis. The process is characterized by 4 main steps: awareness, understanding, internalize, communicate. To implement the process, two workshops are facilitated with employees with the goal to co-create IBM iX BNLX vision and identify their positioning which allowed to initiate the procedure of internal identity enhancement. To support the department in the external communication of the identity, a series of co-creative ideations are performed in close collaboration with iX employees. The results of these sessions include an iX story pitch and infographic to convey the identity internally and a marketing campaign whose purpose is to spread awareness among other departments in IBM. Final evaluation with IBM led to recommendations regarding the continuation of the process for the transfer of the iX identity. This includes a communication roadmap for the iX department that suggests the realizations of workshops, events, and constant renovation of the iX story.