We call it “napkin resonance” – the moment when two or more people first see original sketches of an outstanding new design concept, on a napkin. This sketch is often preceded by discussion, brainstorming, years of market knowledge and experience, mixed with a helping of innovation, coffee, and possibly ketchup stains.
But the napkin is only the beginning.
Fleshing out a new idea, especially in the electronics and Internet of Things (IoT) space, means designing an ecosystem of support, service, production, and design all with the goal of high customer satisfaction, and profit.
Our marketing messaging often calls out for Free Napkin Reviews, but the truth is, we do much more.
Ideation Events from Hallsten Innovations
First some context of who we are: Hallsten Innovations designs custom hardware and software solutions with deep expertise in IoT to connect the physical to the digital world.
A Hallsten Ideation Event (HIE) is a dynamic researched and thoughtful two-day defining experience meant to uncover and draft initial ideas, technical feasibility, market opportunities, and early economic/market models for electronic designs, and IoT ecosystems.
An HIE defines opportunities and valuable solution niches within a specific market. Starting with a client’s industry-specific experience, the gathering seeks to determine an accountable benefit from an IoT Platform device, system, platform, or augmentation. Sometimes existing ideas are improved, others uncover never before seen concepts.
An HIE is heavily focused on user-centric design. Product and system concepts are fleshed out with actual, marketable value proposition for the targeted customer.
Events are facilitated by your writer, Jon Hallsten and by members of our capable team. Your author brings decades of innovative design experience, invention, IoT know-how and market insight to an ideation discussion. To keep everyone visually engaged, Matt Orley joins as a visual architect for the event. Matt visually records the happenings of an event live on large paper in a meaningful way. Matt’s contribution is so much more than just visualization… his background in business, technology, and design go a long way in crafting a holistic view yet approachable experience.
Our HIE Approach
A Hallsten Ideation Event includes guided homework preparation on all sides.
We utilize a number of visual business canvases on large paper to frame talking points. We have successfully used modified versions of the Consumer Trend Canvas, the Rose Hulman Innovation Canvas, the Value Proposition Canvas, as well as exemplary Customer Profiles, Journey Maps, and of course Hardware / IoT Ecosystem Sketches.
While every HIE is different, there are some common aspects of these events that help drive discussion. Below is a typical event agenda:
A Typical 2 Day Ideation Event Agenda
Day 1
- Innovation Statement – what do we hope to accomplish?
- Client Framing and Stakeholder Expectations
- A Review of Existing and Bleeding Edge Technologies and Customer Solutions
- Consumer Opportunity Markets Defined for the HIE
- Customer Profile Design
- User story, mapping experiences, Customer Journeys
- Pain/Gain Points in experiences, and define alleviating solutions.
- Define a Segmentation of prioritized opportunities.
Day 2
- Re-cap of Day 1 & associated (big paper) canvas developments
- 4 Types of Innovation (breakthrough, sustaining, new market, disruptive)
- Solution ideation per personas, segmentation, opportunities identified on Day 1
- Technical Assessment Discussions
- Market-oriented Canvas discussions against which a product model can be verified
- Next Step and Design/Market Verification planning.
Hallsten Ideation Event Takeaways
Hallsten Innovations will summarize the event’s best insights, take-a-ways, outputs, product ideas, and action items into an internally shareable slide deck which will be delivered typically one week after the completion of the HIE event.
Results can be a basis for a product design quotation, a prototype, minimal viable product development, patent research, or a basis for comparing existing in-house business solutions to new ideas.
Bigger Than a Napkin
An HIE is bigger than a lunch napkin idea sketch. It’s reach outweighs single concepts and explores the market, user-centric design, business models, value propositions, and compares and contrasts existing solutions with new technology that is within reach in this era of the Internet of Things. We’re happy to tailor an event to your needs and we look forward to journeying together in realizing innovation executed well.