Clients benefit most from our sprint format when they are faced with strategic decisions about their market and offer, because, for example they:

• want to reposition an offer for a new (or previously marginalised) customer segment;
• are threatened by a new entrant or innovative competitor;
• need to stimulate growth with a new product;
• are operating in a market changed by technology, regulatory or social evolutions, and must respond to a resulting shift in consumer demand;
• are expanding into a new territory with different market conditions and consumer needs;
• are considering vertical integration of the value chain, upstream or downstream;
• want to relaunch a legacy business;
• are an offline business and need to build a digital offer.

Defining the challenge can be the toughest part of the work and it is okay for some aspects to remain partially unclear on kick-off. We spend time at the beginning of every sprint to clearly frame the challenge together. However, in order to guarantee success it's important to be able to articulate:

1. the industry or sector in which your offer will sit,
2. the customer segment you wish to better serve.

We can help leadership clarify these points, however should they remain hazy, then we suggest delaying the sprint until they become clear. Please get in touch to discuss more!

A typical sprint team will consist of two to four Wisdom team members, including at least one founder, a Client Project Leader, and further client stakeholders at relevant moments.

Wisdom associates are selected on a project basis, depending on the challenge. They are versed in a number of design disciplines (such as organisational, business, brand, industrial, experience, interaction, product or communications design) and design research. By sourcing project-specific talent with relevant geographic and subject-matter expertise, we help ensure breakthrough outcomes.

Our clients nominate a Client Project Leader, or CPL, who actively participates in the sprint process. Together, we select further client team members to participate in specific sprint sessions. One of our key goals is to empower our clients, and the CPL in particular, to internalise human-centred design principles, develop confidence in creative decision-making and build new skills to take back into their organisation. Depending on a team’s learning objectives, we can customise elements of the sprint to coach and cultivate the design competency of specific team members.

Ten days allow us to offer the minimum effective dose to maximise our clients' precious resources. Our experience using a deliberate sequence of steps ensures that, even though ten days is a highly constrained time frame, we always fully understand the challenge and are able to trigger powerful design thinking. Depending on the nature of the challenge we may suggest a longer sprint, but always aim to deliver the most value in the least amount of time. Big picture, our experience has taught us that working in a constrained time-frame creates urgency, banishes "analysis paralysis", instills a powerful bias for action and accelerates creativity.

Wisdom assembles teams wherever most relevant to the project at hand, potentially anywhere in the world! Each sprint incorporates working both in the field and in the studio:

• Field work: All ethnographic research is conducted in “the field”, and our team will travel to wherever the target customers are located. We interview people in their natural setting, whether this be at home or any place they feel most comfortable. It is important for us to not only listen to what they say but also observe how they interact with their worlds.
• Studio work: For collaborative sessions, the Wisdom team sets up a project space in the vicinity of the client, or at the clients’ office when appropriate. 

The ten days are scheduled flexibly, and when travel between field and studio, or other constraints prevent them from being consecutive, they are spread over a more feasible, but always short, time span.

Every sprint delivers concepts that trigger a leap in business ambition, clarity and confidence. We ensure this outcome by providing supporting assets for each phase of work that make the design process tangible and shareable:

In the first phase, we deliver:

• Consumer and stakeholder journey maps,
• Ideation work photographed as post-it notes (50+ ideas).

In the second phase, we deliver:

• Interview summaries,
• Key interview observations, insights, and ideas inspired by them,
• Insight synthesis in thematic clusters.

In the third and final phase, we deliver:

• Three low-fidelity concepts: incremental, ambitious and radical (a low-fidelity concept is an early prototype, typically using a mix of free-hand and digital visual work),
• A high-level business case and go-to-market plan for each concept.

The end of a Wisdom sprint leaves you with a calculated take-off point for your strategic decision-making. Clients use the three concepts to work with stakeholders within their organisation and identify the right path forwards. Once aligned on a vision of the future, clients can choose to continue their project internally or begin a next collaboration with Wisdom. Wisdom works with clients on getting concepts all the way to market, and on specific scopes such as:

• Increased fidelity prototyping
• Follow up ethnographic interviews including in analogous market segments
• Business & financial modelling to secure project funding
• Brand strategy
• Hiring key operational or technical talent
• Leading a small team to run in-market experiments
• Running team workshops (eg. design-thinking, strategic planning, fundraising, product development, scaling-up)
• On-going or ad-hoc advisory

Yes, we are happy to help you with your challenge in the most appropriate way. That said, every sprint is tailored to the needs of our clients. For example, if you are not looking for an entirely new product or service, the scope of your sprint can be limited to a rebrand or a new feature set, and the Wisdom method will remain relevant to favouring breakthrough results. We also facilitate business transformation for multinationals with multiple business units by planning a series of sprints across a longer engagement period, and including an organisational design scope. Please get in touch to discuss more!