Designing Services for Energy Customers

Client: First Energy Solutions

Situation: Deregulation of the energy industry increased competition and created opportunities for new revenue through value-added services. Our client completed their own systematic exploration of customer needs, and needed a process for integrating the voice of the customer into their concept development.

Strategy: Establish a customer-centered concept development process as a tool for ongoing innovation.

Tactics: Innovare worked with the client to shape research findings into insights suitable for team concept development. We then mapped out and deployed a concept development process the teams could repeat as needed. During a two-day Innovare Greenhouse workshop, a cross-functional team of 16 employees created more than 300 beginning ideas that directly addressed customer needs. We shaped the ideas into 30 working concepts and used affinity mapping to sort them on the basis of interest and strategic fit. Twelve concepts were selected for further development.

Result: Two successful new services were deployed within six months of the session, and several longer-term concepts entered the product development pipeline. Team members were empowered to conduct their own structured concept development to keep innovation moving.

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