Choosing the services to build around a device portfolio

The question

Across the categories the company sold, devices were becoming harder to tell apart.

It wanted a vision for services across its whole portfolio: what people would want in the years ahead, and a single philosophy to organize those services, so that hardware, software and services worked as one. The vision had to shape what it built and stay relevant for a decade.

Our approach

We started from people, with a framework of basic human needs, and built the vision on it with industry analysis, expert interviews and ideation.

Each need was weighed on three questions: how strongly people feel it, how poorly incumbents serve it, and whether it is in a contemporary crisis.

Ideation turned those needs into candidate vision territories and service concepts, each with a user journey and a market size. Every service was set against the incumbent it would displace, with a revenue model and the flows of value between the company, its customers and third parties.

What the team came away with

Corporate strategy had a services vision for the whole device portfolio, organized around a single philosophy, with service territories and opportunities worked through to business models.

We worked the vision through with the company’s team in a workshop, and a companion piece translated it into the organizational capabilities the company would need to put it into practice.