Work AI & Innovation Portfolio
03 · What’s next
Designing what doesn’t exist yet.
At Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange, my work sits at the intersection of Strategic Foresight, Human-Centered Design and Artificial Intelligence.
- Role
- Head of Experience Design & Strategic Foresight
- Organization
- Capgemini · Applied Innovation Exchange
- Disciplines
- Foresight · HCD · AI
- Output
- Future visions, opportunity portfolios, prototypes, products and services
00 The work
From emerging signals to something a business can decide on.
I help executives and multidisciplinary teams translate emerging technology and changing behavior into future visions, opportunity portfolios, prototypes and new products or services.
Four selected engagements. Each one enters that path at a different altitude: one at the horizon, one at the opportunity portfolio, and two at the point where a concept has to become something people can actually use.
· In common
Different industries, one shape of work.
Make the uncertainty explicit. Frame the choices so they can be argued about. Then build enough of the thing that a decision becomes possible.
That sequence is the reason I built tooling for it, so the first two steps stop consuming the time that belongs to the third.
05 How I work
Three steps, in this order, every time.
These four engagements start at different altitudes, but the sequence underneath them does not change. It is the sequence, and not any single method, that makes emerging technology something a business can decide about.
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I separate what is unknown from what is merely unagreed
Before framing anything I make that distinction out loud, because teams lose most of their time treating the second as if it were the first. Disagreement gets researched when it should be decided.
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I frame choices so they can be argued about
An opportunity written as a possibility invites enthusiasm. The same opportunity written as a choice with a cost on each side invites a decision. Executive audiences are good at the second and not much help with the first.
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I build only until the argument is settled
Each engagement stops at the point where the decision becomes possible. Sometimes that is a vision. Sometimes it is a working prototype. Building past that point is spending the client's money on my own certainty.
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I match the altitude to the question
Horizon work for a business model that does not exist yet. A prototype for a behavior no deck can predict. Choosing the wrong altitude is the most common and most expensive mistake in innovation work.
Teams lose the time that belongs to the third step in the first two. That is why I ended up building tooling for those two.