A New Chapter
Stripping back to our core focus.
Andthen was started back in 2016 with the vision of building an innovation consultancy offering that blended the complementary aspects of design and futures. While futures has always been great at helping people think big picture and expand their thinking, it’s traditionally been hard to action learnings from futures or foresight exercises, and futures work has also rarely been collaborative. Meanwhile, design thrives off interdisciplinary working and diverse inputs, and crucially, it is great at turning insight into action. The idea was to build an approach to consulting work that blends these two disciplines, in order to help people design and innovate with a sensitivity to their long-term goals.
At the time, there were only a handful of others that we knew that were doing this kind of work in a commercial setting, so much of the journey thus far has been about finding our voice in an evolving field of design and futures. Along this journey, we’ve had a few highlights, from developing a diverse and interesting range of clients to setting up a Scottish chapter of the global Speculative Futures network and delivering several projects through our pro bono service.
Through this journey, we’ve always placed an emphasis on reflection. Reflection is one of the main things that drives improvement for us. Whether it’s keeping an eye on the impact of our work, reworking existing methods, or tracking the larger-scale changes in our field, we find reflection creates the kind of deep learning that makes us better. We think it’s just about time to take all of this learning and capture it in a new voice and identity.
Revisiting our roots, our new brand strips back to the core of what we do; ultimately, we’re a team of designers that research, and in particular, we do research about the future — helping our clients understand what the future could look like, and what people want it to look like.
We’re now focussing on supporting our clients in three key areas:
1 Seeing clearly with a shared understanding
Successful innovations are built on strong foundations. Understanding people’s behaviours and needs is a key piece of this puzzle, but it’s also important to look ahead, and to identify their aspirations and worries by asking the question — ‘what future do you want to inhabit?’ We’ll use social research, foresight, and participatory futures to help our clients better understand important factors within and outwith their organisation, while also helping them identify values and develop their point of view.
2 Building alignment with vision and purpose
To align a team you need a powerful story. A story that describes the future you want, and can mobilise people to work towards a common goal. Using scenario planning, vision design, and proposition design we’ll help our clients get on the same page about where they are headed.
3 Creating intent and a plan of action
There’s no point having great ambition without any idea of how to get there — every vision needs a strategy. One that not only charts a path forwards but that also helps each of us understand our role in bringing about the future we want. We’ll use roadmapping, product and service strategy, and brand strategy to help our clients chart a path forward, and assumption testing to help them refine and stress test their plans.
These new areas of focus and the corresponding stripped back identity are about us using our learnings over the past 5 years to hone in on the areas where we can have the most impact, where clients will use us well, and where we can do our best work.
2020 and the start of 2021 have been a tough time for the nation. But we’re privileged to be doing what we’re doing at a point in time when we have an opportunity to influence the thinking and strategy that will shape our route out of this pandemic as well as the coming decade. Right now, we’re looking at the challenges ahead and are excited for the next chapter at Andthen.
Have a look at our new brand here.
