Daimler and SAP Partner for Design Thinking Enablement
Daimler AG drives change in innovation and agile working culture and therefore implements Design Thinking in its organization. Daimler has chosen SAP as a partner for their Design Thinking enablement because SAP went on a similar journey and thus Daimler can benefit from SAP’s learnings. A former development project of Daimler’s subsidiary Mercedes-AMG with SAP, in which Design Thinking was applied, created a high amount of trust which is the basis for the partnership.
“We have integrated Design Thinking into SAP’s DNA over the last decade to change the culture within SAP. Now, we have the great opportunity to share our learnings and best practices with customers who want to establish a design-driven mindset within their company. I am proud that we recently started the Design Thinking enablement program at Daimler and we are happy to accompany them on their journey. When I met the project lead and the team of ambassadors at Daimler, I could really feel the enthusiasm at Daimler for Design Thinking — not only as a need-to-have, but to become a new mindset and key to change their culture.” Sam Yen, Chief Design Officer, SAP
The challenge which triggered this engagement was the creation of a new mindset with Design Thinking as basis for a culture change towards creativity, collaboration and innovation.
Innovation: The combination of People, Process and Space
The core strategy of the enablement consists of three dimensions:
- People: Execute training curriculum to educate Design Thinking coaches from different units and organizations at Daimler who serve as multipliers spreading the principles and the approach across the company.
- Projects: Apply Design Thinking in real projects to prove success and value of the approach.
- Space: Set up a creative space to support the new way of working and make it visible and tangible. Flexible furniture and a different environment will help to foster creativity and come up with different solutions. Through a Design Thinking container space, the different mindset was made visible.
The benefits of such partnership were the focus on the real user problems, becoming more agile, creative problem solving, collaboration across silos. This partnership towards a design-oriented organization unlocked creativity to re-imagine digital businesses.
If you would like to learn more about this design engagement and see pictures of Daimler’s new creative space “Stella” read this article from CIO Magazine (German only).
