Service Design, a good way to start-upping
The biggest mistake that can be made when dealing with a startup is thinking that it is a company like any other. This mistake is quite common and has repercussions on the methodologies used to guide these teams.
A start-up, by redefinition, is an extremely young company that lacks a fundamental aspect: a business model.
An established company, on the other hand, has already identified its business model and is consequently focused on executing it repetitively and progressively more effectively. In short, startups look for a business model, companies execute it. It is this aspect that allows us to understand that startups do innovation, a mainstream term for doing new things or doing things in new ways.
With these definitions in mind, Service Designers need to rethink the approach and methodologies that have been used over the years to guide the growth and innovation of these teams.
If we look at the classic product development model that has guided organisations for the last two centuries, it proposes new solutions where tangible products represent the real value for the end customer. Throughout the period of industrialisation, people’s problems were more evident and essential, and consequently so were the products offered: innovation was not easier than now, but it was probably more immediate.
But this perfect mechanism has recently jammed. What we have experienced over the last few decades is a rapid and drastic change in perspective that is progressively dematerialising the product and rewriting the logic regarding the value perceived by the end customer.
Think about it. When was the last time you bought a film on DVD? Or a CD of your favourite singer? Even the concept of money is becoming increasingly digital and intangible.
This change has affected some sectors more than others. If you look at the tourism sector, in just a few years Airbnb, that does not own any hotels, has achieved a higher capitalisation than all the others that for decades dominated the sector unchallenged. Even the art sector is experiencing something unexpected: if you think of a work of art, the first thing that comes to mind is a painting or a sculpture, in short, something tangible. Now a work of art can be intangible, it can be a photo, a gif or a few lines of code. In this case, the real value perceived by the user has shifted from the physical ownership of an artistic object to the value given by the sole ownership of it (more on NFT). Art has freed itself from the material constraint that has always characterised it.
When you think about it, this is crazy. But it is actually more normal than you might expect.
But let’s get back to the subject of startups.
How is it possible to innovate in a context where problems, needs and desires are no longer only solvable with tangible products?
How can we identify the true value that our customers are looking for in order to offer them the perfect solution?
How should business models be composed in order to function in a context where physical and digital are already one?
These are just some of the questions that a designer or entrepreneur should ask themselves before launching a startup in the 21st century.
The real problem is that nowadays it is extremely difficult to start a revolutionary business. Yet most tech-driven startups still adopt a purely engineering mindsets based more on how to solve than what to solve. If you look at the numbers in this sector, it is surprising to note that more than 40% of startups fail because they have developed a product or service that few or no one is interested in.
The startup world is a different beast, and in this context when we think of innovation, service designers need to respond in a different way when supporting these teams, especially tech-driven ones.
Hence the goal of this blog. Here you will find a collection of articles written by service designers working to support tech driven startups. Our goal is to share our stories, best practices and even mistakes in order to disrupt how service designers and startups think about technology, users and business models in a world where materialisation is diminishing its reign.
We hope you enjoy our stories.
