3-5 MIN. READ / STRATEGY / CAPABILITY Building / DIGITAL / Service Design

Creating a Digital Center of Excellence for a Global Giant

Rêve helped one of the biggest companies in the world stand up as a digital accelerator while developing the culture and infrastructure for testing, sharing, and scaling solutions.

Challenge

As a global product and services provider, the company was facing disruption and opportunity alike from emerging tech start-ups in many industries. While pockets of the company were proactively developing and testing innovative digital solutions, they were siloed in their efforts.

 

As part of an enterprise-wide strategic initiative, our client, an internal strategy leader for digital innovation, was tasked with standing up a team and processes that would become an accelerator for the company’s digitalization efforts. Specifically, he needed to bring to life emerging technology solutions like IoT and blockchain, and help leaders systematically identify where they might transform or disrupt their different lines of businesses and serve their customers better.

 

To deliver on this mission, our client engaged Rêve to develop a scanning process to identify relevant technologies, to design an accelerated process for prototyping, and to educate business leaders about their potential applications.

Approach

For a duration of 3 months, we served as our internal client’s team that would help build the digital center of excellence.

 

To start, we developed a technology scanning framework and process that mapped potential applications of emerging technology domains, such as blockchain, IOT, AR/VR, and AI, to identified internal business needs across the different lines of businesses of the entire organization. We shared our model with business leaders to gain feedback, and to learn about where they saw additional opportunity for emerging technology applications. We also developed a scanning playbook that would provide a scalable process for the intake of scanning requests.

 

Based on the internal insights, we curated a portfolio of opportunities that could be quickly prototyped and tested to decrease the risk of premature investment in specific solutions or companies, and inform the development of organizational strategies around emerging technologies. We saw convergence on a myriad of applications for IoT, and worked with leaders to develop the blueprint for an IoT prototyping lab that would serve as a testing platform and showcase, and could be replicated for other technologies.

 

In addition to identifying emerging technology applications and testing models, we were tasked with building a community of practice amongst business leaders and employees. To kick-start this effort, we leveraged behavioral design principles to develop education and engagement tactics to build digital acumen. Among these tactics were tailored technology content (“Digital 101”) and an internal summit facilitated in a hands-on “unconference” format. We also created a Roadshow presentation that would allow the digital innovation team to inspire and educate the rest of the company on their digitalization efforts.

 

With this new digital center of excellence in place, the global corporation is now well positioned to proactively manage and leverage the rapidly changing technology landscape for their global business.

Key Activities

DISCOVER

  • Technology Scanning Framework
  • Scan Prioritization + Execution
  • Scanning Playbook + Templates

Develop

  • Internal Stakeholder Interviews
  • Low-Fidelity Prototypes
  • Internal Prototyping Lab Strategy + Overview

DEPLOY

  • Technology Briefing
  • Internal Summit for Leaders

Key Deliverables

4

Journey Maps

6

Critical Moments

1

Future Experience 

1

Mid-Fidelity Prototype