Identify Business Challenges

Discover what is interfering with your business goals

Investigate and identify what concrete challenges are hindering a selected business area to achieve its goals and what can be possible solutions to overcome them. The outcome of this method is a list of challenges, external risks, internal barriers and proposed solutions that can be used as starting point to identify potential innovation projects.

GOAL

Identify concrete challenges within a selected business area

PARTICIPANTS

Design or Design Thinking practitioner, department leads from a selected business area

TIME NEEDED

45 - 60 Minutes

PHASE

Explore

Before you start

Select a business area to focus on
This can be the business area that has raised an unclear requirement or one that needs to be further scoped.

Materials you will need

Templates for Download

Download All Templates

Steps

  • 15 min

Capture main challenges, external risks, internal barriers and solution ideas

Send the Business Challenges questionnaire provided for download to 4 or 5 different leads of the business area you have selected, who volunteer to help you with your investigation.

The survey is aimed at Business Strategists, Business Leads and Business Managers of the identified business area.

  • 30 min

Consolidate your findings

Write each challenge, external risk, internal barrier and solution idea in a separate post-it note and assign a different colour to each of the four aspects. You can also use the Collection of Innovation Opportunities template provided to document the results of your questionnaire.

Combine repeated or similar statements into one note. These results will be used as input material for the method Use Case Exploration Workshop.

You’re done!

Great job! You have now an understanding of the current situation of the business area you aim to improve. As a next step, you can use the identified challenges, external risks, internal barriers and solution ideas to identify potential innovation projects. Follow the next methods in the Recommended Path to continue with your innovation project.