Methods

Practice Human-Centered Innovation Step by Step

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Framework

Objective

Mindset

People

People are at the core of innovation. Organizations can enable people with the right skills, mindsets, and competencies for creativity and collaboration.  Our methods and offerings help people grow as innovators. ​

Process: SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innnovation

Human Centered Approach for Innovation

SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innnovation is an end-to-end process that supports the entire innovation lifecycle: from the generation of novel business ideas to the development and delivery of high value solutions. Here you will find methods to apply SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation at every stage of your project.

Explore Opportunities

Explore Phase

The goal of the Explore phase is to identify the most valuable business challenges and use-cases to focus on together with your key business and IT leaders. The resources below will help you to complete this phase.

Place

Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings, and afterward, our buildings shape us.” As organizations begin practicing innovation, they need to be surrounded by spaces that support creative work. Our methods help customers turn spaces into creative places.

Discover Challenges

Discover Phase

The goal of the Discover phase is to gain a deep understanding about the challenges to solve through observation, interviews and market research. Here you will find different resources to help you through this phase.

Leadership

A culture of innovation can only flourish when it’s supported by the organization’s leadership. Executives and middle management need to have a human-centered mindset to empower their people and nurture practices for innovation. Our methods create awareness and help leaders grow creative mindsets and competencies.

Design Innovations

Design Phase

The goal of the Design phase is to identify the best solution ideas and convert them into tangible prototypes that can be validated by end-users and other stakeholders. Here you will find different resources to help you through this phase.

Deliver Solutions

Deliver Phase

Develop the architecture solution and deliver value for your end users by leveraging SAP Business Technology Platform. Here you will find different resources to help you through this phase.

Technology

Technology is foundational to practice continuous and scalable innovation. SAP Business Technology Platform provides unified data management to connect, discover, and orchestrate data; intelligent technologies and analytics to improve analytical and transactional workloads; application services to simplify extension and integration across the intelligent suite. Here you can find resources on SAP Business Technology Platform technologies, and SAP UI technologies.

Methods to Understand your Business

Methods to Understand People

Methods to Generate Ideas

Methods to Prototype Solutions

Design Thinking

SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation starts with Design Thinking, empathizing with the end-user to discover their needs. Design thinking is a mindset and a creative, human-centered approach that leverages empathy, collaboration, rapid prototyping, and continuous feedback to tackle problems. The methods in this section will equip you and your team to develop competency around these pillars.

Architecture Thinking: The Lean Architecture Toolkit

Architecture Thinking uses the data, processes, and system components to assess how the solution will be scaled from both technology and business perspectives. These methods will help you run and scale your solutions.

66 Methods

Business AI Agent Design Workshop

Are you looking to automate tasks that go beyond the repetitive—tasks that require adaptability, learning, and decision-making? Our upcoming hands-on experience will guide you in designing AI agents that work for you.
  • Discover
  • Design
  • Generate Ideas
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Business AI Design Workshop

Looking to enhance your processes or solutions with AI capabilities? This creative and structured approach will help you revolutionize your current processes with AI, shaping your solution vision around your users' needs.
  • Process
  • Discover
  • Design
  • Technology
  • Understand People
  • Generate Ideas
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Gen AI Explore Workshop Icon

Business AI Explore Workshop

Curious about how AI can benefit your business and drive innovation? This collaborative method is designed to help you identify AI use cases with real business impact, tailored to address your current challenges.
  • Process
  • Explore
  • Technology
  • Understand Your Business
  • Generate Ideas
  • Design Thinking
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Architecture Roadmap

Lay Out an Architecture Roadmap

The Architecture Roadmap is designed to identify and list the actions that are required to realize your architecture. This method uses the architecture roadmap to discuss the optimal implementation sequence and its steps.
  • Process
  • Deliver
  • Architecture Thinking
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Visualize the Software Distribution

Break down a complex IT-landscape and show how your solution is hosted.
  • Design
  • Architecture Thinking
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Solution Concept Diagram

Generate a Solution Concept Diagram

Draw a high-level representation of your solution
  • Design
  • Architecture Thinking
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Discover Phase Recommended Path Icon

Discover Phase Recommended Path

Complete the Discover phase step by step to scope your project and understand your users' needs.
  • Process
  • Discover
  • Design Thinking
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Solution Realization Diagram

Craft a Solution Realization Diagram

Explain your target architecture with solution building blocks.
  • Design
  • Architecture Thinking
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Visualize the Solution Context

Visualize how your solution relates to your organization.
  • Process
  • Discover
  • Architecture Thinking
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Meeting Workout

A practical and playful instrument to help you exploit how to reduce your meeting time and get the most value out of your meetings.
  • People
  • Overview
  • Leadership
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  • Core 77 Design Awards 2016
Scenes

Scenes

A tool to create visual stories about product and service ideas fast, collaboratively and iteratively, no drawing skills required.
  • Process
  • Design
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Business Model Innovation Canvas Icon

Validate Your Business Model

Verify that your prototype is viable from a business perspective
  • Design
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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How to Build a Prototype

Make ideas tangible and ready for validation by creating a model of how they might work.
  • Design
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Flex Team Workshop

A Design Thinking Workshop to Reimagine Hybrid Work
  • People
  • Place
  • Leadership
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Map Your Business Process

Map the process of a given design challenge, including key stakeholders and their connections, to uncover actionable insights.
  • Discover
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Spectrum

A collaborative tool to build innovation teams in organizations. 
  • People
  • Leadership
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Design Thinking Leporello

A simple tool to walk customers through an idealized design process.
  • Process
  • Leadership
  • Design Thinking
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Mosaic Tool

Mosaic

MOSAIC enables teams to prototype a future creative space based on their way of working.
  • Place
  • Understand People
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Dot Dot Bot

Dot Dot Bot

Design your own chatbot with Dot Dot Bot.
  • Process
  • Design
  • Technology
  • Design Thinking
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Calculate the Value of UX

Discover the true value of exceptional user experience.
  • Overview
  • Leadership
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Explore Phase Recommended Path Icon

Explore Phase Recommended Path

Don't know what method to start with? Follow this path to complete the Explore phase step by step.
  • Process
  • Explore
  • Design Thinking
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Design Phase Recommended Path Icon

Design Phase Recommended Path

Complete the Design phase step by step and transform ideas into concrete solutions.
  • Process
  • Design
  • Design Thinking
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Deliver Phase Recommended Path Icon

Deliver Phase Recommended Path

A guide to complete the Deliver Phase methods step by step.
  • Process
  • Deliver
  • Architecture Thinking
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Measuring tools on. table

Introduction to the Lean Architecture Toolkit

The Lean Enterprise Architecture Toolkit is comprised of 15 methods: 7 methods help to describe the business domain, and 8 methods help to describe the technical domain. Learn how to apply these methods in your projects.
  • Process
  • Architecture Thinking
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Lean Architecture Toolkit Express Path Icon

Lean Architecture Toolkit Express Path

While all Architecture Thinking methods have their purpose and value, some of the methods can be optional when describing a “Minimum Viable Architecture”, for example. This guided path shows you in what order to complete this minimum set of methods.
  • Deliver
  • Architecture Thinking
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Generate 100 Ideas in 30 Minutes

With this method, you have several associations and constraints combined to create as many ideas as possible.
  • Design
  • Generate Ideas
  • Design Thinking
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Align With Corporate Strategy

Align With Your Corporate Strategy

Articulate how your project goals support the company’s strategic goals by breaking them down into a set of measurable objectives, projects, and initiatives with a strategy map template.
  • Process
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Architecture Thinking
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Involve Your Key Stakeholders

Identify whom to work and align with while exploring and defining use cases and the architecture of your aspired solution with a stakeholder map and stakeholder matrix.
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
  • Architecture Thinking
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Identify business challenges

Identify Business Challenges

Use a questionnaire to discover pressing challenges in your business area.
  • Process
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Use Case Exploration Workshop

Use Case Exploration Workshop

Generate use case ideas and identify the most promising ones to implement.
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Identify Scope Architecture

Identify the Scope of Your Architecture

Define the scope and the business rationale of your innovation project and its architecture with the Statement of Architecture Work template.
  • Process
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Architecture Thinking
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Define Architecture Principles

Set constraints and guidelines to develop the architecture
  • Discover
  • Understand Your Business
  • Generate Ideas
  • Architecture Thinking
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Evaluate a Project Idea

Evaluate and prioritize ideas collaboratively based on selected criteria using a value heatmap.
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Use Case Blueprint

Create a Use Case Blueprint Diagram

Pivot from Design Thinking to Architectural Thinking by mapping user actions to architectural requirements.
  • Process
  • Design
  • Understand Your Business
  • Architecture Thinking
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Make a List of the Architectural Decisions

Document your architectural decisions and reasoning
  • Design
  • Understand Your Business
  • Architecture Thinking
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Evaluate Your Use Case

Learn how your use case ideas can be implemented with SAP technologies by finding similar existing use cases
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Perform Risk Analysis

Perform risk analysis to identify, classify and mitigate risks for the architecture.
  • Discover
  • Architecture Thinking
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Define Your Use Case

A short and concrete description of a use case idea for future implementation
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Conceptual Data Diagram

Devise a Conceptual Data Diagram

The Conceptual Data Diagram outlines the relationship between data and business entities of the aspired solution
  • Design
  • Understand Your Business
  • Architecture Thinking
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Collection of Innovation Opportunities

Collect Innovation Opportunities

Identify innovation ideas to overcome concrete business challenges, external risks and internal barriers.
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Define a Solution Vision

Use the Vision Board to set and align expectations about a solution that a team envisions.
  • Process
  • Discover
  • Generate Ideas
  • Design Thinking
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Synthesize the User Interviews

Derive insights from your research data using visual artifacts and storytelling.
  • Discover
  • Understand Your Business
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Formulate a Problem Statement

Transform the research findings into challenging questions for ideation
  • Discover
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Define a Persona

Create an archetype of your users from end user interviews to guide future design decisions.
  • Discover
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Reframe the Challenge

Making a high-level design challenge more specific and actionable by brainstorming and prioritizing target users, experiences, and constraints.
  • Discover
  • Generate Ideas
  • Design Thinking
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Remember the Future

Remember the Future

Set up a vision of success for the use case and milestones that will help you achieve that vision
  • People
  • Explore
  • Leadership
  • Understand Your Business
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Identify Key Stakeholders

Understand how the key stakeholders interact and influence each other
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Stakeholder Matrix

Map Architecture Stakeholders

Understand key stakeholders for your architectural work and manage support for your architecture
  • Explore
  • Understand Your Business
  • Understand People
  • Architecture Thinking
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Describe the Baseline Solution Architecture

Describe existing applications and IT components relevant for the use case.
  • Design
  • Understand Your Business
  • Architecture Thinking
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[How To] Conduct Field Research

Conduct interviews and on-site observations with end-users for the project
  • Discover
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Capture Feedback

Use the Feedback Grid to capture impressions and ideas from users, stakeholders and experts about your projects, and have a structured approach to derive learnings and insights.
  • Design
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Create an Investor Pitch

A short description of your solution and the problem it solves that can be presented to management and key stakeholders for sign-off.
  • Design
  • Understand Your Business
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Vision Storyboard

Create a Vision Storyboard

The Vision Storyboard is a visual story of how a proposed solution idea could be used in a possible future scenario.
  • Design
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Idea Napkin

Create an Idea Napkin

Describe your ideas from brainstorming and make them easier to prioritize.
  • Design
  • Generate Ideas
  • Design Thinking
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Ideate with 6-3-5 Brainwriting

Generate ideas with 6-3-5 Brainwriting brainstorming, a technique that encourages to build on the ideas of others.
  • Design
  • Prototype Solutions
  • Design Thinking
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Ideation Guide

Generate Ideas with Ideation

Generate ideas in quantity and do it in structured yet creative ways.
  • Design
  • Generate Ideas
  • Design Thinking
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Map the User Experience Journey

Understand user's actions, challenges and motivations over time to derive insights about the use case.
  • Discover
  • Understand Your Business
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Define an Action Plan

Use the Action Plan to get a deeper understanding into the vision, success factors, challenges, resources and phases that will be needed for your project.
  • Discover
  • Design Thinking
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Create a Context Map

Understand the context of a design challenge
  • Discover
  • Understand Your Business
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Prepare for User Interviews

Prepare for user interviews by creating an interview script with your team members.
  • Discover
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Analyze Data and Find Insights

Make sense of interview findings in the form of stories and visual connections
  • Discover
  • Understand People
  • Design Thinking
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Environments and Location

Draw an Environments and Location Diagram

Shows the geographical location of building blocks and runtime environment specific details.
  • Deliver
  • Understand Your Business
  • Design Thinking
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Sustainability Targets Card Deck

Sustainability Sparklab Workshops

A set of two collaborative sessions in which a systems thinking approach is used to help business and IT leaders understand sustainability related challenges and identify innovation opportunities with business value and sustainability impact.
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SAP Discovery Center Screenshot

SAP Discovery Center

A low touch enablement, self-service tool that helps businesses to adopt and drive outcomes for the intelligent enterprise. It contains "missions" that will guide you step by step to learn and implement a business specific use case on SAP Business Technology Platform.
  • Technology
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Fiori Guidelines

SAP Fiori is the design language that brings great user experiences to enterprise applications.
  • Technology
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SAP UI5 Library

A collection of libraries that developers and designers can use to build desktop and mobile applications that run in a browser. With SAP’s SAPUI5 JavaScript toolkit, developers can build SAP web applications using HTML5 web development standards.
  • Technology
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