A quick Google search for ‘innovation’ pulls up thousands of results: leading edge technology, business school case studies, how-to guides for innovation in corporate environments, and more. ‘Innovation’ is a big, ambiguous term that often looks very different depending on where and how it is applied.

This article explores how start-ups can learn from small organisations’ curiosity for – and implementation of – service design as a mean for innovation. By translating learnings from SMEs, we propose how start-ups can successfully adopt and practice a decentralised, informal and flexible use of service design.

Technology advances at breath-taking speed. Developing new solutions – or improving existing ones – while at the same time keeping track of these advances and considering opportunities they introduce, becomes increasingly challenging for us service designers. Therefore, we need to find ways to understand their potential, while at the same time enabling stakeholders to have an informed role in the process.

A team of students within the service design Masters degree programme at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) were interested in the awareness and knowledge of service design amongst participants of a start-up competition and carried out research and identified potential areas of improvement.

Established in 2010, Livework’s São Paulo outpost is a service design pioneer in one of the world’s top-ten largest economies - Brazil. Since then, the team has worked with an enviable roster of clients, but also experienced the challenges of carrying out service design before it became widely recognised. In this edition of the Touchpoint Profile, Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes speaks to Luis Alt, one of the studio’s founders.

The ‘Service Design Futures’ event took place from 23rd to 24th April in Shanghai Jing’an district, with more than 1,000 participants from across China and around the world. The two-day programme was filled with more than 30 presentations, the Successful Design Awards ceremony, and a trade show with sponsors and representatives making contact with the attendees, who included both seasoned professionals and service design newcomers.

We are proud to present the amazing work of our SDN chapters from around the world. This annual publication shares personal insights into the service design national conferences, events, meet-ups, publications and other innovative initiatives that chapters have organised throughout the past year. Download your free copy from the SDN website for the full story!

Over the past couple of years, the SDN has reached out to our members to understand what they value about their membership and how our organisation might ­improve the member experience.

This article reports on the development of a new service design ideation method which may be used for creative problem-solving. This new matrix has undergone preliminary testing in a half-day workshop entitled HackCARE, that was planned and organised by the authors.

For this edition of the Touchpoint Profile, Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes followed up with Anna-Sophie Oertzen after meeting at an event in Amsterdam, to learn more about how her research into the value of co-creation can enlighten service designers.

The Service Design Award 2018 ceremony took place on 11 October 2018, at the SDN’s Global Conference in Dublin. The Convention Centre Dublin was full with over 800 expectant attendees and sixteen shortlisted teams.

The SDN is a strong, international network, thanks to our amazing and motivated Chapters. Since 2008 we have grown from 1 to 42 Chapters in more than 30 countries and over five continents!

As designers, we pride ourselves in our ability to think of innovation holistically by applying the three lenses of Desirability, Feasibility and Viability to our work. At Conic, we have iterated on the creation of Service Blueprints over the past few years to make the execution of new experiences more clearly actionable (Feasibility) and to better articulate their business value (Viability).

Beautiful Dublin – the hometown of Guinness and U2, and a hub for Google, Facebook and Linkedin – played host to the 11th Service Design Global Conference (SDGC) in October 2018.

Designers increasingly find themselves thrust into leadership roles. Despite their passion for the work they do, they are not always prepared for these roles. In this article I share research insights about the leadership qualities that creative teams want from their leaders, and provide some tips on how you can develop these qualities if you want to become a better leader.

As service designers, we face many obstacles in maintaining service design’s relevance during the implementation phase of complex enterprise IT projects. Making service design the cornerstone of a fast-paced agile project requires a new approach, where service design spans from research through to delivery.