Idea Couture

The future of the future is not the present so only solving for today’s challenges does little to address tomorrow’s unknowns.

Idea Couture’s Futures & Foresight team helps clients understand, anticipate & prepare for the future—applying both research & design methodologies to support present-day decision-making to produce more tangible & compelling narratives of alternative possibilities.


How can we help organizations navigate & innovate in complex & uncertain environments?

Overview

Idea Couture is an in-house strategic innovation & experience design resource to parent company Cognizant Technology Solutions as well as a consultant to external clients across Hospitality, Entertainment, Travel, Retail, Food & Beverage, Grocery, Education, Health, Banking, Finance & Insurance sectors that might be unconcerned with emerging signals of change, misaligned on organizational direction, removed from evolving brand relevance, faced with a saturated market, settled on established projections, or detached from looming future imperatives. Project snippets below.

Growth Platforms & Opportunity Areas

Case Studies

Sprint to in-depth research & ideation initiatives that translated insights into strategic solutioning of opportunity & risk assessment in areas of high impact & value for organizations. These efforts aimed to align, impact & expand existing capabilities which featured but were not limited to these activities & deliverables:

Activities

Causal Layered Analysis

SWOT Analysis

Capabilities Assessment

Innovation Matrix

Market Sizing

Cone of Plausbility

Windtunneling

2x2 Evaluation Matrix


Deliverables

Concept Briefs

Future State Service Blueprin

Product/ Service Roadmap

Prioritization Scorecard

Low-fidelity Rapid Prototyping

Scenarios & Personas

Case Studies

6+ week long in-house & external research projects showcasing Thought Leadership & Content Marketing pieces & Forecast reports focused on a singular topic & industry. Extrapolation & scenario development inject tangible & visceral weight to future decision-making processes. Activities and deliverables often encompassed:

Activities

Mood & Storyboarding

Backcasting

Hero Stories

Future Personas

Inflection Point Development

2x2 Scenario Development


Deliverables

Moodboards

Behavioral Archetypes & Personas

Visual Mockups

Design Artifacts

Scenario Archetypes

Immersive Scenarios

Workshops

Case Studies

Single-day sprint to multi-day immersions of informal & creative participatory convergent & divergent design thinking exercises. Coordinated Framing, Alignment, Ideation, Short- to Long-Term Visioning & Prioritization sessions with stakeholders, cross-functional client teams & users to gather insights, identify pain points & refine ideas, frame concepts & prototypes that involved these activities, methods & deliverables:

Activities

Workshop Design & Planning

Workshop Facilitation

Laddering

Arbitrary Constraints

Brainwriting 6-3-5

Business Model Experimentation


Deliverables

Future State Journey Map & Service Blueprint

Concept Briefs

Prioritization Criteria

Prioritization Scorecards

Strategic Roadmap

Research

Case Studies

A mix of user research, market research, competitor analysis, environmental & horizon scanning efforts that helped to better understand the goals, biases, needs & variables influencing or prone to influence the nature & context of a client's business. These engagements spanned anywhere between 2-3 weeks for RFPs, 4-6 weeks for incubation & 8-10+ weeks for multi-stage projects that included some of the following activities & deliverables:

Activities

Behavioral Ethnography

Signal Scanning

Domain Mapping

STEEPV / PESTLE

Futures Wheel

Affinity Diagramming

Thematic Clustering

Insight Development

Trend Identification

Systems Mapping


Deliverables

Interview Questionnaires

Baseline Assessment

Trendscape Reports

Futures Landscape

Drivers of Change

Current State Journey Map & Service Blueprint