Case studies

What changed for the client

Six engagements, newest first. Open one to see the situation, what we did and what came of it.

Wärtsilä

From technical plans to real strategy: teaching engineering teams to think, plan, and present strategically

Offering: Strategy, roadmapping
Format: Four workshops
Duration: Four days spread over four months

Situation

A team of engineers was treating its technical development plans as a strategy roadmap.

What we did

Strategy fundamentals
Stakeholder management
Roadmapping and OKRs
Strategy communication

Result

The teams moved from describing technology to making a case for it. The program expanded to three additional teams.

"When our engineers gave their presentions, it was very obvious which speakers had worked with Dan."

Tom Backlund, General Manager, Wärtsilä

Asana

How do you reposition a work-management product when GenAI and agentic workflows rewrite the market?

Offering: Strategy, AI roadmapping
Format: A running series of calls over nine months
Partner: Head of Market Strategy

Situation

Asana's value proposition was not well defined. GPT-3 disrupted whatever plans were in place, and the market was rewriting itself around AI.

What we did

Together with the Head of Market Strategy we analyzed the landscape, mapped the options, and set out the capabilities to build, in a running series of calls over nine months.

Result

Asana repositioned itself around the Coordination Layer.

"Dan's big-picture perspective helped us understand where we were, what options were available, and the steps necessary to start building those capabilities."

Tim Bowman, Head of Market Strategy, Asana

Beiersdorf

Out-moving an agile startup: a personalized-at-scale product and a live store in under three weeks

Offering: Growth, business design
Format: Two-week design sprint
Result: Store live two days after the sprint
Production: Four weeks after launch

Situation

An agile startup was out-moving a global brand with a personalized product, around 8,000 options driven by machine learning and an app.

What we did

We led the sprint at the start and facilitated from the first converge, from zero to an MVP and a working website. We coordinated the website launch.

Result

The full store went live two days after the sprint. Production started four weeks later.

From hardware to as-a-Service: a working sales and operations tool, taken from proof of concept to production

Offering: Roadmapping, proof of concept, business design
Format: Working tool in Excel and VBA
Result: Rebuilt for production by F5 developers

Situation

F5 was moving from selling physical products to selling as a service, and the sales and operations teams needed tools that matched the new model.

What we did

We built an internal sales and operational tool as a proof of concept, in VBA within Excel, and piloted it with the teams.

Result

After the pilot, F5's own developers built the production version.

Samsung

Not another smart speaker: the blueprint for a true SmartHome ecosystem

Offering: Roadmapping, strategy, market entry
Year: 2019
Duration: Four months
Deliverable: The SmartHome blueprint

Situation

Samsung was catching up to Alexa and needed a way into the home that was not another smart speaker.

What we did

We developed the blueprint for a true SmartHome ecosystem: the strategy, the roadmap, and the market entry plan.

Result

The blueprint became version 1.0 of Samsung's SmartHome strategy.

Microsoft

From follower to thought leader: a 17-paper future series that mapped the AI era five years before ChatGPT

Offering: Strategy, foresight
Period: March 2017 to December 2018
Scope: 17 papers
Credit: Eight written end to end, three also designed

Situation

Microsoft wanted to be seen as a thought leader on where industries were going, rather than a follower reacting to them.

What we did

Concept and outline for all 17 papers: the scenarios, causal chains, opportunities, threats, and business model changes, with stakeholder interviews to keep them grounded. Eight written end to end, three also designed.

Result

Papers on banking, manufacturing, retail, cybersecurity, and more, published and showcased through 2017 and 2018. Several saw the AI era coming four to five years before ChatGPT.

Read the papers and what they saw coming →

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