Our thinking

Large organisations increasingly realise the importance of developing partnerships and building out ecosystems. Used well, ecosystems enhance and accelerate innovation; enabling the rapid development of new products and services to generate new revenue streams from customers old and new.

Customer-led design is an accepted norm these days; a go-to approach for innovation teams. But there’s a fundamental flaw in customer-led design when you’re trying to take a real leap forward: customers can’t lead you there.

9th January 2021 marked Wilson Fletcher’s 18th birthday. The coming-of-age party we’d planned obviously won’t be happening (our 21st definitely got a scale-up) but it’s an amazing milestone for us to hit. Some reflections on the journey so far…

Keeping a focus on customers throughout the design process has long been the domain of the persona, but we rarely use them in favour of two more powerful and applicable tools; behavioural archetypes and behavioural modes.

Our recent work with Nesta’s Future News Pilot Fund has highlighted again how crucial local news is, why it must have a viable future for all of our sakes, and why that future lies in forming a new relationship with consumers, starting now.

Incremental innovation is everywhere, but the real step-change, breakthrough innovations are much harder to come by. There’s no fixed formula for success, but here are six key techniques that we use consistently to generate big ideas.

Our work here at WF has been based on the principles of service-led strategy for many years. We’ve written and spoken about it before but given how central it has become to our work, it’s long overdue a simple explanation and an overview of why it’s the only way to build modern businesses fit for the digital economy.

The last decade is littered with companies brought low by an unexpected disruption, but avoiding the same fate doesn’t require a crystal ball. A new perspective on what a healthy company looks like is the key to preventing calamity.

A decade on from our original work with iconic news brands The Times and The Sunday Times, we consider an overlooked but critical quality needed for step-change transformation — and why achieving overnight success may take longer than you expect.