Healthy Ageing by Design growth programme
Why Design is a strategic growth ingredient for Healthy Ageing solution providers
3.08.21
Julian Grice, Creative Venue and Veronica Hawking, Project Manager — Healthy Ageing Challenge Community of Practice
Essential reading for solution providers committed to developing innovative and disruptive propositions to exploit the healthy ageing market.
Design alone isn’t a panacea for entrepreneurs searching for answers to their business challenges in the healthy ageing market. However, using design strategically goes a long way to setting an idea on the correct heading, to launching it into a market on the right trajectory and to ensure users love it and want more.
“Despite the UK’s enormous strengths in design there remains a significant opportunity for more businesses to exploit that potential: recognising, adopting and investing in the best quality design to innovate more effectively, compete successfully and grow faster. For businesses that truly embed design into their innovation strategies the potential benefits are considerable.” Dr Ian Campbell, Executive Chair, Innovate UK
Last month saw the launch of the Healthy Ageing Challenge Community of Practice’s brand new Healthy Ageing by Design growth programme. The programme, which runs to September, will provide an unmissable opportunity for participants to learn how to use design strategically, as they develop innovative new products and services for the healthy ageing market.
This poll from 90 solution providers who joined the programme’s launch webinar highlights the challenge of convincing enterprises to invest in design to shape their strategy. While 70% know design can help test new ideas and 41% know design can provide insight into markets, only 22% translate that ability into helping them shape their growth strategy.
This is the perception gap we need to close but the good news is that the appetite for learning about the strategic role design can play is undeniable.
There’s plenty of research proving the value of design — McKinsey reports that businesses who value design out-perform industry benchmark growth by 2 to 1, and the UK Design Council demonstrates a ROI of £7 for every £1 invested in design.
However, 42% of start-ups fail because they lack a deep understanding of their market and only 50% of businesses conduct user-research before generating first stage ideas. And as highlighted in Innovate UK’s design and innovation strategy, 66% of UK firms are only at level 1 or 2 on the Design Ladder with ‘no design’ or ‘only using design as a final finish’ in projects. The UK is behind Europe, despite having what many believe is the world’s leading design industry.
So why do so many entrepreneurs fail to invest in design? What value do they expect from design? And how do they currently use design? The Healthy Ageing by Design growth programme will answer these questions and help solution providers grow faster.
Helping solution providers grow faster
We are delivering the Healthy Ageing Challenge Community of Practice’s Healthy Ageing by Design growth programme in partnership with the Centre for Ageing Better. Our experience in leading enterprise growth programmes for British Design Fund, Design Council and Growth Accelerator inspired the founding of our Design Age Accelerator and Healthy Ageing by Design campaign.
The programme aims to equip entrepreneurs, innovators, social enterprises and research institutes with the skills and knowledge to innovate faster and more effectively, to create products and services fit for market in the healthy ageing sector.
The programme kicked off on 21st June with the Design your way to growth webinar, rated as excellent or very good by 87% of participants. You can watch a recording of the webinar here.
Chaired by Healthy Ageing by Design’s John Mathers, with expert insights from Innovation Design Lead at UKRI Ben Griffin and Damon Bonser, CEO of British Design Fund and first-hand experiences from entrepreneurs Adi Kasliwal, Co-founder of Personal Alarm Watch and Eric Kihlstrom, Chair of Centaur Robotics, the webinar highlighted the return on investment of design through real-life examples.
“Our extensive design process ensured a successful launch, nurturing a community of customers that understand, value and feed back into our design led ethos. Design drives continuous improvement to help us to our goal of supporting millions of older people to stay independent” Adi Kasliwal, Founder, Personal Alarm Watch
“Increasingly design is becoming more prominent in Innovate competition scopes. If you go through a design process you will be able to answers questions such as what is your customer need and do you understand your market more effectively.” Ben Griffin, Innovation Design Lead at UKRI
Where design is working and where it is not
Professionals from the world of robotics to housebuilding, biomedical sciences to organisational behaviour and rural design participated. With 62% of attendees perceiving design as an essential ingredient for their business, and 54% as a helpful way of improving my product/service experience, the benefits of using design to co-design with users is established. However only 28% view design as essential to winning funding.
A key design challenge highlighted in webinar polling is that while 75% perceive the value of design in forging connections to communities and collaborators only 15% value objective strategic thinking and 21% in building team capability.
There is clearly work to be done to convince senior decision makers that design provides coaching and training to help teams move faster and de-risk projects — issues we will be addressing in the rest of the programme.
With so many attendees already recognising the value role that design can play, we look forward to seeing the outcomes of the Healthy Ageing by Design growth programme, as participants have the opportunity to learn from industry experts about how to effectively design products and services to exploit the fast-growing healthy ageing market in the coming months.
“I don’t see design as a separate from our business — it’s part of everything that we do. Everything starts with understanding the customer and take that away and we’re nothing.” Eric Khilstrom, Chair, Centaur Robotics
“There are so many talented innovators and enthusiastic start-ups out there but soi many of them forget to put the user at the start if their journey.” Damon Bonser, CEO British Design Fund
The over-riding message is that Design is no longer a nice to have … it’s mandatory if you are serious about developing innovative and disruptive solution to exploit the healthy ageing market.
What next
Last month’s launch webinar was only the start of our programme. Over summer there will be further workshops, primarily working with projects already in receipt of funding from the Healthy Ageing Challenge and businesses in the healthy ageing market seeking investment.
These free, interactive workshops will tackle the themes of ‘Design your proposition to fit your market’ and ‘Pitching your design vision’, to help participants understand how design can help overcome business challenges, exploit market opportunities and win investment.
If you are interested in applying to take part in these workshops, please complete this short form or email the Community of Practice team for more details. We will host a webinar in October to share lessons and best practice from the programme, as it reaches its conclusion.
To stay up to date with this and hear about other Community of Practice events, as well as the progress of our Healthy Ageing by Design growth programme, please sign up to join our extended community.
The Healthy Ageing Challenge Community of Practice is delivered by Ageing Better on behalf of UKRI. It is a learning community bringing together those organisations funded by the Healthy Ageing challenge, and others interested in the healthy ageing market, to collaborate, share expertise, and gain insights from the innovation and research both funded by the project and from the wider Healthy Ageing domain.
For more information:
· You can watch a recording of the webinar here
· Register for updates from the Community of Practice on the latest news and events.
· Connect with the Healthy Ageing Challenge on LinkedIn.
· Follow Creative Venue’s Healthy Ageing by Design on LinkedIn
