POWER ELECTRONICS - INNOVATION DESIGN
Discover New Technologies and Business Ecosystems
Challenge
The Renewables Market is one of the most growing and competitive market in the world. New ventures like Google build next generation micro inverters and Huawei - a communication company enters the photo voltage and battery storage market which is pointed out in the video below. The challenge for this project was to realize a competitive renewable inverter prototype with a business eco-system within the next 6 months covering six business units of a large corporation.
Approach
The approach to tackle the challenge of the program is based on the Boom! Innovation Design Flow to create breakthrough solutions in short terms.
1. Discovering
In the discovering phase Boom! started with a vision workshop to align the team and focuses them on the common challenge for the next 6 months. Moreover the Boom! Team processed a market analysis in short term sprints identifying the focus markets, market volume and growth rate as well as the key buying factors which are the basis for the features of the inverter prototype. In addition to that the Boom! Trend Discovery identified the key trends for the renewables market.
2. Visioning
In the Visioning phase an ideal inverter has been imagined inspired by the Boom! Innovation Tools like New Combinations or Design By Nature. The highlight of the visioning phase was Boom! Pitch Night in which all participating teams present their vision of the role of the inverter in the future.
3. Realizing
In the third phase the teams created first prototypes and tested them with potential customers of the energy sector in a collaborative way. This created a big mindset shift by the engineeers who see customers now as partners withn whom you can collaborate from the beginning.
4. Business Design
In the last phase three variants have been identified for the next iteration. The inverter business model has been reframed from a product business to a service eco-system in which the inverter is the door opener to the service industry of fully connected energy systems.
Solution
The Boom! Innovation and Business Design Flow crafted a disruptive inverter which makes several elements of the energy market obsolete. Moreover a business ecosystem has been designed in which the inverter is the future core element of a connected energy network and a door opener to service business.