Fjord Design From Within

Design and Innovation
from Accenture Interactive © 2017
DESIGN FROM
WITHIN
How to build internal teams to design and innovate

from Accenture Interactive
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
© 20172
Executive Summary
• Fjord’s three approaches to helping clients design
Context
• Striving to become a Living Business
• Where it all began
◦ The rise of the designer
◦ It started with a Trend
◦ A brief note on terminology
01. Setting Up Shop
• What does that mean?
• How long does it take?
• How we do it
◦ Big hairy audacious goal (BHAG)
◦ Self-organizing teams (SOTs)
◦ A stand-alone entity
◦ Service Design approach
◦ Sowing the cultural seeds
• Benefits
• Challenges
• Dealmakers
• Case study on cultural change: 
Banco Sabadell
02. Design Bootcamp
• How we do it
◦ Focus on a single area
◦ Pursue design-led innovation
◦ Establish a start-up culture
• Benefits
• Challenges
• Dealmakers
03. Taking Fjord Within
• How we do it
◦ Define a clear purpose
◦ Establish an experienced team
◦ Educate the wider business
• Benefits
• Challenges
• Dealmakers
Conclusion
WHAT CAN YOU LEARN HERE?

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
© 2017

EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
As a people-centric approach becomes
fundamental for success in an increasingly
competitive space, organizations are
realizing they need to move beyond relying
on external partners for design capabilities
that allow them to deliver innovation to
market.
We’ve helped multiple clients design and innovate
internally, using three approaches:
1. SETTING UP SHOP
2. DESIGN BOOTCAMP
3. TAKING FJORD WITHIN
Each is defined by the extent to which it enhances:
• Cultural change
• Development of design skills in-house
• Client-led innovation.
CULTURALCHANGE
DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN CAPABILITIES
LEVEL OF CLIENT-LED INNOVATION
TAKING FJORD
WITHIN
“Do it for me”
DESIGN
BOOTCAMP
“Learn by
doing”
SETTING UP
SHOP
“Help me do it
myself”
© 20174

EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
Each has its own ways of achieving the
GOALS they all share:
• Create a culture that inspires creativity and is
liberated to think differently.
• Create a relationship with the parent
company that allows them to deliver value
and pull on resources from the wider
business.
• Scale the ideas that come from a design
studio or innovation hub into market-ready
experiences that will topple competitors.  
And each follows these GOLDEN
RULES for success:
• Appoint a strong leader with clear autonomy.
• Create a psychologically and physically ‘safe’
space for designers to work freely.
• Assemble a diverse team and give them time
to work out how they will work together.
• If you’re setting up a new studio or hub,
create a distinct brand for it.
• Follow a Service Design approach to ensure 
you involve the user from the beginning, and
throughout the process of coming up with
any new products or services, while also
considering the backstage changes necessary
to make them work.
• Define a clear purpose and vision of what the
project will set out to achieve.
• Focus on breaking down silos, rather than  
allowing your stand-alone unit to exacerbate
any disconnected ways of working.
© 20175

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
SETTING UP SHOP DESIGN BOOTCAMP TAKING FJORD WITHIN
IN A NUTSHELL
DESCRIPTION
DURATION
BENEFITS
CHALLENGES
“Help us to design ourselves”
We work alongside the client to set up a
design studio/innovation hub powered by their
people, processes and technology.
1-3 years
• Building capabilities in-house
• Kicking off cultural change
• Attracting the right talent
• Sluggish culture adoption organization-wide
“Help us learn by helping us do”
We run a brief, intense and immersive
engagement, working together with the client
through a design process.
100 days +
• Co-creating as one: Learning by doing
• Cultural change
• Shock-induced rebellion
• Making formal changes to ways of working
• Broadening cultural change
“Design for us”
We set up a Fjord-led design studio 
within the client’s organization, taking full
responsibility for all the client’s design and
digital requirements.
1-6 years
• Driving digital transformation
• Making an attractive business case
• Foreign body syndrome
• Developing the client’s own design  
capabilities
Choosing the optimal approach relies on factors unique to each organization:
• What they want to achieve
• What they can do already
• What resources they have available
© 20176

CONTEXT
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
© 2017

CONTEXT
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
Let’s take a look at how the
three approaches within this
report connect with some of our
other thought leadership topics
CULTURALCHANGE
DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN CAPABILITIES
LEVEL OF CLIENT-LED INNOVATION
TAKING FJORD
WITHIN
“Do it for me”
DESIGN
BOOTCAMP
“Learn by
doing”
SETTING UP
SHOP
“Help me do it
myself”
LIVING
BUSINESS
“Help me rewire
my entire
organization”
Striving to become a Living Business
We believe the ultimate goal for any organization is
to become a Living Business – a business that can
respond quickly when the world around it changes,
adapting to remain fresh and relevant.
It’s almost impossible to transform into a Living
Business in one leap. The more practical and robust
way to do it is to test out the theory in a small area to
see what works well for the organization, then roll it
out from there.
© 20178

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
“I truly believe it is essential to start
by making a part of the business
customer-centric, then spreading
this across the rest of the
organization.”
MIKA LINDSTEDT, Fjord Business Design Lead 
CLIENT K (GLOBAL ENERGY COMPANY)
© 20179

CONTEXT
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
Living Businesses are set up to thrive in the rapidly changing
business landscape. They’re embedded with human
characteristics, which we break down into four Vital Signs:
PERSONALITY
The behaviors, beliefs and values that shape the
experience of interacting with your company –
whether as a customer or a colleague. Much
more than just brand, personality is everything
you exhibit to the world.
INSTINCT
How your company responds to difficult
situations. If you empower and trust your
colleagues to make decisions without needing
to feed up through higher management each
time, change will happen more nimbly.
RELATIONSHIPS
Every relationship within the business’s
ecosystem, including each colleague, customer,
supplier and wider society. Great business has
always been founded on great relationships –
but more so now than ever.
CRAFT
The essence of what your business does, and
what each person within the business
contributes. It’s about the combination of skills
that make its offering unique – and impossible
for competitors to replicate.
Becoming a Living Business requires a
new way of thinking, acting and
behaving, which we articulate through
our Design Rule of Three.
It describes how Design Thinking,
Design Doing and Design Culture
combine to deliver people-centric
services to market.
As we described in Fjord’s Shiny API
People Trend this year, for an
organization to truly embrace the
Design Rule of Three, its transformation
must saturate the entire business. A
design studio or innovation lab is the
perfect kick-start, acting as a stepping
stone to organization-wide
transformation.
© 201710

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
CONTEXT
Where it all began
THE RISE OF THE DESIGNER
Over the past five years, organizations have
started to shift their recruitment ratios in favor
of bringing in more designers. You can read
more about the change in the developer-to-
designer ratio in this article by Figma’s Dylan
Field.
IT STARTED WITH A TREND
“Design from Within” was featured in our 2016
annual Trends report (slides 59-64). In an
increasingly competitive market where it was
harder than ever to sustain differentiation, we
suggested that the answer lies in following a
human-centric approach that delivers genuinely
innovative products and services.
Evidence supporting our prediction emerged
from major corporations across the globe, with
many approaches materializing. Banks invested 
in Fintech start-ups; CVS Health opened an
innovation hub; and eBay brought in John
Maeda as a chairman of its newly formed design
advisory board — to name a few.
In the Trends report, we stated that “ultimately,
the success formula will lie in the execution...”
and this report explores our answer to that
challenge.
A BRIEF NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY
AND CLIENT REFERENCES
It’s becoming common to use ‘design’ and
‘innovation’ interchangeably – which will be the
case here. Although design and innovation are 
not the same, they are inextricably linked.
Design is often used as a process to drive
innovation. Innovation is, of course, possible
without a design process – but made more
probable with one. Please see the end of the
report for a complete list of the anonymized
clients’ sectors.
© 201711

SETTING UP SHOP
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
01
© 2017

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
SETTING UP SHOP
What does that mean?
Setting up shop involves working alongside
the client to set up their in-house design
studio or innovation hub, powered by their
people, processes and technology.
How long does it take?
At least a year, to give time to establish a
change, but the timescale could be several
years, depending on the client’s
circumstances and aims.
© 201713

HOW WE DO IT
DESIGN FROM WITHIN | SETTING UP SHOP
BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOAL (BHAG)
This is an ambitious vision of what the design studio
or innovation lab will accomplish – the reason for its
existence. It must excite and motivate, and — on a
practical level — be a signpost toward a shared
vision.
SELF-ORGANIZING TEAMS (SOTs)
The self-organizing teams (SOTs) you create will plan
how to achieve your BHAG.
They must have the autonomy to decide what to
create, how to create it, and how to work together to
realize their ideas. This autonomy must include the
ability to bypass bureaucratic barriers, which
empowers individuals to make decisions and make
faster progress.
© 201714

HOW WE DO IT
In addition to SOTs – whatever you call
them – some companies also build
clans and guilds:
• CLANS are groups of people from the same
discipline, who meet up weekly to talk about
what’s happening across the range of work
they’re all doing.
• GUILDS are people from any discipline or
project, who share an interest in a specific
topic – AI, for example, or blockchain.
Building these different groups reinforces their
relationships, develops knowledge-sharing and
collaboration, and boosts the quality of work
your team produces. Much of this thinking has
been well documented by Spotify.
Client B call their SOTs “ninja groups” and Client A
has “tribes”. Each ninja group or tribe has a name
and identity that helps to establish a sense of
belonging, camaraderie and trust.
© 201715

HOW WE DO IT
A STAND-ALONE ENTITY
To create cool and useful stuff, a design studio needs to be free from the shackles of its parent
company and encouraged to embrace a type of thinking that differs from the rest of the organization.
The studio should be free to bypass traditional
processes and protocols that can slow progress
and suppress creativity. Physically separating
the hub helps to reduce the subconscious
influence of a parent organization.
Liberated from parent company rules, a design
studio will need its own model that supports
what it sets out to achieve. This is where the
combined power of Fjord and Accenture is at its
best.
Visually differentiating your design and
innovation department will send a strong,
subliminal message that says you’re doing
things differently.
The Client A Hub was delivered in close
collaboration with Accenture, who took control of
shaping governance — including everything from
structures and processes to defining delivery
models and infrastructure requirements.
We helped the Finnish Immigration System, a
government agency that processes matters relating
to immigration, create a distinct brand identity for
the unit, clearly separating them from the wider
ministry and accelerating them toward a culture of
design and innovation. The move was a success,
sending a strong message across the ministries,
and throughout other government departments.
© 201716
To encourage the team to think differently, Banco
Sabadell launched InnoCells, its hub of new digital
ventures, away from their HQ.

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
“You’re only as good as
your people, so you must
give them space to
innovate.”
TOBIAS KRUSE, Fjord Business Design Director EALA 
NEUGELB, COMMERZBANK’S IN-HOUSE DESIGN AGENCY
© 201717

HOW WE DO IT
SERVICE DESIGN APPROACH
Service Design is about focusing on the needs
of the people impacted by your product or
service throughout the whole experience. The
logical first step is to talk to them, to help you
find pain points and opportunities for delight.
They’re involved throughout the design journey,
testing and offering feedback on iterations in a
cycle that continues until they fall in love with a
concept.
The business’s objectives are of course
considered throughout a Service Design
approach, but equal focus is placed on the value
that you’ll deliver to the customer — which
ultimately benefits the business as well.
A critical part of your approach must cover
scaling solutions. Creating beautiful prototypes
can be a fun and effective way of
communicating ideas, but delivering robust,
industry-ready products to market within
budget is another kettle of fish. We favor multi-
disciplinary teams.
We engage individuals from design, technology,
delivery, marketing and finance from the
beginning of a process, which helps us to
manage expectations and mitigate risks. Not
forgetting, of course, that a multi-disciplinary
team can pull together their diverse experiences
and skills to build a more creative and
comprehensive finished product.
Every part of an experience the customer
touches is called “Frontstage” — so it might be
an app, a website, a customer service
representative, a store, a hotel room. The stuff
that happens unseen by the customer, that
makes it feel like a magical experience — that’s
the “Backstage”, and it’s vital. Behind every
service is an infrastructure of enablers that
make it happen. It could be everything from the
CMS, servers and data analytics to staff training
programmes, marketing plans and recruitment
strategies. Without the backstage bit, all you
have is a beautiful prototype.
Our team at Client A works in waves lasting 15
weeks, providing a timeframe we can divide for
each part of the process. We kick off each new
wave by revisiting our BHAG and reflecting on how
our activity over the past 15 weeks has contributed
toward achieving it. The 15-week waves are short
enough that we can avoid things running away with
us and long enough to create a structured plan.
© 201718

HOW WE DO IT
SOWING THE CULTURAL SEEDS
By its nature, culture is amorphous and
intangible, but it’s crucial to the success of a
newly established design studio or innovation
hub, so if you can’t design it, what can you do
about it?
Culture can’t be explicitly designed. Instead, it
must grow organically from a set of principles
that everyone is inspired to embrace and
perpetuate – and leadership decisions and
actions play an important role:
• If you have a principle of being open,
promotion and reward decisions need to  
reflect this.
• If you have a principle of being caring,
leadership behavior must demonstrate it.
• If you have a principle of being collaborative,
your tools must support it.
When every touchpoint your employees interact
with is designed to bolster your cultural
principles, their responses will begin to shape
your culture.
Creating a culture from scratch is difficult
enough, but merging multiple cultures is even
more challenging.
Fjord’s design-driven culture, Accenture’s
delivery-focused approach, and Client A’s focus
on margins and revenue are the constituent
parts of a powerful force, but merging them
takes time and patience.
At Neugelb, Commerzbank’s in-house design
agency, we combined the task of defining cultural
principles with the more familiar idea of shaping
the brand principles to achieve their result. The
work came to life in the onboarding experience we
designed for new employees: when an employee
arrives on their first day, they’re greeted with their
own desk and a balloon to let everyone know
they’re new. On their desk is a box, wrapped in
branded paper, in which they’ll find their MacBook,
a guide to the studio, a lunch guide and other
thoughtfully curated bits. They’re also assigned a
buddy to guide them through their first two weeks.
It was so effective and well-received that we took
what we’d learnt and implemented it at our own
studio in Berlin.
© 201719

BENEFITS
BUILDING CAPABILITIES IN-HOUSE
People trained in design craft and design
methodologies are the people organizations need to
create products and services that are both physically
beautiful and emotionally compelling.
As market challenges continue to evolve 
and increase, any organization serious about
protecting their market position must consider
developing design capabilities in-house.
KICKING OFF ORGANIC CULTURAL
CHANGE
When you get the culture right and amazing work
starts flowing out of the studio, it’ll capture the
attention of employees from elsewhere. They’ll
naturally start to recognize the importance of design
and digital innovation, and want a piece of the action.
© 201720

CHALLENGES
ATTRACTING THE RIGHT TALENT
Bringing design and innovation talent to a studio can
be tough for large organizations who haven’t
historically been associated with those fields.
Clients often rely on Fjord’s design capabilities for a
long time while they strive to attract designers of
their own.
SLUGGISH CULTURE ADOPTION
ORGANIZATION-WIDE
Even with the benefit of a natural grapevine effect
and the active involvement of external stakeholders,
transforming culture beyond the design studio will be
a slow and challenging process.
© 201721

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
“The client’s digital hub has the
potential to be an alloy, stronger than
the three metal components that it’s
created from. However, the melding
of these metals is not easy.”
ALEX JONES, Fjord Business Design Director 
CLIENT A (HOME IMPROVEMENT RETAIL GIANT)
© 201722

DEALMAKERS
CREATE VALUE STRAIGHTAWAY
Setting up a design studio from scratch requires time
and investment, so it’s vital to demonstrate value
from day one to make an attractive business case.
FOCUS ON THE ‘DARK MATTER’
By ‘dark matter’, we mean the governance and
structural elements that will support the studio. The
close collaboration between Fjord and Accenture
teams has proven invaluable in helping to tackle
incredibly complex challenges. They have unrivalled
ability to diagnose and resolve issues by developing
new operating models, organizational structures,
metrics and incentives, which sets up a design studio
or innovation hub for success.
BUY-IN FROM THE BOARD
To achieve freedom to innovate, you need the board
to appreciate the long-term business benefit of what
you’re setting out to achieve, and to sign off on the
dispensations you need to do it.
Within the first 12 weeks of a project with Farmers
Insurance, an American insurance group, we created a
VR car insurance demo. It was a tangible vision of what
their Innovation Lab would deliver, and educated people
within the hub on the design methodologies we’d
defined for them.
© 201723

CASE STUDY ON CULTURAL CHANGE
BANCO SABADELL
Over the past two years, Banco Sabadell has been
working to create a more design-driven culture
throughout the organization. Recognizing that “the
bank can’t afford to just look forward”, they started
by splitting the transformation into two distinct but
overlapping initiatives:
• Establishing a design studio focused on digitally
transforming the current banking experience.
• Setting up InnoCells, Banco Sabadell’s hub of new
digital ventures, to explore where they should
direct their effort moving forward.
the two new teams started to work with BUs from
day one of the design process — and the relationship
started to flourish.
When asked about how to start off on the right foot with
BUs, the Head of the Design Office told us: “You’re
asking people to take a leap of faith, so this can’t come
from the theory. It has to come from experience.”
© 201724
The design studio started asking BUs for a backlog of
forthcoming opportunities, so the designers could
then find and tailor tools and materials to help
explore them. By bringing insights from across the
business and market, the design studio helps Banco
Sabadell’s traditionally siloed BUs approach
problems differently, and “by using the Design Office
from the beginning, BUs can consider the bigger
picture from the start.”
In the beginning, their focus was at the delivery end
of creating a new product or service, and both new
teams found it difficult to engage with the business
units (BUs). They recognized that design offered
greatest value if applied right from the outset when
exploring a new area of opportunity. To that end,

© 201725
CASE STUDY ON CULTURAL CHANGE
Banco Sabadell found it challenging to manage the
execution-driven approach that BUs are used 
to following, compared to the design studio’s
preference for spending time to think through the
problem.
After proving how successful this approach had been,
the teams eventually started to work in harmony, and
the BUs are gradually changing their approach to
problems in favor of something more people-centric.
The Design Office at Banco Sabadell recently designed
the new digital onboarding for the bank. The team could
have designed the solution independently within the
department, then handed the design over to the other
departments for building and approvals in a waterfall
approach. Instead, the team co-created with BUs from
across the bank from the beginning of the design process,
all the way through to implementation.
This approach empowered people who usually didn’t have
the opportunity to give their opinion on how a new service
should be designed. And it meant, after the initial six-
week design phase, they had internal buy-in from all
departments thanks to their involvement from the start.

DESIGN BOOTCAMP
DESIGN FROM WITHIN
02
© 2017

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
DESIGN BOOTCAMP
A design bootcamp is a brief, intense and
immersive engagement where Fjord and the
client work together through a design
process. Moving at nimble start-up pace,
they collaboratively search for problems and
solutions, stimulating cultural change along
the way.
Our experience shows that 100 days is ideal.
100 days is the standard for measuring
change when a new CEO arrives or a
politician takes office – if it’s good enough
for them, it’s good enough for measuring
meaningful innovation.
© 201727

HOW WE DO IT
DESIGN FROM WITHIN | DESIGN BOOTCAMP
FOCUS ON A SINGLE AREA
The beauty of the bootcamp is that it has the
flexibility to solve pretty much any customer or
business problem that you throw at it. But,
when you’re short on time, you must focus on a
single area to explore.
PURSUE DESIGN-LED INNOVATION
Following a design methodology is essential 
in providing structure for the bootcamp, and
ensuring you arrive at innovative solutions that
deliver real value to the customer. This means
working through a prioritized product backlog
in two-week sprints.
1. Discover the problem the team will solve.
During this phase, it’s crucial to let your team
off the leash — no idea is dismissed. Carte
blanche.
2. Describe different ideas, technical
possibilities and key indicators for success.
At this point the team must prioritize their
ideas.
3. Define the design direction, detail the scope
and understand the interactions across the
whole product or service ecosystem,
including the operational rewiring
implications to support it. Deeply
understand, describe and prioritize the
factors that will enable your service to work
— e.g. processes, technical capabilities,
partnerships.
4. Deliver what you’ve achieved. Spend focused
time on the brand and the story you will tell.
Stories are the key to continuing the culture
beyond the bootcamp.
© 201728

HOW WE DO IT
WITH THE PHYSICAL SPACE
Start-up culture thrives when people are
liberated from the status quo of business-as-
usual environments, and from daily
responsibilities. To get the best out of your
bootcampers, you need a physically separated
and visually different studio, lab or hub. Ideally
it should be light, open and comfortable, with
walls people can write on, and music playing. It
works really well to run Design Bootcamps
within Fjord studios, so that bootcampers are
immersed in our culture and see how it works
first-hand.
The psychological separation stimulates
creative thought, but the physical separation
from the rest of the organization has the bonus
feature of preventing bootcamp members
being pulled into ‘important’ meetings.
WITH THE TIMEFRAME
100 days provides the pressure and urgency
that often comes with working in a start-up. It
puts the emphasis on agility, speed and
flexibility — perfect attributes for a design
bootcamp. It’s a big step away from a typical
big corporate environment where bureaucratic
process saps time.
The timeframe generates a sense of excitement
at what you’re achieving in a comparatively
short time, but it’s important to create a
backlog of new types of work, and of new
types of working that the client can work on
after the 100 days are up. This sustains the
culture and sets them up to continue utilizing
what they’ve learned.
Establish a start-up culture
A word to the wise: sometimes even a different
location can’t quash distractions. At Client H,
attendees’ colleagues challenged the process and the
solutions they were designing — but kudos to the
bootcampers. They knew they were doing great work,
stuck to their guns and won over their colleagues in
the end.
© 201729

HOW WE DO IT
WITH YOUR TOOLS
At the beginning of the process, you only need
whiteboards, blank paper, Post-it® Notes and pens.
The faster team members can get their thoughts on
paper and share with the rest of the team, the better.
Cool technology has its own role in bringing ideas to
life, but not necessarily at the start. Later, you’ll use
agile and collaborative tools that allow team
members to work faster, together. They might include
JIRA, Confluence, HipChat and GitHub for managing
work and communicating, and Sketch and InVision to
prototype and test.
WITH YOUR ATMOSPHERE
A big part of cultivating an exciting start-up culture is
by having fun. You don’t need complex or expensive
activities — it’s the little things that have the biggest
impact.
Establish a start-up culture
The Fjord/Client H team worked offline for much of
their bootcamp — no phones or laptops were allowed,
freeing the team from the daily distractions that
technology pushes on us all.
The Fjord/Client H team had daily stand-up with Bingo
Flamingo — “It’s amazing how talking to your
colleagues with a pink toy Flamingo in your hands
makes for a more fun and relaxed atmosphere, shifting
participants’ minds away from their daily worries.”
© 201730

BENEFITS
LEARNING BY DOING
Intense immersion in the design process for 
100 days is by far the most effective method 
for learning something new. Design bootcamp
develops a customer-centric mindset and
teaches how to implement design methodology
— fast. Bootcampers get a set of skills they can
take away and apply to their jobs immediately.
For those bootcampers who are already skilled 
in a discipline like product design or non-digital
design, we’ll show them the methods and
benefits of Service Design, and a focus on
blending the human, the digital, and the
physical.
PROMPTING CULTURAL CHANGE
When client bootcampers influence the rest of
the organization with their newly developed
mindset and skills, cultural change starts to
happen organically. This relies on the
participants actively evangelizing design. When
they talk about what they’ve learned, they
deliver a powerful message to their colleagues
— a lot more powerful coming from them than
an external party banging on about it.
The major benefit of this approach is co-creating
as one, which can be split into two parts:
Someone from Client H’s purchasing department
was overheard discussing how his bootcamp
experience impacts his daily work. He empathized
with smaller suppliers who were struggling to get
to grips with the complex procurement policies
that giants like Client H sometimes implement. He
then identified the processes that needed to
change to achieve a quicker and more efficient
procurement process both for the supplier and for
Client H.
© 201731

CHALLENGES
SHOCK-INDUCED REBELLION
The design bootcamp will present such radically
different ways of working that people might initially
respond with resistance. It passes quickly, but it can
make the beginning of the bootcamp a bit bumpy.
MAKING FORMAL CHANGES TO WAYS OF
WORKING
Bootcampers may change their mindset and
approach to their work because of the bootcamp
but, if they don’t have a governance model to
support them, it can be hard to put everything they
learn into practice after the bootcamp. For example,
if an employee’s performance isn’t measured on the
customer value they deliver, it's unlikely they'll invest
the effort needed to improve it.
BROADENING CULTURAL IMPACT
The impact of the bootcamp beyond the bootcamp
rests on the determination of the attendees to talk
widely about the benefits of a customer-centric
approach and a design-led decision-making model
throughout their organization.
If only a handful of individuals from the client side
get involved, achieving broad cultural change will be
challenging. It’d improve the chances of success if
those selected for a design bootcamp were the
company’s most vocal game-changers.
© 201732

DEALMAKERS
FOLLOW A PROVEN METHODOLOGY
An established design methodology is key to
meaningful outcomes. The structure of the 100 days
is also vital – with limited time, every minute matters.
The key is in taking established and proven
methodologies, and being emboldened to tweak
them based on your own learnings and the problem
you’re tackling. In fact, we believe that pivots are
essential to the process, so find opportunities to shift
direction, confident that it’s okay to deviate from the
path you chose at the outset.
PLEDGE 100% COMMITMENT AND TAKE
RESPONSIBILITY FOR DRIVING SUCCESS
Productive engagement can only happen if
participants in the bootcamp switch off from
business-as-usual and immerse themselves fully in
the process. With genuine commitment, they come
up with the solution themselves, which means they’re
more motivated to buy into the results.
Client H’s participants were so convinced by what
they’d learned, they presented their idea to the board
following the bootcamp, and received funding to
develop it further.
Daljit Singh, Fjord Design Lead on the Client H project,
told us that taking time for “reflection is important to
justify how you begin to take what you’ve learnt, and
what’s been created, and apply it back into the
company.”
© 201733

DEALMAKERS
BE RUTHLESS
You will have far too many brilliant ideas to cover in
100 days. It’s crucial to ruthlessly take things off the
table many times throughout the process.
It’s a process of divergence and convergence, where
you start with all the crazy ideas you can dream up
together — where no idea is too “out there” to
suggest, then you converge by filtering out the ones
you’ll take off the table. Continue to diverge and
converge until you get to the idea you’ll work on, and
draw up a backlog of work that will continue beyond
the bootcamp.
DON’T STOP AT ONE
A design bootcamp is the first step in achieving
customer-centricity. The best result comes when a
business runs three or four bootcamps throughout
the year, exploring new opportunities with new teams
each time.
Innovation isn’t a one-off activity, and shouldn’t be
treated as such.
© 201734

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
“This innovation framework should
become as important as the air
conditioning, heating and lighting.
It should become part 
of the organization.”
DALJIT SINGH, Fjord Principal Director - Design Strategy Group EALA 
CLIENT H (GLOBAL AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURER)
© 201735

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
TAKING FJORD WITHIN
Taking Fjord within is when we set up a Fjord-
led design studio within the client’s
organization. The client experiences the
benefits of having a high-quality in-house
design team without the cost of recruiting their
own designers. The Fjord-led studio takes full
responsibility for all the client’s design and
digital requirements, from branding and
communication design to service design and
digital product development.
To give enough time for the team to establish
themselves, engagements last at least 12
months. They can then prosper for a further
three to five years, though the long-term
ambition is to shift to a position where Fjord
takes a supporting role, helping the client
develop their own design capabilities.
© 201737

HOW WE DO IT
DESIGN FROM WITHIN | TAKING FJORD WITHIN
DEFINE A CLEAR PURPOSE
The ideal design team boasts diverse experiences
and skills, so we keep everyone aligned by clearly
communicating a shared goal. This clarity is also
useful for the working relationship between Fjord and
the client: a mutually agreed purpose avoids
unwelcome surprises a few months down the line.
Client J is a multinational telecommunications services
provider. 
Their team purpose was defined in three components:
 
TRANSFORM 
Fully modernize services to be responsive to both
customer needs and business conditions, from the inside
out. 
UNIFY 
Shift focus from operational silos to gapless integration
from one customer experience to the next.
 
CRAFT 
Design elegant services and experiences that grow the
business, and that customers fall in love with.
© 201738

HOW WE DO IT
ESTABLISH AN EXPERIENCED TEAM
The beauty of taking Fjord within is in
gathering an experienced team of designers
who have all worked together before, and have
established a culture capable of driving the
studio’s success. While it isn’t a perfect long-
term solution, the short-term benefits of this
off-the-shelf package are irrefutable.
Fjord designers come with a global network of
nearly 1000 other designers, developers and
data nerds across different disciplines, each
with their own points of view, skills and
experience. 
 
A Fjordian lives and breathes the Fjord culture,
nurtured by global gatherings, frequent
worldwide communication, and a network of
knowledge.
© 201739

HOW WE DO IT
EDUCATE THE WIDER BUSINESS
To start the necessary mindset shift, the team
must work together with as many business
units as possible, as soon as possible, to solve
the biggest problems and explore the most
attractive opportunities on the horizon.
The design team’s human-centric approach can
begin changing the way the business units think
about their work. In addition to planting the
seeds for cultural change, this also
demonstrates the studio’s value to the wider
business.
As well as extolling the value of a Service
Design approach, the team must push their
client to change their governance model to
support this shift in thinking. Governance
change is not a simple task, but one that should
be pursued to realize the true benefits of a
customer-centric approach.
“It’s a difficult environment 
to change but we’re slowly
changing the mindset and
behaviors of individuals
within the organization.”
KENNETH LINDFORS, Fjord Engagement Lead 
CLIENT J (MULTINATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES PROVIDER)
© 201740

BENEFITS
DRIVING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Transforming your business operations in response to
the changing digital landscape requires big
commitment if you’re to come out the other side
thriving. Establishing an in-house design studio with
the primary focus of achieving this digital
transformation is a huge step in the right direction.
By taking Fjord within, clients can bring products to
market a lot faster, as well as create much higher
quality experiences for colleagues and customers
alike.
DELIVERING AN ATTRACTIVE 
BUSINESS CASE
The headache caused by design inconsistencies,
quality issues and painful communications all point to
the suggestion that the client would be better off
investing in one team, dedicated to tackling such
problems.
Before Client J set up the design studio, they hadn’t
launched a product in two years. With the autonomy to
handle the design and development of new services, the
studio overcame many of the their pain points and, now,
everything happens faster. Two applications launched to
market in the studio’s first twelve months.
© 201741

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
“Different vendors are producing
different services, with no
common design language. And
there is no single team
communicating in the same way.”
GEORGINA MONJARAZ, Fjord Design Lead
CLIENT J (MULTINATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES PROVIDER)
© 201742

CHALLENGES
FOREIGN BODY SYNDROME
This describes the notion that a new initiative of any
kind would be more actively embraced if driven by an
internal team as opposed to an external group.
We’ve found this challenge can be tackled early 
in the studio’s existence, and can be done in a non-
confrontational way that feels organic. As
stakeholders within the organization see evidence of
the value that the studio can bring, and the new ways
of working they stand for, more permission tends to
be granted and opposition reduces.
Investing in a new, stand-alone design studio staffed
by dozens of new designers makes a bold statement
to the wider organization.
These designers mingle with other employees,
sharing the meaning and impact of their work. The
benefits become particularly profound when
considering cultural change.
DEVELOPING THE CLIENT’S DESIGN
CAPABILITIES
Although the client’s employees will be infused with a
people-centric mindset, they don’t develop the
hands-on craft. The organization remains reliant on
an external partner for design and innovation, and
they miss the opportunity to strengthen their
workforce with these vital skills. The goal is to drive
innovation and change the organization’s culture, so
that it becomes more appealing to design-minded
candidates.
At Client J, twelve months on from the small, empty
room they were originally allocated, the team enjoys a
bigger space with work plastered over the walls and
plants to bring some life. Now, when their employees
walk into the studio, they realize this place is a bit
different, and must be proving its value if it’s receiving
such interest and investment.
© 201743

DEALMAKERS
STRENGTHEN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH
YOUR PRIMARY STAKEHOLDER
Your first task is to find out which client stake-
holders you’ll be working with daily, and work to
understand their aspirations and goals for the studio.
Get this relationship right, and they will be your
biggest supporters.
EMBED FJORDIAN CULTURE
An experienced Fjordian team brings a culture and
global network that has been key to Fjord's success,
as we’ve grown from eight to twenty-five studios in
the past three years. A Fjord team can overcome any
initial resistance by replicating our culture within a
client’s physical environment, which is key to building
a firm foundation for the new studio.
BE REALISTIC ABOUT STAFFING
The average Fjord studio has between twenty and
eighty designers. So, finding a significant number of
Fjordian designers to be based within a client’s
design studio for a year or more is no mean feat.
What’s more, with the value that experienced
Fjordians bring, as was proven with Client J, it’s no
good simply to recruit new Fjordians.
© 201744

GOLDEN RULES
DESIGN FROM WITHIN | CONCLUSION
Whichever approach you use,
remember:
Each of our three approaches has
different virtues and challenges but,
with the similarity in their goals, there’s
inevitable overlap when it comes to
what will allow the project to make a
tangible difference to the organization.
NOMINATE YOUR YODA
To drive the success of the studio and battle through
the barriers that the larger organization will present,
you need to appoint a strong, stand-up leader.
SHED THE SHACKLES
Create a psychologically and physically “safe” space.
This will liberate the studio from any restrictive
bureaucracy of the parent organization, so
designers are free to think and work differently.
BE A MIXED BAG
The key to creating differentiated and delightful
solutions is to assemble a diverse team of
people with a mix of personalities, skills and
backgrounds. Give them time to gel — forming
such a team will come with challenges in the
early days, but take the time to work through
the issues, and it’ll pay off.
STAND OUT
If you’re setting up a studio or hub, create a
distinct brand. This makes it clear that it’s a
separate unit, operating differently from the rest
of the organization. This accelerates the move
toward a culture of design and innovation.
WRITE YOUR LOVE STORY
Follow a Service Design approach to ensure you
involve the user throughout, resulting in
something end-users love, and benefitting the
business as a result.
WHAT’S YOUR POINT?
Define a clear vision of what you’re setting out
to achieve, to provide something for the
designers to work toward together.
SILO? SI-NO.
Concentrate on breaking down silos. By setting
up a stand-alone unit, you’re at risk of
contributing to the siloed nature of many firms.
The team must actively engage with business
units from across the organization.
© 201746

KEY: ANONYMIZED CLIENTS
DESIGN FROM WITHIN | CONCLUSION
CLIENT A: A retail giant in the home improvement sector. 
CLIENT B: A global provider of asset management and retail financial services. 
CLIENT C: Neugelb, Commerzbank’s in-house design agency. 
CLIENT D: Banco Sabadell. 
CLIENT E: Finnish Immigration System. 
CLIENT F: Farmers Insurance. 
CLIENT G: An international healthcare group. 
CLIENT H: A global automobile manufacturer. 
CLIENT J: A multinational telecommunications services provider. 
CLIENT K: A global energy company.
© 201747

DESIGN FROM WITHIN
© 201748
Fjord, part of Accenture Interactive, is a design and
innovation consultancy that reimagines people’s
relationships with the digital and physical world
around them. We use the power of design to create
services people love. By combining a human-centred
approach with robust methodology, we work with
some of the world’s leading businesses to make
complex systems simple and elegant. Founded in
2001, Fjord has a diverse team of 900+ design and
innovation experts in 25 studios, including Atlanta,
Austin, Berlin, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dubai, Dublin,
Helsinki, Hong Kong, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles,
Madrid, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Paris, San
Francisco, São Paulo, Seattle, Stockholm, Sydney,
Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.
For more information visit fjordnet.com or follow us
on Twitter @fjord
This document makes descriptive reference to
trademarks that may be owned by others. The use of
such trademarks herein is not an assertion of
ownership of such trademarks by Accenture and is
not intended to represent or imply the existence of
an association between Accenture and the lawful
owners of such trademarks.
This document is produced by consultants at
Accenture as general guidance. It is not intended to
provide specific advice on your circumstances. If you
require advice or further details on any matters
referred to, please contact your Accenture
representative.
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, High Performance Delivered and
Fjord are trademarks of Accenture.

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