Building an internal innovation hub for sustainable mobility

The project focused on helping a major player in the German sustainable mobility sector build an internal innovation hub to expand its portfolio of products and services. By introducing structured processes for ideation, research, experimentation, and validation, the initiative enabled employees to develop and test new ideas while building the organization’s internal innovation capabilities.

Role: Strategic Designer / User Researcher

Duration: 1.5 years

Outcome: Through use of the framework, employees submitted 80–100 innovation concepts, including a product that later won the 2024 EUROBIKE Award for Best Digital Solution.

Details

Challenge:

The organization wanted to expand its portfolio of sustainable mobility solutions by encouraging employees to propose new products and services. However, while many ideas existed within the company, there was no structured process, infrastructure, or shared methodology to develop those ideas into validated opportunities. Employees lacked the tools and experience needed to move from early concepts to research, experimentation, and business validation, making innovation efforts inconsistent and difficult to scale across the organization.

Core questions to be answered:

  1. How can we create a structured framework that enables employees to move ideas from concept to validated opportunity?

  2. What support systems are needed to help teams experiment, learn, and iterate effectively?

  3. Which internal assets and resources can be leveraged to support idea validation?

Responsibilities:

  • Oversaw the creation and implementation of design playbooks and frameworks documenting research, experimentation, and innovation/validation methods

  • Facilitated workshops including mission and vision alignment, ideation sessions, idea scoring, prioritization, and retrospectives

  • Led a 4-week Agile Design bootcamp and other individual trainings in research, strategy, and agile product development

  • Mentored internal teams as they developed their first ideas through discovery, research, and early prototyping

Research Methods:

  • Stakeholder interviews

  • Organizational capability assessment

  • Workshop facilitation

  • Process mapping

  • Opportunity mapping/Scoring

  • Collaborative ideation sessions

Idea Submission

Employees submitted new product or service ideas through a structured submission process that provided them with educational content and direct guidance.

Idea Scoring

Submitted ideas were evaluated based on predefined criteria where grading focused on desirability, viability, feasibility, and strategic alignment.

Prioritization

The most promising ideas were selected to move forward

Discovery

Teams explored the problem space to better understand the potential opportunity and generate key hypothesis

Research

User research and market analysis were conducted to understand customer needs and existing solutions.

Ideation

The team generated potential solution concepts based on insights gathered during research.

Innovation Process / Idea Funnel

Market and Business Case Validation

Early concepts were tested with potential users to validate assumptions and gather real-world and expert feedback. In parralel, concepts were evaluated for business viability market potential, and strategic fit.

Concept Refinement

Insights from testing were incorporated to refine and improve the solution concept.

Prototyping

MVP prototypes were developed to explore usability, feasibility, and product vision.

Stakeholder Pitch

With the refined concept, the team presented their validated concepts to internal stakeholders to secure support and investment.

Build Phase

Ideas that successfully passed validation and receieved approval from stakeholders, moved into development and scaling.

Bundeswehr/Roland Alpers

Deep dive into research approach

Framework Development

To start, we first assessed the organization’s existing capabilities, processes, and resources related to innovation. Through stakeholder interviews, workshops, and collaborative mapping sessions, we identified gaps in how ideas were generated, developed, and validated.

This discovery phase helped us define the core structure of the innovation framework, ensuring it aligned with both the organization’s strategic goals and the capabilities of its employees.

Key activities included:

  • Development of mission/vision statments

  • Stakeholder interviews and capability assessment

  • Identifying gaps in skills, tools, and infrastructure

  • Defining the core stages of the innovation pipeline

  • Defining ‘sucess’ criteria for each stage of the framework

  • Incorperation of a continous resarch framework

© Bundeswehr/Roland Alpers

Training & Tools

To support the innovation process, we developed an ‘upskilling’ program which included training and toolsthat helped employees and teams move ideas from early concepts to validated opportunities.

  • Various tools and methods to evaluate ideas (i.e. ICE framework)

  • Workshop formats for ideation and prioritization

  • Templates for research and validation experiments

  • Playbooks documenting innovation methods and workflows

  • Training sessions to accompany each tools and stage of the framework

  • Mentoring sessions to provide direct guidance and feedback

  • Aiding and assisting in the hiring of team members of the innovation hub and for concepts which secured funding

Impact and Outcome

The innovation hub established a structured and repeatable framework that enabled employees to move ideas from early concepts to validated opportunities. By introducing clear processes for discovery, research, experimentation, and validation, the organization gained the internal capability to systematically explore and develop new products and services.

During my time on the project, employees submitted approximately 80–100 new ideas, creating a sustainable pipeline of potential innovation projects. Teams were able to test and refine concepts using research and experimentation before requesting further investment from leadership.

One of the most successful ideas to emerge from the program was a digital service concept that went on to win the 2024 EUROBIKE Award for Best Digital Solution, demonstrating the real-world impact and scalability of the innovation framework.

Beyond individual products, the project helped foster a culture of experimentation and learning within the organization. Employees gained the confidence and tools needed to explore new ideas using a learn fast, fail fast mindset, allowing the company to innovate more effectively in the long term.