Afternow
Afternow
Strategic toolkits for start-ups
service provided:
branding, UX, copywriting, positioning, business modeling
No two client’s business challenges are exactly the same. So why do companies hire consultancies that use a standardized process? Afternow is a digital platform that creates organizing principles to uniquely solve any business challenge by combining different stages of the design thinking and design making process.
THE CHALLENGE
Early stage start-ups and university student looking to develop their business ideas need guidance. Unfortunately they can not afford to pay for the consulting frameworks and toolkits use to ground their ideas.
INSIGHT
Professors Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer of BYU’s Marriott School of Management observed that managers that help their firm’s maintain innovative practices, use a different set of tools than their traditional counterparts. Although the tools go by many names (eg: lean start-up, design thinking, agile, etc.) they actually are remarkably similar. Where they differ is where and when they are applied. For example, design thinking emphasizes understanding customer problems, whereas lean emphasizes solution experiments. The result is what Furr and Dyer call the Innovator’s Method. A methodology that summarizes the process of innovation and how corporation have adopted it to create sustainable innovations for their companies. We can adapt this framework to help us understand how to reframe ideas.
The innovation process is broken down into four key stages. At each step there are tools used by start-ups to test and validate their ideas. Many consultancies have adopted and refined these methods into toolkits that they use to help Fortune 500 companies. While this graphic simplifies the innovation process into four key stages, the reality is that the innovation process is messy and that there are multiple starting points based on the challenge or the skill set of the person or persons digging in.
SOLUTION
Research showed that the two most pressing issues that early start-ups have articulating their idea and validating their hunch
A summary of every innovation firms process
A video and brief description about what makes each firms process unique
Choose from a series of questions that multiple firms ask when address their user needs
Choose from series of toolkit techniques
Start-ups are provided with a summary of each toolkit and step-by-step instructions on how each technique works
They are also provided with a demo video that demonstrates how the tool works and are provided with a case study showing the impact and results of method.
Start-ups can download a series of assets. Including blank workshop material templates. A poster that summarizes all the methodologies. A manual that describes when and where to use each toolkit and finally technique cards that can be used diagnose a business challenge.
Start-ups pay a monthly fee to maintain access to all site content. They can either choose to download a complete innovation's method template or download specific sections based on their need.