Turipamwe explores design thinking in Namibia
A new venture by design agency Turipamwe seeks to map the state of design thinking in Namibia to understand how local companies and other organisations foster creativity and develop new services, products, or processes.
Turipamwe’s new department Co-Create is leading an original study underway and will publish the findings in an openly available, industrial White Paper.
The findings aim to propose a way to leapfrog innovation in the country.
“Turipamwe has serviced the corporate landscape, the public sector, and civil society for over a decade,” said Tanya Stroh, Creative Director and CEO of Turipamwe. “In our work, we have come across an untapped market in supporting clients in strategy work and innovation facilitation. Most local companies currently seek this support abroad from South Africa or Europe, but we wanted to meet the demand with a local service.”
Supported by Growth Consultant Auri Evokari, Turipamwe underwent a Lean Service Creation process last year and developed its new service Co-Creation using the Design Thinking methodology.
Over about nine months, the team mapped out the user needs, developed a prototype that we tested with our users, finalised the design, and launched the new service Co-Create.
“By the end of the year, we started to notice how the approach we took was changing our team’s mindset to be more experimental and creative, leading to better service delivery for our customers. We realised the power of design thinking and how our company processes needed to adjust to this new approach,” Stroh added.
However, the innovation landscape in Namibia still has some way to go to be globally competitive. Based on the Global Innovation Index 2021, Namibia is ranked 100 out of 132 countries
The Co-Create team decided that more awareness is needed on which organisations are considered innovative and how they do it. Design thinking is a methodology that has been mainstreamed in management consultancy and innovation practices in the past 15 years, but it is still a novelty in Namibia. It provides a systematic approach to solving problems, and it’s beneficial for tackling complex problems that are difficult to define or unknown.
This is because it serves to understand the human needs involved, reframe the problem in human-centric ways and create numerous ideas to solve it.
“We are now calling for everyone in corporations, NGOs, and the public sector to participate in our study through a survey on our website. We want to know who Namibians consider innovative and who out here use these methodologies that foster innovation. We value all your input on the subject matter, and you’re welcome to contact us should you be interested in contributing more”, said Donovan Majiedt, Head of Co-Create at Turipamwe.
