Business Innovation
7 min read

Roche: Pushing Innovation Through Prototyping

Written by Talent Garden Talent Garden
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In the age of Digital Transformation, businesses need to adapt to sudden changes in the socioeconomic trends in order to fully operate and compete. Adapting to these changes is a top priority for companies and the speed with which they do so is one of the most critical aspects of digital transformation. With the help of prototyping small businesses and large corporations can identify, develop and test new business ideas quickly and thoroughly, helping teams to successfully prioritise launch time and budget. Italian company Roche, is well aware of the challenges of prototyping and has partnered with Talent Garden Italy to develop a project together with the aim of developing innovative solutions starting from the real needs of consumers and stakeholders through prototyping and digital design.

Roche & Talent Garden Italia Project in Numbers:

  • 12 months of activity
  • 4 rapid prototyping cycles
  • 4 cross-functional teams of 10 people
  • 20 days of training and prototyping
  • 20+ stakeholders involved
  • 4 prototypes made and tested with the project stakeholders
The project involves the design of new mobile and web apps with the added value of rapid prototyping cycles lasting 4 weeks. Each cycle lays its foundations in Human-Centered Design, an approach that brings out the users needs. All stakeholders are involved in the design process, allowing creators to understand their perspectives and motivations, align different points of view to create a single solution, and make better decisions. Perspectives, motivations and needs are investigated through short qualitative interviews. The listening phase is followed by the actual design and prototyping of digital solutions.  The company's cross-functional teams are guided and supported by Talent Garden's experts in devising innovative solutions to the needs and problems that have emerged. The solution that best meets the feasibility and sustainability criteria is then finalised and prototyped. The result, a tangible digital creation, is presented to the stakeholders who can test its core functionalities. The above is a key step because through feedback it is always possible to improve the prototype in an incremental and iterative logic, ensuring that the idea is translated into a product or service of actual value for the end customer. Along the way, the Talent Garden Tech Creatives community- which gathers professionals and experts in the world of User Experience, Data and Artificial Intelligence - is involved to support the design process with further stimuli and skills. All this guarantees the company not only to acquire new skills, but also test new business ideas in a valuable way to make the best use of their launch time and budget.

Q&A with Roche

Contributed by Fabrizio Bellina, Marketing & Customer Innovation Manager, Roche

What are the main goals of this project?

In Roche we decided to start this project in collaboration with Talent Garden driven by two main factors: the first, the desire to listen even more to the Italian health system in order to design innovative solutions that go beyond drugs ; the second, the need to acquire new skills for our teams and our resources to enable Roche's transformation from a pharmaceutical company to a healthcare provider. The goal is to co-create solutions related to the world of health through rapid and iterative processes that involve our direct interlocutors in the sector. Another important goal we set ourselves is the creation of a marketing community and a cutting-edge team on new digital skills and design thinking applied to healthcare.

What are the results achieved so far?

In this project we are facing two different phases that are extremely important and interesting for us. The first is UX research , an inclusive ecosystem listening process; the second is prototyping , which allows us to experiment, get feedback and bring solutions to the market in less time and with a greater probability of success and acceptance. Why have you partnered with Talent Garden? We have chosen Talent Garden as a Partner because within its community there are skills and networks from other industries and not yet widespread in the healthcare world that can guarantee us high design standards shared with our customers and extremely functional to our transformation process.

Alessandro Colombo

Corporate Transformation Strategist

Talent Garden

For over 10 years he has cultivated two great passions. The first for sociology and history leads him to graduate in International Relations at the State University of Milan. The second for technology to start its professional career in the world of youth entrepreneurship by collaborating with some startups in the field of e-learning and mapping the Italian innovative ecosystem for the WCAP project of Telecom Italia in 2010. In the following years he specialized in the field of User Experience and programming working as Full Stack Web Developer and Digital Project Manager at a consulting company and web agency. In 2016 he founded his own brand with which he offers the market of small and medium-sized enterprises prototyping and development services of digital products and services. In 2019 he joined the Talent Garden Corporate Transformation team, supporting large corporate organizations in the definition and implementation of innovation and prototyping projects and in the construction of training courses on digital skills.
Article updated on: 09 August 2023
Talent Garden
Written by
Talent Garden, Digital Skills Academy

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