Agile Design Isn’t Just For Start-ups Anymore: Thoughts From The Branding With Ferocity Webinar

Today, more than ever, our clients are asking about how they can compete with smaller, more nimble companies that don’t have the “red tape” and complexity that often plague larger corporations.

At CBX, we combine best practices from Agile and Design Thinking to encourage ourselves and our clients to think differently, to facilitate efficient innovation planning and execution, and to maximize speed to market.

We call our new process and methodology leap.

Leap manifests itself in the ability to: collaborate cross-functionally; make decisions ongoing; pivot in real time; and learn and iterate simultaneously. The process itself is executed using 4 to 6 2-week-long sprints. Sprints enable focused collaboration and empower teams to set up their own tasks and co-dependencies to achieve a goal, faster and more efficiently than they would’ve been able to otherwise.

It’s been our experience that when teams are empowered by means of Agile thinking and working, good things happen in terms of process, output, and outcomes. Leap is a valuable process and methodology not just for large-scale innovation, but also for brand design and brand refresh and renovation projects.

Our own Stacy Hintermeister, VP of Marketing and Growth, discussed leap—as well as other ways to apply start-up thinking—on a webinar hosted by Brand Experience Packaging (BXP). Below are three key takeaways, for those of you who couldn’t attend:

1. To effectively embrace a start-up mentality, change must come from the top. Brands need not only buy-in, but also support of the executive team and management to effectively change the mind-set of an organization. This commitment is crucial to creating a cultural shift that not only changes how people think, but also how the organization as a whole operates.

2. Smart collaboration is key to the process; speed to market is the outcome. If your goal is getting to market faster, you risk compromising quality. Agile thinking is about getting smarter about how you collaborate—it means getting the right people in the right room to make decision-making as streamlined as possible.

3. An agile mind-set pushes you out of your comfort zone, which is a good thing. Agile working often changes your frame of reference and concept of success. Especially in our new normal, adapting to meet changing consumer need states means adapting how we work and learning along the way. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s to develop a mindset of continual progress.

Watch the replay here: https://discover.cbx.com/bxp-webinar-branding-with-ferocity