The TIM Lab is designed to offer a space for learning, training and overcoming innovation challenges, improving business opportunities, encouraging creativity in business, and prototyping new solutions and offers. This experimental lab at Grenoble Ecole de Management is organized around a design thinking approach.
“Much like the connected shop at GEM, which is a digital and sensorial sales and marketing lab, the TIM Lab is a platform and physical space designed to improve innovation management and support innovation projects. This new lab offers companies new methods of learning in order to foster innovation,” explains Delphine Gatti-Urweiller, head of innovation programs at GEM.
The TIM Lab integrates a design thinking approach. Design thinking creates experimentation by building on the awareness, tools and methods of designers in order to enable multidisciplinary teams to increase their creativity by integrating user expectations, technological feasibility and economic viability.
Emulate and create
The strength of the TIM Lab lies in its ability to mobilize students, teachers and companies to collaborate in a process that can develop new solutions or improvements. As a result, experiments are implemented in mixed teams. This collaborative effort is carried out in four steps:
- Step 1 involves exploring the current environment and client challenges from the angle of new technology and new usages.
- Step 2 enables the project to clearly define the theme and create a framework to solve a specific challenge that will facilitate business opportunities.
- Step 3 is the creation of ideas through creativity and idea generation for new products or solutions to implement improvements.
- Step 4 follows with the prototyping of the offer in a visual manner.
Korus: a TIM Lab partner
The TIM Lab was co-designed with Korus, a Grenoble-based company specialized in the design, creation and maintenance of collaborative spaces. The same type of successful co-creation process was already used with Picture, an outdoor clothing brand, in order to create the connected shop. The TIM Lab serves as a laboratory for Korus, which analyzes how the space is used based on feedback from participants since March 2019. GEM and Korus are currently working on a 2.0 version of the lab that will integrate user feedback.
Transdev participated in the TIM Lab experimentations
“Our teams tested four TIM Lab work spaces as well as the methodology based on design thinking. We explored the topic of napping at work,” explains Sandrine De Boras, head of innovation France at Transdev. “The idea was to test innovation experiences and offer feedback from the exploration step to prototyping.”
“The first step was to identify all the resources available for the exploration process. We also explored the theme of napping at work through key figures, recommendations and current practices in France and abroad. The second step was crucial. It focused on asking the right questions to get the right answers. It’s a moment when you can define the benefits expected for all participants and imagine possible added values. The idea creation phase use a mix of individual and collaborative thinking to think up new solutions and reformulate the challenge. It was also an opportunity to mix and match ideas. The prototyping step enabled us to transform ideas into concrete concepts. We shared our solutions during a pitch and were able to receive immediate user feedback to improve the concept.”
“The found workstations match design thinking methodology and enable users to easily identify the four steps. The fact you move from one station to another is beneficial as many similar processes remain static. It’s interesting to move about and it facilitates interactions. The clear workstations and process enabled participants to work autonomously thanks to a few guidelines. The approach reboot the creative process throughout the steps all the while increasing autonomy in the search for innovative solutions,” concludes Sandrine.
