What is Innovation Design?

What is innovation design?

Innovation design is the discipline of moving from an undefined, complex problem to a validated, adoptable solution through a structured sequence of phases. It is not about having a single creative idea. It is about applying the right analytical and creative methods in the right order, with the right stakeholders, under conditions of genuine uncertainty.

Traditional innovation models — design thinking, lean startup, the double diamond — were largely created for the private sector, where speed is prioritised, stakeholder groups are small, and regulation is secondary. These models are valuable, but they carry assumptions that do not translate cleanly into the multi-stakeholder environments where the hardest problems live: governments navigating procurement rules and democratic accountability, industry coalitions aligning on shared standards, research consortia bridging theory and practice, and energy communities balancing cooperative governance with technical complexity.

Innovation design fills that gap. It combines analytical rigour — problem analysis, systems mapping, assumption testing — with creative methods such as ideation sessions, prototyping, and design sprints. It accounts for governance structures, procurement processes, ethical considerations, legal obligations, and the practical reality that a solution is only valuable if someone can adopt, maintain, and scale it.

At its core, innovation design recognises that solving the wrong problem is the most expensive mistake an organisation can make. Starting with an extensive problem analysis — understanding root causes, mapping stakeholder dynamics, challenging assumptions — is not a delay to the creative work. It is the foundation that makes the creative work effective.

What are the 10 innovation design services?

Regen Studio offers 10 innovation design services, each addressing a different phase or dimension of the innovation journey. They can be deployed as standalone engagements or combined into a custom innovation process tailored to your organisational context.

1. Problem Analysis — systemic analysis of complex multi-stakeholder challenges using methods such as Socratic Questioning, Systems Mapping, the Iceberg Model, Causal Loop Diagrams, and Stakeholder Mapping. Find the root causes before investing in solutions.
2. Ideation — creative sessions generating innovative solution concepts, visualised in an idea matrix. Each idea passes through an Innovation Quickscan covering privacy, security, legal, ethics, and procurement dimensions. See how ideation shaped the Smart Charging in the Vruchtenbuurt project.
3. Prototyping — building rough testable solutions as quickly as possible, from paper prototypes to functional demonstrators. Browse working prototypes built by Regen Studio.
4. Solution Validation — structured checks ensuring a prototype is ready for real-world testing: storyboard, data flow, architecture review, DPIA, security baseline, ethics audit, and impact measurement design. Read how validation shaped the Energy Justice experiment.
5. Experiment Design — planning and executing real-world tests with defined work packages, responsibilities, budgets, timelines, and impact indicators. Communication to stakeholders is a formal work package, not an afterthought.
6. Design Sprints — rapid innovation pressure cookers that compress ideation, prototyping, and testing into days rather than months. Best suited for well-scoped challenges that need fast stakeholder alignment.
7. Innovation Process Design — creating custom innovation frameworks for organisations, accounting for governance, procurement, legal obligations, and adoption. Regen Studio's eight-phase framework for The Hague was formally adopted as departmental policy.
8. Innovation System Design — building co-creation communities and ecosystems where multiple organisations innovate together. Designing the structures, incentives, and governance that make collaborative innovation sustainable.
9. Innovation Coaching — supporting innovation teams through the process, providing periodic guidance to individual team members. Regen Studio coaches The Hague's Smart City team, supporting each civil servant in their role as innovation process manager.
10. Innovation Management — effective innovation operation at the portfolio level: prioritisation, resource allocation, reporting, decision-making structures, and organisational learning across multiple concurrent innovation projects.

For each service, Regen Studio takes into account not just the creative process, but also reporting, decision-making structures, procurement processes, and ethical considerations. Templates detailing all required steps are available for every service.

How does problem analysis drive innovation?

The head of the Industrial Engineering Department at Yale University famously said: "If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the problem is." Solving the wrong problem is the biggest innovation mistake an organisation can make. That is why starting every innovation journey with an extensive problem analysis is essential.

Regen Studio's problem analysis toolbox includes 11 methods, each suited to different aspects of complex challenges:

• Socratic Questioning — structured "why" chains that peel back surface symptoms to reveal root causes
• Empathy Mapping — understanding what stakeholders think, feel, see, hear, say, and do in relation to the problem
• Personas — profiling key user types to ground innovation work in real human needs
• Customer and User Journeys — mapping every touchpoint and pain point across the stakeholder experience
• Assumption Mapping — surfacing and prioritising the beliefs the team holds but has not yet tested
• Stakeholder Mapping — understanding the power dynamics, interests, and relationships between all parties
• Systems Mapping — visualising the full web of causal relationships within a complex challenge
• Causal Loop Diagrams — identifying reinforcing and balancing feedback loops that drive system behaviour
• Root Cause Mapping — tracing symptoms back to their structural sources
• The Iceberg Model — looking beneath visible events to uncover patterns, structures, and mental models
• Custom Brainstorming — tailored sessions combining multiple methods based on the client's specific context

In the Smart Charging in the Vruchtenbuurt project, problem analysis revealed that what appeared to be a straightforward request for a "smart charging plaza" actually sat at the intersection of energy policy, spatial planning, grid management, mobility strategy, community governance, and legal frameworks. Through structured workshops, the team mapped 30 distinct problem elements across seven themes, visualised as an interactive network diagram. Without this analysis, the project would have solved for one dimension while ignoring the others.

Physical and online tooling is available for every method.

What is a design sprint and when should you use one?

A design sprint is an intensive, time-boxed innovation format — typically three to five days — that compresses problem framing, ideation, prototyping, and user testing into a single focused period. Originally developed at Google Ventures, the format has been adapted across sectors for challenges that benefit from concentrated creative energy and rapid stakeholder alignment.

Design sprints are most effective in three situations:

• Well-scoped challenges — when the problem domain is defined (even if the solution is not), a sprint can rapidly generate and test concrete concepts
• Stakeholder alignment — when multiple departments or organisations need to converge on a direction, the intensity of a sprint forces shared understanding
• De-risking decisions — when an organisation wants evidence before committing significant resources, a sprint delivers a tested prototype in days rather than months

Design sprints work best as an acceleration tool within a broader innovation process. In The Hague's eight-phase framework designed by Regen Studio, design sprints are one of ten situational deepening options within the Idea Generation phase — available alongside hackathons, Startup in Residence challenges, and student project partnerships. A sprint is powerful but not a replacement for thorough problem analysis: without understanding root causes first, a sprint risks producing a polished solution to the wrong problem.

How do living labs work for innovation?

A living lab is a real-world testing environment where innovative solutions are developed, tested, and refined with active participation from end users and stakeholders. Unlike controlled laboratory settings, living labs operate in actual communities, public spaces, or organisational environments — generating evidence under the conditions the solution will eventually face.

The Hague's Living Lab Scheveningen is a prime example. Established as the city's designated area for testing digital innovations in public space, it has hosted a cluster of innovation projects including:

• Slim Strandnet — a 1-megawatt smart microgrid running on solar energy, a second-life EV battery, and open-source energy management software, governed by a public-private energy cooperative. Named one of the top 3 government innovations in the Netherlands in 2025.
• Energy Justice — an experiment testing whether solar cooperative revenues could be routed directly to vulnerable households, reducing their energy bills. The experiment surfaced that existing welfare gift policies were not equipped for this model, prompting the municipality to revise them.
• Smart Electricity Grid, Crowd Control, Drone Detection, and Circular Solar Panels — each testing different dimensions of urban digital innovation.

Living labs enable iterative experimentation that would be impossible in a traditional pilot setup. The community is not a passive test subject but an active co-creator. Results carry more weight because they are generated under real operating conditions — with real weather, real users, real governance constraints, and real grid operators. When a solution works in a living lab, the case for scaling it is built on evidence, not assumptions.

Regen Studio's founder established Living Lab Scheveningen during his role at the City of The Hague, and continues to advise on its development.

What is innovation process design?

Innovation process design is the creation of a custom innovation framework tailored to a specific organisational context. Off-the-shelf methodologies — design thinking, lean startup, the double diamond — provide generic structures. But organisations operating in complex multi-stakeholder environments need a process that accounts for their specific governance structures, procurement rules, legal obligations, political cycles, and adoption requirements.

Regen Studio designed an eight-phase innovation process for The Hague's Expertisecentrum Digitale Innovatie & Smart Cities (EC-DISC). The process runs from an undefined problem to a solution that an organisation owns and operates independently:

1. Phase 0 — Start Project: assessing whether the challenge meets conditions for an innovation approach
2. Phase 1 — Problem Analysis: structured workshops to surface root causes and build a shared problem map
3. Phase 2 — Idea Generation: ideation sessions with Innovation Quickscan and ethics workshop
4. Phase 3 — Prototyping: building and testing with real users, with transparent supplier selection
5. Phase 4 — Validation: DPIA, security baseline, ethics audit, impact measurement design, and permits
6. Phase 5 — Experiment: field testing with formal communication and impact measurement work packages
7. Phases 6 & 7 — Feasibility and Adoption: transferring ownership to the operating organisation

Every phase shares the same internal architecture: a defined function, steps (including an explicit Go / Stop / Redo decision), deliverables, and a menu of situational deepening options. The CIO of The Hague's Information & Automation department formally adopted this framework as departmental policy — a consultancy output that became institutional infrastructure.

The process has been applied across multiple projects, including the Smart Charging Vruchtenbuurt initiative and Energy Justice Scheveningen.

How does innovation design apply to sustainability and circular economy?

Sustainability transitions — the circular economy, the energy transition, EU regulatory compliance — are inherently complex multi-stakeholder challenges. They involve supply chains spanning continents, regulations crossing sectors, technologies not yet mature, and governance structures not yet designed. This is precisely the territory where innovation design delivers the most value.

In the energy transition, Regen Studio has applied innovation design to build smart microgrids that achieve 33% more efficient use of local networks, to design energy justice mechanisms that route cooperative revenues to vulnerable households, and to facilitate multi-stakeholder innovation processes that turn neighbourhood ambitions into actionable plans.

In the circular economy and EU regulation space, Regen Studio applies the same structured innovation approach to help organisations navigate DPP (Digital Product Passport) requirements under the ESPR, the Construction Products Regulation, and other frameworks. The same problem analysis methods that map 30 interconnected urban challenges also map the data architecture and supply chain traceability requirements of a Digital Product Passport implementation.

Regen Studio's approach is grounded in antifragile design principles — inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's work — that shape innovation systems designed not just to withstand shocks but to grow stronger from them. Principles such as bottom-up governance, trial and error as a core methodology, and deliberate small-scale experimentation before large-scale commitment are embedded in every project.

What types of organisations use innovation design services?

Innovation design services are used by organisations facing challenges too complex for any single department or discipline to solve alone. The common thread is multi-stakeholder complexity and the need for structured approaches that bridge analysis, creativity, and practical adoption.

• Municipalities and government agencies — The City of The Hague has engaged Regen Studio for innovation process design, innovation coaching for its Smart City team, living lab management, and multiple innovation projects including smart energy infrastructure, energy justice, crowd management, and drone detection.
• Energy cooperatives and community organisations — cooperatives like Sterk op Stroom (200+ members, experimental energy regulation exemption) and Vruchtenbuurt Deelt (shared electric vehicles) have worked with Regen Studio on integrated smart charging concepts combining energy, mobility, and public space.
• Industry associations and supply chain partners — organisations navigating EU regulations such as the ESPR and Digital Product Passports use innovation design methods for compliance roadmaps, data architecture strategy, and vendor-neutral technology selection.
• Research institutes and universities — academic partners such as Haagse Hogeschool have participated in innovation processes, contributing research capacity to real-world problem analysis and solution development.
• Companies developing circular or regenerative business models — firms seeking to move beyond linear take-make-dispose models use innovation design to prototype and validate new approaches to product lifecycle management, supply chain traceability, and stakeholder engagement.

See our client projects for more examples of innovation design in practice.

How can Regen Studio help with innovation design?

Regen Studio is an independent innovation design consultancy — we do not sell software platforms or take commissions from technology providers. Our advice is shaped by your challenge, not by a product we need to sell.

All 10 innovation design services are available as standalone engagements or as part of a custom innovation process designed for your organisational context. Whether you need a single problem analysis workshop, a full design sprint, or a multi-year innovation framework, we tailor the approach to your stage and your constraints.

What sets Regen Studio apart:

• Proven frameworks — our innovation processes have been adopted as government policy, not just delivered as reports
• Real-world impact — our work has changed welfare policies, built award-winning energy infrastructure, and turned neighbourhood initiatives into actionable plans
• Systemic perspective — grounded in antifragile design principles and systems thinking, we design for complexity rather than simplifying it away
• Dual expertise — we bridge innovation design with EU regulatory advisory, connecting circular economy innovation with Digital Product Passport compliance
• Physical and digital tooling — for every method in our toolbox, both physical workshop materials and online collaboration tools are available

We work across the Netherlands, Brazil, and the EU, with particular experience in energy transition, circular economy, smart cities, and digital innovation. Browse our FAQ for more answers or get in touch below.