How and Why I Made the Career Shift Into Workshopping and Consulting

I started an innovation consulting and workshop facilitation business with Design Sprints and Design Thinking workshop?methods.

Hello and thank you for stopping by to find out a bit more about me, my background, my experience and my plans for the future. In this post, I will share with you some things I have done so far in my life and career. This will give you an idea of my skills, of what I love to do, and of the things I can help you with.

My background and experience first

Honestly, starting a new workshop business is not big news, especially to those that know me well. I have gained vast experience designing, facilitating, and evaluating workshops for large corporations, institutions, or universities.

I ran my first workshops as a designer and strategist on the topics of product and brand design around 2007. Since 2009, I have been teaching and conducting workshops at various universities all over Europe, but mainly in Berlin, where I live. Designing, facilitating, and evaluating workshops have exclusively been part of my work. But it has been just a minor part of the overall project work, e.g., project work as a designer.

I have always enjoyed working directly with people, and as a designer, you might know how you could mostly end up in endless iteration loops in front of a screen for weeks or even months. So, the idea of doing less project work and focusing more on working directly with people grew organically over the years. And, of course, designing, facilitating and evaluating workshops on topics such as product design, team management, business processes, and innovation strategy.

For me, it’s simply all about guiding people to work together in a structured way and solve problems more effectively, all while creating an environment where ideas can flow, and decisions feel easy.

The career shift into full-time consulting and workshopping

Applying my workshop and facilitation techniques to solve complex problems has been a standout point to get most of my jobs done. My clients loved the structured methods I consistently applied and were always happy with the outcome. Last year, I was awarded the German Design Award 2021 through the help of my custom-made workshops. The entire process of the project was based on the outcome of this workshop, which started in 2018, in cooperation with my client, Blinkist .

Such successful projects gave me an enormous boost for my personal and professional development and career. And in 2019, I decided to level up my career by gaining a Google Design Sprint Facilitator & Coach certification, giving myself a distinct professional edge. I have been officially certified by Jake Knapp (the creator of the Sprint at Google Ventures) and AJ Smart since then. Yaaaaay ??

Next, I combined my knowledge and experience and founded Design Sprints?Studio

I created a new consultancy called Design Sprints Studio by essentially combining my experience as a designer, consultant, innovator, strategist, tech expert, teacher, and workshop facilitator. My new baby is basically a product design, strategy, and innovation studio with specific expertise in utilizing Design Sprints and other Design Thinking workshop methods for ideation, decision-making, and problem-solving helping our partners with product design, product strategy, and rapid innovation.

But what is a Design?Sprint?

In 2010, Jake Knapp of Google Ventures designed a method of working that allows companies to develop their products more efficiently and faster. Basically, it’s a 4-day innovation process for rapidly solving big challenges, creating new products, or improving existing ones. It compresses potentially months of work into a few days, saving time, energy, and money by directly getting market feedback to your idea–without having to build it first. It encompasses business strategy, innovation, behavior science, and design thinking. He called this process a Design Sprint and published the related publication, Sprint, in 2016, which quickly became a New York Times bestseller.

And today, thousands of teams and organizations globally have adopted sprints in startups (like Slack and Airbnb), big companies (like LEGO and Google), agencies (like IDEO and McKinsey), schools (like Stanford and Columbia), governments (like the UK and the UN), and even museums (like the British Museum and the Smithsonian).

I can do better strategic and design work through Design Sprint workshops

How can I guide your team…

• to work together in a more structured way,
• solve problems more effectively,
• all while creating an environment where ideas can flow
• and decisions feel easy…

you may ask?

I teach and facilitate innovation processes through the assistance of the Design Sprint 2.0 method. The essential part of all my workshops uses exercises from the verified Design Sprint method while adapting it to the specifics of each challenge. Besides the Design Sprint, I also offer workshops for brainwriting (yes, another fancy buzzword, but believe me, it is not the same as brainstorming), ideation, decision-making, problem-solving, or even for marketing challenges.

Conclusion

You can hire me to gainfully ?? activate and facilitate innovation and change ?? within your team or organization.

I can help you develop and improve your products, services, processes, and business models that set you apart — faster while saving time, money, and resources. I am based in Berlin and work on-site as well as remotely across different time zones.

?? I can guide you if your team or organization?…??

?? needs to solve a complex problem

?? needs to solve any problem, without unstructured discussion

?? lacks efficiency in collaboration, leadership, and decision making

?? moves too slow, goes around in circles and loses its focus

?? is under pressure to be innovative but doesn’t know where to start

?? needs cross-functional alignment towards common business goals

?? needs custom-designed workshops

Feel free to follow Design Sprints Studio on social media and let me know what you think in the comment section ?? or send me a message.

Thanks for reading and stay healthy,

Martin

More information

Check out our new webpage below and learn more about the methodology by following the link: www.designsprints.studio

This blog article first appeared on Medium .