Creating impact

Garage

Engineering futures to drive immediate change

What we do

In the Garage, we “engineer futures”; we set a future state for a real-life environment based on the opportunity to make much more of the way individuals might interact with machines or technology in general. Technology that is available today and, if approached and used innovatively, can mean a turning point in how they perform their jobs and undertake their routines.

 

Our challenge

We do this to eliminate waste in crops, help doctors provide the best treatment to their patients, know when products on a supermarket shelf need to be replaced, avoid customers waiting in queues. Specific solutions to specific problems. There is always a clear benefit to pursue, whatever the environment: a restaurant chain, retail warehouse, theme park, sales network, crop field, convenience store franchise, transport fleet, hydrogen vehicle, etc.

 

How we work

We apply traditional scientific concepts such as neural-net algorithms, Markov chains, and queueing theory among other things, as frameworks to complex business and operational situations, and we design a proof of concept based on existing technology to demonstrate how people can thrive on these real-life, common environments.

Although we do not target specific industries, themes, or capabilities in particular, there are indeed three basic areas of focus that happen to be common across the solutions we deliver: augmenting consumer knowledge, managing uncertainty and developing new behaviours.

Augmenting consumer knowledge

Instead of tools or the use of them, we focus on a disruptive way of operating in order to make a difference on end consumers. This might involve the launch of a new venture, business, process, or unit, or reinvent existing ones. It is the enterprise design what does lead us to unleashing the power of data: turning wholesale distributors into service providers, leveraging shared services to accelerate customer insights, or turning trivial day-to-day routines into drivers of wellness with IoT.

Managing uncertainty

This is next-generation operations designed to manage the intrinsic uncertainty of demand – e.g., when will customer orders arrive? – supply – e.g., when is the moment of optimal yield to harvest crops? – and human behaviors – e.g., how to influence park visitors to avoid them going to the same place at the same time? The key for success in these cases is to enable a new business model with the ability to shift gears on performance, articulate it with detailed clarity and gather stakeholder buy-in.

Developing new behaviours

We also focus on the organizational challenge that every transformation process entails, either behavioral or structural. The right relationships, fit-for-purpose roles, operating models, and ways of working are critical elements we look at. How to make the relationship between franchise dealers and brand HQ work? How does the role of a sales rep change if provided with regular automatic customer knowledge? These are examples of issues not to be on a - usually broader – solution.
 

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