Welcome to the world of innovation consulting.

Unceasing innovation is essential for a company's sustainable growth. In an era where not only the value of products and services themselves but also the "experiential value" of a brand is scrutinized, how does Dentsu Inc. provide consulting services that support corporate innovation? Asako Nagai, Chief Consultant of the Consulting Office, who has been involved in consulting on various innovation challenges such as brand design, new business development, and generating new product and service ideas, reports in a three-part series.

 

Providing Stimulating Tools and Spaces to Unlock Potential Beyond Everyday Thinking

The mission of Dentsu Consulting Inc. in its innovation consulting is to increase the "customer value" of client companies. Customer value refers to the brand value a company provides to its customers—consumers, end-users, and business partners. However, in recent years, with products and services reaching saturation, differentiation based solely on the value of goods or services has become extremely difficult. We are now in an era where the emphasis is on "experiential value"—how to make customers truly feel the brand's value through every brand experience across all touchpoints.

Furthermore, the globalization, mass adoption, and openness of technology have begun to shake the very foundations of manufacturing that companies once relied upon. The technological advantages companies once took pride in are increasingly being rapidly matched by competitors, making the sustainable preservation of the value of original products and services a major challenge.

Amidst these trends, redefining and rebuilding brands to drive corporate growth strategies, and creating innovations that enhance customer value, have become urgent priorities.

While innovation encompasses diverse challenges and themes, the generation of original ideas is essential across all fronts: defining the company's ideal future state, exploring new business domains that could become the company's new backbone, developing new products and services, and even constructing sales strategies. Furthermore, breakthrough ideas are indispensable for overcoming internal challenges, which are crucial keys to driving all corporate activities forward.

To generate these original ideas and construct future scenarios, we offer an innovation consulting service. This service processes the original thinking methodologies Dentsu Inc. has cultivated from a customer perspective, working alongside client companies to derive optimal solutions.

The defining feature of our Innovation Consulting Service is its foundation in right-brain thinking—a core element of Dentsu Inc.'s DNA.

Traditionally, even in idea generation methods, there are numerous "templates." However, we provide tools and spaces that stimulate participants to unleash their latent potential and aspirations—free from these templates, by letting ideas swirl around or even get messy at times. Similarly, in future trend and market analysis, we go beyond merely predicting future events. We take a step further, focusing on the mindset of consumers to generate ideas. We believe this right-brain approach and methodology, used in collaboration with our client companies to realize innovation, is both the role and strength of Dentsu Consulting Inc.

As a powerful supporter enabling autonomous results

For client companies pursuing innovation, however, equally important alongside generating groundbreaking ideas is making those ideas effective. The goal isn't merely idea generation; it's maintaining the momentum to actually shape those ideas into tangible forms that drive corporate growth.

To ensure the effectiveness of ideas, we place great importance on providing the optimal process for our clients themselves to derive the "solutions" and gain a deep understanding and genuine conviction about those solutions. For example, even in work sessions aimed at solving problems, the depth of discussion required and the desired outcomes vary according to each company's specific needs. This cannot be achieved by uniformly providing a ready-made program.

Designing a custom-made process tailored to each company's specific circumstances and needs becomes crucial. Here too, the ability to design flexible processes unconstrained by rigid templates is essential. This is precisely where Dentsu Inc.'s unique strengths, cultivated through our communication business, come into play.

The Brand Creation Center (BCC), the predecessor to our current Consulting Division, was established in 2001. Shortly before that, the importance of branding had begun to gain recognition in Japan. From that time, I myself was deeply involved in developing Dentsu Inc.'s unique workshop programs as part of our marketing services, and in facilitation-based problem-solving services designed to draw out the initiative of the stakeholders themselves.

What I deeply realized through this work was the critical importance of self-driven outcomes. When client companies experience the process of arriving at solutions themselves, the ideas themselves become exceptionally robust. This builds confidence and generates powerful momentum for implementation, driven by strong will. I believe this is the very core of corporate innovation. Our role is to be powerful supporters of this process. I will introduce the specifics of this support over the next two installments.

The next update is scheduled for March 12.

Location: BICE