who we are
Executive Team Core Discipline Leaders
Director, Global Business Development
Sabina is a committed business development professional with a strong operations background in the sales and service sector. Having been responsible for a diverse range of sales and marketing campaigns, she brings a fundamental understanding of not only the customer experience, but the importance of capturing and measuring the end result.
Previously Sabina worked in Global Business Development with Blast Radius where she worked with a number of leading global brands. She did this through identifying and acting on marketing opportunities for her clients. Prior to this, she held a Director role for Intrawest Resort Group, Marketlinc (a leading service bureau) and was largely involved in the start up for a new charter in the banking sector.
Outside the office, Sabina spends time with her husband and family…traveling whenever she has the chance.
Much current thinking about innovation focuses on coping with unpredictability. The process of creating purposeful and profitable innovations is not as inherently unpredictable as one might think, once there is an understanding of the forces at work. The trick is to break big sweeping forces down into smaller, predictable elements or pathologies.
At Idea Couture, our innovation process revolves around a structured play program that brings together best-in-class methodologies and tools to create new products, services or processes that drive customer value and alter the economics or market power of a business.
Idea Couture applies a variety of empathy-based methods to uncover consumer insights, transforming them into actionable information and ultimately business solutions. Immersive research provides us with in-the-moment inspiration and ideas that power innovation and marketing strategy. Our multi-disciplinary insight teams analyze data and insights through the lenses of anthropology, behavioral economics, human factors and ethnography.
Today, the most progressive design and research cultures have embedded ethnography into their operations and consider it a fundamental means of achieving their overall business and marketing strategy. Designed and conducted by a professionally trained team, our ethnographies offer a level of depth and intimacy absent in traditional market research. We watch. We listen. We ask. We participate. And we learn - all in the context of consumer lives, and always through the critical lenses of anthropology and the social sciences. Our ethnographic research includes, but is not limited to:
Within and across a firm's boundaries, customer centricity and purposeful design are key of a successful business model. Many companies do not understand their existing business model well enough because their business or industry structure has evolved over time. This affects not only the core premise behind the company's development but also its natural interdependencies, strengths and limitations.
Idea Couture has a robust framework to help companies create value by specifying business scale, scope and positioning in the value-chain. At its core, the development of a business model is the design of an activity system that is mutually interdependent of the firm and all of the players in its ecosystem, including customers, suppliers and competitors. Throughout our process, we review and challenge our clients' strategic assumptions and experiment with different configurations.
We work to identify the best business model(s) that capture the biggest opportunities, building value within a company and developing an understanding of how its current performance compares with its full corporate potential.
The most complex, interesting and potentially transformative solutions lie at the intersection of engineering, design and human sciences. With interdisciplinary teams that understand social, technological and corporate landscapes, Idea Couture helps companies envision and create breakthrough products that fulfill user needs and forge lasting connections between customers and brands. Our talented team of industrial designers can transform any product or idea into a market leading solution with genuine competitive advantages and consumer appeal. In addition to new products and categories, our toolkit can also be applied to innovative product line extensions.
The launch of a successful product is a multi-faceted puzzle, and every member of our team brings a different piece to either the workshop or the boardroom, including perspectives on product features and functionality, ergonomics and usability, branding and positioning.
Idea Couture understands that with today’s ever-growing proliferation of consumer electronic products, systems and screens, human interfaces play a pivotal role in defining the quality of customer experiences and overall competitiveness in the marketplace. Whether a touch screen, mobile device or appliance, our multidisciplinary team of designers and human factors specialists employ principles of user-centered design to create elegant and effective interfaces that harmonize functionality and usability, resulting in efficient interaction and enjoyable experiences.
The goal of user interface design is to create a beautifully intuitive and unobtrusive design that allows the user to accomplish her goals without unnecessary effort and frustration. Core to our design approach is an unyielding focus on users and their real needs. Our trained human factors specialists methodically deconstruct and analyze users' goals and associated tasks, deriving insights and functional requirements that inform the design of the interface. Once the clear design and usability requirements are established, Idea Couture’s interface designers draft and refine successive prototypes of ever-increasing fidelity, beginning with early stage paper sketches and ending with fully functional digital artifacts. Our usability experts then develop and conduct rigorous contextual testing sessions to ensure that the architecture of action/reaction events enables users to instantly recognize how to best accomplish their chosen tasks.
Rapid iterations are at the heart of all Idea Couture’s methodologies, whether designing a product, service experience or business model. Prototypes, simulations and semi-functional models are used to quickly assess viability, test business concepts, mitigate risks, facilitate strategic discussions, gather early user feedback, establish performance benchmarks and project future performance. This process eliminates the inefficiencies of long planning cycles and facilitates the transfer of knowledge across disciplines to create tangible futures. By developing the level of fidelity necessary to explore a concept, Idea Couture is able to cost effectively produce and experience the small failures necessary to achieve the greatest successes.
Every brand has a community or social media strategy, although many don't even know it. The brands that are in the dark operate without critical orientation, and confuse "anti-strategy" with "strategy". Understanding what your brand is, could be, or should be, requires deep insights drawn from rigorous research and analysis. Idea Couture's approach to Brand Experience builds successful brands by helping clients make a promise, communicate that promise, keep that promise and strengthen that promise time and time again.
From initial exploratory research to the complex analysis and interpretation of business implications, conducting rigorous quantitative research is an essential part of making informed choices. Idea Couture conducts Delphi Research, Online Panel Surveys, Longitudinal Studies and other advanced techniques to offer its clients timely and accurate quantitative research to support strategic decision-making. We uncover the hidden dimensions of data that lead to a richer understanding of customers, markets, trends and business futures.
Our quantitative programs include, but are not limited to, investigating:
Service design can be both tangible and intangible. It can involve artifacts as well as communication, environment, behaviors and the specification and construction of technologically networked social practices that deliver value to consumers. Whatever form it takes, service design must be engaging, consistent, easy-to-use and have strategic purpose. Unlike products that are created and 'exist' before being purchased and used by consumers, services come to life in the same moment that they are being provided and consumed.
While designers can develop the precise configuration of a product, a service is the result of interactions between customers and providers. A product has a defined form is typically experienced in a static state. A service, by contrast, can empower a deeper brand relationship by delivering a dynamic engagement with emotional value that creates a stronger long-term bond with customers. Idea Couture specializes in helping our clients transform their brands into experiences by developing multi-layered services that reach consumers through multiple digital and real world touch-points.
Idea Couture believes that social media is much more than blogs, forums and social networks. It encompasses social commerce, co-creation, wireless interactions, conversations, collaboration and other methods of exchange and interchange. As connectivity increases and social platforms open up, the opportunity for consumers to socialize brand interactions will increase exponentially. Beginning with a comprehensive social media audit, Idea Couture works with clients to create a plan that identifies and engages advocates, increases engagement and benchmarks performance on an ongoing basis to support organizational objectives.
In an increasingly fragmented media marketed, it is not enough to merely identify the most efficient channels for awareness and engagement. Channels must be carefully interwoven and aligned to maximize uplift and activation. Brands must manifest themselves in ways native to the medium of communication and the contexts that they are being consumed in. By building marketing plans on a trans-media engagement model instead of a mass media broadcast model, Idea Couture is able to effectively navigate the void between mass and niche, ensuring relevancy and efficacy.
Idea Couture fills a void in the marketplace between strategic consulting firms that typically lack an understanding of the ever changing digital ecosystem and interactive agencies that lack business rigor and corporate strategy competency. Simply put, we architect interactive initiatives that look great and have purpose. Our approach is platform and process agnostic. We utilize the frameworks, libraries and mixes of them that best support the needs of each project. We integrate with and provide scalability to support our clients' digital roadmaps. And we utilize qualitative and quantitative methodologies that measure and analyze the metrics that optimize performance long after launch.
The majority of new companies that go it alone fail to survive past the first 12 months. Those that are incubated survive the critical early years. A catalyst for starting and growing new ventures, Idea Couture offers business incubation services and facilities to web technology companies so they can grow faster and live longer.
Currently, we are looking for teams with the knowledge, experience and track record to grow an exceptionally successful business. Entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to create shareholder value are necessary attributes. A clear analysis should explain why customers will purchase the company's product or service rather than a competing or alternative product or service. Our typical investment over a 12 to 16 month incubation period consist of services and cash between $200K to $500K. If a project requires more than $500K in seed funding, we will work with other venture capital firms to raise the capital.
+- Business Model DevelopmentFor most start-ups, surviving and thriving during the first few years is incredibly challenging. The market is changing rapidly, new competitors are emerging, technology is evolving quickly and human dynamics can often make or break a company. Start-ups must move quickly and decisively on limited resources, with little margin for error. From idea inception to scaling beyond early market validations, Idea Couture offers Business Model Development for start-up companies.
Through deep strategic experience, we have become adept at pattern recognition and are able to identify key elements that lead to success and common pitfalls that plague many start-up companies. Our expertise blends successful entrepreneurship, industry insights and practical marketing advice.
Strategic partnerships are an essential component of many new ventures. They can leverage external expertise to fill gaps in capabilities, facilitate new market entry, increase speed-to-market and provide access to specialized technologies and shared development risks. But they can also raise significant questions surrounding co-development and other intellectual property ownership issues. Technology transfer, exclusivity, competition, rights to opportunities, sharing of profits or expenses, and the duration and termination of the relationship must all be considered, because when strategic partnerships go wrong it is usually because of a poor or flawed design from the very beginning. Idea Couture assists new ventures through several stages of the partnership process including strategy development, partner selection, deal structure, and operations implementation.
Launching an innovative product or service into a market that does not yet exist or breaking into an established market can be tricky. But it should be at the top of every new venture's To Do list. To do this successfully requires early market scanning and constant re-evaluation and re-assessment of the market as it continues to evolve. Idea Couture offers companies a complete Market Entry Strategy that maps the competitive dynamics of the marketplace, constructs a complete profile of every competitor and determines key competitive attributes that clearly meet the needs of an identifiable target customer group.
While thorough strategy and carefully-selected partners are critical to any start-up, a timely and cost effective execution is also paramount. Idea Couture's processes, methodologies and teams of digital strategists, technologists and designers can help companies translate concepts into flawless experiences on time and on budget. We can also help ventures find the right off-shore and near-shore development teams or full-time employees to supplement in-house personnel employees.
Every start-up needs an exit strategy. The difference between a deal that generates exceptional returns and one which disappoints rests in forethought, positioning and execution. Developing an exit strategy early in the process and revisiting it as the situation changes provides an increased probability of success. Idea Couture works with start-ups to generate exit scenarios and acquisition plans. We facilitate meetings with target acquirers or investment bankers while working to achieve the greatest valuation possible for our clients. From private placements to mergers and acquisitions, Idea Couture has the knowledge and connections to plan and guide a start-up through every twist and turn of the exit process.
Idea Futures (I.F.) is the design research arm of Idea Couture. I.F. is focused on the development and application of adaptive multidisciplinary foresight practices that help our partners understand, anticipate, and imagine, compelling actionable futures. More specifically, I.F.'s activities are aimed at the identification, interpretation, and expansion of social, cultural and technological signals for the purpose of framing new innovation perspectives; envisioning and articulating unseen opportunities and preferred scenarios.
Idea Futures' explorations are complimented by rigorous strategic analysis which provides the ideal balance between emotional- creative divergence and rational convergence. This interplay creates a strong platform for strategic departures into a world of infinite possibilities.
The future is here today as much as it will be tomorrow. Every day, choices and decisions shape conditions that have yet to be realized. Understanding those choices, decisions and future conditions is the key to successful innovation. Idea Couture applies a variety of scanning, signal analysis, scenario planning and evaluation methods to generate the actionable insights and stimulate the critical discussions that frame and inform the front end of innovation. Our Strategic Foresight offerings draw on imaginative and creative ideas, deep analytical research and methodological rigor to strengthen anticipatory orientation, envision and planning skills to explore and realize a variety of desirable futures.
Global Scanning & Context Framing is key to understanding the potentials or variables that contribute to the design, development, acceptability and adoption of new products, services and systems. It requires researching, collecting, compiling, comparing and evaluating a wide range of signals to identify new areas of near-future business opportunity. Idea Couture taps into its global innovation network in Sao Paulo, London, San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, Amsterdam and Barcelona to unlock and understand the new and emerging languages, cultures, customs, ideas and needs that drive innovation. Each scanning and framing exploration is unique, sensitive to the scope of each project, and composed of four main activities:
Well-told stories are critical. They mobilize the imagination in ways that finished prototypes and products cannot. Like low-risk, early-stage prototypes, they are business tools that can be shared, discussed, negotiated and revised. Idea Couture's Scenario Development helps companies shape and articulate the desired and informed futures by telling stories. By writing in the narrative spaces between prediction and imagination, and by conjuring the voices and experiences of consumers, we help tell the tales of new products, services, systems and business models that inspire real innovation.
Suspending disbelief and plotting out possibilities is key to driving new ideas forward. But in many business cultures there is little or no room for the wilder side of creative imagination. To remedy this, Idea Couture's Future Workshops encourage radical ideation through collaborative and customized events where we introduce and work through new process and methodologies, transfer knowledge, and imagine and socialize new ideas.
Copyright © 2010 Idea Couture Inc.