4.2 – Use Your Target World As A Reality Check

As with any other product building process, plan a rough roadmap for building your product or service. Start with prototypes, test a lot, expect several changes along the way. Always come back to your target world representation, immerse yourself again and again, and try to check whether your current prototype, MVP or product version will actually contribute to your target world. If not, it is either not the right product to build or you have to revise your target world. Remember, though, that your target world is the future version of the world that you constantly discover and reimagine to live in, the world version to which your company or team wants to contribute to. With every research study you conduct and every product iteration you run, you uncover a new region of your world’s map that was hidden to you before, revealing new opportunity spaces to act on, but also reshaping your game strategy to play by. In this case, your target world serves you as a continuous quality control and eyeopener, which is what your target world should eventually turn into.

CONCLUSION

In my imagination – if done well – the result will look like a very famous architectural masterpiece in the center of Vienna, called ‘Hundertwasserhaus’.

Figure 24: Hundertwasserhaus as a great example (Source: Hundertwasser.com)

This house – named after its architect – is anything but perfect from a symmetrical perspective, but it is close to perfect from a sustainability point of view.

Socially it connects people: its playful design inside the building with small playgrounds in and outside on terraces, encourages children to play, to run around in the house, visiting flats with open doors from the friends. Environmentally it offers multiple balconies solely for the planting of trees all around the building, which reduces noise pollution, breaks winds and cools the building during summer. Technologically it was built on solid bricks and due to its use of fired tiles, the facade is extra resistant to damage. Economically it was a state-financed project, which committed to lower rental prices for average citizens to be able to pay for it. I think it is a great example of an already existing target world for future housing projects, and in my opinion this is what innovation should aim to contribute to.

To conclude this paper, I hope that I have: (1) provoked the reader about some of the problems we regularly face in innovation; (2) pointed out the responsibility and power innovators have and need to utilize better; (3) explained the need for Target Worlds and how worldbuilding can help; and (4) sketched a first step by step guide of how to build your own target world as a new starting point for innovation that goes beyond target groups, problems, technology-focus and limited centeredness. I very much hope that this was a provocative nudge for you as a reader, and look forward to receiving any feedback, thoughts and ideas on how to develop this concept further.

Markus Rothmüller is a Techno-Anthropologist by training and applies anthropology in business, design and product development. He has worked in the fields of future studies, user research, corporate innovation and venture building with a special focus and passion for emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles, smart home, digital health and wellbeing. He looks at concepts like socio-technical worlds, networks, rituals, mediation, transformation and belonging, as an add-on to the otherwise mainstream innovation frameworks.

2021 EPIC Proceedings, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic

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