2017 was all about digitalization, automation, artificial intelligence on the one hand and human-centered solutions, invisible technology and experience design on the other. Interestingly, two opposing trends, yet both emerged at the same time and have a different importance depending on the industry. We mainly engaged in holistic strategic topics and had an exciting field of projects ranging from mobility solutions to fast moving consumer products to breakthrough medical developments. For us, 2018 is the year of holistic solutions - from product to service and thus a holistic brand experience.
Design is getting more and more important, although it is still underestimated. A lot of people still believe, that design means styling, but it is so much more than just a lipstick on a pig. I have the feeling, that people understand now, that you need designers as part of the team in order to transform, to rethink, to question establish norms and to create competing visions of the future. I see this as our challenge to help to create added value through empathy with all different stakeholders in mind. Interdisciplinary teams help to get a 360° view about a specific situation, enabling us to make the right decisions. It is a great chance and we are ready for it.
For us, 2018 is the year of holistic solutions – from product to service and thus a holistic brand experience. N+P is working in different markets, developing different insights and opportunity areas out of the user needs to open up new paths. In order to achieve this, we set up our teams more interdisciplinary to create the greatest possible friction and thus also new insights. Additionally, we are focusing on our own USPs: 1 soul, 1 mission, 1 team – local but global. We are interested in complex processes on a bigger scale and are looking forward to an exciting year with many challenging projects together with our customers from around the world.
In 2017, we have realized a very exciting project about food and mobility as a service – an intermodal platform that allows travelers to have access to all types of food throughout their entire travel chain across all modes of transport. Here we were mainly focused on the holistic formulation of cross-industry, all the way up to defining the underlying ecosystem. Other exciting projects were an intercultural project in India together with a team from India, Singapore, Korea, and Germany as well as a completely new type of collaboration in Vienna in the form of an Innovation Challenge. There we worked together with an interdisciplinary team, developing a product within 72 hours that destroys multidrug-resistant germs. Using light and a carrier material, wound healing is accelerated many times over, without the need of antibiotics. An exciting project, which will be further developed in 2018.
