Valyuu, a pre-owned digital device trading startup, currently faces the issue of losing customers during the order placement process. My task is to create a doorstep service tailored to their specific needs, aiming to streamline the seller's journey from order placement to getting the payment. Although doorstep service is not innovative in the market, Valyuu requires a bespoke design aligned with their specific requirements. The primary research question guiding this project is, "How can Valyuu meet the needs of pre-owned product sellers to achieve efficiency, simplicity, and brand recognition in doorstep pickup services?" My research covers three main areas: Valyuu's brand positioning, doorstep services, and the behaviors of pre-owned device sellers.

As a result, this project introduces a service concept, "Selling your device with ease and satisfaction," aimed at streamlining the process of selling pre-owned products for efficiency and simplicity by shortening the user flow from placing order to waiting for payment. In this service, all these "hassle" process finishes at doorstep. Additionally, during the process, Valyuu's brand identity is conveyed through specially designed vehicles, the attire of pickup personnel, and their customer-centric behavior to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. This concept also aligns with Valyuu's long-term vision of expanding into C2C business, where the doorstep service can serve as a pivotal logistics component.

In the last decade, European citizens had to overcome multiple severe disruptive events like Covid-19, extreme weather and war at the EU-boarder. With ongoing climate change and political instability, more crises are expected to arise. To deal with these crises an increased resilience of individuals, organisations and society is needed. One organisation eager to contribute to building resilience in Hamburg (Germany) is Cociety. The name is a contraction of a collaborative society.

To create resilience, multi-stakeholder knowledge and an interdisciplinary approach is needed, to be able to deal with the high interdependencies of the system within society. Cociety has the potential to collect and generate this diverse knowledge, as it is an umbrella organisation of over eight non-profit foundations, founded by Dr. Otto, that contribute to diverse aspects of social and environmental sustainability in Hamburg.

However, Cociety is in the start-up phase of an organisation. It still needs to develop a clear strategy to unlock the potential it has. This project clearly defines the potential of and strategy for Cociety, using systemic design and social innovation as theoretical background. Desk and field research, including interviews and a co-creative workshop, formed the basis for a gigamap, showing the system of Cociety and its perspectives. The rest of the project focuses on the internal perspective of Cociety, meaning the collaboration between the foundations and their employees. A Social network analysis (SNA) shows the interconnections and collaboration levels in the current network. From the insights generated in the SNA, a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis discovers the leveragepoints to design for the improvement of Cociety’s internal network.

The final design of this project is a strategy. An overall vision and a vision for the internal network of Cociety are formulated. A roadmap outlines the key actions need to achieve the vision, supported by three interventions to make the first steps, including an organigram to visualise and access the knowledge available in the network, a meeting format to share the knowledge with the network and an onboarding guide to keep the network active and alive.

Candy Inc is a Dutch company specialized in designing and manufacturing process equipment for the global confectionary industry. Their brand is built on high quality custom projects for the high-end market. To lower their prices and appeal to the medium-end market, Candy Inc has implemented Configure-To-Order practices (Aqlan, et al., 2014). To help Candy Inc reach these new medium-end customers this report presents a strategic marketing plan. Research for the strategic marketing plan included ten semi-structured interviews with a mix of internal sales managers, agents and external strategic partners. Six interviews were recorded and transcribed. These interviews were analyzed using the Grounded Theory Method (Strauss, A.L. & Corbin, J.M.,1990). This process starts by coding interviews by writing down the most important statements. These 308 statements were then categorized by subject. Finally, these categories are put together into overarching clusters, summarizing the themes of the interviews. This process led to two superclusters. The first is named ‘Agents are asked to be superhuman but are under supported’. This reflects the insight that agents are valuable to companies like Candy Inc for marketing across borders and cultures. But they feel underequipped and prepared. The second supercluster is named ‘Selling is complex and needs a human touch, but tech could support them more’. The personal relationships between agents/sales managers and customers are an essential aspect to sales in this business. But there is a lack of use of digital tools like targeted advertising and customer relationship management systems. The research phase ended with the formulation of a statement that would serve as a guide for ideation. From ideation came five recommendations, which were tested at Interpack or with agents. To give Candy Inc a concise guide for implementation a roadmap was made. The recommendations are implemented over the span of 3 years to help Candy Inc integrate with their agents and market more effectively without interfering with the personal relationship-building of the sales process. The first step is a communication platform for sales managers and agents to connect on. Using features like topic channels on these platforms allows Candy Inc to efficiently convey information to their team of agents. This platform also allows agents to connect and exchange ideas. The second step is to supply agents with an organized library of marketing material. Any marketing material Candy Inc produces can be stored on the previous communication platform so agents can easily find and use these. The final step is to use an implemented CRM system to inform better marketing, like digital advertising campaigns on LinkedIn.

Background: GFI was a global financial institution. An innovation methodology, DTLSA, was created for GFI through the integration of Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile/Scrum software development. Signs of a low-level adoption for DTLSA were witnessed internally, despite ongoing promotion efforts.

Objective: This project aimed at improving the DTLSA adoption at GFI through empirical research and design intervention (directions). First, an investigation was needed to validate the potentially low-level adoption of DTLSA and to analyse different aspects of the DTLSA adoption status quo. Then, barriers and enablers for DTLSA adoption were sought out in pursuit of a better understanding of DTLSA adoption. Furthermore, the contextual information gathered in empirical research was used to inspire the design process for potential improvement concept directions.

Research methods: A mix of different research methods were used to achieve a holistic understanding of the topic: literature and existing knowledge study, group session, interview, and survey.

Research results: The low level of DTLSA adoption was confirmed, despite the positive aspects of DTLSA adoption such as sufficient understanding, and high motivation at GFI. A variety of barriers and enablers were found, the majority of which were related to 2 significant factors: team autonomy, and team engagement. 3 growth stages for DTLSA adoption were identified regarding the different levels of these 2 factors. Team autonomy at risk caused by multiple barriers was considered the most pressing issue that led to the low level of adoption.

Design: The design problem was defined as empowering the ambassador figures who emerged in teams during the DTLSA adoption. A storyboard of a possible current situation and an imaginative narrative of an ideal situation was created. 3 concept directions were proposed.

Pure mycelium materials are a novel type of biobased materials that provide an alternative to otherwise polluting leather products and meat. Pure mycelium is considered a sustainable material as it is being produced through biofabrication while making use of renewable biomass resources or waste streams. However, the production of this pure mycelium results in a waste stream itself. This waste stream consists mostly of the spent mycelium substrate (SMS) used for its production along with a smaller share of pure mycelium waste (PMW) which cannot be used for its intended purpose due to contamination with substrate particles. The current knowledge gap with regards to the lack of appropriate options for its valorisation results in these waste streams to be composted and provides a serious burden to producers of mycelium materials as this disposal is costly. Additionally, composting of these mycelium waste streams is considered unsustainable according to the principles of the circular bioeconomy (CBE). The CBE is suggested as an alternative economic system that is to overcome the problems that are inherent to our present linear economic systems e.g., resource depletion and environmental degradation. This thesis aims to determine the potential for valorisation of these mycelium waste streams to support operationalisation of the CBE and to improve the cost-efficiency of pure mycelium materials.

To assess this potential, the characteristics of the mycelium waste streams are synthesized from the literature and various options for its valorisation are identified from the literature based on these characteristics. The environmental impacts (GWP, water- and energy consumption) and economic viability of the identified valorisation options are determined by studying available lifecycle impact assessments and techno-economic assessments of processes comparable to those for the valorisation of the mycelium waste stream. Additionally, the eco-efficiency, or the relation between the environmental costs per monetary unit benefit of these valorisation options is calculated with the idea that this provides a more straightforward answer as to what would be the most favourable options for this valorisation based on the separate assessments of environmental impacts and economic viability.

The results of this study suggest that there are several economically viable options that theoretically provide the potential to support operationalisation of the CBE through the valorisation of mycelium waste streams. These are the production of mushrooms, cellulase and fuel pellets for the valorisation of the SMS and extraction of dietary fibers and phenolic compounds from the PMW. The production of fuel pellets is considered the preferred option for valorisation of the SMS due to its fast ROI. However, it does not provide the possibility for optimalisation of biomass resource utilisation. Furthermore, the identified options for valorisation of the PMW are not desirable due to their extremely high environmental impacts. Nonetheless, the production of fuel pellets from the SMS provides the opportunity to improve the cost-efficiency of pure mycelium production as it makes up the vast majority of the mycelium waste streams.

Additionally, the novel synthesis of mycelium waste characteristics provides the potential to study additional options for valorisation of mycelium waste streams in the future. These options could potentially provide the possibility to improve the cost-efficiency of pure mycelium production while simultaneously allowing an optimisation of the utilisation of the resources used for its production. Furthermore, the findings of this study suggest that a different approach in the decision-making of appropriate options for valorisation of biomass waste streams, including mycelium waste streams, is required. An initial idea for a potential decision-making tool is therefore provided.

Lastly, the findings of this study provide the first indication of the possibility to capture economic value from a waste stream that provides a growing burden to the mycelium materials industry. This will allow reductions in the cost price of pure mycelium, making it available to a larger group of consumers and allowing the release of their full potential through increased substitution of otherwise polluting materials and meat.

For an incredibly long time, what exactly happens between the legs of female-sex people has been a great mystery.
It‘s not common to talk about our vulvas and how we feel about them in detailed and specific terms - and yes it‘s vulva and not vagina, the vulva is the entire external genital area, the vagina is merely the internal muscle canal.
It‘s so unusual that many women lack the vocabulary to describe their genitals and the education that‘s practised in the school system is sporadic and often only focused on reproduction.
And the vagina is by no means the star of the show and definitely not the female equivalent of the penis. This is the clitoris, which is by no means just a little (apparently difficult to find) knob above the vaginal opening, but is a large and complex organ located beneath the skin‘s surface. A more or less fun fact, for example, is that it was not until 1998 that the complete anatomy of the clitoris was revealed in a study by the Australian urologist Helen O‘Connell (Fyfe, 2018). In fact, most anatomical books don‘t even show the clitoris and therefore not depicting the vulva correctly. Let that sink in.
Conversations about sexuality, well-being or pleasure find no place and lead to misconceptions, rumours and often leave people wondering „Am I normal?“.
This thesis aims to answer the question “How might a concept car look like for Yoni” as means of process and deliverable exploration for The Young.
In essence this thesis is about the world and future of vulvas and which role Yoni could play to ultimately facilitate positive change in people’s lives.
To explore this notion the method of developing a “concept car” was used to deliver a tangible representation of this future brand scenario.
And because the social climate is changing and brands are increasingly acting as amplifiers of cultural trends and the introduction of questions and topics into the mainstream of society. At this point Yoni joins the conversation. Yoni has been offering organic 100% cotton period products since 2015 after the founder found that the products recommended to her by her gynaecologist were not only unavailable to the majority of consumers but regular period products did not list their ingredients and were full of synthetic fibres.
That‘s why Yoni made it its mission to offer better products, products one would trust to touch their most intimate body part. Yoni wanted to change the market for more transparency and a higher standard of menstrual products and has achieved this, especially in recent years. Big brands are now also offering organic alternatives, explaining the ingredients of their products on the packaging or at least online and other brands have followed Yoni‘s lead. But with the constant fulfilment of the initial mission, it is time to find a new drive, a new vision.
And the time is ripe to do so, people are excited and ready to overcome their inhibitions and have meaningful conversations about their vulvas, and are eager for opportunities to learn. And the market is not yet oversaturated with offerings.
To answer the question of what exactly happens in the world of the vulva, this work started with in-depth research both in an interview study and in extensive literature and media research. It was about exploring the behaviour, feelings, culture, history and economy regarding vulvas and menstruation.
The market, consumer and context research resulted in four distinct directions Yoni could follow in the future to have a positive impact on their users‘ lives. These directions were about pushing the menstruation conversation in society further, for more social justice, to build strong communities of people with vulvas to overcome gaps of knowledge and wisdom, to unlock knowledge about hormonal cycles beyond the binary view of period on-period off and finally to discover how to bring vulva care to the forefront of people’s attention to share knowledge, facilitate experiences and overcome bodily shame.
In close collaboration with Yoni one direction was chosen as the means for Yoni to facilitate meaningful positive impact in the lives of their users and subsequently use this direction as a vehicle for organisational transformation and future vision.
This direction is called “vulva care” and targets the redefinition of what true vulva care might mean on a time axis of 1 to 5 years. At the end of this axis stands the concept product of vulvovaginal microbiome testing and personalised vulvar care products which acts as a beacon for creative brand development.
To make this concept product more accessible from an organisational point of view, the product was contextualised in a three step roadmap showcasing three distinct steps on how the company might develop for their current offering and structure towards a focus on vulvovaginal care using digital and care products infused with science and technology to ultimately future-proof a brand with incredible potential.
At the final pages of the report you will find the translation of this concept product into a website and digital product prototype illustrating how Yoni’s brand future might look like.

This thesis aims to find a new collection method for post-consumer denim garments that fits the future context and the needs of ecosystem stakeholders. The thesis is aimed at all who want to work on a circular fashion industry from a business- or ecosystem perspective. The design solution is aimed at brands and retailers.

In a circular economy, denim is recycled at the end-of-life. To scale up recycling, collecting needs scaling up. Now municipalities grant the right to collect garments to collectors. They use textiles containers. The profitability of this business model is decreasing and many garments still end up in the trash.

Stakeholders in the denim industry were interviewed about the barriers, drivers and ideal situation for collecting or working with post-consumer (recycled) denim. The most critical barriers stakeholders mentioned are: clothing is treated as a waste stream; the company’s scale is too small for impact; (fast) fashion is counteractive to circularity; financial barriers; a lack of transparency in the ecosystem; needing to convince consumers to hand in clothes; and uncertainties around legislation. The most important drivers they mentioned are: legislation (the Extended Producer Responsibility) leads to action; financial incentives (from legislation); more attention for sustainability; and growing consumer enthusiasm for sustainability. Consumers often value attributes like a comfortable fit over sustainability when buying garments. There is a need to educate the consumer on topics like handing in clothes. For an ideal situation, industry stakeholders mentioned: collaboration between stakeholders; sustainability is profitable; brands and retailers take care of different steps in the value chain; more transparency. They also asked: should the future be local or global; and should we create closed loops within a brand or the industry? Trends that impact the ecosystem are trends in logistics and legislation.

Brands and retailers will be impacted by the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and will bear responsibility for collecting garments at the end-of-life. Therefore, the design challenge is to facilitate the collection of worn denim for brands and retailers. The thesis studied the case of De Rode Winkel to learn more about jeans collection in stores. This gave insight into the volume composition of the collected jeans. The retailer kept some of the jeans, which led to a decrease in revenue for the sorter. A different approach to the business model was needed. Therefore, the design challenge was redefined to develop the business case of collection as a service.

In the final design, Textiles2Textiles offers collection as a service (CaaS) to denim brands and retailers. The consumer hands in their garment at a store and receives a discount. The service, called the Collecting Collective, takes care of educating the consumer; providing retailers and brands with the means to collect; and sorting the garments and sending them to the right step in the value chain. The service can exist in a system without and with the EPR. At first, the service will be only for denim garments, but will later extend to the collection of all garments.

Consumers no longer buy products. They buy brands. The power of a brand lies in what consumers have “learned, felt, seen, and heard about the brand as a result of their experiences through interaction with brand’s touchpoints “(Keller, 2013, p. 69)). The designing of these experiences is called Brand Experience Design.
Brands have become one of the organizations’ most valuable assets. This entails that storytelling has become more important. It helps ensuring a brand has a single and consistent proposition. However, when a brand does not live up to its story, the story is nothing more than empty words to persuade a consumer. Therefore, it will not only be essential to tell a consistent story but also to prove it.
To achieve this, brands have to think from a central idea and translating it into the brand’s different touchpoints. Think about central ideas like Nike’s Just do it or Coolblue’s Alles voor een glimlach. While these are successful examples that organizations look up to, they don’t organize themselves to do the same. So the question is how to help these organizations think more from such central idea?
This project is executed in collaboration with creative agency Selmore. Selmore believes they have the answer to this question: Guiding Ideas. Guiding Ideas are meant to spark inspiration and give guidance to the brand builders during brand experience design. It is a guiding principle and forms the basis of the design process of brand touchpoints (Calabretta et al., 2019). Selmore uses creativity to help brands grow with Guiding Ideas.
Guiding Ideas can potentially function as brand ideas for organizations that help translate the brand’s story into the different touchpoints. Selmore believes in this potential, but the reality is still different. Selmore experiences that Guiding Ideas are not used correctly and therefore do not reach their full potential. In line with this observation, the purpose of this thesis was to research:
How to exploit the unexploited potential of a Guiding Idea?
In other words, the aim was to investigate how to create a warm bath for Guiding Ideas that, at the same time, can contribute to better usage of Guiding Ideas.

For the past decades, aviation has had a fair amount of incremental innovations, such as improved traffic management, optimization in conventional aviation technology and process developments. With the global sustainability ambitions, new technologies and innovations have been in development by a vast amount of parties. Electric aviation is one of these innovations within the developing sustainable aviation industry. Therefore, the scope of the project revolves around electric aviation, executed in collaboration with Royal Schiphol Group (RSG) and its Innovation Hub department. The Innovation Hub's main role within RSG is to provide research and set in motion radical innovations to be implemented, of which Sustainable Aviation. The research questions within the scope are therefore defined as follows: What are the current developments in the electric aviation industry? And how can RSG facilitate the transition towards sustainable aviation within the aviation industry?Geels' (2002) system transition theory serves as the foundation for the research approach, structuring the thesis in two phases accordingly to the research questions which define the scope; research and concept phase (figure 0). Within the research phase, the landscape drivers have been analysed, depicting a sustainability pull through global sustainability ambitions and a technology push through the developments in the battery technology. With these developments, multiple niche innovations have emerged over the past years, consequently making electric aviation feasible for specific use cases. The most prominent parties developing these niche innovations are Heart Aerospace, developing a 19 passenger electric aircraft with a range of 400 km, and Eviation Alice, developing a 9 passenger electric aircraft with a range of 815 km. The socio-technical (ST) system transition towards sustainable aviation is the goal of electric aviation. This transition is enabled by the interaction of technology and people. Based on this, the landscape cultural trends have been analysed and used as a basis for the comparison of the use of modalities within the mobility industry. Thus, deriving a potential ideal use case for electric aviation of 300-400 km, potentially increasing in range depending on the battery developments in the future. The current expectation is that batteries increase in energy density from 260 Wh/kg to 600 Wh/kg by the end of the decade. This range is the foundation for the entry use case, the concept of the thesis. The range of 300-400 km is one of six metrics used to develop the entry use case. The others are passenger substitution potential, network potential, location in the Netherlands, innovation resources and viral factor. In line with RSG its values, network potential has been the deciding factors when choosing the entry use case, with other potential entry use cases available when altering the deciding factor. This entry use case is between Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, as this has both a high passenger substitution potential with a critical strategic motive. Scandinavia aims to implement electric aviation on their airports, enabling a higher certainty and willingness to collaborate towards the development and implementation of electric aviation. With this entry use case, several bottlenecks emerge. As a pioneer in the sustainable aviation industry, RSG has a seven step plan to overcome these bottlenecks, of which creating a coalition of industry stakeholders collaborating in researching and developing the electric aviation industry. With this actionable plan, RSG has the ability to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable aviation industry, as well as progress in the research for the implementation of electric aviation.

Eleven out of twelve startups still fail (Startup Genome, 2019). Even though startups are a growing breed of companies. From 2016 to 2018, startups created $2.8 trillion in value, which is more than the annual GDP of the United Kingdom. In the same period, growth was at 20,6% increase from the preceding periods. Even though startups are growing in popularity, and on macro-economic scale a force to be reconed with, on the individual level they are still major gains to be made.

As co-founder of Lynk, the startup used as a case in this thesis, I understand the hype around becoming a startup founder and the struggle and uncertainty coming with it. At Lynk, we are developing a B2B SaaS Document-Project Management (bingo lingo) solution for the construction industry. The product is struggling with gaining traction with customers as sales conversations are long and pilots postponed or delayed. As with the other eleven out of twelve failed startups, Lynk is having difficulty with becoming successful. Or, in other words, to launch their product.
The aim of this thesis is twofold;
Develop and evaluate an improved product launch plan for Lynk.
Create new learnings on how startups might effectively launch a B2B SaaS products by connecting theory to practice.

To accomplish these goals, an action research approach is taken. With two purposes, to bring theory into practice and help bridge the gap between marketing literature and practice. At the same time, an autoethnographic reflective perspective is taken to create rich data from which new learnings are created.
To develop and evaluate an improved product launch plan, the project is divided into two phases, the research and design phase. Field texts are written throughout the project and transformed into autoethnographic texts by connecting the events to literature. The texts create rich data for the development of the launch plan for Lynk, as forming anecdotal learnings for other entrepreneurs.
In the research phase, a literature review is carried out and synthesised into product launch criteria concerning launch strategy and B2B selling practices. Second, Lynk’s launch practices are critically assessed through empirical research. Interviews and observations are analysed to evaluate strategic launch opportunities in each segment. Furthermore, through observations and autoethnographic reflection, Lynks sales practices are assessed. Based on the critical assessment of Lynk’s launch practices, two improvement plans are proposed to improve Lynk’s product launch. First, by developing a niche launch strategy, second by improving Lynk’s discovery and learning practices to inform future strategic planning.
The design phase explores both improvement plans. A niche positioning is developed for the two most opportune segments, translating deep customer insights regarding jobs, pains and competitive alternatives into a differentiative value proposition. While a founders sales approach is proposed that embeds customer-centred discovery practices in Lynk’s customer conversations to improve reliable data gathering. The niche positionings are evaluated through a second empirical study; both new customers interviews and ongoing sales conversations are used to evaluate the new positionings. The evaluation shows the customers are interested in the value proposition, but some insights regarding product improvements are gathered. For the next iteration, it is proposed that Lynk should reduce implementation complexity and invest in both early adopters and resellers.
Finally, the product launch plan is delivered to Lynk in the form of a Strategic Roadmap. The niche positioning, evaluations and customer-first discovery approach are evaluated through internal sessions with the team. From which input for further launch plan development are created. The launch plan for Lynk is summarised in a
Although the road of a startup is unclear, it can be said that both the strategic planning practices underlying the positioning and customer-focused discovery help Lynk to improve its product launch plan. The positioning and discovery approach proposed in this thesis might help other B2B startups analyse their launch practices and improve their launch plan by taking a customer- and competitive first approach.
This thesis aimed to improve Lynk’s launch plan. The proposed launch plan and underlying practices might help Lynk launch more effectively and improve further product development and launch in less time. On a personal note, my understanding of products and startups has changed significantly because of this thesis. By bringing theory into practice and reflecting on it in relation to daily practice, I feel I now better understand what makes a launch a success and how I can guide the development towards that. That will help in this startup, but even more so in the next. By understanding product launches better, I feel it has also improved my ability to assess and evaluate startup opportunities by considering competitive and adoption criteria.
For any startup founder reading this, my giveaway would be that any product competes with other solutions. Deeply understanding the customers view on that solution, their job and the concept of product advantage will help to shape product strategy and launch products effectively.

Plotwise is a tech scale-up that offers continuous planning for last mile delivery. By providing data-driven AI planning software as a service, the company strives to improve the delivery planning process of its customers and thereby allowing them to handle the growth in demand for home delivery. The home delivery market is expanding at an exponential rate. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the e-commerce market five years ahead, more packages are delivered every day and this volume is rapidly growing. Online shoppers are reshaping the delivery economy from supply- to demand-driven. They expect their deliveries to be free, fast and convenient. At the same time, logistics operators and (online) retailers strive to find the optimal balance between costs, operational efficiency and customer experience. Improving environmental performance is getting increasingly important as well. This puts significant stress on their planning and delivery process. Plotwise seems successful in terms of its product-market fit. Hence, the management team wants to rapidly scale the company through signing new customers in at least four additional European countries between now and 2022. For this reason, the Head of Sales of Plotwise asked the author of this thesis to design a sales strategy that guides the company in entering European countries with its current product. The author created this sales strategy through performing a literature review, an internal analysis, an external analysis and quantitative market research. Strategic design principles complemented these research methodologies. This thesis presents the results of this research. In the literature review, the author discusses theoretic elements of traditional market entry strategy literature. The review synthesises the findings into a model that guided the development of the sales strategy. An internal analysis on Plotwise’s vision, mission, product, business model and culture shows that the company is fit for international expansion. However, the analysis shows that the sales team faces several challenges that possibly slow down this scaling. To tackle the identified challenges, the author presents three sales tools in combination with a roadmap for 2021 and 2022. The expectation is that these tools will improve the lead conversion, thereby increasing the number of signed customers. The author created a market analysis framework to conduct a quantitative market study. The result of this analysis is a list of most attractive countries to enter; the advice is to enter the UK market first, followed by Sweden, Norway and France. This advice deviates from an initial assumption on entry sequence as made by the management team of Plotwise. Additionally, the author advises to focus on logistic service providers (LSP), third party logistics (3PL) companies, electronics e-tailers, brands and (online) grocery stores as first customer segments. Lastly, the author advises Plotwise to position as “future-proof planning partner for delivery service optimisation”. This positioning resonates with online shopper behaviour and differs from the competition. Moreover, it leverages the core competencies of Plotwise.

The aim of this project was to propose several explorative experiential retail concepts which could strengthen and/or induce the value of the physical retail environment for millennials within developing omnichannel strategies. Additionally, such experiences desirably enhanced the bond between consumer, brand, and product through immersive narratives. These should be supported by rich interactions which blend the digital and physical realm.

STRIK is a well-known bakery in Nijmegen and surroundings, with currently 3 pastry shops, 2 chocolate/ice-cream shops and 1 central bakery for storing and production. CEO van Geenen possesses a passion and talent for entrepreneurship and an expertise in pastry-making, but little affinity for- nor experience with sustainability. With the upcoming laws and regulations, governments are pushing companies to move from a linear towards a circular economy. However, a lot of companies, especially those smaller and medium-sized enterprises, struggle with implementing sustainable innovations. Guided by the Revamped Double Diamond model, this project tries to find an answer to the research question being: “How should STRIK patisserie contribute to a Circular Economy, while at the same time creating additional economic value?”, while sliding through phases of discovering, defining, developing and delivering. In the first discovering & defining phase, the project finds areas of opportunity for economic, environmental and social value creating using the Triple Layered Business Model Canvas (TLBMC). Within these steps, amongst others, the company ecosystem is determined, just as a carbon footprint analysis was conducted to understand which are the most impactful categories in terms of greenhouse gas emission. Moreover, a company analysis leads to a list of implementation criteria in terms of ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘could’, and ‘won’t’ criteria. The conclusions from the TLBMC and criteria were used to define the design challenge of: “How can we make STRIK’s food waste stream 100% circular while gaining economic and social benefits?”. In the developing & delivering phase, ideas were generated and evaluated, leading to three selected concepts of 1) an educational web-page about food waste; 2) a new product line made from wasted parts ; and 3) a partnership for anaerobic processing of food waste. These concepts are turned into ‘minimum viable products’ for testing the key metrics of desirability and viability. From the results can be implied that there is a high desirability and viability for concept 2, while concept 3 can assure 100% circularity, concluding a recommended perseverance of concept 2 (new product line from wasted parts) as a first step and concept 3 (partnership for anaerobic processing) as a future step. The focus is on rapidly bringing concept 2 to the market, so further detailing is done on concept 2 only, looking into the product, packaging, price and promotion. In a final ‘present & validate’ phase, the solutions for helping STRIK contribute to a circular economy are presented. The first and most important step towards circularity is making new products from wasted parts and promoting these in a qualitatively, tasteful and story-telling way. The validation phase concludes that, in addition to the earlier tested desirability and viability, that the solution hits the innovation sweet spot, as it is considered feasible, viable and desirable. The thesis ends with a ‘discussion, conclusion & reflection’ chapter.

Kollekt, a provider of background music for businesses positions itself in the competition heavy market landscape as a bespoke music strategy provider. Their personal and totally customised approach is what differentiates them from their competitors and helps them to deliver satisfying results to their clients. However, this amount of detailed attention causes unstructured processes and inefficient ways of working. This project structured and analysed the specific steps in the bespoke music strategy consult and simplified them. Moreover, using in-depth interviews with clients, seven design guidelines for the consult were constructed. These design guidelines were used to design a new service proposition, based on the newly structured consult, to guide the client during the process. This new proposition is the first iteration towards a client focussed consult experience, increasing the perceived value of the consult, while reducing work pressure for the Kollekt team. The concept has been validated and delivered promising results for the future.

In recent years, a preference for purpose-driven brands, brands that display values and intentions beyond simply making profit, is increasing amongst consumers. However, this growing preference comes along with brands that use purpose as an opportunity for marketing purposes, creating skepticism in consumer’s mind about the authenticity of the brand. As a consquence, purpose-driven brands encounter an intention-behavior gap. Thus, there is a need for brand authenticity in brand development. This thesis draws links between purpose-driven, brand authenticity and brand development literature, of which a theoretical framework is developed and applied to a case study for Forestwise to build a beauty consumer brand. Forestwise is a Dutch social enterprise, located in Indonesia, offering harvested rainforest ingredients for the food, beauty and personal care industry (B2B market). The thesis resulted in designs for Forestwise that are a stepping stone for the new brand to inspire potential partners and use as a discussion tool to further develop the new brand. 1. Roadmap 2. A brand book 3. Brand narrative 4. Brand touchpoints examples. . This thesis suggests a new approach to purpose-driven development by regarding brand authenticity factors. However, the value and effectiveness to this approach remains uncertain. It is suggested to do further research regarding these topics.

The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world, mostly due to the many ways fashion is polluting the environment (Fischer, 2015). First of all by the CO2 emission produced in manufacturing and logistics, second the massive amounts of water used in dyeing processes and production of natural resources, third the pollution of groundwater and rivers by pesticides and dyes and last but not least the enormous amount of waste created by fast fashion items that are only worn once. One of the most impactful garments in this industry is something most of us wear every day: a pair of jeans. The production of a single pair uses on average 8000 litres of water (Water Footprint Network, 2016). Besides water, toxic and corrosive chemicals are used to dye and ‘wash’ the jeans to its desired style. Every year, more than 2 billion pairs of jeans are produced worldwide, adding to its yet existing footprint (Greenpeace, 2016). Some brands in the industry are already putting a lot of effort into the production of sustainable denim. However, reducing the impact of the denim industry is not just up to denim brands and manufacturers anymore: consumers have to play their part as well. To raise awareness and higher the demand for sustainable jeans amongst consumers, this graduation project for House of Denim focusses on solving the following challenge: how might we help consumers buy better jeans? To raise the demand for sustainable jeans, the impact of a jeans has to become more transparent and understandable for consumers. In an attempt to achieve this, a jungle of certifications has popped up in the fashion and jeans industry, resulting in more confusion than transparency; many consumers are not familiar with any of these existing certifications. Besides awareness, understanding what a certification stands for demands quite some knowledge of materials or manufacturing from consumers. To make it easier for consumers to make a positive choice, Brighter Blue, a product rating tool, was developed in cooperation with denim experts and consumers. To accomplish this, the project used an inside- out approach to research the impact of a pair of jeans, to see what factors contribute most to this impact and to explore how this impact could be minimised. Afterwards, a case study was used as a parallel perspective, to see and learn how indices in other industries help change behaviour. Qualitative interviews with eight denim experts and a literature study on green consumer behaviour defined the most important challenges and design guidelines for Brighter Blue. These guidelines were further developed into a first minimum lovable prototype of the rating: the impact index. From this moment and outside-in approached was used to develop this concept using lean methodology. Through three design interventions with important industry stakeholders and (expert) consumers, the rating was developed into the final concept Brighter Blue. Brighter Blue is a positive and easy indicator of the best jeans out there: accessible on various levels to serve as many consumers as possible. By means of a hangtag and Google extension, the ratings are communicated to consumers, so they can look good and feel confident that they have made the right choice. An overarching platform conveys the message that sustainable choices do not have to be that hard or complicated: everyone can vote with their money. Brighter Blue helps consumers regain their power to decide and gives a little push to young conscious consumers that want to make better choices but not always know how. This thesis presents the development and final concept of Brighter Blue, including the rating methodology, working mechanism, benchmarks, prototypes of the various consumer tools, and a detailed plan for further implementation and market launch.

This thesis answers the question ‘how can VodafoneZiggo improve the ambulance services with IoT in the Netherlands?’. Three subquestions are answered in to finally find the answer to this main question. 

Emergency services often arrive too late. Only one out of three ambulances succeeds in meeting the standard. The arrival time depends on several steps in the process. There is a challenge in the end of the process where the collaboration between ambulances, the reporting room and emergency departments (EDs) can be enhanced. By doing this, the arrival times might improve due to an increase in efficiency.

The design goal was ‘Design an IoT based logistic concept that improves the collaboration between reporting room, ambulance staff, and EDs by giving the ambulance staff direct insight in patient stops set by EDs, and giving EDs insight in arriving ambulances’.

With the CommunicAid, the ambulance nurse fills in several fields in the ‘digitaal ritformulier’ (DRF). Based on this and several external factors the system decides which ED is most eligible. The real-time information will be shared with the certain ED and the reporting room. With the CommunicAid, patient stops at the ED will be set digitally. As soon as an ED does this, the reporting room gets an announcement and the DRF notifies it. It will make sure that the certain hospital is not available anymore in the DRF. One hour later, the patient stop is automatically canceled so the ED becomes available again. IoT is required for the information flows between the different devices.

However, implementing the system brings complications with it. In the healthcare sector, all parties work in their own systems that are not able to ‘talk’ to each other. To make it even more complex, also the systems differ between regions. This makes it complicated, expensive and unrealistic to design a solution that fits every region, unless we start from scratch. The CommunicAid should be used as a wake-up call to prove that IoT indeed can improve the ambulance service in the Netherlands.

The societal impact of implementing the CommunicAid in the Rotterdam-Rijnmond region will be direct and positive. Rotterdam-Rijnmond is chosen because the system is designed based on the outcome of the field research. Most elaborate research took place in this region. For the ambulance nurses the communication improves and time will be saved; the system prevents long waiting times at the ED. By creating insight in the arriving ambulances at the ED, the ED nurses can anticipate on the arriving ambulance patients and in this way efficiency can be increased. For reporting room employees implementing the CommunicAid will reduce their workload by automating communication flows. 

An important future goal should be to harmonize the operations in acute healthcare in all regions for all involved parties. The dream is that all parties in all regions finally operate in one system for a perfect collaboration. VodafoneZiggo can start this major change in the ambulance service by supplying IoT-connections required for implementing the CommunicAid.

This project is an assignment commissioned by Houweling Interieur, a furniture retailer. They were seeking new business opportunities and therefore wanted to investigate the opportunities for a furniture lease service in the expatriate market.

Introducing a lease service would have several consequences for the company as well as for the customer. The company would take on several responsibilities from the customer, and has to cover for the purchase costs, which are repaid in small monthly payments by the customer. In general the operation of the company would become more complex and the value for the customer would be closer to his or her needs. Houweling Interieur is able to handle this more complex operation. All the physical resources necessary are available to the company. However, some of these should be expended dependent on the size of the lease operation.

If Houweling would introduce a lease service, it should position it at the high end of the market, where the company currently positions itself as well. This, because it matches the current suppliers, company vision and the Houweling Interieur brand name. However, in the expatriate market appears only to be a demand for lease furniture in the low end of the market. In the high end of the market, shipping in one’s own furniture is preferred.

While the analyses show that targeting the expatriate market with a lease service is not advisable for now, furnishing house viewings and selling separate smaller pieces of furniture fitting the small houses in the Netherlands are opportunities that have presented itself in the different analyses. Furniture lease in other markets is still an option as well.