How to Turn Research into Innovation Gold

You did the interviews, got the photos, and compiled the reams of data. Now what? A Steelcase experience could guide your next innovation project

BusinessWeek, July 1, 2009 — Throughout the winter of 2006, the long, white walls of the room assigned to Steelcase's (SCS) health-care research team looked like a scrapbook.

The four-member group based in the Grand Rapids (Mich.) headquarters of the office furniture giant was studying the experience of cancer patients, and had spent months interviewing and photographing doctors and patients in oncology units at nine hospitals across the country. Hundreds of the thousands of pictures they'd taken lined the walls, along with almost as many Post-It notes. There were collages, created by cancer patients to express treatment as it is, and as it should be, and interview transcripts and traditional market research in stacks on the conference room table.

Standing before all of this material, the Steelcase health research team faced the challenge of every innovation team after the initial research stage: how to tease useful insights out of all of this disparate data.