As a plastic processing and injection molding expert, Plastika Skaza primarily focused on its B2B segment, serving as a reliable partner for custom-made products across various industries. However, over time, they recognized the need and desire to develop their own market products. Venturing into the B2C segment presented a challenge, and they realized the importance of finding the right focus for designing and manufacturing new products, as well as understanding the actual needs of end-users.

Following initial success in a niche segment with their kitchen compost bin, Bokashi Organko, they began developing a broader range of complementary B2C products. To ensure the successful development of these new products, it was crucial to ask key questions that would guide the innovation in the right direction. Together, they decided to define the scope of the new planned products and remain within the carefully chosen segment.

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The key to our collaboration's success was the series of workshops conducted with an enthusiastic team eager to redefine the early innovation process. Their approach to exploring unaddressed user needs marked the first steps toward establishing new innovation processes. Simultaneously, it opened up various areas of design research to identify additional development opportunities. After combining insights from the initial research with the journey of plastics and food, innovative guidelines were formulated, followed by active and close collaboration between teams to define the next steps.

Defining opportunities for each innovation guideline was the result of active participation from all involved in joint workshops. This was further enhanced during the validation phase, which, through open discussion, uncovered additional potential for improvements. Opportunities validated together with the leadership management during sprints ultimately served as anchors for further innovation phases and became the basis for a strategic approach to developing new products.

The most significant long-term contribution of our collaboration was the establishment of a new early innovation process for Plastika Skaza, bringing them closer to the end-user. Guessing about user needs was replaced by an integrated user research process, allowing for more confident implementation of changes in complementary products. The redefinition of early innovation also represented the systematic and continuous introduction of improvements with higher strategic value.

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