Mirabeau was approached by pension fund PGGM to introduce design thinking. Peet Sneekes explains what that involves during eFinancials.
Link to the article by Emerce (Dutch Marketing and digital magazine): https://www.emerce.nl/interviews/mirabeau-introduceert-design-thinking-pgm
PGGM’s target audience is mainly nurses. According to Sneekes, the pension fund wants to apply design thinking to better align their services with people’s needs. “We did four sprints in which we came up with new ideas. With the starting point: what’s relevant to people in everyday life, in this case healthcare workers, and how can we develop that? How can PGGM genuinely stand behind that and drive that engine?”
For that, Mirabeau came up with various ideas. “One of the first ones we really liked was: people who are retired have a lot of experience, for example with how to quickly calm down a crying child, how to combine work and personal life. How can you get that information into the heads of people who are just starting out in healthcare? We’re trying to create something fun for that, to bring those two groups into contact with each other. In this case, we’re working on an app.”
That doesn’t immediately seem like a marketable product for PGGM. But that’s not the point, according to Sneekes. “PGGM has a number of pillars on which their services are based, and one of them is: we’re here for healthcare, so we also have to take care of these people. We really need to pamper these people because they’re our people. They see it as an intrinsic part of their service.”
The method Mirabeau uses to apply design thinking comes from a book by Google Ventures. “It’s called Sprint, a really great book. In three days you’re exploring an idea, and in three days you’re building the idea and actually implementing and testing it with real people. Then you at least have a prototype and an idea of whether this might resonate with the people you have in mind.”
This interview was recorded during eFinancials 2016, the event for senior and middle management of banks, insurers, mortgage lenders, pension funds, and other financial institutions.