Structured innovation is most effective when running as an extended program with a bold mission. We call this an innovation lab. It provides the space, infrastructure and talent flow to produce a steady stream of innovative products and services. 

We make a physical space to create a focus for the activity, with an operating team of creative, strategists, technologist, users and the client. Depending on the question we have differently structured approaches to come to an end delivery.

The lab stands for rapid development and testing of digital products and services. This development lives in a flexible environment that encourages collaborative working between teams. A team can consist of internal and external participants.
The lab is also a statement within our own organization, with which we say that we have a platform for people to bring ideas to life. Projects within LABS should be innovative (technical or conceptual). It should have a WOW factor or have a client opportunity. In LABS we host speakers, talk about innovations, give workshops and share output from international LABS.

Cases

Don’t Kill Mia was one of our first concepts to come out of LABS. Below are some of our other awesome projects. See the complete case here.

Unicorn Street Game
Unicorn Street is a game in Google Street View we made for our colleagues. In the game, the Unicorn collects coins while fighting off Space Invaders that attack him. You can do a specific route, based on the location you want to start from, for example, your office building. A tad ridiculous, sure, but the game proved great fun. 

The Rain Watch Face
People use their weather apps more and more as a substitute for an umbrella, seeing they can pinpoint when there will be rain and when it will clear up almost with surgical precision. The only downside is the fact that you need to take your phone out of your pocket. That’s why we came up with the idea to project the weather data on your wearable device (in the case Android Wear). The Rain Watch Face showed the weather an hour into the future. It was quite a challenge to visualize something rather complex in a simple, clean way, but we believe we succeeded. 

TheTalkingLamp
We took a Philips HUE lamp and customized it so that it changes color based on the performance of the web shops of our clients. The real-time connection with the Google analytics API enabled e-commerce teams to check their online sales at a glance. A green light meant hitting the set targets, while a red light meant even more sales than that. 

Hackathon - VirtiQ
The city of Amsterdam is getting more crowded by the day. That's why Amsterdam Economic Board and Stichting Museumnacht Amsterdam (N8) organized the Museumnacht Hackathon 2015. The goal was: Think of an innovative technical solution that helps to spread the visitors across the city. We came up with the concept of VirtiQ, an app that enables museum visitors to get out of the physical queue by entering the virtual queue. You're assigned a timeslot, based on the current waiting time, giving you a chance to wander around the city and come back within your timeslot to enter the museum directly. VirtiQ gives you suggestions on how you can spend this time in the city. Suggestions are personalized based on time, location and your preferences. The result? We won! The jury was impressed by the way we managed to create a fully working prototype within 8 hours that worked with real-time open data, Internet of Things.