What does a water bottle have to do with strategy?
For our For Planet Strategy Lab Club event on December 3rd, we visited the studio of Altherr/Weiss. As interdisciplinary creative designers and artists, they create objects they want to live with.
In a discussion with them hosted by Nicole, they described their own creative process, including of their sculptural water bottle. Dissatisfied with flimsier models, they set out to create one that fit their vision of combining aesthetics and functionality.
In seemingly endless prototyping rounds, they experimented with new ways of bending medical-grade steel and ensuring a dripless seal. Serendipitous connections with experts, often made years before, helped them to solve engineering problems.
They told us of one moment when they were looking for a company to produce the bottles of the tricky medical-grade steel: in a meeting with the company, the marketing executive was enthusiastic about the project. But the production leader killed it on the spot: too difficult to produce, not possible.
They still decided not to give up, and kept on looking for another company that was willing to take the risk.
Creating something from nothing isn’t easy. But having a living strategy helps.
Their story shows how a prototyping approach carried them through multiple iterations. Creating connections with experts and other companies allowed them to gather the necessary knowledge to solve problems that came up along the way. And their openness to uncertainty and risk allowed them to push through when others would have killed their idea.
This is how a strategy comes to life: in a combination of an exploratory approach open for discovery with focussed strategy realisation.
Drawing inspiration from creative practices for strategy is a key element of our interdisciplinary approach at For Planet Strategy Lab. Thank you to Zuzanna and Christian for sharing your stories.
If you’d like to bring a question, insight, or story to one of our next events, we’d love to hear from you!
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