Venture Building in The Digitally Disrupted Travel Industry.
Helping a globally listed B2C seller discover new business models by leveraging existing resources in new ways.
KUONI
Kuoni Group is a global travel company. We worked with the Global CMO, and a variety of senior executives ranging from a country CEO to finance and legal directors.
CHALLENGE.
How could Kuoni, a multi-billion dollar travel conglomerate, compete more effectively in the digitally disrupted B2C space?
What we did.
We began by working with Kuoni strategists to define the project scope and ensure we were innovating in areas with maximum commercial potential.
Next, we selected 7 leading OneLeap community entrepreneurs, in markets ranging from Silicon Valley to Singapore and Sao Paulo, and brought them to Kuoni's Zurich HQ. They included a range of relevant sectoral, functional and geographic expertise, with an emphasis on digital services.
Entrepreneurs were combined with an internal Kuoni team including senior executives in compliance and legal as well as management, technology and marketing. This ensured broad buy-in.
During the 48-hour venture sprint began by identifying opportunities by creatively recombining Kuoni’s existing network of resources. These opportunities were filtered through a rapid validating, pitching and voting process.
HOW WE DID IT.
The best propositions were developed as business models drawing on Kuoni executives knowledge to sense-check key assumptions against internal realities.
Following a further validation process, where finalist ventures were interrogated by other Kuoni executives, the surviving ventures were mocked up in hours, working with OneLeap’s tech and design teams. This enabled further refinement and testing.
The final business propositions and mockups were formally presented to the country CEO, who together with the global CMO, decided which would be developed for in-depth prototype testing. We built and deployed prototypes in 10 days, which were tested under an anonymous brand with 5000+ users.
This enabled the CMO to present real data to the Global Board, together with prototypes they could experience. This informed the Board’s key decisions on B2C strategy.
Outcomes.
The process enabled real answers to be presented to decision-makers: “Because the ventures were prototyped and tested on real consumers, we had real products and data to present to our global board.”
In addition, there were wider organisational benefits. Whilst working with our teams, Kuoni executives developed practical innovation capabilities which provided them with the tools necessary to rapidly ideate, develop, test, and pitch new venture propositions aimed at company growth.
Feedback.
"The OneLeap experience was highly energising and inspiring for Kuoni. Our executives not only learned, but built innovative new ventures. By the end, our people 'owned' the ventures and were pitching them to the country CEO… The OneLeap experience left a good feeling in the company. We were very, very satisfied, and OneLeap will be back with us.”
