AWS D2E · The Innovation Cycle

One cycle behind everything we do.

Every workshop, every briefing, every engagement is the same journey: helping a customer change their business, and how they work with data and AI, starting from the customer. This is that cycle, and where each of our formats sits on it.

Scroll to walk the journey ↓
The Spine

The five-step innovation cycle

Two motions in one. Steps 1 and 2 run once to build a prioritised roadmap and backlog of opportunities. Steps 3 to 5 are a loop you run for each opportunity. EBC sits before the cycle. Click any step to jump to its detail.

0
1
2
3
4
5
Step 0EBC · Before
Step 1Find the Friction
Step 2Shape the Opportunity
Step 3Work Backwards
Step 4Design the Future
Step 5Deliver with Adoption
Cloud to ground

Each stage, in depth

The same cycle works at every altitude, from the highest echelons of the organisation down to a single task or interaction, and back up again. Here is what each stage does for the customer, the scope it works at, and who has run it with us.

0

Executive Briefing (EBC)

Before the cycle · can loop you into step 1, 2 or 3
For the customer
Senior leaders get the narrative and the confidence to influence and bring the wider organisation along, and a mixed-maturity room is levelled up to a shared view of what good looks like.
What it does
Influence, educate, calibrate and convince, before any hands-on work. Suggested outputs: a full EBC or a briefing document that orients them. Not exclusive to the cycle, it can drop a customer straight into finding the friction, shaping the opportunity or working backwards.
Who: the AI cut is EBCs focused specifically on AI-driven transformation, distinct from the thousands of general briefings.
Sainsbury'sKudelskiReedBizzDesign
1

Find the Friction

Altitude: organisation and domain, down to the journey
For the customer
They see where the business is losing time, money or trust, and, more powerfully, the unmet needs and blind spots: the white space where they could be helping customers but are not, and cannot yet see.
How we isolate it
We start from the customer, not from a current problem. Where is there no signal today, the moment that happens without anyone noticing, and what would we do if we could see it? That reframes friction as opportunity.
Who: almost every engagement opens here. The AI cut is the customers reframing where AI, not just data, removes the friction.
DebenhamsLocalizaBBCAllianzAbbott
2

Shape the Opportunity

Altitude: domain and journey
For the customer
A long wish-list becomes a short, prioritised set of opportunities with clear decision criteria, so they stop spreading budget thin across everything.
How we isolate it
We force a shared basis for choosing, what matters most for the next year or two, and turn raw ideas into crisp, roadmap-ready opportunities.
This is where the roadmap is made, and where the loop below begins. The AI cut is customers prioritising an AI portfolio rather than a data one.
Greene KingNissanAston MartinAbsa Bank
3

Work Backwards

Altitude: journey and interaction
For the customer
They start from the customer outcome, not the technology, and commit to the single big idea worth building.
How we isolate it
We anchor on one persona and one moment, so the design stays specific and buildable.
Who: hundreds of Mobilize engagements. The AI cut is AXE, the agentic version, still small but the fastest growing. That difference, general versus AI-driven, is exactly what separates a Mobilize from an AXE.
Saudi Pro LeagueArcelor MittalBMWAbsa Bank
4

Design the Future

Altitude: interaction and task
For the customer
They see what the future experience looks like and what sits behind it, the data, the models and the enablers, made tangible.
How we isolate it
Layer by layer, from the experience down to the data, so nothing is hand-waved.
Who: every Mobilize designs here. The AI cut adds the agent design layer.
HiltonVirgin AtlanticATP TourAegon UK
5

Deliver with Adoption

Altitude: task, back up to the whole organisation
For the customer
Are the people ready. Is it embedded in their teams, does it fit how they already work, and have they had the room to rethink how they organise around it.
How we isolate it
We name the human and organisational change explicitly, not just the build. Adoption is the point, not an afterthought.
Who: where cloud-to-ground closes. The task-level build only sticks if the organisation-level people move with it.
AetnaXximoAlaska Sealife CenterVeritiv

It is a loop, not a waterfall.

Stage 2 produces a roadmap of crisp opportunities. The business then cycles through steps 3 to 5 for each one, and can revisit any step as it learns. That relationship, a backlog of opportunities feeding repeated passes through the build stages, is what lets a business keep moving rather than run a single project and stop. AI-driven work is the same loop, with an autonomous agent as the thing being built.

CLOUD · the organisationGROUND · the task
One system, every format

Where all our workshops sit

None of these are separate products. They are recurring selections of the same moves. Seeing them on one line is the point: it is all one system for helping customers change, driven from the customer.

BeforeAlign leadership
1 · Find the Friction
2 · Shape the Opportunity
3 · Work Backwards
4 · Design the Future
5 · Deliver with Adoption
BeforeEBCAlign and inspire leadership
MindsetWhere to play. Established format since 2022.
FoundationPlatform exists, needs adoption. Persona-led.
MobilizeWork backwards to a buildable MVP. The workhorse, 62% of engagements.
Lens · newestAXE (Agentic)The same design and deliver, when the solution is an autonomous agent.
FadedCX StudioA service-design lens on Mobilize. Rose, then faded.
RetiredTechnology WorkshopTook use cases into a tech foundation. Now folded into Mobilize Day 2.
Active formats
Lens on an existing format (not a separate lane)
Retired or faded, still mineable for good ideas
Grounded in established practice

We stand on the shoulders of the field

The cycle is not invented. Every move traces back to a recognised body of practice. We assembled the best of it into one coherent, AWS-flavoured system.

Amazon
Working Backwards, PR/FAQ and the tenets mechanism. Where it starts: lead from the customer outcome, then everything else follows.
LUMA System
The 36 human-centred design methods. Our backbone vocabulary.
NN/g
Nielsen Norman Group facilitation. The Open, Explore, Close arc and the design canvas.
IDEO
Human-centred design and systems thinking.
IDEO U
Certificates in Change Leadership, Service Design and Systems Thinking. The source of the CL and service-design cards.
University of Cambridge
Executive education in innovation and strategy that shaped how we frame the front end.
Imperial College London
Formal design and innovation training feeding the human-centred methods.
Pip Decks
Workshop, Innovation and Strategy Tactics. The card-based composable model.
Design Council
The Double Diamond. Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.
Innovation Games
Luke Hohmann's Speed Boat / Sailboat. Forward-looking strategic visioning.
Strategyzer
Value Proposition and Business Model canvases. Jobs to be done.
Gamestorming
The Open, Explore, Close structure and dozens of generative games.
IBM EDT
Enterprise Design Thinking. Hills and specificity rules.
Lean Startup
MVP thinking, riskiest-assumption testing and pivots.
It has resonated

Customers who have run the cycle with us

Across close to six hundred engagements, this way of working has landed with businesses of every shape. A selection:

BBC Sainsbury's Kudelski Reed BizzDesign Greene King Bosch Nissan Saudi Pro League Petronas LNER Deswik Blue Origin Abbott Veritiv CSL CreditorWatch Aston Martin GE Appliances Bridgestone FUJIFILM Lucid Synchrony LSEG
Some engagements are attested from first-hand delivery where the original playbook no longer exists (for example the CX Studio work). The point is the pattern: the same cycle, composed differently, has carried leaders from a first conversation all the way to a built and adopted outcome.
The whole point

It is all one thing.

Not a shelf of products, but one cycle for helping customers change their business, and how they work with data and AI, starting from the customer. Everything we do is a way of moving them along it.

What comes next

Bring a customer into it. Start the Navigator to find the right engagement for where they actually are, or build a briefing pack to show them what a session looks like before you are in the room.

Open the Navigator Build a briefing pack