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Empowering CITYINNOHUB Team through Collaborative Workshops on Digital Transformation in SE Romania Tourism

Empowering CITYINNOHUB Team through Collaborative Workshops on Digital Transformation in SE Romania Tourism banner
Empowering CITYINNOHUB Team through Collaborative Workshops on Digital Transformation in SE Romania Tourism
Published at 04 July 2024 | Romania

General details

EDIHs involved

Customer

EDIH logo
Customer type: PSO
Customer size: Mid-cap (500-2999)

Services provided
Networking and access to innovation ecosystems
Training and skills development
Technologies
Internet Services & Applications
Sectors
Travel and tourism

Challenges

The digital transformation journey for CITYINNOHUB’s Beneficiaries goes beyond simply adopting new technology. It involves a deep dive into their unique challenges, skillfully overcoming specific constraints, and crafting solutions tailored to their distinct needs. By empowering CITYINNOHUB specialists with the expertise to identify the best digital transformation strategies, we enable our customers to address their immediate issues effectively. This approach also fosters the creation of sustainable, impactful strategies that will serve their future needs.

Ovidius University, in collaboration with local authorities, has designed a practical scenario to address the pressing issues in the tourism sector within the Dobrogea region (Constanta and Tulcea counties). This initiative involves a series of innovation workshops aimed at solving real-world problems such as seasonal tourism fluctuations, inadequate digital marketing, and insufficient visitor engagement. The workshops focused on ideating, prototyping, testing, and evaluating digital technology-driven solutions to enhance regional tourism.

The local authorities' decision to pursue this initiative is motivated by their acknowledgment of the untapped opportunities within the Dobrogea tourism sector and the potential benefits offered by European funding programs. Previous attempts at addressing these issues have fallen short, lacking in-depth analysis, priority-setting, and rigorous testing of proposed solutions. Hence, the engagement of EDIH CITYINNOHUB in this initiative underscores a commitment to a more structured approach. The innovation workshop, rooted in creative and design thinking methodologies, seeks to meticulously examine specific challenges, propose viable solutions, and initiate a comprehensive journey encompassing the conceptualisation, prototyping, testing, and evaluation of digital technology-based solutions tailored to fortify and elevate regional tourism.

Solutions

The Ovidius University team operating within CITYINNOHUB meticulously formulated a strategy to address the challenge at hand through a series of innovation workshops fuelled by creative thinking, specifically employing Design Thinking principles. Their approach involved structuring these workshops following a procedural model inspired by the Design Sprint framework, albeit simplified and condensed to ensure active participation from pertinent stakeholders. This proposal outlined a succinct plan spanning four meetings, each extending approximately 3 hours, meticulously scheduled over a concise two-week period. Across these sessions, a comprehensive set of activities was delineated, including stages focused on understanding the core issues, engaging with diverse stakeholder categories, (re)defining the overarching theme, brainstorming and ideation sessions, prioritising solutions, prototyping, rigorous solution testing, and culminating in a robust evaluation of the outcomes.

Moreover, the CITYINNOHUB team conscientiously curated a diverse list of workshop participants, meticulously selecting and inviting entities crucial to the Dobrogea tourism sector's revitalisation. The envisioned participants comprised representatives from the Constanta City Hall, the Constanta Metropolitan Area, the Constanta Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture, supplemented by skilled IT specialists and delegates from cultural and entertainment institutions. This carefully assembled cohort aimed to ensure comprehensive engagement, amalgamating diverse expertise and perspectives essential for dissecting and addressing the multifaceted challenges faced by the region's tourism sector. This inclusive approach sought to maximise insights, creativity, and problem-solving capabilities to derive innovative, impactful solutions for the Dobrogea tourism landscape. 

Results and Benefits

The results of this project led to the successful training of 20 CITYINNOHUB specialists in delivering sessions using design thinking methodologies and design sprint principles to address the digital transformation needs of 400 targeted entities, including Public Sector Organizations and Small and Medium Enterprises. The training program was meticulously crafted to equip these specialists with the expertise needed to employ advanced design methodologies, with a particular focus on leveraging online prototyping tools such as Figma.

Through a strategic and structured approach, the specialists were immersed in a comprehensive training curriculum that emphasised practical application of these methodologies. This curriculum was designed to ensure that the specialists could effectively address the diverse digital transformation requirements of the targeted entities.

By the end of the program, the CITYINNOHUB specialists were well-prepared to facilitate innovative design sessions, create impactful prototypes, and drive digital transformation initiatives for PSOs and SMEs. This initiative not only enhanced the skill set of the specialists but also significantly contributed to the overall digital transformation landscape, enabling the targeted entities to innovate and adapt in an increasingly digital world.

Perceived social/economic impact

The workshop can have several economic impacts on the tourism sector:

1. Efficiency and Cost Savings:

   - By rapidly testing and validating ideas, design sprints help you avoid investing resources in unviable solutions.

   - Reduced time spent on lengthy decision-making processes translates to cost savings.

2. Innovation and Revenue Growth:

   - Design sprints catalyze innovation by fostering a culture of experimentation and collaboration.

   - Successful solutions lead to new revenue streams and improved products or services.

3. User-Centered Solutions:

   - Sprints focus on meeting user needs, resulting in better products that attract more customers.

   - Enhanced user satisfaction can positively impact revenue.

4. Adaptability and Agility:

   - Tourism businesses face dynamic challenges. Design sprints allow quick adaptation to changing market conditions.

   - Agility leads to competitive advantage and revenue growth.

 

In the same time, this type of collaborative workshops can have a significant social impact, especially for organizations focused on solving community or environmental problems. Here's how they contribute:

1. Better Problem-Solving:

   - Design Sprints foster better communication and collaboration, breaking down silos and outdated practices.

   - This leads to more successful problem-solving, benefiting social enterprises, nonprofits, and B Corps.

2. Exploration and Validation:

   - Sprints work well for ill-defined problems.

   - If your tourism business aims to address community issues, a Design Sprint can help explore and validate solutions¹.

3. Innovation for Impact:

   - By compressing months of work into a week, sprints accelerate progress.

   - Successful solutions positively impact communities and the environment.

Measurable data

When assessing the impact of a Collaborative workshop on digital transformation in tourism sector, we consider these measurable data points:

1. Business Metrics:

   - Revenue: Monitor any revenue changes resulting from the sprint's validated solutions.

   - Customer Acquisition: Measure new customer acquisition attributed to the sprint outcomes.

   - Customer Retention: Assess whether the sprint-led improvements positively impact customer retention.

2. Usability Metrics:

   - Task Success Rate: Evaluate how successfully users complete tasks with the new solution.

   - Time on Task: Measure the time users spend interacting with the improved product.

   - Error Rate: Track any errors encountered during user interactions.

3. User Feedback:

   - Gather qualitative insights from user testing sessions.

   - Note feedback on usability, satisfaction, and overall experience.

Lessons learned

Do's:

  1. Encourage Active Participation: Foster an environment that encourages active involvement, discussion, and contribution from all participants to maximize diverse perspectives and ideas.

  2. Follow Structured Processes: Adhere to structured methodologies, such as Design Thinking or similar frameworks, to guide the workshop through problem identification, ideation, prototyping, testing, and evaluation.

  3. Emphasize User-Centric Approaches: Prioritise understanding and addressing user needs and experiences throughout the workshop sessions to ensure the solutions are tailored and effective.

  4. Facilitate Collaboration: Promote collaboration and teamwork among participants, encouraging open communication and the exchange of ideas to generate innovative solutions.

  5. Utilize Tools Effectively: Introduce and utilize appropriate tools, software, or platforms (e.g., Figma for prototyping) effectively to facilitate ideation, collaboration, and solution development.

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