AI Design Sprint® — three reasons it works
Start with value, not tools
Don't chase the latest AI product. First, figure out where AI creates real business value. The right tool follows from that.
AI tools are evolving faster than any organization can track. Chasing the latest tool creates exactly that — a constant chase, and a permanent feeling of being behind.
We suggest a different starting point: find out what AI should do for you. Where does it create the most business value — for your team, your department, your organization? Once you know that, the tool choice becomes clear. Sometimes it's a ready-made solution. Sometimes a low- or no-code tool. And sometimes, the right answer is a customized AI solution built for your specific situation.
Ownership comes from involvement
Leadership sets the direction. The team on the ground shapes the solution. That combination means the people who know the work build the answer — and actually use it.
The people who perform a process daily know things no outsider ever will. Developing an AI solution without them and then pushing it into a department is a recipe for resistance — and a solution that misses critical nuance.
Involving future users in shaping the solution does two things at once: it produces a better solution, and it creates the buy-in needed for people to actually adopt it. When people help build it, they own it.
But co-creation works best when it combines two directions. Leadership sets the focus areas — top-down direction that aligns AI initiatives with organizational priorities and unlocks budget. The people on the ground bring the process knowledge and develop the detailed solution — bottom-up depth that makes it real and workable.
Together, that's how AI solutions get built, adopted, and sustained.
Look at all of AI, not just the obvious use cases
Most organizations pick from a short list. The AI Design Sprint® maps the full landscape — so you find the best fit, not just a familiar one.
Most approaches to identifying AI use cases start too narrow. A consultant presents a shortlist. A department browses industry examples. Employees list what they already know. An AI team proposes options for business people to prioritize — without a clear framework for how.
Every one of these approaches has the same flaw: the solution space is already limited before the real thinking begins. You can only choose from what's on the list. And what's not on the list stays invisible.
The alternative is to consider all AI capabilities — systematically, and from the perspective of the people doing the work.
That's what our AI Cards® make possible. They organize the full landscape of AI capabilities, formulated not in technical terms but from the user's perspective — what AI can do for you. Anyone on the team can work through them, match them against their process, product, or problem, and spot opportunities that a pre-selected list would never surface.
When you start with everything, you end up with the best answer — not just an available one.
Some categories of the AI Cards®.
Two possible starting points
Whatever the situation your team is in, the sprint meets you where you are. In our experience, teams come to the AI Design Sprint® from one of two places.
Some are in the orientation phase — they sense AI could deliver value, but don't yet know where to focus or what direction to take. Others have already identified their focus: a specific process, product, or problem. They know the what, but not the how — how to shape the solution, what's technically possible, and how to get everyone aligned.
The AI Design Sprint® has a format for each.
Opportunity Mapping
Helps teams in the strategic phase make directional decisions and define their focus area. The input can be as broad as: we believe AI could create value here, but we don't know where to start. The output is that clarity — a specific process, product, or problem worth pursuing.
Concept Development & Assessment
That focus area becomes the input for Concept Development & Assessment — where the team develops a detailed AI solution concept together. The output is a technical brief: a concrete, specific definition of the solution, ready to hand to a technical team.
And that's where the larger journey continues. With the technical brief, the technical team performs a feasibility check and builds a prototype. That prototype gets tested, refined, and eventually integrated as a running solution — monitored and adapted over time, because the world keeps changing.
Wherever your team is in that journey, there's a format to meet you there.
The sandwich approach
Start at Opportunity Mapping, move through Concept Development & Assessment — and you've done something powerful. Leadership sets the strategic focus from the top. The team on the ground shapes the actual solution from the bottom. Two formats, two directions, one complete approach.
That's the sandwich approach to AI — and it's built right into the sprint. Participants consistently point to this combo of top-down and bottom-up as what makes the AI Design Sprint® format truly work.
The modules
The AI Design Sprint® comes in four modules — each focused on a specific AI goal.
AI Design Sprint®: Process Automation — Partly or fully automate work processes, or augment and improve them with AI. ↗
AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services — Enhance customer-facing products and services with AI. As users grow accustomed to intelligent AI tools, they expect that same intelligence from every product they use. ↗
AI Design Sprint®: Agentic AI — Identify where agentic AI fits your situation, define the agents roles, and build a multi-agent system blueprint — ready to build yourself or hand to a technical team.
AI Design Sprint®: Copilot — Help employees identify their most valuable Copilot use case and get focused training on it. An effective way to scale meaningful Copilot adoption across an organization. ↗
Get started
AI Experience Session
Want to get a taste of the AI Design Sprint® before committing — and maybe bring a colleague along? The AI Experience Session is 90 minutes, free (€5 commitment fee), live, remote, and fun.
Training & Certification
Already excited and ready to go? Join our Training & Certification with your colleagues in a Company Team Training, or join solo — we bring together people from different companies in our Bootcamps.