Int'l Strategy with Design Thinking

Kalekim’s Hizmet Kozası team had three selected priority projects for its overseas operation on its agenda. The need was not to create a new list of ideas but to turn these projects into actionable plans based on user needs.

The priorities had been selected. The next task was to develop the project ideas in detail around user needs and turn them into actionable steps. The workshop focused on this transition.

How can the three projects selected for the overseas operation become sustainable, feasible roadmaps based on user needs? For each project, we wanted to connect the thinking process to a concrete action plan.

In 2025, we conducted a two-day Roadmap Development through Design Thinking Workshop, facilitated by Prof. Dr. C. Ruhi Kaykayoğlu and Y. Bora Kaykayoğlu.

With the Hizmet Kozası team, we followed the stages of empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping and testing. Each stage was part of the same workflow for developing the selected projects in detail.

In the workshops, participants analyzed user needs, developed creative solutions and detailed their project ideas. Design thinking became a framework teams used on their own projects rather than an abstract explanation of a method.

Actionable plans were created for each of the three priority projects. The verified outputs were these plans and the roadmap development process. We do not claim the overseas operation’s subsequent commercial results as an impact of this two-day project.

In this project, design thinking did not remain a creative activity separate from strategy. Selected priorities, user needs and action plans came together in the same workflow. Developing ideas in detail and defining implementation direction were addressed together.