Strategyzer

Lucy Luo

January 6, 2025

min read

Arcadis, a global engineering consultancy, transformed its approach to innovation by training 400+ employees across multiple countries using Strategyzer's methodology. Moving beyond technical solutions, they built organization-wide capabilities in business model and value proposition design, leading to higher-quality innovation initiatives and stronger business outcomes.

Companies that are prepared for disruption are constantly reinventing themselves. They don’t believe they are invincible. The main task of leadership today is to constantly reinvent your organisation.”

Arcadis, a global sustainable design and engineering consultancy with 36,000 employees, struggled to innovate beyond technical solutions. Their billable-hours business model made it difficult to allocate time for innovation. At the same time, their engineering-focused teams excelled at technical feasibility but needed to gain skills in customer desirability and business viability.

Partnered with Strategyzer to implement a comprehensive Corporate Team Training program, focusing on business model and value proposition design. The program combined self-paced learning with hands-on coaching, allowing participants to apply concepts to real business challenges while building innovation capabilities across the organization.

Successfully trained over 440 employees across multiple countries, receiving very high ratings compared to other innovation and digital training programs. The initiative, known as IGNITE, has already shown early signs of business success and has led to expanding its partnership with Strategyzer through programs focused on business outcomes, where teams will now apply their skills to real client challenges.

Our people are engineers, project managers, environmental specialists, technical advisors. They are passionate about building solutions to help our clients which sometimes leads to 'if it can be done, it should be done'. Across Arcadis, we see a need to strengthen our skills around desirability and viability so that we can provide innovative propositions that delight our clients, through commercially viable business models.”

Mar Zumaquero

Global Innovation Management Director at Arcadis

With strong technical skills, teams at Arcadis excelled at technical feasibility but needed support with customer desirability and business viability.

The challenge: moving beyond technical solutions

For Arcadis, a global sustainable design and engineering consultancy with 36,000 employees, innovation meant different things to different people. While the company had always fostered innovation, it faced two significant hurdles:

Their business model relies on billable hours, making it difficult to allocate time for innovation
With strong technical skills, their teams excelled at technical feasibility but needed support with customer desirability and business viability

“Throughout the years, we have upskilled our people to gain digital fluency, without focusing on how digitalization impacts our business model..!,” explains Mar. “People get really excited about the use of technology. But we didn't necessarily have the skills to understand innovation outside of technical or technological solutions.”

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The journey: building an innovation movement from within

Rather than trying to change everything at once, Mar took a strategic approach: “I'm building a secret innovation army in plain sight,” she shares with a smile. The plan? Train over 1,000 people across the organization in innovation fundamentals by 2026.

Working with Strategyzer, Arcadis began with the Corporate Team Training program, focusing on business model and value proposition design. The program combined self-paced learning with hands-on coaching sessions, allowing participants to apply concepts to real business challenges.

“Other trainings have been more theoretical,” Mar notes. “This was different. People now see that tools like the Business Model Canvas aren't just a training box to tick – they're instruments for continuous iteration and learning.”

Arcadis strives to create livable spaces where communities thrive, today and for generations to come.

Arcadis helped extend London Undergrounds Northern Line, , transforming London's transport infrastructure.

Our logistics operations protect people and the environment while delivering long-term value for communities.

The breakthrough: from theory to practice

The impact was immediate and measurable:

400+ employees trained across 24 countries
the virtual training meant it had a global reach while reducing travel to meet Arcadis sustainability targets
Participants rated it as "the best training they've had in the organization"
Strong positive feedback on the coaching experience
Increased quality of innovation ideas entering their pipeline
identified a pool of innovation practitioners who will now continue to work on real client use cases

“The satisfaction rating was consistently high across the 400 people we trained,” Mar observes. “The fact that participants compared this favorably to our premium in-person training programs is impressive. We just have to provide high-quality and beneficial content throughout.”

With Strategyzer's support, Arcadis trained 400+ employees across 24 countries.

Moving forward: From training to transformation

The success of the initial program has led Arcadis to expand its partnership with Strategyzer. They're launching a Discovery Program where selected teams will work on real client challenges, applying their new innovation capabilities to create tangible business outcomes.

“By creating this movement across the organization, we have people capable of doing this properly,” Mar explains. “The pipeline of ideas will increase, the quality will increase, and we'll have more winners in innovation because we have a bigger quantity of well-developed ideas at the beginning of our pipeline.”

The pipeline of ideas will increase, the quality will increase, and we'll have more winners in innovation because we have a bigger quantity of well-developed ideas at the beginning of our pipeline.”

Mar Zumaquero

Global Innovation Management Director at Arcadis

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Key learnings

Start with fundamentals: Train people in business model and value proposition design before diving into specific innovation projects
Focus on practical application: Use real case studies and hands-on coaching to make learning stick
Build a movement: Strategic training across different parts of the organization creates momentum for change‍
Look beyond technology: True innovation encompasses customer needs and business viability, not just technical solutions.

The results speak for themselves

“We've had a few participants saying this was the best training that they've had in our organization,” Mar shares. “The feedback on the coaches is even higher than the overall feedback of the program.”

By investing in innovation capabilities across their organization, Arcadis is transforming how their teams approach challenges – moving beyond purely technical solutions to consider customer needs and business viability. Their systematic approach to training over 400 employees demonstrates how large organizations can successfully build innovation capabilities at scale. Through their partnership with Strategyzer, Arcadis is not just training individuals – they're creating a movement changing their innovation culture from within.

Lucy Luo

January 6, 2025

It was a tremendous amount of work and we are extremely thankful to the whole team at Strategyzer. We learnt so much: three years ago we didn't really know how to start, and now I think we have built robust program that generations after us can continue to run.”

Henning Till

Head of Corporate Innovation, Bayer