Think global, adapt local: how service design accelerated B2B market entry by 6 months
Summary
To solve this, I led the creation of a structured, repeatable market entry framework rooted in service design. Working with over 20 cross-functional teams—including business, product, UX, engineering, marketing, and market intelligence—we used JTBD journey mapping, Blue ocean strategy canvas and visual needs mapping to uncover what truly matters to customers in each market. This enabled fast, aligned, and customer-relevant go-to-market strategies, reducing time-to-market by 50% and embedding service design as a business enabler.
Key Insights
-
•
Launching new markets without a structured process caused repetitive delays and inefficiencies, exemplified by the 12-month Germany launch preparation.
-
•
A repeatable market entry framework that visualizes all activities and dependencies accelerates alignment across many teams and countries.
-
•
Creating a single source of truth in a universally accessible format (Excel on Google Drive) accommodates varied digital literacy across teams.
-
•
Deep ethnographic research with ‘extreme users’ in target markets builds authentic customer empathy even without local teams.
-
•
Italian garage market culture emphasizes specialization over direct competition and involves close, almost familial supplier-customer relationships.
-
•
Combining customer journey mapping and jobs-to-be-done into a hybrid framework enables a detailed, role-based understanding of complex B2B customers.
-
•
Prioritizing customer needs by importance rather than addressing all pain-points leads to more valuable solutions for both customers and business.
-
•
Co-creation workshops uniting product, business, marketing, and local stakeholders break down silos and create shared ownership of strategy.
-
•
Analyzing competition through the lens of customer needs helps identify blue ocean opportunities instead of copying features.
-
•
Service design can evolve from a support role to a strategic driver that transforms organizational processes and accelerates growth.
Notable Quotes
"My definition of service design is dancing with needs and value."
"When we first started expanding, our internal process felt like being stuck in a massive traffic jam."
"We were reinventing the wheel every time we entered a new market, which was incredibly slow and inefficient."
"We needed a scalable system and GPS that everyone could follow with clear lanes for each team."
"Our framework is our playbook, our single source of truth for every launch."
"Notice period sometimes can be more than three months for some roles, so parallel activities are essential."
"The focus isn’t on head to head competition, but on specialization and differentiation in the Italian market."
"Combining customer journey mapping and jobs to be done gave us a clear set of opportunities stemming directly from the garage’s reality."
"We are no longer just a collection of cars, we are a focused racing team ready to hit the track."
"Service design stops being just a support function; it becomes the strategic driver that transforms organizational performance."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The Rosenbot chatbot is trained on all Rosenfeld content and is amazingly useful for answering your questions."
Louis RosenfeldAbout the Rosenverse
March 15, 2026
"The new product approach lets researchers proofread, edit, and decide which insights should be tracked."
Daniel Korczynski Justyna ParmeeFrom generic to contextual research insights with AI | Live Q&A
March 11, 2026
"Multilingual embedding models can cluster similar meanings across languages in a shared latent space."
Ian JohnsonLatent Scope: Finding structure in unstructured data
June 11, 2025
"AI cannot replace user research, usability testing, or domain expert validation."
Snehal PendharkarConducting pre-research with AI agent personas: Pressure-testing concepts for expert workflows
June 10, 2026
"Evals are a product and UX skill; learning them lets you make these systems do what you want."
Peter Van DijckHands-on AI #1: Let’s write your first AI eval
October 8, 2025
"Don't shy away from technical conversations; service designers should map data journeys like user journeys."
Lais de Almeida Maria IzquierdoDesigning Data Services
December 4, 2024
"We don’t want ugly charts for accessibility, we want good chart colors that complement the brand and remain accessible."
Theresa NeilJust Build Me a Dashboard!
April 9, 2019
"Everyone needs permission from their manager and leaders to truly care about research outside of their job description."
Crystal YanBuilding a Customer-Centric Culture
March 30, 2020
"This is a topic near and dear to my heart and I feel really long overdue conversation."
Christian CrumlishIntroduction by our Conference Chair
December 6, 2022