What We Do
Unthinkable is a consultancy that understands the potential of digital technology for our clients, and knows how to realise it. Our shared passions have brought us together – passions such as the effect of digital communications technologies on collaboration models; how data and its structures increasingly make our world go round and how technology is reconfiguring our personal, cultural and economic relationships. We constantly think about these things, and crucially, their impact on companies and organisations, and how to harness and manage the change which they bring.
Our track record to date embraces a variety of approaches and disciplines, including strategy, service design, implementation, events & workshops, research and analysis, R&D and technology scouting. At the heart of all of these is a commitment to absorb the world of our clients and offer ourselves as extra thinking muscle.
For us, nothing is off the shelf; rather we offer entirely bespoke work for our clients, immersing ourselves in their business, because we know that is the only way to deliver useful strategies. Listening deeply and responding honestly to our clients are central to the way we work. We are also obsessed with quality, critical thought around technological innovations and a straightforward, jargon-free approach to communciation.
Service design
Service design is among the least understood of digital media disciplines, yet it's one of the most vital. It's important in the stage between a client deciding they need, say, a new website and the moment when they commission a team to get stuck into building it. But it also applies to the need for organisations and companies to apply continuous attention to their relationship with audience or customers, and the importance of placing digital technology in a wider context. Service design takes on a many shapes, but features such constants as consultation with internal stakeholders from as wide a spectrum as possible, user research and competitor analysis. And we invariably set out to answer two key questions: what business aims are we helping to deliver and what user needs are we seeking to address? Most recently, we've worked with the City of London to deliver a vision that has transformed their communications strategy, and produced detailed business requirements for a new website that automates a vast array of interactions and transactions with customers, tenants and members.
Strategy
For us, strategy hinges on the moment when we help our clients look at the broader digital media environment and have them consider the implications — the opportunities and threats — for their business. We're able to introduce a degree of objectivity into our clients' view of their place in the market precisely because of our independence. And although pride ourselves on the currency of our knowledge, we feel that what sets us apart more clearly is our ability to help clients place developments in a critical context.
In reality this equates to a wide range of work, from helping organisations reshape their teams, through working out what kinds of digital products and services will help deliver their business aims, to identifying potential clients, partners and competitors. Our strategy outputs range from lengthy and detailed papers to one-on-one management development. Among others, we've worked with Outline TV Production, Newstin and Glyndebourne in developing their digital strategies.
Events and Workshops
Our workshops fall into two broad categories: training and what we term "knowledge building", and naturally these overlap a great deal. Our work in this area comprises combinations of session design, production, facilitation and presentation. We always work closely with our clients to ensure our content is consistent with our given audience's knowledge base and understanding. We have provided social media training to producers across the BBC, presented workshops on the impact of digital media on the arts to the Southbank Centre, the Barbican, the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne, and have delivered training in digital tools and applications to music teachers in Manchester and Newcastle. We also hugely enjoy giving conference presentations such as our IT4Arts talk on IP, The Trouble with Poetry.
Research & Analysis
Work we've done in this area includes a service feasibility study for BBC Audio & Music Interactive and a five-year technology horizon scan for Teesside University's Institute of Digital Innovation. We are currently working on a report for the BBC's Future Media & Technology division looking at the impact of social media on the corporation's accountability mandate. A crucial component of our research and analysis work is extensive interviews with stakeholders across our client's business to ensure that our research and conclusions are informed by the deepest possible understanding of their business needs.
Implementation
In addition to setting a strategic framework for and scoping our clients' digital build work, we can also help with project delivery. We have helped clients such as Glyndebourne recruit internal digital media staff. In the case of Save the Children we wrote the project brief and then helped them select an external agency to do the work, as we did for the London Sinfonietta. We are also able to offer hands-on creative direction and project management for design and build work. While we are definitely not a full service production agency, all four directors are from a production background, and we do like to keep our hand in with some small projects of our own from time to time, including websites for local music education services and a distance learning course for the Royal Opera House.
Research & Development
According to the OECD, R&D is "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications". We like to think this is fundamental to everything we do on behalf of all our clients, although our main client in this area specifically is UK Trade & Investment. We provide information on UK R&D opportunities in digital media to UKTI clients including Turner Broadcasting, Disney and Singapore Technologies. We are also involved in several individual and collective R&D projects of our own.
Technology Scouting
Much of our work revolves around partnerships and consortia we help establish; indeed, we believe that collaboration is one of the keys to success in digital working. In some of our work however, the brokering of business is itself the service, with clients asking us to help make introductions on their behalf, such as the Canadian province Prince Edward Island who valued our work so much the first time that they approached us again two years later. We have also brokered successful collaborations for small UK companies in the news technology, speech synthesis, social gaming and 3D TV areas with clients in the UK and overseas.
