Strive for the new, create the new

This has been the case for almost 35 years now. This makes Dingert a true veteran of the Vileda company. Technologically, the solutions at Vileda are becoming ever more sophisticated, because many new products work with sophisticated electronics. Dingert, who was born in the Saarland region of Germany, loves tackling such tasks. For several years now, he has been working on “front-end issues” and leads various teams that play around with new technological developments.

At the same time, this approach optimizes the innovation process itself. “It follows the concept of design thinking in combination with a sprint format”, Dingert observed. He himself takes on something like the player-coach role, as he puts it.

It is an elaborate process. For example, the goal may be to develop an idea for a new cleaning product. The ingredients are a team that is as diverse as possible and brings many different perspectives to the innovation process, a generous dose of creativity and a lot of patience.

To develop an understanding of the problem, the team takes a lot of time. “That’s important, because consumers and their needs are always the focus”, said Dingert. That’s why they also go right into the households and have them explain and demonstrate exactly what people are doing with their cleaning equipment, for example.

The team evaluates the consumer issues that come to light in this process according to their importance to the company and the consumers, and then consistently works only on the issues that are important to both - then the brainstorming begins. "Strive for the new, create the new: When I see that spark ignite the team, it excites me," Dingert says. If others are as passionate about new ideas as he is.

Strive for the new, create the new: When I see that spark ignite the team, it excites me.

Uwe Dingert

Preliminary concepts are created, visualized on paper, and prototypes are built. During this process, the idea is refined further and further. Then the team invites the customers to the company and presents the concepts to them. And then, “Yes you have an initial qualified idea that we can take with us into our development process. That’s a real moment of satisfaction when we’ve worked hard and are able to report success.”

This is a very rough sketch of the innovation process Dingert and his staff implemented at the company in 2017: “I’m pleased that these sprints have been so well received. It’s really helped the company move forward.” Since then, Dingert has prepared and carried out nine product development sprints based on this approach, while also supporting production in a number of projects – and he has also very successfully earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Innovation and Design Thinking while still holding down his job.