Hitachi: Designing Transitions Towards A Net-Zero Society
Hitachi Europe were looking to commission a market research study brief on designing societal transitions towards achieving zero carbon society.
This study was commissioned to inform their European design strategy for future integrated energy and mobility challenges. A particular requirement was to identify potential partnerships - both types of organisations, as well as identifying specific partners, with recommendations for how best to engage with them.
Most of the lens of the work is directed externally, yet the final component of the work was to reflect on the role of design within Hitachi culture, and helping design with techniques for engaging internal and external stakeholders on designing transitions towards Net Zero.
The Brief
What we did
Liminal sourced and interviewed 18 people from across our network of contacts in the corporate, start-up, academic and government sectors. In addition we researched in detail 40 organisations, and mapped 156 organisations that were relevant to Hitachi’s specific areas of focus. Lastly we explore 6 existing frameworks for measuring and/or benchmarking an organisations transition towards Net Zero.
All of this work was pulled together in a full report together with a succinct deck to give a flavour of the ideas and organisations and the people we met, all now dedicated to moving society forwards, towards a sustainable footing. In both documents we laid out the ground for our formal research findings under five themes, and gave relevant examples for each theme.
The work has been well received within Hitachi Design Europe and has gone on to inform their work in the field of transition design and working towards a net-zero economy, in the context of energy and transport industries.
“Liminal have been a great partner for us and dived head first into the thorny challenges of net-zero transitions and what this means for our design community today. They have produced a wealth of insights that is helping to shape our current research programmes and partnership strategy. I very much look forward to working with them again.”
