Open Innovation is often a mess. It’s vague. It’s performative. And more often than not, it ends with an idea board and zero follow-through. We’ve seen it fail. And that’s exactly why we do it differently. In this case, we worked with ZADZ AG - a leading mental health clinic and part of a family-owned group in Switzerland - and the University of St. Gallen (HSG) to run focused sprints that delivered insight, alignment, and forward motion.

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Most Open Innovation Fails for Three Reasons

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1. No real question - just “let’s do something with students or startups.”
2. No internal bridge - the insights stay outside, and nothing changes.
3. No next step - no plan to translate what was learned into what gets built.

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The Context: Why ZADZ Needed New Ideas

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ZADZ was exploring how to grow beyond their core revenue model - ambulatory mental health services reimbursed by TARMED. They weren’t trying to build a new business unit (yet). They wanted to explore:

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• What next-gen customers expect from therapy
• Whether parallel revenue models (e.g. sleep medicine) could be viable
• How to move toward innovation without breaking what works

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What We Did

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Together with HSG, we launched two open innovation sprints designed to answer real questions.

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[ Sprint 1 - Gen Z Therapy ]

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What do younger audiences expect from mental healthcare?

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• HSG students interviewed Gen Z, analyzed expectations, and mapped digital-first therapy concepts
• Deliverables included customer personas, service models, and design principles
• Outcome: Internal clarity for ZADZ and input for positioning and employer branding

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[ Sprint 2 - Sleep Medicine ]

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Could a sleep-focused outpatient service become a parallel revenue stream?

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• Teams explored trends, pain points, and viable business models
• Outcome: A strategic option that made it to board-level discussion

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Each sprint ran over approximately 6 weeks, with weekly check-ins, defined outputs, and embedded leadership participation.

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What Made It Work

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• Tight framing - every sprint started with a strategic question
• Embedded leadership - ZADZ leadership was present and involved
• Outcome-driven - the goal wasn’t ideas, it was clarity
• Academic firepower - partnering with HSG added depth and credibility

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This wasn’t innovation theatre. It was structured learning for real-world decisions.

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The Strategic Win

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For ZADZ, the biggest win wasn’t a new product - it was the ability to test future directions without slowing down core operations. Each sprint built:

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• Strategic insight
• Internal alignment
• Confidence to act (or pause) based on evidence

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For us, it proved that even in regulated environments, you can run fast, useful experiments - if you design them right.

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What You Can Steal from This

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If you’re running a business with legacy systems, here’s the model:

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• One sharp question
• One committed partner
• One tight sprint

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We’ve used this model across clinics, B2B services, and family-run companies. It works - even in places where change is hard.