Bridgeable the Sole Canadian Winner of Fast Company's 2019 Innovation by Design Awards
As Winner in the Mobility category, Bridgeable joins an influential and diverse group of 22 winners and 483 honorees in architecture, graphic design, data visualization, social good, user experience, mobility, and more—including Nike, Microsoft, Mastercard, Gensler, and other leading global design firms.
TORONTO, Sept. 12, 2019 /CNW/ - Toronto-based service design consultancy Bridgeable has been named Winner in the Mobility category in Fast Company's 2019 Innovation by Design Awards for its work facilitating the development and design of Fast Forward: The Plan to Modernize New York City Transit. One of the largest independent service design consultancies in North America, Bridgeable is the only Canadian Winner of the 2019 competition.
Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards recognize people, teams, and companies solving problems creatively at the intersection of design, business, and innovation. Fast Company editors and writers spend a year researching and reviewing candidates from all over the world for these prestigious awards. This year's competition was the toughest ever, with more than 4,300 global contenders.
"Considering the extremely high calibre of the Mobility finalists—which include NASA, Uber, Lyft, FedEx, Airstream, and Google's Waymo—we're thrilled to have been named Winner in that category," said Bridgeable CEO Susan Bartlett. "We're grateful to be recognized for what Bridgeable does best: designing solutions to complex challenges in a co-creative way that generates incredible value and stakeholder buy-in."
Bridgeable received the award in conjunction with MTA New York City Transit. NYCT engaged Bridgeable to help them tackle a complex, large-scale challenge: to rapidly develop a plan to turn around an aging transit system in New York City in a way that would garner the stakeholder alignment necessary to solve problems affecting over 2.4 billion riders annually. The result was a comprehensive plan calling for a thorough transformation of America's largest transit system.
In sharp contrast to the top-down, internally focused strategic planning processes typical of larger organizations, Bridgeable applied a design sprint approach to NYCT's challenge, co-creating a plan in just over 6 weeks through stakeholder engagement—with input from over 4,200 NYCT employees—and rapid prototyping and iteration.
Bridgeable's work on Fast Forward exemplifies its distinctive ability to apply design thinking methodologies to the thorniest problems faced by large organizations, in which diverse stakeholders with competing interests often find themselves stuck in gridlock.
The Innovation by Design Award adds to the global design honors Bridgeable has received over the past two years for its work across industries as diverse as transit, financial services, telecommunications, and the life sciences. The company was honored with First Place at the 2018 Design Management Institute (DMI) Design Value Awards and named Strategy and Research category winner in the 2019 Core77 Design Awards. In 2017, Bridgeable was awarded Best Commercial Project at the Service Design Global Awards in Madrid and Most Valuable Patient Initiative or Service in the eyeforpharma awards.
Winners, finalists, and honorable mentions are featured online and in the October 2019 issue of Fast Company magazine, on newsstands September 17. Winners will also be recognized at a special celebration at Fast Company's Innovation Festival in November.
SOURCE Bridgeable
Jim Muzyka, Bridgeable, (416) 840-9979, [email protected]
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