Soulution Lab
Services
Introducing Myself
Hi, I'm Ron Verweij. For more than 30 years I've been designing, inventing, building startups, and helping organisations transform how they innovate. Because my services are deeply connected to my own journey and experience, I'd like to briefly introduce myself before presenting how I work.
My journey has taken me from a bicycle design studio to startups, from founding teams to executive boardrooms, across Europe and the US. It's been anything but linear — and that's exactly what makes it valuable for my customers.
Working across industries, technologies, and business models has shaped how I approach innovation today: with curiosity, pragmatism, and a strong focus on outcomes. I'm at my best when tackling complex challenges where the answer isn't obvious yet.
Everything I do starts with people — understanding what users, customers, and stakeholders actually need, not just what the brief assumes they need. That human-centred perspective helps uncover the real problem and create solutions where user value, business value, and technology come together.
I don't lead with methodology. I lead with experience. That experience shaped the Meaningful Innovation Framework — developed through years of experimentation, pioneering work in service design and lean innovation, and a collaboration with TU Delft that brought together intuition, practical experience, and proven practices into one coherent approach. The framework has supported both corporate teams and startups in turning ideas into strategies, roadmaps, tangible outcomes, and lasting organisational change.
The playbook includes a selection tree that helps identify the most relevant tools and starting points based on your context and the maturity of your challenge.
Not every step is required — the framework provides structure and direction while helping you navigate the most effective path toward meaningful outcomes.
Services
Although every innovation challenge is unique, I've identified three service packages that capture how I most often support customers — to give you a clearer sense of how we can work together.
Innovation Outcomes
For teams who need to move from insight to outcomes — inside real organisations, with real constraints. I work end-to-end or start by identifying the right problem to solve. Through research, observation, and value exploration I build a deep understanding of real user needs, business needs, context, and technology landscape — leaving with a sharp problem definition and a clear direction.
Every innovation challenge is different, so rather than a fixed package I start with a conversation. Depending on where you are, two approaches are most common:
- End-to-end — The Triple Diamond takes you from problem discovery through ideation and prototyping to a validated, demonstrable concept. Each of the three stages builds on the last, and not every stage is always necessary.
- Fast-track — The Lean Innovation Sprint is the right starting point when you already have a clear value hypothesis and need to validate it quickly. Results within weeks, not months.
Example end to end — COVID-19 & the Beacon Lavatory When COVID-19 halted aviation, most solutions focused on antimicrobial materials and UV technology. I took a different approach: understanding passenger perception first. Research across three continents showed the aircraft lavatory was already a source of health and hygiene concern before the pandemic — COVID intensified the problem. Through rapid research, prototyping, and validation, we redirected innovation toward solutions grounded in real passenger needs rather than technology assumptions. The result: the Crystal Cabin Award-winning Beacon Lavatory (2021). Read more on the Soulutions page.
Example fast track — Connected Cabin to Asset Management Driven to revolutionize the onboard experience, I developed a vision for connected food and beverage services — enabling passengers to order what they want, when they want it. Airlines responded differently than expected: "We like it — but first help us know where our equipment is." That feedback changed direction completely. We redefined the hypothesis around an immediate operational problem: digitising the catering supply chain. The result was an asset management solution using Bluetooth tracking, mobile devices, and real-time dashboards — and a Crystal Cabin Award in 2020. A strong reminder that customer validation should drive innovation, not assumptions. Read more on the Soulutions page.
Share your challenge with me and I'll come back with a tailored proposal to choose the right path, steps, and tools to work efficiently and effectively.
Co-innovation Workshops & Training
For teams who need to get unstuck, get aligned, or build their capabilities and adapt to fast-changing challenges. I design and facilitate targeted interventions that reframe complex challenges, bring the right voices into the room, and generate solutions grounded in real user and operational context.
Every session is designed around your specific challenge and team — not a generic agenda. The goal is always the same: leaving your team more capable than I found them.
Our Workshop & Training
- The Pressure Cooker Co-Creation — 2 days A full co-innovation sprint compressed into two intensive days. Cross-functional stakeholders, real challenges, facilitated from problem discovery through to a validated concept direction. You arrive with a question. You leave with traction.
- Discovery Workshop — 1 day A focused session to define and reframe a complex challenge — exploring user needs, mapping the context, and aligning the team on what problem is actually worth solving.
- Innovation Mindset Training — 1–3 days Hands-on training in human-centred innovation, design thinking, and lean experimentation. Built for teams who want to build lasting capability — not just attend a workshop and forget it by Monday.
- Custom Programme — multi-session For organisations who need a sustained capability-building journey. We design the arc together based on your team's starting point, ambitions, and the challenges ahead
Example — The Pressure Cooker in Action A major US airline approached us with what seemed like a straightforward stock management problem. We brought together catering managers, flight attendants, and galley planners, asking each participant to observe the onboard process during their flight to Amsterdam. Once in the room, it quickly became clear that every stakeholder saw the problem differently. What started as finger-pointing between departments — each convinced the others were the source of the issue — gradually turned into something closer to family therapy, with the group ultimately reaching consensus on the real problem. Not the one described in the original brief. With stakeholders aligned, we brought in designers, facilitated rapid ideation, developed the strongest concepts into value propositions, and had participants pitch them back to the group themselves. The result: full stakeholder buy-in, a clear operational value case that reduced workload, improved stock management, enabled more consistent branding, and a working prototype delivered within weeks.
I always prefer to start with small projects, workshops & training to get to know each other — reach out and let's discuss a training, discovery, workshop, or sprint that fits your need.
Innovation Systems
For organisations that want innovation to stick beyond individual projects — building the systems, structures, and capabilities needed for continuous innovation delivery. This is the infrastructure behind successful innovation: aligning vision, strategy, governance, roadmaps, and ways of working so innovation becomes repeatable, scalable, and connected to business goals.
Example — Redefining an Innovation Strategy When I joined an airline catering equipment supplier, their innovation strategy was built almost entirely around weight and cost reduction. I challenged this by running two parallel research streams — one into onboard services, one into ground logistics. The insights revealed significant frictions and opportunities that the existing strategy was missing entirely. We redefined the direction, built roadmaps around genuine airline pain-points, and launched a portfolio of differentiated products that won industry awards and opened new revenue models in a hardware-dominated market. Read more on the Soulutions page.
Our Innovation System Activities
- Strategic Alignment & Innovation Direction Helping leadership teams create shared direction in complex and fast-changing environments — through innovation vision and strategy, opportunity mapping, scenario building, stakeholder alignment, and innovation roadmaps.
- Ecosystem & Capability Building Understanding the broader systems surrounding products, services, and operations — mapping ecosystems, identifying leverage points, building innovation governance, playbooks, and operating models that make capability repeatable and sustainable.
- Futures, Storytelling & Emerging Technology Co-creating compelling future visions that help organisations align and engage stakeholders — combined with emerging technology scouting, opportunity framing, and technology-enabled business model exploration.
Innovation only creates business value when ideas become meaningful outcomes — over and over again, inside a system built for it.
If you're navigating complex challenges, building innovation capability, or exploring new opportunities, let's start with an open conversation. Or explore the Soulutions page to see how these approaches have delivered outcomes and transformation.
