Integrated development (IPD) increases a company’s revenue and profitability—an opportunity for Finnish businesses. The integrated approach combines multidisciplinary teamwork, customer focus, and innovative development, leading to better products, shorter development cycles, and cost savings.
Integrated development is multidisciplinary collaboration in which experts from different fields—including mechanical engineers, industrial designers, electronics engineers, service designers, UI designers, software developers, prototype builders, marketing and sales professionals, and production personnel—work together throughout the development process. Project management must be dynamic and allow sufficient freedom while remaining purposeful and results-oriented.
Company management must support the work and stay up to date on the project’s progress. When every perspective is considered early, product quality improves, errors decrease, and end users receive a market-leading product that outshines the competition. Faster product development also enables faster launches and greater revenue opportunities. Time to market is one of the key principles of integrated development.
The Secret to a Hockey Team’s Success
Ice hockey is an excellent example of integrated development. A team brings together players of different ages and skill levels. Some are established “superstars”; others are young and relatively inexperienced, but are given responsibility and room to make mistakes. A team may not look like an all-star lineup on paper, yet it can still succeed and win championships. A team that plays seamlessly together will always outperform an all-star lineup of individual performers.
I would not call myself a hockey expert, but as a casual observer, I would analyze it as follows: Hockey is built on junior development, in other words, on training players to become strong individuals as part of a team. This produces world-class players and strengthens a culture of working together. Players learn to win and lose fairly, but above all, they develop a shared culture of teamwork and winning in which individuals at different levels can shine.
The team creates a shared game plan and executes it together. The work must be guided by a clear vision. When the game is tight and goes into overtime, Finland wins a high percentage of those games. Difference-makers step up under pressure. That says something about Finnish character and grit.
Integrated Development Is Not Just a Process
Returning to our home ground—development—the hockey-team model provides an excellent analogy for successful integrated development. The formula is simple: assemble the best experts from different fields to work together on a development project and lead the work through a shared vision.
The core elements are:
- Collaboration and mutual respect: Everyone’s expertise is important, and everyone’s expertise must be given space.
- Open mindset and ideation culture: Co-ideation is more effective than solitary thinking.
- Shared vision: A collectively agreed goal guides the work and necessary priorities.
- Game sense and humor: white-knuckling the stick won’t get the puck in the net. An authoritarian approach doesn’t work.
“Integrated development is not just a process, but a culture. It can work with different development methods, whether it’s a waterfall model, double diamond, or sprint model.”
An Invitation to a Cultural Journey
To fully realize the benefits of integrated development, a change in mindset is required. I invite all professionals involved in development to join this cultural journey, centered on the following themes:
Listen to others: One of the greatest challenges in integrated development stems from our educational backgrounds. We are often taught that our own field is the right and most important one. This can create a need to be right and a tendency to defend our own principles at all costs. Integrated development leaves no room for clinging stubbornly to one’s own ideas.
You must accept that others may be equally right—and that their proposed solutions may be just as valid or even better than yours.
Ideate openly: Finnish development professionals are excellent at working independently, but we are often less skilled at generating ideas together. Collaborative ideation can quickly turn into accepting and rejecting the same idea in the same sentence. In shared ideation sessions, one person may generate ideas while everyone else generates objections. Integrated development requires a collaborative and open culture of ideation. Ideas are generated and evaluated together throughout the process, becoming increasingly focused and concrete. Every successful product and service once began as an idea, so ideas should be encouraged widely while the process remains coordinated.
Diverse team: Success comes from different experts working together—not simply from assembling an all-star team. A winning team has room for people from different disciplines and backgrounds. Even a seasoned veteran can be surprised by the observations of a young and enthusiastic colleague, and a business specialist can surprise an engineer on a technical question.
At the heart of integrated development is the deliberate practice of bringing different ideas and areas of expertise together, even allowing them to collide. The important thing is that no one’s thoughts or ideas are dismissed. The decisive insight may come from an unexpected perspective.
Leading through vision: In integrated development, leadership is based on a vision that experts are free to challenge without challenging the authority of the leader. Once a shared vision has been established, the development team follows it systematically.
Vision-led leadership requires flexibility and situational awareness, because authoritarian leadership has no place here. It also means understanding and accepting changes in emphasis: when one feature is prioritized, another may have to give way.
Give individuals space to shine: Integrated development also leaves room for standout performances. Although collaboration is at the heart of integrated development, individuals must be allowed to shine when their particular expertise is needed. The rest of the development team will support this when it serves the shared vision and goals. Pursuing a personal agenda or vision has no place in integrated development. This game also needs difference-makers: the person who scores the winning goal delivers the victory for the entire team, not for themselves.
Conclusions
The principles and practices of integrated development offer significant advantages compared to conventional development models. Multidisciplinary teamwork, customer focus, and innovative leadership improve product quality, reduce development time and costs, and increase customer satisfaction.
I argue that if the integrated development model were used more widely, companies could significantly increase their revenue and profitability. Finland has enormous potential to leverage each other’s expertise more effectively.
LINK is a pioneer in integrated development. We address product and service design challenges by combining the digital and physical worlds. LINK offers strategic partnerships in product and service development, focusing on both user and business needs. The author, LINK CEO Jaakko Anttila, has worked in integrated development throughout his career.
