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Red Wing: Design Thinking with the Garage to spark innovation on the path to Intelligent Enterprise

Red Wing Delivered 2022

Mindset worked alongside Red Wing's Garage innovation team to apply Design Thinking and the SAP AppHaus approach, helping Red Wing trigger employee-led innovation as part of its journey toward becoming an Intelligent Enterprise.

Red Wing

By the numbers

  • SAP AppHaus

    Network methodology applied

  • 2022

    Public collaboration year

Before

Seeking a method for employee-led innovation

  • Red Wing's Garage had the mandate to drive innovation toward Intelligent Enterprise but needed a structured approach.
  • No established Design Thinking practice inside the Garage to guide ideation and co-creation.
  • SAP AppHaus concepts weren't yet embedded in how the team worked.

After

A Design Thinking practice rooted in the SAP AppHaus approach

  • Garage team facilitated through Design Thinking workshops using the SAP AppHaus methodology.
  • AppHaus-grounded approach in place to trigger innovation and inspire employees on the Intelligent Enterprise path.
  • Work co-presented publicly with Mindset, sharing the story with the SAP ecosystem.

Why this matters

Red Wing built its innovation culture deliberately, through the Garage and a Design Thinking practice grounded in the SAP AppHaus approach. This is what it looks like when a manufacturer takes the Intelligent Enterprise journey from the inside out.

The challenge

Red Wing Shoe Company is a ~$440M private footwear manufacturer headquartered in Red Wing, Minnesota, selling work boots and heritage lifestyle shoes through 4,000+ US retail locations and distribution in 110+ countries. Its internal innovation center, the Garage, was tasked with helping Red Wing become an Intelligent Enterprise.

The challenge was cultural as much as technical. Getting a workforce thinking differently about how technology could serve the business required a structured method, a safe space, and outside facilitation with real experience running that kind of work.

What we did

As a member of the SAP AppHaus Network, Mindset collaborated with Red Wing's Garage team using Design Thinking facilitation and the SAP AppHaus concept. The work focused on co-creation and ideation rather than implementation.

Mindset's role was to bring the method: structured empathy exercises, ideation frameworks, and the AppHaus approach to human-centered problem framing. The Garage provided the domain knowledge, the employees, and the innovation culture. Together they co-presented the work publicly.

The outcomes

Red Wing's Garage team came away with a repeatable Design Thinking practice grounded in the SAP AppHaus approach. The collaboration helped Red Wing demonstrate what innovation-led transformation looks like inside a manufacturing company.

The public co-presentation made the work visible to the broader SAP ecosystem, positioning Red Wing as a company taking the Intelligent Enterprise journey seriously.

On stage & in the press

If we built this today

Concept · not delivered scope

From design sprint to live agent.

This is a forward-looking concept, not the scope we delivered on this engagement. It is the build we would reach for now, grounded in SAP that ships today.

When a footwear manufacturer's innovation team ran Design Thinking sprints to spark ideas on the road to an Intelligent Enterprise, the hard part was getting those concepts into working Fiori experiences people actually used.

The data product

Cloud ERP Intelligence

A governed view of the company's own SAP data that a new agent or app can stand on, so a prototype born in a sprint reasons over real numbers rather than mockups. It gives the Design Thinking output a real foundation to build from.

Intelligent Application on SAP Business Data Cloud

The Joule agent

Knowledge Graph Navigator

Sits in Joule and lets a workshop idea ask plain questions of SAP S/4HANA through the SAP Knowledge Graph, so the team can see what the data supports before anyone designs a screen. It reads governed business semantics and proposes which entities and flows a new app would touch.

SAP Build, SAP Knowledge Graph, SAP Fiori · PROPOSE · Time from concept to a working prototype people use

The Fiori app

Joule in the Fiori launchpad

Instead of building a one-off app per idea, the modern path is the copilot already in every Fiori app, where Joule reads the screen, answers questions, and drafts the next action. Custom flows the team designs get built in Joule Studio and surface here too.

Embedded in the Fiori launchpad

The honest first step is still to mine how the work actually runs in SAP Signavio, map the application estate in SAP LeanIX, then let MIND accelerators carry the good ideas from old screens to new agents.

The Joule Agent Factory Process intelligence

What we built

  • Applied SAP AppHaus Network methods with Red Wing's internal innovation team

    Design Thinking facilitation

    Structured empathy, ideation, and prototyping workshops run with the Garage team using the SAP AppHaus methodology.

  • Garage team equipped with an AppHaus-grounded innovation approach

    AppHaus concept adoption

    Introduced the SAP AppHaus framework as a way to trigger employee-led innovation and anchor Red Wing's Intelligent Enterprise vision.

  • Work visible to the public SAP community

    Public co-presentation

    Mindset and Red Wing's Garage team co-presented the collaboration publicly, sharing the Design Thinking journey with the SAP ecosystem.