Double Your Diamond helps teams turn tangled challenges into tested, workable solutions. For fifteen years we've worked across Europe, the US, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
We help teams look at hard problems honestly. We widen the search for ideas, then narrow towards answers worth building.
End-to-end research, ideation, prototyping and testing to delight your customers and find your edge.
Replace low-value meetings with collaboration designed for the goal. Unlock the productivity most organisations leave on the table.
Surface hidden strengths and cognitive diversity to raise engagement, psychological safety and lasting loyalty.
A tailored blend of all three dimensions of organisational excellence, shaped around your challenge.
18 months, 21 workshops and 29 interviews to lift engagement across an 80-person technology department.
A four-day sprint mapping the used-car ecosystem and pitching three business-model prototypes to leadership.
A repeatable three-week process that carried 40 employee ideas from research to prototype and pitch.
A four-day sprint with 25 staff producing ten tested prototypes for better member communication.
“Thanks for the awesome design thinking workshop to improve our tech organization. We generated prototypes that were ready for implementation the day after the workshop - great!”Martin Hilgers · former Director Germany Delivery and Global Mobile, American Express
“A good understanding of Design Thinking should be required for all business leaders looking to run a transformation program of any kind or size. René taught us a lot.”Andrés Gluecksmann · Senior Director, Salesforce
“René took the time to understand our needs and tailored a practical programme that went far beyond standard training. We learnt each stage of the innovation process, and his clear guidance helped us confidently apply this to our work, with René providing valuable coaching along the way.”Hayden Rodgers · Manager Collections Design, StatsNZ
“René's expertise in Human-Centred Design and Design Thinking has been instrumental for us. His contribution has laid a strong foundation for the next phase of our digital transformation.”Stephen Pennruscoe · Head of Public Engagement, Canterbury Museum
“René made innovation practical and approachable. We learned by doing, with plenty of hands-on exercises and thoughtful feedback along the way. I left with the confidence and tools to start applying what I'd learned immediately in my own work.”Lizzie Dryden · Outreach and Engagement Lead, ChristchurchNZ
“I have worked with René to re-develop a design process for companies, acknowledging New Zealand's strengths, weaknesses, and risk profiles. I have found René to be open to questioning the status quo and eager to seek ways for design to find new meaning.”Dorenda Britten · Innovation expert and sister of New Zealand innovator John Britten
“René is an excellent Design Thinker with lots of experience and thorough knowledge of innovation. In addition, he is willing and able to get deep into the respective subject matter.”Dr. Claudia Skibbe · Chief Digital Officer, German Development Bank
“I've lost count of the times I've been surprised by the way René moves a group through divergence and convergence.”John Masson · former CTO, Kilterset
“René significantly contributed to how effectively we undertook organisational evolution and development. Using design thinking techniques, René facilitated numerous initiatives which led to a higher quality experience for our team and customers.”Abhinav Keswani · former CEO, Trineo
“René accompanied a challenging change project as a design thinking coach and inspired us with his professional competence and his calm and likeable manner.”Florian Theimer · CEO, MaibornWolff
Tell us about the problem you're wrestling with. No pitch. Just a conversation.
Start a conversation →We help organisations get better at three things that reinforce one another: how they innovate, how they work, and how they feel to work in. Progress in one lifts the others.
Creating offerings customers love through research, ideation, prototyping and testing, end to end.
Designing how people collaborate so time turns into value, day-to-day and week-to-week.
Building engagement, psychological safety and trust so teams do their best work.
These dimensions overlap. A more innovative organisation needs the culture to take risks; a healthier culture needs meetings that respect people's time. We work across all three. Where it helps, we combine them into a single bespoke engagement.
Underneath every engagement is a disciplined method: open up widely, then narrow down; prototype early and cheaply; test before committing. Every phase is a chance to spend a little to avoid losing a lot. We make small, deliberate bets in place of one big gamble.
Small losses come from investing in something that gets scrapped later. For example, an early prototype might fail at testing and be replaced by a different one for the same feature.
Big losses come from building something complex that ultimately meets neither customer nor business needs.
Small gains come from investing in something that contributes towards customer or business needs. That might be a series of interviews that deepens your understanding of who you're building for, or a feature prototype validated with customers.
Big gains come from building a complex product or service that ultimately delights customers and achieves business goals.
Every engagement is shaped around the problem in front of us.
See it in practice →Three dimensions of organisational excellence, with bespoke engagements that can combine them.
Research, ideation, prototyping and testing from end to end. Delight your customers. Find your edge.
Can include project leadership, training, mentoring & coaching.
In most organisations, a large share of meetings create little value. The causes include unclear purpose, the wrong people, weak facilitation and no follow-up. The answer isn't fewer meetings; it's matching each collaboration goal to a format designed for it. The result is efficiency and effectiveness, day-to-day and week-to-week.
Can include project leadership, training, mentoring & coaching.
Surface sources of dissatisfaction and hidden strengths, including both hard and soft skills. Tap into cognitive diversity, build team structures that maximise collective capability, and raise engagement, psychological safety, purpose, satisfaction, loyalty and retention.
Can include project leadership, training, mentoring & coaching.
These three dimensions often overlap. Double Your Diamond can combine all three into a bespoke approach to organisational excellence, shaped around your challenge.
Tell us the outcome you're after and we'll suggest the shortest honest path to it.
Let's chat →Example engagements across innovation, service design, efficiency and organisational culture, with the outcomes they reached.
An 80-person IT department with low engagement. Over 18 months: 21 workshops across 7 teams, 29 confidential interviews and a weekly change committee. Engagement and relationships measurably improved.
A four-day sprint into the used-vehicle market: an end-to-end ecosystem journey map, top-three ideas prototyped, and recommendations pitched to leadership.
A repeatable three-week process that carried 40 employee ideas from research to prototype and executive pitch.
A four-day sprint with 25 staff across five teams; ten prototypes tested with real members and presented to the CEO.
Two days building end-to-end capability with 15 key employees, covering research, personas, journeys, ideation, prototyping and testing.
We help organisations reach a higher level of organisational excellence across the products and services they create, the way they work, and the culture they work in. For fifteen years we've partnered with teams from museums and ministries to some of the world's best-known brands, on four continents.
I'm René, a practitioner with a physicist's rigour and a philosopher's curiosity.
I founded Double Your Diamond to help organisations think more clearly and act more boldly. Certified through the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany, I pair deep method with a calm, humble style: quiet, practical work grounded in good research, honest facilitation, and prototypes that earn their place before anyone commits to them.
I've worked across Europe, the US, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand for over sixteen years. I'm based here in New Zealand and work with teams anywhere.
“He inspired us with his professional competence and his calm and likeable manner.”Florian Theimer · CEO, MaibornWolff
Tell us about the problem you're wrestling with. The tangled, hard-to-phrase kind is exactly right. No pitch, no obligation, just a conversation about whether we can help.
Double Your Diamond · Aotearoa New Zealand · working with teams worldwide.