MING Labs: Making Businesses Future-Proof by Design

When pre-Socratic Greek theorist Heraclitus philosophized, “The only thing that is constant is change,” he might not have anticipated that his ideology would become a cornerstone for modern businesses that aim to keep pace with digital innovation. Today, while revamping business activities, processes, and competencies, implementation of technologies like AI, blockchain, and VR has become a crucial undertaking that no organization can ignore. However, merely focusing on technology implementations is not ‘digital reinvention.’ Sebastian Mueller, COO, MING Labs, describes digital reinvention as a process that involves careful rethinking of an organization’s complete business model. “Without overhauling business workflows and touchpoints, the true transformational potential of a company’s digital innovation journey can rarely be seized,” Mueller adds. This is what MING Labs achieves through its leading-edge user experience design and application development offerings. “We help businesses derive greater value from their digital transformation projects,” affirms Mueller.

Founded in 2011, this next-gen company started operating in Shanghai with an aim to become leaders of the web-designing arena. However, as time raced on, MING Labs did not want to settle as a typical product design company. “We wanted to assume the role of a strategist,” mentions Mueller. Driven by this goal, today, business design has become the backbone of MING Labs’ digital transformation services. “Applying system thinking, probing the entire customer journey, emphasizing value creation and touchpoints are all part of our value proposition,” Mueller asserts.

Furthermore, what truly enhances MING Labs’ reputation is its ability to blend creativity, technology, and data to implement its business designs. “We don’t just introduce a new product or service; we work closely with clients from an end-to-end perspective to help them grow. We think holistically,” he says.

Matthias Roebel, CEO, MING Labs, attributes the success of their holistic design approach to the diversity of the company’s leadership team—a dynamic mix of business and technology professionals. MING Labs boasts a close-knit team of 70 domain experts that enables them to go the extra mile and achieve a client’s business vision. “On one hand, we are small enough to care about every detail of the customer, and on the other, we have the clout to deliver large-scale engagements,” says the CEO.

Elucidating a case in point, Mueller describes how MING Labs helped a German automobile parts manufacturer. Anticipating challenges from modern-day electric vehicles, the client wanted to revamp their current product portfolio. The company started investing in several different solutions to evaluate the market risk, verify proof of concepts, and strategize new touchpoints. Based on those initiatives, the manufacturer decided to redesign its automobile parts by adding sensors and IoT capabilities. “MING Labs was chosen to design a solution for assessing the quality of the hardware devices that would be used to build their products,” says Roebel. “However, we wanted to dig deeper. We worked closely with the client to understand the customer requirements, and how the final products would be used, and accordingly realigned their business model and designed new touchpoints,” Roebel explains. While this approach aptly solved the client’s problem, what stood out was MING Labs’ ability to coalesce business and product designing initiatives.

Today, MING Labs’ pursuit of driving innovation extends beyond solving challenges for big corporations. “We are entrepreneurs, and we do not want to remain a run-of-the-mill services and agency-only business,” says Roebel. MING Labs proactively works with up-and-coming entrepreneurs, supporting them in building their company and products from the ground up. “This, for me, really balances our overall activity,” says Roebel. In the coming years, MING Labs intends to continue its services for startups, while strengthening its solutions portfolio for aiding larger organizations in the digital frontier.