Tag Archives: prototype

Innovation self-efficacy: Do you believe you can create change?

Mazatlan Diver Sequence
I came across an intriguing and unique perspective on this question through the video of a talk given by Liz Gerber, a professor in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University.

Liz’s talk covers her thinking on how we can use design processes as a way to change people’s belief in their ability to innovate and create change. And not just any innovation and change — but how we address some of the more difficult challenges facing society (for example, the obesity epidemic).

In the the video, Liz makes the comment that when discussing social change issues, you often hear non-designers say things like “I don’t know how to solve that problem,” or “I don’t know where to start.” But rarely do you hear something like that from a designer. Designers seem to have a fearlessness (Gerber’s word) when confronted with challenges that might require them to experiment and fail before finding a solution. So how do we teach people to have the fearlessness that ultimately leads to innovation?

Gerber’s answer is a mastery experience — actually doing design for social change. And in her case it takes the form of Design for America, a program for undergraduates at Northwestern where cross-disciplinary teams of students collaborate with local community groups and non-profits to solve real problems.

There is a great moment in the video during which one of the DfA students relates his experience and the impact it has had on his “innovation self-efficacy.” I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of these students as they work on their projects and his story and insights are common across them all. It is easy to be affected not only by the enthusiasm, but the real results that are coming out of their efforts.

For me, the challenge of learning from design process is first learning how to turn off your natural inclination to jump to a solution. There is a real payoff in dedicated empathic observation, and in combining observation with smart data gathering and analysis, before you begin to brainstorm potential solutions. Challenge #2 is in learning from prototype. Again, it’s a skill to detach your emotions from a prototype design and learn from how your target population actually engages with the prototype before moving forward. It’s good to fail. You learn. And you learn to become fearless.

Photo Mazaltan Diver Sequence By Jennifer Williams from Hayward, USA (Mazatlan Diver Sequence) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Strategic challenge: Learning how to collaborate for social impact

In the days leading up to a strategic planning retreat for The Talking Farm, I have been reflecting on “scale” and “impact” — two concepts often discussed in relation to non-profits or social enterprises. Can we/should we/how might we scale to have greater impact?

This is a particularly relevant issue — in my view — for non-profits like The Talking Farm that operate in an environment characterized by a rich landscape of other non-profits or public organizations working on the same fundamental issue. In this case, it’s the desire to impact the local food system. Dozens of organizations in the Chicago area are addressing food system issues, albeit in different communities and with slightly different approaches or goals. Layer on top of that national organizations such as Slow Food USA or the National Farm-to-School Network, Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, etc. and you begin to see a network of abundant resources.

So is the question really about scaling to achieve greater impact, or being more strategic about learning how to collaborate within a large network of resources? And if it’s the latter, what does that look like, exactly?

I am beginning to think that “what it looks like” is something like strategic hypothesis testing and prototyping. It seems beneficial to first be clear about an operating hypothesis: “Locating a 3-acre, production farm within an urban setting provides a leverage point for food-system issue awareness, education, jobs and new venture development.” But determining how best to collaborate with the larger network of resources — to drive the greatest social impact — also takes a bit of hypothesizing (“what is our most impactful role among the network of resources?”) and then prototyping some thoughtful collaborations with like-minded organizations. Hypothesize > prototype > learn > adapt.

We’ll see if this applies to The Talking Farm’s strategic planning over the next several weeks.

For two excellent pieces exploring the issues around scale and impact for non-profits, I recommend:

Driving Change: It’s not just about size by Sally Osberg, President and CEO of Skoll Foundation (published in the McKinsey & Co. blog What Matters.)

Scaling Impact: How to get 100x the results with 2x the organization by Jeffrey Bradach, cofounder and managing partner of the Bridgespan Group (published online in the Stanford Social Innovation Review)