design thinking for social innovation
DESCRIPTION
Suzi Sosa, Executive Director, Dell Social Innovation Challenge, The University of Texas at AustinTRANSCRIPT
Design Thinking for Social Innovation
A Systematic Approach to
Generating Ideas with Impact
Suzi Sosa
Associate Director
RGK Center
The University of Texas at Austin
www.dellchallenge.org
An Historical Bifurcation
Mission Money
Organizational Consequences
Mission Money
Government
NGO
CBO
Business
Early Crossovers
Mission Money
Government
NGO
CBO
Business
Pub/Private
Partnerships
NGO w Earned
Income
CSR
Cooperatives
Disappointing Results
• Social problems fundamentally unsolved
• Disenchantment with “pure” business, “pure” NGO, and “pure”
government
Failures:
Consequences:
NGOs -> Few mission-based solutions able to scale
Business -> Few business CSR programs with meaningful impact
All -> Lack of dynamic social innovation
A Spectrum Emerges
For Profit Non-Profit
Traditional
Business
Business
with Social
Impact
Hybrid
NGO
with Earned
Income
Traditional
NGO
Financial Sustainability
Social Impact
Best of Both Worlds
Mission Money
• social commitment
• distributive (selfless)
nature
• inspire others
• collaborative
• inclusive
• focused objective
• operational efficiency
• access to capital
• easier to scale
• more innovation/risk-
taking
• leverage the
market/consumers
Social Entrepreneurship
1. Innovative idea = significant social
impacts
2. Financially sustainable business model (& efficient use of resources)
3. Replicable & scalable
Why innovation?
What is Innovation?
“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act
that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”
- Peter Drucker
Innovation Value
Private Sector : Value = Money
Social Sector : Value = Social Impact
Innovation & Value
An innovation creates a significant increase in the marginal delivery of value
with regard to a persistent social problem
Socia
l Im
pact
Current
Impact
Current
Impact
Innovation Improvement
New
Impact
New
Impact
How do you find value?
Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?
What is Design Thinking?
What is Design Thinking?
Design for Innovation
Idea generation Synthesis
create choices
make choices
INNOVATION!
The Innovation Cycle
Inspiration
Ideation
Iteration Implementation
The Design Process
Inspiration Ideation Implementation
idea generation synthesis
create
choices
make
choices INNOVATION!
Iteration
LISTENING
DREAMING
ANALYZING
THINKING
PROTOTYPING
EXPERIMENTING
Key Traits of the Approach
• Deploys both right-brain and left-brain strategies
• Iterative, experimental
• Interactive, collaborative
• Interdisciplinary
• Challenges assumptions by suspending beliefs.
• Observes the problem with a beginner’s mindset.
• Assumes nothing.
Find the Core of the Problem
It’s not just to find answers but to make sure that you are asking
the right questions.
Decon/Recon-Struction
Scotia-Glenville Traveling Children’s Museum
The Innovation Cycle
Inspiration
Ideation
Iteration Implementation
Who is the person you are trying to serve?
What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Two Key Questions:
Start with the person (that will lead you to the problem)
Phase 1: Inspiration
Listening
Dreaming
&
Listening: Who Are They Anyway?
The most meaningful social innovations come from deep and precise
understanding of the circumstances and needs of the client.
Two Types of Listening
1 : Direct Source (external)
2 : Empathy-based (internal)
Individual interviews (5 why’s, think aloud, show me)
Group interviews
In context immersion (work alongside, home-stay, re-creation)
Self-documentation (photos, videos, drawings)
Community-driven discovery (engage community in research)
Expert interviews
Listening Techniques
IDEO
Method Cards
Personal Interviews
Group Interviews
• HUMAN
CENTERED
DESIGN
• ETHNOGRAPHY
Empathy (Another Type of Listening)
• Empathy Map
• Storytelling
TECHNIQUES
A Day in the Life
Have you lived a day
in the life of your
client?
Empathy Map
Empathy Map
Storytelling
Dreaming
Dreaming, too
Journaling
Drawing
Building
Exercise
Music
Observation Empathy Insight
Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?
The Innovation Cycle
Inspiration
Ideation
Iteration Implementation
Phase 2: Ideation
Seeing Patterns
Ideation Process
• Extract Key Insights (few and powerful)
• Organize Ideas (by level or magnitude)
• Find Themes (linkages)
• Create Frameworks (visual representation of the system)
Goal: Identify Potential Opportunities
Frameworks
TIP: Push them to
extremes to find insights
Mind Maps
Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?
The Innovation Cycle
Inspiration
Ideation
Iteration Implementation
Prototyping for Services
The Pilot Project
The Innovation Cycle
Inspiration
Ideation
Iteration Implementation
Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?
Why is design thinking important
for social entrepreneurship?
Reduces Risk
• Unlike traditional businesses, social enterprises often cannot “afford”
to push a partially-developed product or service and wait for market
feedback
• costs may be too high
• potential negative social
impacts may be too large
Design thinking improves the quality of a product or
service from the start.
A Fresh Look
Social problems are extremely complex and many of them are
affiliated with a lot of “baggage” about how they ought to be
solved.
Design thinking allows entrepreneur to shed much (or all) of that
baggage, leading to an innovation.
Innovate Everything
Social problems are extremely entrenched and require new,
innovative methods to solve them in financially sustainable ways.
Require innovation not just in the product or service but also often in
the delivery, financial model, partnerships, etc.
“In the end, you have to rise
above them. You have to say
you solved all that.”
Doing the Impossible
Designers have a lot of places to hide
behind, a lot of excuses.
“The client made me do this.” “The
city made me do this.”
I don’t believe that anymore.
WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL | LOS ANGELES
Frank Gehry | Architect
Summary: the Path to Innovation
• challenging or abandoning previously held assumptions;
• uncovering hidden truths;
• discovering opportunities for significant improvement;
• vigorous disassembly followed by methodical reassembly incorporating
new information;
• an iterative, ongoing process that takes nothing for granted and
is obsessive in its pursuit of perfection.
Innovation Comes From:
Design Thinking for Social Innovation
A Systematic Approach to
Generating Ideas with Impact
Suzi Sosa
Associate Director
RGK Center
The University of Texas at Austin
www.dellchallenge.org