Live Session #46| Topic: “Innovators Team: How might we make it easy for innovators and enablers to co-create and scale impactful innovations?

Join us to learn more about this transformative initiative called ‘Innovators Team’ and how you can be a part of driving meaningful change through open innovation. This event is for all the members of the Proportion Global community, who stand at the crossroads of innovation and human-centred design (HCD).

Date: Wednesday, June 12th 2024 from 4:30 – 6 pm East African Time (EAT)

Agenda and Inspirators:

1. Introducing the idea behind Innovators Team – by Thomas Schuurmans (10’)
2. The new role of designers (Design 2.0 framework) – by Emnet Woubishet Teklu (10’)
3. Our hypothesis of the various value propositions – by Mrignaina Tikku (20’)
4. Designing a co-innovation platform for governments of seven countries – by Ahmed Saalim Iddrisu (15’)
5. How can a community in the North of Kenya benefit from an open innovation approach? – by Kanana Kaburu (15’)
6. Existing platforms: pros and cons – by Ahmed Saalim Iddrisu and David Kaguima (20’)
7. Next steps, and how can you engage throughout the process – by Thomas Schuurmans (10’)

Background Information

Challenge:
A lot of effort (and money) is spent on developing new innovative ideas to solve problems in communities. From social entrepreneurs to NGOs, there are numerous projects that follow HCD steps, like Design research, ideation, prototyping and piloting. So why is it that most of these pilots are not brought to scale?
Assumptions:
Our assumption is that successful scalable solutions, that truly have impact on a system, tick multiple boxes:

1. The research insights are spot-on
2. The value proposition has been validated and optimised for and with users
3. The product or service is built on a technology that simply works and is scalable
4. There is a business model that is viable, independent from one-off donations/startup capital
5. There is strong alignment with government policies, that drive scaling rather than obstruct it
6. There are partners on board who have the network and outreach that enables operating at scale
7. There are investors who are interested in funding the growth stages of a solution

Hence, our overarching problem statement is that a single innovator (for instance an NGO or social entrepreneur) does not have the competencies in-house to tick all these boxes. It requires a multi-stakeholder team effort to bring impactful solutions to scale.
Opportunity & Ambition:
Proportion Global has various instances where we occasionally facilitated co-innovation processes. For example, we hosted monthly round table discussions with 6 innovation directors from leading INGOs. And we supported the innovation process of numerous innovators tackling the Afri-Plastics Challenge.
We now believe and have the ambition to be fully intentional about bringing multi-stakeholders together to co-create solutions to systemic problems that matter. This can vary from solving the systemic challenges around youth unemployment, up to systemic challenges around gender-based violence.
Hypothesis/solution direction:
We believe that if we proactively bring all types of innovators (social entrepreneurs, NGOs, tech experts, thematic experts, academics, designers, and investors) together on a social platform and provide clear guidance on how these stakeholders can collaborate to solve big problems, then the solutions that come out of these collaborations create impact at a massive scale because all required competences and organisations for success are together innovating as a team effort. We call it the “Innovators Team”.
Starting point:
We don’t start from scratch. We have already a great basis: 150+ designers from 51 countries, on a social platform, who have a huge collective experience in facilitating co-innovation processes and a huge collective network of clients.
Design Challenge: We encourage everyone from the Proportion global community to engage in the design process of this challenge. We will follow the steps of HCD; from conducting research, redefining the design challenges, co-creating ideas, prototyping, testing & refining and scaling the Innovators Team.
Community live sessions:
We will run a series of community live sessions, to engage everyone in the process steps. This first session is about setting the stage, share initial findings and to explain how everyone can engage to observe, learn or actively contribute.

We look forward to seeing you at the webinar and collaborating on creating sustainable solutions for our global challenges!

Please click on the link below to add this event to your calendar.