“I encourage the conversation to move away from either/or, but/and, and if/that and really start thinking about what are the motivating factors and how do we enhance those motivations to really understand what it is we’re getting at.”
Gena Rotstein is a fundraising innovator and co-founded Karma and Cents. And Gena is on a mission to help people advance good ideas faster.
How?
“It is about that scientific rigour. I want to help people create a hypothesis, bring the right people together to have a conversation and test whether or not the question we’re asking is really the right question. And then I help people rapid prototype a solution. Because we don’t want people to be spending thousands of dollars across three years piloting a project that’s flawed, when they could easily have figured it out in in a 12 week to 16 week period.”
It’s a model perfected in Silicon Valley and Gena says when she starts by asking if solution-makers are even asking the right question? “All of a sudden, we’re not trying to put a position statement forward. We’re just trying to figure out where’s the start line? Are we even on the same playing field?”
It’s why this model – this tool known as design thinking – is one we all can benefit from, argues art innovator Jerry McGrath.
“Design thinking centres the experience of people, which I think should be obvious, but isn’t always obvious. It provides a focus for different groups of people to come together to work on a particular problem.”
Jerry McGrath uses design thinking to advance art-driven solutions to social problems. As an example?
“How would you design a product if you were concerned about 200 years from now; if you’re concerned about the planet that we live on?”
The solution to that question – to any question – Jerry says “is not going to come from one place or the other. It’s going to come from a combination of places.”
According to Jerry, that means we all need to “talk to scientists and talk to philosophers and talk to economists. We need to talk to everybody because we’re going to have to work collectively if we’re going to actually figure these challenges we’re facing.”
Artist Maggie MacDonald agrees, telling us the best way to reach that goal is use a tool like design thinking to help “allow for trying and failing.
Maggie argues, “Prototype something so you make you make a test project. You invite people to interact with it, you see how it goes.”
Randall Howard – one of Canada’s top angel investors – explains that the value in doing this is “you build a minimum viable product. You build something and get it out there and beta test and have people try it and then you get lots of feedback.
Randall adds, “That kind of process of discovery? It hopefully takes you to what your real product was supposed to be. At an early stage, come up with an idea and shape it by having people use it. That’s really critical to success across the whole spectrum these days.”
Which isn’t to say that the Silicon start-up model or design thinking strategies are the only processes for advancing new ideas or creating change. But they are tools, just as what you’ve learned in this course is a tool too.
Taken together, you now have the tools needed to move beyond learning and into doing.
After all, Ilona Dougherty – Canada’s leading thinker on youth innovation – says, “We need to integrate learning and doing. We need to recognize that young people have something to contribute now while they’re young.
Ilona adds, “It’s not just about learning while you’re young and doing what when you’re older and contributing when you’re older. So, we need to put young people in spaces where the actions they take will have consequences – and those can be positive consequences or sometimes young people will fail and that’s okay too.”
Why does this matter?
“Folks who go on to make incredible impact when they’re older have likely been the ones who were making impact on social and environmental issues while they were young. The only way to be a change-maker is to be a change-maker while you’re young.”