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

suzi.sosa@austin.utexas.edu

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

Modern Prototyping : The Miracle Brace

1:25

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

suzi.sosa@austin.utexas.edu

www.dellchallenge.org