Rides4Refugees Part 1: Innovation Sprint Aims to Enhance Mobility for Refugee Community

Join the Center for Innovation Strategies and 99P Labs for this blog series on enhanced access to mobility for the refugee community in central Ohio.

This past year, our Center partnered with 99P Labs and Rides 4 Refugees on a challenging issue. Our collective goal — how can we help to alleviate the obstacles around mobility for refugees in central Ohio? The Ohio State University Center for Innovation Strategies (CIS) has worked with 99P since 2018 through our OnRamp program, a student innovation accelerator co-created with Honda Research Institute USA (HRI-US) to support their work at the intersection of future mobility, energy, and data.

To tackle this extensive problem, we conducted exploratory research and developed a tailored seven-week innovation program:

The OnRamp Mobility Sprint

In a series of workshops over seven weeks, multi-disciplinary teams of students worked through an innovation process led by CIS staff, with a focus on creating sustainable and unique concepts to enhance access to mobility for refugees. Topics covered include:

An introduction to the innovation process, including design-thinking and lean startup methods;

o Exploration using the design double-diamond, including exploratory research and convergence on refined problem/opportunity statements;

o Instruction on identifying and understanding customer and client unmet needs;

o Guided ideation of unique solutions based on these unmet needs; and

o Creation of a pitch deck summarizing their research, early-stage solution and next steps

The sprint concluded with each student team pitching their creative solutions to HRI/99P Labs senior leadership and leaders from the community. This included representatives from Rev1, the Central Ohio Transit Authority, and SHARE Mobility, as well as key nonprofits in the refugee community, ETSS and CRIS.

Stay tuned for more in this blog series, where we will share context on the refugee community in central Ohio, their transportation needs and challenges, potential mobility solutions for this community, and key insights and trends related to future mobility solutions.

Next post: A Refugee Journey