Startup School: Week 2

Week 2 is behind us now. So here is just a quick update on what we got up to.
In case you missed it, here is my commentary on Week 1.

There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed

— Mahatma Gandhi

This week touched on few interesting topics. Firstly, the idea of starting your business or running your existing business on top of a purpose. Companies are moving more and more towards defining their purpose and doing everything in their power to remain aligned with that purpose. Purpose driven businesses will have an organisational culture that is far stronger, more sustainable and scalable that other businesses that do not have a purpose or those that simply don’t stick to their defined purpose.

This has lead to companies seeing themselves as forces of good in the world and in turn are creating products and services that are meaningful. As a business, one of the key activities is to motivate your employees. Motivated employees will tend to work more productively, stay engaged and aligned to the values of the company. Profits have been used to try create this motivation, however, giving employees a purpose can create a much more meaningful work experience for your employees. This keeps them happy and productive and in a way profit becomes secondary.

I really enjoyed looking at how companies run on purpose can thrive. It is something I will without a doubt be implementing in my future businesses or roles where I am able to influence the business on this higher level.

Following on from the learnings about purpose, we were introduced to global and local challenges. These challenges are those ones that impact billions of people all around the world. We are all striving to solve these problems. Some examples are climate change, food security and unemployment. Solving these problems is not easy.

We are living in a time where technology is growing extremely rapidly. Leveraging this exponential growth is a way to bring about real change in the world. These technologies are decreasing in cost making new solutions much more affordable. By taking these technologies and empowering the people affected by the global challenges, solutions can be found. This is called inclusive innovation. Groups of people who have traditionally been excluded from technological advances are empower to design and create solutions to the problems that they face. This both aids directly to easing their situation but also enables them to grow both socially and economically.

Finishing off this week was the assignment. We had to apply the design thinking process to our ideas that are solving a particular problem. This meant starting with empathising with the people who are affected by the problem we are seeking to solve. This phase really allowed one to gain a deeper understanding of the challenge. Moving to the next phase, we had to define the problem. Clearly articulate what we are trying to solve. This leads to the ideation phase. Brainstorming as many potential soluttions as one can. Really understanding the problem helps make this a fun creative exercise. The main take away here is that no idea is too crazy. Take notes of them all. Who knows, at the rate technology is moving it might not be long before those ideas are possible.

The last two phases were prototype and test. For the sake of the assignment we just needed to touch on how we would create a prototype and follow through with testing.

Applying this kind of thinking really helps take people context and culture into account. It is also a very creative process. I encourage you to have a look at design thinking and how it can impact your business and product.

On to Week 3. Thanks for reading!