Lasagna and other challenges
What would you do if you had 12 hours to re-imagine everything you knew about your job/ your passion/ your experience? This was the question that was posed to a brave and dedicated group from the Phoenix Society during a day and a half long design studio led by the Business Innovation Factory.
The Challenge:
How might the Phoenix Society become a presence, asset, resource, and advocate for the burn community worldwide?
The group was first presented with a set of mindsets to consider. These approaches are an integral part to the design approach employed by BIF, and are essential to the success of collaborative innovation:
1) Be flexible and unattached
2) Have a bias towards action
3) Be future facing
4) Support a hive-mind
5) Be generative
The group was tasked with keeping these mindsets present throughout the entirety of the workshop, and were regularly asked to consider their adherence to them; but first we asked them to make lasagna…. Yes, lasagna.
Given a set of ingredients, the group was charged with creating the future of lasagna, while still maintaining the essence of the dish. The purpose of the lasagna challenge was to become comfortable with the idea of reconfiguring and rethinking a lasagna while still holding true to its story and essence
This process was carried into our first round of concept design, when the group was asked to conceptualize the future of the Phoenix Society (the lasagna) by reimagining different combinations of current and future capabilities (ingredients) while still maintaining alignment with their mission (essence).
This first attempt at creating a new business model concepts carried the group into day two, where they would be challenged to transition from small tweaks into real transformation.
Through a series of drawings, discussions, sharing and reflections; the group created four solid concepts that were challenged, iterated upon, questioned, and supported for hours. And then came the hard part.
It wasn’t about Lasagna and drawings anymore. The group was pushed to the point of #peaksquig; struggling to defend the transformative properties of their idea, creating a revenue model and developing a viable testing strategy.
Creativity, as it turns out, is not as easy as we would all like to pretend it is. Our participants noted that removing yourself from your own experiences, while necessary to generate new ideas, is an incredible challenge.
At the end of their 12 hours, the Phoenix Society left our Providence offices with a set of defined concepts that resolved their design challenge, moved their organization to a future-facing place, and maintained alignment with their mission. They are now better positioned to adopt and test a new business strategy, and equipped with a new set of tools that enable and encourage creative, innovative thought and solutions.
Not bad for 12 hours.
