Brainstorming about GRIN-CO-CREATIONS
GrinCo is a project developed in the context of the “Dare to Challenge” workshop by Betty Tsakarestou in Panteion university of Athens, where we’ve been encouraged to challenge social circumstances and offer viable solutions to digital and physical communities through innovation. Our project aims to be the first local open innovation organization that works in a co-creation digital and physical environment. Our goal is to change consumption and production patterns in Greece from self-interest actions to community and worldwide interest actions by following the co-creation economic system. Our digital platform serves as a meeting point for stakeholders to brainstorm, share ideas and collaborate in our physical labs of creativity.
On Wednesday, 26th of October, during the course Social issues, social innovation and corporate responsibility at Panteion university we were asked by the prof. Tsakarestou to have an hour of brainstorming with the members of our project group. Were were called upon using the so-called golden circle, starting with the WHY, continuing with the HOW and ending with the WHAT of our project.
The group I am part of consisted of four members; Ivan from Ukraine, Narinna and Dimitris from Greece and I, and after the brainstorm we were joined by Jason, so now we are five. We had the basic idea of what we were trying to do before the brainstorm already, however we haven’t all together really discussed about what the idea means to us, how we see and understand it. There were a lot of loose ends, which showed on our initial presentation of the idea to the class as well. We knew what we were trying to achieve and we had the same thoughts, however we didn’t know how to explain them, which means we didn’t understand them in perfection as well. If you can’t explain something to someone who knows nothing about it, it means you don’t understand it enough either.
Here is where the brainstorming session was really useful for us. It made us put our thoughts in order and on paper, explain and understand the parts, which were not clear until then. When all of us started thinking of the why, how and what we saw we have a lot of reasons and ways to do it, but we had to make it concrete. It was hard at times to divide what is the reason for doing something, what is the way we want to do it and what is the product we are doing it with.
We had a second meeting a few days after and continued to divide the answers to this three questions, which sound very simple and basic, but in the end turn out not to be.
The brainstorm was helpful in many ways. It made our goals and mechanisms clearer and now we understand much more what we are trying to do, how we must communicate it and what we still need to work on. It also opened a lot of space for improvements and additions to the project, which we haven’t thought about before.
Check out some photos from our brainstorming session:
Interested in another look at our brainstorming session? Check out this article: https://medium.com/dare-to-challenge/grin-co-creations-brainstorming-55ad4e2640a9#.7bssrf2rx
Our team includes:
