Observe the world like a child: with “fresh eyes”
After 12 intense weeks, it is time to wrap up our Design Thinking in Social Innovation class. These past months felt like a lifetime and a blink of an eye at the same time. Throughout this journey, I definitely faced many challenges: sometimes I was very excited about a new insight while in other situations I got frustrated— but all of these moments and feelings definitely make me stronger today.
During our face-to-face classes, I had many key moments which made me rethink certain behaviors. Especially, the “Yes, and…” challenge is something that is stuck in my mind. Generally, it is always easy for us to find reasons why something cannot work or why it is a bad idea rather than finding further good arguments to support a thought and coming up with additional complements. Especially in a business and management context, we tend to follow a fact-based approach. However, as innovation increasingly will be key for sustaining a business in the long-term, this way of thinking needs to adapt and we need more people and especially companies, who allow and embrace it. This is why I definitely learned from this class, that empowering different points of view leads to creativity and wild and spontaneous ideas. This is something I want to keep close to my heart, particularly when entering the real business world soon.
I also like to think about this as observing the world like a child: with fresh eyes. I learned, that I tend to eliminate myself by my own philosophy about life, and based on this I decide which things are “good” and which are “bad”. My philosophy of life is something, I built up throughout the years I grew up and it keeps getting stronger as I am a young adult now. However, if I never break through or interrupt it, I will stop growing. This is why, I will keep reminding myself about the “Yes, and…” phrase to not get stuck at one point.
Throughout the journey, I noticed, that I am struggling exactly with this way of doing things: not being biased and “allowing” thoughts to happen and enhance themselves. Especially working in a diverse group setting, it is important to let loose, step back from your own point of view, and the belief that “I am always right”. In the end, this is exactly what we need: stepping out of your own comfort zone in any opportunity there is.
I really like the following citation from the article “The Ten Faces of Innovation”, which summarizes my key takeaway from this class in a nutshell:
“Treat life as one big experiment and you’ll start building a framework for continuous learning. […] So don’t wait at the starting line trying to figure out the whole race. Just get moving and start trying things out. Along the way you might discover a new way to win.” — The Ten Faces of Innovation
We should much more view our way of life as something, which is not planned out nor has an existing route in place for us already. The Design Thinking Process is a great analogy for the route of life: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test and implement. You will never arrive at the finish line and be like: I have finally figured everything out in life. I have understood, that life is a never-ending learning process. Just how it is in the Design Thinking Process, it is crucial to use my senses and to read, hear and see more rather than overshading observations with my own philosophy of life. Also, it is important to realize that things do not work out as they were initially planned and that it is ok. In those moments I will remind myself to adapt and rethink and listen more and speak less.
Now, looking forward to everything ahead of me, the question we discussed in class about the role of power and how it is so bilateral as it has a good and bad side, is stuck in my head. Personally, I think it is very important to understand that power is two-sided and everyone can and has the chance to use their power. As I have and will have some kind of power in the future, I want to make sure that I am making use of it in a good way and contributing with it positively to the world. Our course contributed to building and strengthening positive aspects of power, which I will continuously grow and work on from now on. In class, we discussed that good power is about enriching and empowering people and their ideas. As mentioned before, I tend to stick with my philosophy of life, however, through this course I realized this and I want to further work on it to embrace power in a positive way. I can say for sure, that Design Thinking for Social Innovation is a course, that enriched, developed, and strengthened my good power traits.
