Design thinking, young professionals and the healing power of food

My friend Matt reached out to me about hosting a Meetup where he works. He’s the Director of Innovation at Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts. They are wonderful, generous hosts (and all around awesome people) so of course I jumped at the chance. We partnered with Community Servings, an incredible organization that provides meals to the critically ill and their families, and the Boston Young Professional’s Association.

Matt, and his team from Blue Cross and a few folks from Mad*Pow, lent top-notch tech support, as participants learned from each other; what was important to them, from a financial sense, by looking at “a month in the life”. They interviewed each other in pairs on topics like; “how they spent their time?” and “what was important to them?” and “what does community mean?” Participants recorded their findings on journey maps to get real-time feed back and make what they were hearing visible. They then broke into small groups and shared their maps with one another and recorded what they heard in the form of assumptions. Those assumptions were turned into questions, recorded on post-its, then clustered into like themes.

Our conversation after brought to light some very interesting insights. One person posed the opinion that being very open and honest with a stranger was far more easy with a total stranger than with someone they see everyday. Another person felt that collaboration was easer with strangers, as well.

One of the missions of the Meetup is to bring a diverse and curious set of people together to experience something they might experience in everyday life. Tonight, I think the mission might have grown to include doing good things for the community and supporting those already doing good things.