Blockchain Can’t Wait for Design Thinking. And So Can’t Natalya Thakur
Natalya Thakur is on a mission to transform the blockchain and crypto industry through design thinking. A lifelong advocate for financial inclusion and literacy, Thakur has gone from leading a non-profit to founding BlackRock’s Design Thinking Innovation Program. She believes by drawing upon a designer’s toolkit of empathy and experimentation, blockchain can arrive at new heights. Today, she is a dual MBA/MPA Candidate at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Kennedy School. Most recently, Natalya authored the co-authored the 2019 Blockchain for Social Impact research report, a survey of 193 organizations seeking to leverage blockchain to benefit the public. We sat down with Thakur to talk about financial inclusion, empowering girls and bridging design thinking with blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Embracing Design Thinking
A self-proclaimed ‘design school junkie,’ Thakur came across d.school during her undergraduate years at Stanford University. “It was realizing that there was a problem-solving toolkit that you can apply to anything. I was super inspired by it.”
In her senior year of undergrad, this passion became Girl Possible, a global nonprofit she co-founded that seeks to empower young women to become leaders of social change through design thinking and leadership workshops. She stayed involved with Girl Possible, while also formally joining BlackRock full time once she graduated. However, she sensed something amiss once she began working there.
“I felt a void [of] design thinking and I felt BlackRock could benefit from it.”
Design Thinking Meets Blockchain
At BlackRock, Thakur founded the Design Thinking Innovation Program. The program began as a grassroots effort piloting several workshops with the support of a handful of directors. “There was not a ton of support to put funding behind this effort, but I think as a new young employee I was hungry to make it happen,” she said.
“If we are not thinking about the process of innovation, our solutions will fall short of great. It does not have to be only at an executive leadership retreat where they talk about innovation, democratizing access to innovation means anyone could use the toolkit on a daily basis.”
Today, the program has spun out initiatives such as an Innovation Week, hackathons, analyst training, internal consulting, and a design thinking onboarding program in Blackrock’s Budapest office. While at BlackRock, Thakur also was a part of the blockchain working group to help with internal education and the firm’s exploration of business use cases.
Blockchain, Natalya argues, is not the silver bullet to solve the world’s problems. Much of the allure around blockchain centers around its potential for decentralization and democratization yet it remains is a 1% conversation. “The most revolutionary and innovative aspect of blockchain lies in its potential to disrupt existing structures governing economic life — to provide decentralized alternatives to monopolistic and centralized entities,” she said.
“There are a lot of people who come into this space who are misinformed but if you take a step back and think about who the user is and what their needs are, you do not actually need blockchain to solve the problem. But that does not mean the technology cannot be impactful.”
Her response: design thinking. “Design thinking helps reframe the problem. Who is the user? What are the needs? Does this technology and its applications actually solve the problem?” For Natalya, protocol design should be an iterative approach grounded in design thinking that focuses on user needs and encourages collaboration across disciplines outside of cryptography, finance, and software development.
“The challenges surrounding blockchain adoption are as much human as it is a technological one. I feel like if we use more design thinking in this space a lot of people would be pleasantly surprised to find that despite the nascency of the industry, the applications are tenfold.” The usability and user experience of these decentralized applications will impact adoption rates across sectors, design thinking allows us to create new opportunities for business while also keeping in sight the human side of the equation.
An Entrepreneurial Focus
This past year, Natalya co-authored the 2019 Blockchain for Social Impact report (Forbes), the first of its kind in the industry, along with other Stanford graduate students and Doug Galen, co-founder and CEO of RippleWorks. The report showcases the different case studies of organizations using blockchain for social impact; from its use to process payments and transactions in fintech to maintaining patient privacy in the healthcare space.
She is also an IDEO CoLab Fellow exploring various verticals such as the open financial system, circular economy, and other problems within those areas, and how blockchain applications can help advance solutions in the future. Additionally, she completed a fellowship with Celo, a crypto start-up focused on financial inclusion, working on design-based workshops to help central banks thinking about digital currency policy.
Bridging the Financial Literacy Gap
“Blockchain and cryptocurrency are really compelling to me because I do believe they are going to play a big part in global financial inclusion and access,” she attests.
“When I went to BlackRock I instantly realized there is so much to unpack within the financial world” she confesses. “I was sitting in a job in finance and I still felt like I was at a disadvantage.” Today, she continues to run financial literacy workshops at Stanford for both undergraduate and graduate students, providing one hour sessions on retirement, investing, savings, etc.
Empowering Girls Through Design Thinking
Thakur is now an ambassador of she256 and supports our mission through her experience in design thinking, blockchain and leadership.
It harks back to her early days at Girl Possible.
What kicked off with a 14-week RV trip across the country in 2014 has since become a global initiative. This year, Girl Possible hits its five-year mark — reaching thousands of girls across 15 countries complete with an annual leadership summer camp and fellowship program.
In its earlier days, it was Natalya and her other founders who would lead the workshops. “We would teach one to two almost every day,” she recollected. “We work with middle school girls for a reason because that is around the age they start to lose their voice and where they start to allow stereotypes affect the way they view themselves as leaders and changemakers.”
“The design thinking toolkit is helping these girls approach how they can make an impact on the problems they are most passionate about. “I think something that stood out was working with communities that wanted to integrate our curriculum into their own because they were looking at non-traditional models of teaching. Working with all the facilitators even after the road trip — people, teachers, and communities — is important to us, since they became our advocates whether you are a parent, an actual teacher or involved with out of school programming, these are the people doing the most incredible and impactful work, so we wanted to be a tool and catalyst for them.
And what comes after? “We have girls that come back and say ‘This has changed my life and parents that had been like ‘There has been a change in how our girls interact with their environment but it is really hard to quantify. However, it is the key to unlocking the freedom of being able to say ‘I can do anything.”
“It ties back with not only design thinking but with blockchain too — when there is something in front of you that seems nebulous whether that is a new industry or you are the youngest person in the company — the ability to break down a complex problem into solvable parts is such a big one and opens up entirely new possibilities.”
