UNLEASH Innovation Lab: a Global Talent’s firsthand experience and key take-aways
Exactly one year ago during the first etape of my dual master degree programmes at CBS and LSE, I was involved in the making of a student innovation platform in the heart of Copenhagen. You see, when studying innovation management at a world renowned business school, you quickly realise the need for cross disciplinary co-creation with technical universities. So I teamed up with a group of talented entrepreneurs who had gotten their hands on an old police station that we then raised $10M to rebuild into a space offered the 160.000 university-level students in the Capital Region. The unoriginally named Student & Innovation House is set to open in 2020 as a hub for young change-makers to meet, exchange ideas and run project-based experiments in collaboration with each other as well as with companies, governments and society in general. To meet that deadline we managed to recruit 50 passionated volunteers to help build and run the organisation. Then, in the midst of outreach and seeking inspiration, I along with the rest of the steering committee ended up attending the Sustainable Innovation Summit 2017 during Spring. And this is where I was first introduced to Flemming Besenbacher from the Carlsberg Foundation, who along with Henrik Skovby from Dalberg were working on something even more ambitious. UNLEASH Innovation Lab was aiming at addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals framed by the United Nations. I was hooked.
Fast forward to the summer of ’17 after I had been selected as one of the Global Talents of UNLEASH Innovation Lab 2017 when the time had come to attend what would be 10 days of intensive team work: ideating, iterating and pitching. The day before kick-off I found myself on an aeroplane from Brussels to Copenhagen wondering what on earth to expect once I arrived. Practical questions of how I would acquaint myself with 999 strangers to form a team and create a prototype to serve as a minimal viable solution — all in little over a week! Then there was the pressure of being a student and one of the youngest selected to join a cohort of politically active, successful professionals and social entrepreneurs in their 30s with PhDs and stellar resumés, out there in the front-line, full-time, making a difference. Fortunately, UNLEASH had partnered up with UNDP, Microsoft, Deloitte, Dalberg, Maersk, Carlsberg and many other organisations to ensure the presence of facilitating experts and experienced consultants on standby ready to help guide us to the next step of the process. In fact, looking back, THEY were the true talents of UNLEASH.
Upon arriving to Copenhagen and settling in at my hotel, I was quickly sucked in by a strong vibe of youthful, passionated idealism that rubbed off to empower a belief in that we were capable of denting the universe! From there “I” became “we” as the first few days took us through the capital on an introductory tour of the programme with informative talks by our hosts and several public figures including the mayor. Inspirational interviews with renowned entrepreneurs and skill-developing workshops by consultancies also helped us get to know the format, context and each other. One key take-away was the importance of letting go of one’s ego to better listen and work in teams. So to those of you out there applying to this year’s UNLEASH: even though you most definitely bring with you a great idea on how to solve a specific problem, I urge you to come with an open mind and allow yourself to be emancipated. Believe me, some of your premises will turn out faulty and the ideas of your fellow talents better.
As the honeymoon phase of the introductory days came to an end and we left the capital to go to our respective track-camps scattered across the islands of Denmark, the real work began with the formation of teams. As one of the 150 talents on the track of “Education and ICT”, I had chosen to focus on two sets of issues: the access to — and quality of education. My solution? Personalised learning. And I wasn’t the only one. In fact, my team and I were brought together by a technology-driven solution aimed at empowering current and future teachers to become facilitators rather than preachers of learning. This by offering students tailored learning through an ICT-enabled AI teaching assistant. Our somewhat unoriginal idea had a novel approach as our computer scientist from Standford University pointed to the problem of creating an intelligent automation machine-fix was in fact acquiring the data.
First we had to create a teaching rubric to build the algorithm off of. We managed to do so again by drawing from our internal team ressources of two teachers from NYU and Harvard University. Basing our metrics on the studies by Teach First, World Economic Forum and other transnational organisations we concluded a coherent set of desired traits including creativity, critical thinking, soft skills and teamwork to be bestowed our future workforce. But as previously mentioned, to allow for any tailored education to be customised an individual’s learning style and teaching preference, a knowledge-base needs to be present to serve as a foundation from which a given machine learning algorithm can draw on. In order to create such a wide repository containing different types of teaching data spanning from standardised learning, situated learning, contextual learning, purpose-driven learning and so forth, we thought out a system to incentivise the collection of teaching style samples.
Thanks to our fifth member who served as council on the World Economic Forum, UNESCO, AIESEC and TEDx, my team was successful in reaching out to several certifying bodies of teacher accrediting certificates to get their feedback on a new type of certificate. One that would require teachers to submit their teaching samples with audio and visual recordings of their classroom in order to attain the certification. This method would allow us to 1) foster a global community of teachers concerned with effective teaching styles, and 2) build a library of data to run audio-based sentiment and question analysis as well as facial mimicry and interaction analysis to compare student and teacher engagement with pupil grading and satisfaction. The certificate itself would also serve as an anti-fraudulent proof of modern teaching in accordance standards based on scientific research. By registering the accredited certification of a teacher on a blockchain we would offer teachers tamperproof evidence of their proactive engagement as a teacher in teaching to individual pupil needs and to the challenges of the 21st century.
The last two days of UNLEASH culminated in Aarhus as we pitched our ideas to each other for peer review and afterwards to a panel of judging experts, investors and professionals. And although my team did not progress to the final stage of the pitching rounds our idea is currently under review in the UNLEASH IdeaBank by the likes of Ashton Kutcher (actor and investor) and Salman Khan (founder of Khan Academy). We’ve also reached out to the Gates Foundation for financial backing on the idea with the aim of passing it along as a comprehensive plan to function as a three-step framework for existing projects on ICT-enabled solutions to personalised learning. Above all else the biggest take-aways from UNLEASH has been the intangible ones. This goes for me and literally everyone else I’ve spoken to about their experience during their stay in this intensive programme — including those of the winning teams. It is less about the ideas themselves and more about the findings, mindset and drive accelerated through our work at UNLEASH. Bringing together 1,000 talents from 129 countries and providing them the tools and guidance to solve a specific subset of problems, gives each and every participant invaluable insight and perspective that help shape them as a person. Going forward this experience bears a lasting impact on me to believe in myself and in the good of our species. Knowing that there are people in this world dedicated to create a better future for us all makes me dare to seek out new challenges and indeed new people to work on them with.
Important to remember is that Education and ICT was only one of seven SDG’s on the UNLEASH Innovation Lab 2017 agenda. This year, UNLEASH Innovation Lab 2018 will have a new set of SDG’s on the agenda. Amazing to see was how many thought leaders came together to support the initiative. The Danish Prime Minister, Her Royal Highness of Denmark, Under Secretary General and Administrator of UNDP, along with Hollywood celebrities and famous entrepreneurs from the valley all helped create the buzz needed to attract the public eye and cover what was indeed a historical event and the first of its kind: A moment in history to inspire the students, professionals and political leaders of our world to focus their attention to the biggest problems currently facing our species and our planet. So I am honoured to be able to this year make my contribution as a facilitator of UNLEASH Innovation Lab 2018 by nominating dozens of new candidates and officially assessing many more applications for the next cohort of 1,000 Global Talents to come together in Singapore in May. And I can’t wait to see what you come up with!
