Two months into their internship at social impact organizations working to tackle some of the biggest problems in society today, Impact Lab students recently met again for the Impact Lab Seminar, The Creative Process of Ideation – Design Thinking, to learn how they can create solutions as the leaders of tomorrow.
The design thinking seminar, the first of the Impact Lab Seminar series this semester, offered students another opportunity to meet and collaborate in person after the orientation session last month.
The main focus of the seminar was for the students to learn about design thinking, and the benefit of collaborating with people with diverse experiences and backgrounds when trying to problem-solve. The seminar kicked off with a presentation about design thinking by David Bishop, the Impact Lab Course instructor and founder/co-founder of many of the social businesses that the students are working for.
So, what is design thinking? Essentially, it is the process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to be prototyped and tested. This is an essential tool in different stages of entrepreneurship, and it involves five phases – Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
Similar to the mentees of FSI’s Mentorship Program for Ethnically Diverse Entrepreneurs, the Impact Lab students were tasked with practising the first three phases of design thinking. Having learnt the basics, the students then formed groups and got to work on creating a mind map with their most creative solutions to current issues. They started off with a blank piece of paper and some Post-it notes. By the end of the exercise, the students had thought of numerous problems that people in their communities face, from climate to mental health issues, and the creative solutions for those problems.
After a brainstorming session that helped them think of many different ideas to start their discussion, the students were asked to choose one problem and one solution to further focus on. This helped them learn to organize their ideas, which they then presented at the end of the seminar.
Erica Zhou, an Impact Lab student and Communications and Marketing Intern at FSI, says she found the seminar very interesting. “The exercises helped my group think of many ideas we’ve never had before! I think it really helped spark our creativity”.
The key takeaway from the seminar is that creativity is essential to business innovation, and problem-solving is a fundamental skill in all aspects of life, including entrepreneurship.
Stay tuned to the highlights of the next two seminars, with the more recent one on 8 November on Risk Management!
*Acknowledgement: This article is written by Jovan Ivankovic, an Impact Lab intern of the FSI Communications and Marketing team.
