Today, our class was focused on the topic of collaboration and co-creation. One of the things that really stood out to me that was interesting was our conversation surrounding design thinking. In short, design thinking is some sort of process development that centers the user in the forefront or middle of the process development. Integrating the users into the process development is essentially what Bason argues is co-creation in his reading. There are three key parts of design thinking that include analysis, synthesis and the actual idealization or design. Analysis is centered on involving the user in research and defining important problems and aspects of the design situation clearly. Synthesis takes this information and highlights things that would potentially be addressed with a new innovation.
During class, Trent shared our group’s innovation proposal as an example of co-creation. Our innovation proposal uses existing space in the Seattle Children’s Museum to provide engaging childcare while single homeless mothers can participate in career and life workshops. Essentially, through our research we identified the main concerns and feelings of single homeless mothers and looked for ways our innovation would address some of these challenges, which is an example of analysis and synthesis. We are trying to address two challenges with a single innovation which includes childcare for the single homeless mothers and job skills to help them reenter the workforce and move out of homelessness.
A connection that really popped out to me during this discussion was some of the work we did with Kelley’s book during the program. The idea of analysis and synthesis is something that I saw really fit in with the innovator type the “Anthropologist”. The “Anthropologist” is someone who focuses on observing the world around them, especially the small details, in order to better understand the needs of the clients they are working with. Obviously, when you are designing an innovation, you first need to understand what the needs of the clients are in order to produce and innovation that will address real challenges that they face. This is essentially the analysis and some of the synthesis that Bason references in his idea of co-creation and design thinking.
The last connection that I made in relation to Bason, our innovation proposal and Moore was different types of management relationships between groups of people. Moore classifies management in three different ways that includes upward, downward and outward. Upward is classified by asking those you report to for more resources. Downward is working with the people that you manage to enforce policy, procedure and regulation. Finally, managing outwards is defined by developing programs to generate value for external clients and stakeholders. Understanding these different types of management is important because it is very likely that at some point in the co-creation process you will be identifying these types of management and how best to handle them to make the innovation as successful as possible.
One of the questions that Trent asked us to consider was how we see these types of management reflected within our own innovation proposal. In terms of managing upwards, we would be responsible for convincing museum administration that our innovation is viable and ultimately asking the museum’s sponsors, like the City of Seattle, for additional funding. In terms of managing downwards, we will be responsible for training museum employees and volunteers in terms of the program and how to interact with homeless mothers in a way that is respectful. In terms of managing outward, the program is designed to provide value to both homeless single mothers and their children as well as providing good philanthropic publicity for the stakeholders of the Seattle Children’s Museum and the museum itself. One of the biggest things is that innovation will often combine all three of these different types of management, and understanding who they relate to is important when innovating to make sure it is successful and that the idea reaches its full potential.