Activating Innovators to Build Capacity
Making plans to big ideas into action in Cape Town, South Africa
IMMERSIVE, DESIGN-LED EXPERIENCES TO DEVELOP INNOVATION CAPACITY
While working with IDEO.org, my team partnered with The Rockefeller Foundation to design a strategy for building innovation capacity within their grantees. We based our work in South Africa, where The Foundation had a number of grantees for the Youth Employment initiative. Our strategy focused on supporting grantees in putting their innovative ideas into action, and we designed three prototypes to test the assumptions underlying the strategy.
I managed all aspects of three live prototypes to test the assumptions underlying the strategy. The most transformative prototype was the Ignite Innovation Camp, a series of three innovation retreats that I produced and facilitated in collaboration with staff from the d-school at University of Cape Town and the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Participants followed the journey of identifying as innovators, then building their confidence to act, and finally making the commitment (and concrete plans) to put their innovative ideas into action.