Center for Social Innovation

On Monday, we ran our first brainstorming session with immigrant entrepreneurs. The day was coordinated by MITA ONG, a Spanish NGO that works with entrepreneurs, particularly immigrants and women.

As this was our first attempt at using the ‘design method' with an outside audience, Fede, Conchita and I were all excited to see how the session would work, and hoped that the participants Five entrepreneurs came to our session, ranging from website designers to a cheese producer. One of our challenges will be deciding who to design for, as a person trying to start a large manufacturing business is likely to have very different needs from someone running a one-man website shop.

There was a lot of energy during the session, with the entrepreneurs animatedly sharing stories and ideas. Sometimes we slipped from solutions to complaints, and ideas weren't always short, pithy headlines, but maybe that was to be expected from a group newly exposed to design thinking.

The session helped uncover a range of needs, including for additional financing options, sales and marketing advice and strategies for navigating Spanish bureaucracy. There was also some frustration with the Spanish working style, with the participants complaining about the long lunch breaks and inflexible working hours.

For me, I only wish I spoke better Spanish so that I could have followed the session more fully! Nevertheless, it was still very interesting to hear from our future users.