Center for Social Innovation

How do you create an (almost) fully blown business plan for Rabea, a 33 year old Moroccan lady living in Spain, whose children are both at school and would like an opportunity to regain the autonomy she had in her home country?

Answer, invite nine different NGOs to a Jornada de Innovación and let them run wild with a whiteboard and some post-its.

Last week we held our first Jornada de Innovación. The aim of the day was to demonstrate the Design Thinking process to representatives from various NGOs and organizations in Madrid, including Oxfam, IE Business School, whilst also using the ideas to harness the creativity of our peers in designing potential programs to aid immigrant entrepreneurs.

Using the design challenge "How can we help ensure that immigrant entrepreneurs exploit their full potential", we began by using a parallel form of empathy, having participants tell stories about times when they had lived or worked in a foreign country. Next, we shared ideas about how being in a foreign country would create opportunities or barriers to entrepreneurship.

After the empathy session, we spent some time defining are users, paying particular attention to the insights, or deeper reasons for their needs. E.g. Rabea, our user as described above, might want money to help support her family, but the deeper need could be that she was a business-lady in Morocco, and as well as wanting money, she also wants to regain the status and autonomy that she used to have. The insight is important, as it suggests, and rules out, potential solutions to the challenge.

With a user in mind, we developed several "How might we?" statements, such as "How might we connect Rabea with other female entrepreneurs" or "How might we help Rabea translate the business she had to suit the needs of the Spanish market" to seed our brainstorm.

It took a minute or two for the group to get into the brainstorm, but once we were warmed up, the ideas started flowing. Following a train of thought, in idea was conceived for Rabea to run a patisserie that unites the world over sweet cakes. It would sell a mixture of Arabic and Spanish specialties, be staffed with people of all nationalities, and the Church and various Mosques would provide joint funding. Of course, the idea of design thinking is not to plan your user's life for them - that would undermine the whole idea of viewing users as key participants in the design process. But, by letting your imagination run, you can find great ideas, for instance, one key to success for immigrant entrepreneurs may be uncovering the parts of their culture that can be mixed with things familiar to people in their host country to create something innovative, new and pleasing. Likewise, there may be possibilities to seek funding from alternative sources.

Overall, we think the day was a success, and feedback from the participants suggests that they learnt a lot. We may run further Jornadas de Innovación in the future, so do contact us if it seems like something your organization would be interested in.