Design thinking is a systematic approach to generating innovative ideas to solve social problems. It involves listening to understand people's needs, ideating potential solutions, and iterating through prototyping. This process reduces risk for social entrepreneurs and allows them to challenge assumptions, uncover new insights, and discover opportunities for significant improvement. Innovation requires innovating in not just products and services but also delivery models, partnerships and other aspects to solve entrenched social problems in sustainable ways.

1. Suzi Sosa
Design Thinking for Social Innovation Associate Director
RGK Center
A Systematic Approach to The University of Texas at Austin
Generating Ideas with Impact suzi.sosa@austin.utexas.edu
www.dellchallenge.org

2. An Historical Bifurcation
Mission Money

3. Organizational Consequences
Mission Money
Government
NGO Business
CBO

4. Early Crossovers
Mission Money
Pub/Private
Partnerships
Government
CSR
NGO Business
Cooperatives
CBO
NGO w Earned
Income

5. Disappointing Results
Failures:
NGOs -> Few mission-based solutions able to scale
Business -> Few business CSR programs with meaningful impact
All -> Lack of dynamic social innovation
Consequences:
• Social problems fundamentally unsolved
• Disenchantment with “pure” business, “pure” NGO, and “pure”
government

6. A Spectrum Emerges
For Profit Non-Profit
Business NGO
Traditional Traditional
with Social Hybrid with Earned
Business NGO
Impact Income
Financial Sustainability
Social Impact

7. Best of Both Worlds
Mission Money
• social commitment • focused objective
• distributive (selfless) • operational efficiency
nature
• access to capital
• inspire others
• easier to scale
• collaborative
• more innovation/risk-
• inclusive taking
• leverage the
market/consumers

8. Social Entrepreneurship
1. Innovative idea = significant social
impacts
2. Financially sustainable business model
(& efficient use of resources)
3. Replicable & scalable

21. Why innovation?

22. What is Innovation?
Innovation Value
“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act
that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”
- Peter Drucker
Private Sector : Value = Money
Social Sector : Value = Social Impact

23. Innovation & Value
An innovation creates a significant increase in the marginal delivery of value
with regard to a persistent social problem
New
New
Impact
Impact
Social Impact Current Current
Impact Impact
Improvement Innovation

24. How do you find value?

25. Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?

26. What is Design Thinking?

27. What is Design Thinking?

28. Design for Innovation
create make
choices choices
INNOVATION!
Idea generation Synthesis

29. The Innovation Cycle
Ideation
Inspiration
Iteration Implementation

30. The Design Process
Inspiration Ideation Iteration Implementation
LISTENING ANALYZING PROTOTYPING
DREAMING THINKING EXPERIMENTING
create make
INNOVATION!
choices choices
idea generation synthesis

31. Key Traits of the Approach
• Deploys both right-brain and left-brain strategies
• Iterative, experimental
• Interactive, collaborative
• Interdisciplinary
• Challenges assumptions by suspending beliefs.
• Observes the problem with a beginner’s mindset.
• Assumes nothing.

32. Find the Core of the Problem
It’s not just to find answers but to make sure that you are asking
the right questions.

34. Decon/Recon-Struction

35. Scotia-Glenville Traveling Children’s Museum

36. The Innovation Cycle
Ideation
Inspiration
Iteration Implementation

37. Two Key Questions:
Who is the person you are trying to serve?
What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Start with the person (that will lead you to the problem)

38. Phase 1: Inspiration
Listening
&
Dreaming

39. Listening: Who Are They Anyway?
The most meaningful social innovations come from deep and precise
understanding of the circumstances and needs of the client.
Two Types of Listening
1 : Direct Source (external)
2 : Empathy-based (internal)

40. Listening Techniques
Individual interviews (5 why’s, think aloud, show me)
Group interviews
In context immersion (work alongside, home-stay, re-creation)
Self-documentation (photos, videos, drawings)
Community-driven discovery (engage community in research)
Expert interviews
IDEO
Method Cards

42. Personal Interviews

43. Group Interviews

47. • HUMAN
CENTERED
DESIGN
• ETHNOGRAPHY

49. Empathy (Another Type of Listening)
TECHNIQUES
• Empathy Map
• Storytelling

50. A Day in the Life
Have you lived a day
in the life of your
client?

51. Empathy Map

52. Empathy Map

53. Storytelling

54. Dreaming

55. Dreaming, too
Journaling
Drawing
Building
Exercise
Music

56. Observation Empathy Insight

57. Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?

58. The Innovation Cycle
Ideation
Inspiration
Iteration Implementation

59. Phase 2: Ideation

60. Seeing Patterns

61. Ideation Process
Goal: Identify Potential Opportunities
• Extract Key Insights (few and powerful)
• Organize Ideas (by level or magnitude)
• Find Themes (linkages)
• Create Frameworks
(visual representation of the system)

62. Frameworks
TIP: Push them to
extremes to find insights

63. Mind Maps

64. Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?

65. The Innovation Cycle
Ideation
Inspiration
Iteration Implementation

68. Modern Prototyping : The Miracle Brace
1:25

69. Prototyping for Services
The Pilot Project

70. The Innovation Cycle
Ideation
Inspiration
Iteration Implementation

71. Creating Value
Capturing Opportunity
New Insights
Deeper Understanding
?

72. Why is design thinking important
for social entrepreneurship?

73. Reduces Risk
• Unlike traditional businesses, social enterprises often cannot “afford”
to push a partially-developed product or service and wait for market
feedback
• costs may be too high
• potential negative social
impacts may be too large
Design thinking improves the quality of a product or
service from the start.

74. A Fresh Look
Social problems are extremely complex and many of them are
affiliated with a lot of “baggage” about how they ought to be
solved.
Design thinking allows entrepreneur to shed much (or all) of that
baggage, leading to an innovation.

76. Innovate Everything
Social problems are extremely entrenched and require new,
innovative methods to solve them in financially sustainable ways.
Require innovation not just in the product or service but also often in
the delivery, financial model, partnerships, etc.

78. Doing the Impossible
Designers have a lot of places to hide
behind, a lot of excuses.
“The client made me do this.” “The
city made me do this.”
I don’t believe that anymore.
“In the end, you have to rise
above them. You have to say
you solved all that.”
Frank Gehry | Architect
WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL | LOS ANGELES

79. Summary: the Path to Innovation
Innovation Comes From:
• challenging or abandoning previously held assumptions;
• uncovering hidden truths;
• discovering opportunities for significant improvement;
• vigorous disassembly followed by methodical reassembly incorporating
new information;
• an iterative, ongoing process that takes nothing for granted and
is obsessive in its pursuit of perfection.

80. Suzi Sosa
Design Thinking for Social Innovation Associate Director
RGK Center
A Systematic Approach to The University of Texas at Austin
Generating Ideas with Impact suzi.sosa@austin.utexas.edu
www.dellchallenge.org