We like to review existing models before we create our own, like the @diytoolkit. Another framework we’ve used is @innovation_unit, Radical Efficiency, whose three principles are:
1. Start by thinking afresh about the nature of the challenge faced by your community before coming up with ideas to help tackle them.
2. Look for and use the resources that are already under your nose — from well-networked people to popular meeting places.
3. Build a new partnership with users in which they drive design, and contribute to delivery of services.
We’ve been helping people to focus on the nature of the challenge before diving in with ideas, getting people to look at the resources already available to them and building collaboration with people to design solutions.
From new insights to new resources
We’ve used the radical efficiency to analyse what the concepts from our programme have used, from new insights to new resources:
New insights:
A quarter of the concepts make use of new insights, unsurprising given our focus on getting people to uncover the needs in their area before they develop concepts, but also surprising that three-quarters of the concepts are on existing insights, what people already know, but where there is still an unmet need.
New customers:
A third of the concepts target new types of customers, from newcomers to a neighbourhood to children as new consumers of seeds via unemployed people as customers of makerspaces.
New resources:
Just under three quarters of the concepts make use of new resources, from sensors to monitor air quality to 3D printers via car keys and jukeboxes to help people make crafts. Much of this is focused on reusing infrastructure from an old pier to provide solar panels, old post offices for student pop up markets to an abandoned corner of a street via unused country lanes to a birdbox to act as a library of things, billboards to promote community projects and even…your home kitchen to provide meals for people.
New suppliers
About 15% of the concepts use new suppliers, but more often than not, new suppliers are…the audience previously known as customers, whether it’s tracking the quality of the air, setting up an alcohol free pub, creating content for an app, or running events from their kitchens…or their makerspaces.
How did we get people to focus on rethinking customers, resources and even suppliers? We showed how others were repurposing these elements in public spaces and then provide tools to help themobserve the unseen assets in their neighbourhood, hack the resources around them, create personas to discover new types of customers and then match these to the new insights they’ve found to design the solutions.
How could we use the framework to respond to Covid 19?
