Strategy for United Nations Innovation Lab

PROJECT: UNITE, United Nations Innovation Lab + Parsons The New School for Design, 2015

GOAL: Create a Confident Innovation Leader in an Ambiguous Environment    

OUR METHODOLOGY: Design Thinking, Analogous Research, One-on-One Interviews, Cultural Probe, Journey Mapping, SWOT Analysis, Synthesis, Storytelling

FINAL DELIVERABLE: A Set of Design Thinking Tools to Help Guide Change

PROJECT BRIEF

WHO: Becky Band Jain, head of the innovation lab within UNITE at the The United Nations Secretariat in New York City.

WHY: It’s Becky’s job to build an innovation lab so that people within the Secretariat can innovate communications and technology solutions. This is a messy problem for Becky. She’s faced with a lack of support from her manager, funding, and strategy. She doesn’t quite know how to get started building this lab.
Becky tried to introduce innovation work to the body of the UN  by introducing workshops and collaborative activities but was coming up against resistance from other divisions and even from her own leadership team.  Our project was to help her visualize the problem and then help her tackle it better.

HOW MIGHT WE INTRODUCE A DESIGN THINKING APPROACH IN A STRUCTURED ENVIRONMENT LIKE THE UNITED NATIONS?

There is an opportunity to help Becky change her way of thinking when she embarks on her innovation lab journey so that she is able to connect with her audience, identify the real problem, try out new things and test and try again. If she could do that she could make a real difference at the Secretariat. With that, we see our design challenge as How might we develop a design thinking leader? How do we help Becky jump-start her design

solution: Tools for leaders to SPur design thinking and innovation

The tools carefully embed a sense of playfulness and help the user refresh themselves with a new perspective during tense situations. Taking inspirations from nostalgia and simplicity, these tools offer a leader ways to think differently and help them assess themselves while making them realize that problems are essentially a window to newer opportunities.

1. Sample Persona questions
2. Design Thinking Reading List
3. Paper Fortune-teller
4. Pick an Option grab bag
5. Roadmap