Overview

Overview:

At OpenIDEO, people from all corners of the world collaboratively tackle some of the toughest global issues. No matter who you are,  your experiences will bring a unique perspective to our conversation and  idea development. Sign up to start collaborating and read on to learn more about how to participate.We tackle each social issue via a challenge, a three to five month collaborative process that focuses our attention on the topic and creates a space for community members to contribute and build off each other. This approach is modeled on IDEO’s design thinking methodology.

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  • RESEARCH: It all starts with an invitation for you and others around the world to share inspirations, stories, tools and successful examples on the challenge topic.
  • IDEAS: Based on learnings from the Research phase, the OpenIDEO community shares new, wild or existing ideas and collaboratively refines them.
  • REFINEMENT: We then focus on testing ideas with end users.
  • FEEDBACK: This is when the OpenIDEO community  shares comments and suggestions for next steps.
  • TOP IDEAS: Working closely with the challenge sponsor, the OpenIDEO team chooses a set of top ideas based on their potential for impact, level of engagement and relevance to the challenge topic and evaluation criteria.
  • IMPACT: This is where you can  share learnings,  find collaborators and share updates on how ideas are evolving.

Details:

  • Length: 3 – 5 months
  • Apply: Varies – check website for new challenges being uploaded

Spud’s Thoughts:

If you haven’t heard of the folks at IDEO yet, chances are the more you dive into the changemaking field, the more their name will pop up. Design Thinking has been popularized by IDEO and this platform lets you jump in and join others who are coming up with novel and creative solutions to real problems. When I was starting off with a few of my early-stage ventures, I used platforms like these to submit my ideas and win some small start-up funds to get going. Most importantly, these platforms forced me to vet and articulate my idea in a way that the public could easily understand. What was really inspiring to me was after using these platforms to come up with my social ventures, in just a few years, others were linking to that very same venture as the inspiration behind their own ideas and creative solutions. It was humbling to see it all come full-circle and to let people riff off what I’ve created to come up with something new.