Whiteriver Part 1: First Assumptions

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From the course by University of Virginia

Design Thinking for the Greater Good: Innovation in the Social Sector

51 ratings

University of Virginia

Design Thinking for the Greater Good: Innovation in the Social Sector

51 ratings

Do you work for a nonprofit or in the social sector? Are you struggling to solve the problems and meet the needs of the people you serve? Come learn more about how design thinking, a human-centered approach to problem solving, can help you truly understand an issue, generate ideas worth testing and iterate to find solutions that make a real difference. Through global stories from areas as diverse as government, health care, and education, we’ll show you the tools, techniques and mindset needed to use design thinking to uncover new and creative solutions in the social sector. The development of this course was supported by the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. For more about the Batten Institute, see: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/batten-institute/ @BattenInstitute @DesignatDarden

From the lesson

ASKING "WHAT WOWS?" AND "WHAT WORKS?"

Welcome to our final week! This week we transition from idea generation to testing by examining the intersection of what stakeholders want and what the organization can sustainably offer. We'll consider the role of prototypes as a way to test our assumptions about a solution, and consider what it takes to launch a solution into practice, and see real-life examples of prototyping and testing in social sectors as diverse as healthcare and agriculture. You'll begin to think about your own social sector challenge you could tackle with design thinking. We end this week with some advice and actions for impact.

Whiteriver Part 1: First Assumptions5:45

Whiteriver Part 2: Reassessing Assumptions4:22

Intro to What Wows: Prototyping4:21

MasAgro: Creating a Space for Experimentation3:32

MasAgro's Hub System4:20

MasAgro's Innovation Network5:12

Intro to What Works3:50

Monash Learning Launch3:59

Monash Initiative: Long Patient Stays5:15

Integrating DT Across Monash Organization4:08

Meet the Instructors

Jeanne M. Liedtka
United Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration
Darden School of Business

There's widespread skepticism about the ability of the U.S. Government,

one of the world's largest bureaucracies, to innovate.

But we're finding exciting work underway in Uncle Sam, at the FDA,

the Federal Drug Administration and the VA, the Veterans Administration.

There is also great work at HHS,

the Department of Health and Human Services,

one of America's largest agencies,

where the Ignite Accelerator,

a program of the Innovation Design Entrepreneurship and Action Lab,

the Idea Lab, is introducing design thinking and lean startup methodologies.

Many projects that Ignite supports aren't

the big messy wicked problems design is famous for handling.

In fact, we love the smallness and

the non-wickedness of what ignite encourages employees to tackle.

For a closer look,

let's visit the experience of one participant in Idea,

Marliza Rivera from Arizona's Fort Apache Indian Reservation.

Through Ignite, Marliza, in charge of

performance improvement at White River Indian hospital,

realize the value of testing and retesting your assumptions in innovation projects.

White River faced a serious situation,

due to long wait times,

about one fifth of emergency department visitors were leaving without being seen.

Like many rural hospitals,

people were using the emergency room for just about

all issues, even prescription refills.

But White River's problem was magnified with

the emergency leave rate being twenty times the national average.

The patients leaving were rarely in crisis,

but treatable minor and semi urgent complaints were soon turning major and expensive.

Two thirds of emergency room visitors weren't seeking

crisis treatment and those non-emergency patients consistently got delayed,

as staff address true emergencies,

sometimes waiting as long as six hours.

When potential patients left emergency, mid-level problems worsened,

and when those problems became true emergencies,

patients often needed to be helicoptered off the reservation at White River's expense.

Nationally, about one in three patients who leave emergency without being seen,

require crisis treatment within two days.

Discovering HHS's Idea Lab and sensing an opportunity,

Marliza pulled together a team of

White River employees and sought ideas for utilizing Ignite.

One idea, an electronic kiosk to improve

the emergency room process and reduce wait times was selected as an Ignite finalist.

White Rivers' innovators had discovered

the kiosk benefits at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

There, a patient electronically signs in upon arrival and

the electronic system immediately informs other issue related hospital departments,

the pharmacy, specific physicians, testing laboratories.

Besides saving administrative time,

the kiosk also speeds the process of

identifying the best medical approach for any particular patient.

Ignite leadership of course,

is aware of the risk of starting with solutions at hand, like Marliza's kiosk.

It in effect, minimizes the what is question,

and the ease of re-framing any challenge.

Often, what innovation teams see is the problem,

much less its solution,

might not address the actual stakeholder needs.

It's the cart before the horse,

but Ignite has to win all these hundreds of applications somehow.

Hence, the White River team had an initial aha moment,

almost the instant they arrived at Ignite's three day boot camp.

The boot camp opened by challenging participants to re-examine their definitions,

of whatever problems, by questioning any and

all assumptions on which their winning solution was based.

Marliza and Elisa Cardona,

who had arrived in Washington,

were confident they were on the right track.

They knew the wait time problem was significant,

and they knew the kiosk idea best addressed it.

Here are Marliza's words.

We were there thinking we knew what we were going to do,

and nobody was going to change our minds,

that this kiosk is what we needed.

We knew these great places were doing it and it's the best thing ever.

One of the first things Idea Lab taught us was,

challenge your assumptions, challenge them over and over again.

And we learned to not be stuck in one place thinking this is the end-all, be-all answer.

If you question everything,

you're going to probably end up in a better place,

and with something that is more fitted for what you really need.

You've got to be willing to give up the ego and

give up the idea that was set in stone and work through it.

You've got to ask the hard questions.

Ideas that fail can often be traced to

some supposition we made about the world that later proved false.

Paying careful attention to what we are assuming is true,

and looking for ways to test those theories,

is the surest method of reducing the risk of new ideas.

We'll learn how the White River team reassessed its assumptions.

But as Marliza said,

you got to ask and address the hard questions.

It's always difficult but crucial.

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