Design Thinking

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organization that advances children’s rights and equality for girls around the world. Their challenge and opportunity was to design with and for the Indian diaspora community in the US to prototype a new model for better engaging existing and acquiring new members to support their global mission.

The Minds that Move Us initiative challenges communities to design innovative education and training models that create social equity and economic mobility, driven by the market demands of business and industry as well as the needs of youth and adult learners.

The National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) serves as the national health care advocacy organization for America’s medically underserved and uninsured and the community health centers that serve as their health care home.

BIF kicked off a new project with The Sherlock Center on Disabilities and five service providing agencies in RI to reimagine the services offered to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the state.

Business Innovation Factory (BIF), in collaboration with The School of the Possible founded by Dave Gray, Hatch founded by Yarrow Kraner, and Overlap founded by Michael Dila, is launching a project to explore the opportunity for a transformational personalized medicine business model.

Visual thinking pioneer Dave Gray's practices brought illustration into the c-suite to help design more flexible and innovative companies.

Build out of equal parts passion and mischief-making, Alexis is seeking to design for all women, not just the 1%, to make the breast pump not suck through community and placemaking.

Movement is a fundamental right that we all should have. Botha is finding a way to bring autonomy via accessible tech advances to those utilizing wheelchairs as their primary source of mobility.

A true leading thinker and doer, Comstock joins us as a true innovation junkie to talk through what it means to have curiosity in the workplace today, the fluidity we should all be adopting in our personal and professional lives as well as the true meaning of transformational change.

The healthcare industry is disrupting and many organizations are struggling to keep up with the times. Often times, business model transformation feels harder than it has to be. Business model innovation isn’t about practices, it’s about next practices.

Making the most out of your #BIF2018 experience: I make a list of no more than 5 insights that are so powerful that I must act on them. I create an intention for what that action looks like, define the barriers and risks of acting in new ways, and I hold myself accountable for starting.

"BIF has managed to create an amazing community of smart and creative people that inspire me every time I participate."

Sharing his passion, purpose, and inspiration, Philip Sheppard goes beyond the notes as he stops by for an in-house recording session, complete with a few previews of his latest work.

While healthcare leaders understand the imperative of business model innovation, it is often scary to disrupt a large system that has been in place for years. When the motto of healthcare is “do no harm,” it is hard to be the guinea pig to test out new business models and next practices. Our goal was to help them make the business model innovation process safer and easier to manage.

This (100k Ideas) is our favorite type of model here at BIF because it taps into what we call “the gold in the grey space” — working across sectors and industries to meet true citizen needs while transforming each of the latter.

BIF to facilitate a Business Model Bootcamp for over 200 healthcare leaders as part of a three-day in-person meeting focused on innovation that enables the transformation of the healthcare space to focus more on patients and their families.

By letting materials tell their own stories, the form-finding (not form-making) artist, architect and material ecologist shares a few brilliant examples of her work.

President of Western Governors University, Scott Puslipher is a true transformation agent who doesn't accept what is and who imagine what could be.

What happens if we allowed ourselves to live in in the possibility of "what could be" rather than accepting what is? Leveraging our capacity to build safe spaces for innovation is imperative to unlocking the building blocks of the future.

Know around the world for her work in strategic design thinking and organic growth, Liedtka has been a leading thinker and pioneer in the field of corporate strategy for the past 30 years and was at the forefront of utilizing the strategies and principals we use today.

One of the most difficult experiences for those in education is to understand challenges within our system but have no method for creating meaningful, transformative change.

Our health system has the ability to accelerate society’s path to what’s ‘next’ — a next that holds the promise of focusing on health rather than health care or, better yet, sick care.

Emerging technologies don’t deliver value in the real world until they’re converted into capabilities. If they’re constrained by the straightjacket of today’s business model, they will deliver tweaks at best.

We live in a time that screams for transformation yet too many institutions are only capable of tweaks. We developed BIF’s Design Methodology because a growing number of institutional leaders know they need a better approach to innovation.

Famous last words; This time it’s different. No really, this time it is. We have arrived at that Malcolm Gladwell tipping point. Well at least I have, and I don’t think I’m alone. Let me make it personal. We each find our own reasons to reach for another gear, to reinvent ourselves, and to do work that matters. My burning platform is comprised of three things that are changing simultaneously: 1) The Market 2) BIF 3) Me. It’s not about me or my three things, it’s about being informed by and engaged in what’s changing around you, being self-aware and intentional about what’s next, getting better faster, and being clear about what’s important and what you value. Whatever your reasons, please hurry up and figure it out, because we need everyone to play, transformation is a team sport and a generative act. It’s go time!

It is not best practices, but next practices that will sustain your organization on a strong growth trajectory. While you continue to pedal the bicycle of today’s business model make sure that no less than 10% of your time and resources is dedicated to exploring new business models and developing next practices.

In partnership with Children’s Health in Dallas, BIF worked to create the Children’s Wellness Experience: a transformative, sustainable model for care that is rooted in human-centered insights, moving us away from a focus on “sick care” to a broader focus on “well care.”

At the BIF Summit, you can leave your language at the door and just talk. - Lois Kelly