Will my company be socially impactful?
Will it always be a positive impact? To answer these questions, I will examine
my venture using the logical framework impact value chain model. The inputs are
largely centered about human capital and staff time. There will be no regular
inputs of money or any physical capital. The outputs are somewhat difficult to
discern for a participatory design company. What measurable data can be
reliably gained that can compare project results as varied as those anticipated
while working with a community that will have wide-ranging needs and
opportunities. I suppose the best possible answer would be to add up the total money
spent on the project to see how greatly the community thinks it will value the
outcomes. The outcomes, or impact, could be gleaned by conducting surveys and
interviews before and after the project is completed to observe changes in the
community’s perception of itself. If the project has not achieved the goals of
significantly improving resident’s happiness or sense of well-being, the
process must be tweaked to better guide community members toward a satisfactory
end result. I feel like there is a better way to measure the outputs. Can
anyone out there suggest some alternatives?
Social Innovation Incubator
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Blog 3
“If there is no competition, there
is no market.” It is hard to imagine competition for a social venture. Why
would you want to compete with me when I’m trying to make people’s lives
better? If we are working towards the same goal, why don’t we work together?
But I realize that this is because I am assuming social ventures work as purely
altruistic entities. That is not the case for any venture, or really anyone
intent on making money. Social ventures seek to do good, but they also seek to
do it better than anyone else. The customers I serve should be served better by
me than the next best alternative. There are similar participatory design firms
such as Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) and Latent Design, but they tend to operate
in specific geographic areas. Latent Design, in particular, only operates in
the Chicago area at the moment, whereas KDI operates continuously in Los Angeles
and Nairobi while branching out to other areas for the occasional project. If I
keep my geographic scope narrow, for instance staying within one Pittsburgh
neighborhood at the start, I can likely avoid directly competing with other
participatory design firms until I have a distinct advantage of having already
made connections within the community served. Not all competitors are going to
be other design companies. Anyone who offers a solution to the needs of the
neighborhood could be considered competition, however this is where things get
fuzzy. As a guiding figure, my company does not intend to actually supply the
resources to the neighborhood, rather it will connect the neighborhood with the
provider that best suits their needs. So providers are at once competition and
also collaborators.
This also creates some problems when
pricing my services. If the competition is viewed as other design companies, I
will be operating in a different geographic region with a different cost of
living (and different costs for many goods and services). If the competition is
viewed as urban developers and providers of certain resources, the price would
be affected by the resource provided and not the connection to a resource.
Competitive pricing can thus only provide a very broad estimate of the price
range for the service. Viewing the pricing from a cost- and margin-based angle
is also murky. There may be some marketing costs, taxes and legal fees, but
there is not much overall fixed cost for offering a participatory design
service. If there are variable costs, such as covering costs of acquiring
access to a resource for the community, it would be added to the price for that
project. Primarily, the price will likely be dominated by the value created for
the community. After all, even the variable costs are likely ones that would be
encountered if the resource were acquired without going through the design
thinking process. So, that being said, I suppose the real question when
determining the price of my service is how much do communities value using the
design thinking process to find and fill opportunity gaps?
Blog 2
What do I do? I already decided that
what I want to do is participatory design, but I have to find a niche. Because
the point of design thinking is to find an opportunity space, I cannot
differentiate myself on tackling a singular and unique issue. Also, because I
am offering a service that aims find opportunities, there is not an easy fit
into the positioning templates offered. I guess it is better to find the
answers to the following questions: why did I start the company, why should
customers patronize the company, and why should good people work for the
company. Perhaps from here I can gain some insight into what the niche is.
Why did I start the company? I hope
to offer an opportunity to disadvantaged communities, guiding them as they make
their own decisions on how best to solve issues that they care about. The company
will promote design thinking as a tool that will give residents a voice in how
their neighborhood will move into the future.
Why should customers patronize the
company? It is entirely up to the residents how they choose to move forward,
and the first step would be to decide whether they need to pay a design company
to help them find out what they might think they already know. For this, I say
that we are “eliminating the broom” on a neighborhood scale. At the beginning
of my time at Carnegie Mellon, a guest speaker came to tell us how design
thinking is used at his company, Proctor and Gamble. He told us a story about
how he was researching how customers use their detergent. One customer was
asked about the solubility, to which she replied the solubility was great. The
speaker asked her to show him, so the customer added the detergent powder to
water, took a broom handle and stirred the whole tub until the powder was
dissolved. At no point did the instructions say to stir with a broom handle.
Since hearing that anecdote, “eliminating the broom” has become my favorite
phrase for what I feel is the area where design thinking can add the most
value. Sometimes the opportunity is not in overcoming some obvious obstacle,
but in realizing idiosyncrasies and inefficiencies that hinder us but to which
we have grown so accustomed that we completely ignore.
Why should good people work for my
company? I guess this goes back to my friend who got excited to see my list of
issues and was eager to discuss them, but quickly realized discussion would not
be enough. There are underserved communities in every city, not just the major
metropolitan areas that are design hotspots. And there are talented people in
each of these cities who can help connect communities to resources and guide
their growth. So I guess I’m looking for people who see that “sketchy”
neighborhood not as a threat or the next place to get gentrified, but can see a
vibrant community ready to flourish.
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