Innovate Good Times, Come on!

 This week was focused on learning about - you guessed it - Business Models and Lean Startups.  This included readings on why Lean startups were better and more viable than "over-planning" startups and the super confusing Business Model Canvas. Overall, looking at the Canvas made sense, I can see why it's useful.  But trying to fill one out for a company that I don't work for was confusing because I didn't know which piece of information fit where.  It's not like there was an area of Thorn's website that outlined all their Key information. And while I understand that doing the research to fill in these areas is educational - the perfectionist in me stresses about confusing vagaries' like that which make me worry that I can't complete the assignment to the teacher's satisfaction.  I do feel like I knew more about Thorn at the end, and that's definitely coming down on the "pro" side of the list.  Sharpening my business skills benefi...

 I've continued thinking about my Social Innovation Wicked Problem.   I haven't been able to stop talking about it, even during a massage where I was supposed to be relaxing.  Instead I spent the hour venting about the problem, the statistics, and being so frustrated that my masseuses couldn't understand.  She thought I was talking about Human Trafficking. Then she thought I was talking about maturation videos.  Then she thought child pornography.  I've run into this a LOT these last two weeks, where the problem is so taboo, very few people even get what I'm talking about. But on the teenage level, we see it in the Junior High.  We see it rampant .  While reading about Revenue Generation, it all sounded very familiar to me as I've kept up with Thorn and OUR for a number of years. I've also followed scholarship funds and memorial or arts grant foundations and the like.  But trying to discover a way to generate revenue for something like t...

 So far, this week's materials has inspired the most feelings of anger and powerlessness on the topic of social innovation.  Maybe it's because I chose a "problem" that is so wicked, I struggle to put my goals into the prescribed 8 words (Starr, 2020). Maybe it's because I searched the internet for a company that was doing what I think should be done and there is ONE that isn't a church group. One.  That's not enough.  What that says to me is two things: 1. Pro-sexual education is the job of the parents/family. 2. They are left alone to do it.   While 94% of parents say they feel confident in talking to their kids about sex, 64% of those say that their parents really messed up talking to them about it.  And only 46% say that they have or have a plan of when to talk to their children. That is leaving a whole lot up to chance.   I'm powerlessly frustrated by the evidence that parents are waiting  to discuss something that the internet is r...

 Design Thinking.  I immediately thought that this was going to be about me changing the way I think, and in a way it is, but in a bigger sense - it's not that at all. Design Thinking as it relates to Social Innovation is the process of thinking about the problem with purpose.  We spent the last week understanding that Wicked problems cannot be "solved," but can only be improved.  There is the possibility of becoming sad or depressed when one dives too deeply into the root causes only to find there are many, and complex at that.   But Design Thinking is the life saver in what might feel like an ocean of issues.  I learned about 5 steps and 4 of them were no brainers.  But the first step was the one that surprised me the most: Empathize. It makes sense if you think about it, but I guess I had avoided thinking about big problems so much that I had stopped looking at them.  I didn't observe them, I didn't engage with those in the thick of the pr...

 This week I learned about Wicked Problems. I mean, I knew there was a difference between problems and, you know, problems.   But how heart wrenching to learn more about the incredible complexities of the issues that people think can or should be "solved."  It led me to look at the issues and problems that I see in the world in a new light.  Poverty. In my American Government class we had to study the Occupy Wall Street movement in context of differentiating between civil rights and civil liberties.  To read a few articles and see that these people generally considered poverty to be a simple problem with a simple solution: take money from people who have much and give to people who have little.  There: no more poverty.  But then read about the small town in China who defied the communist government and produced their own food in order to survive - what made them rich and lifted them from poverty was education and work: production of value. Poverty...