CREATIVE/ Design THINKING &
PROBLEM SOLVING
It is a mixture feeling. I was so happy and relieved that we completed our video presentation but it was also hard to believe that we’ve come to this point and now saying goodbye to each other. As we spent time reflecting together, many things have become more crystal clear in my mind.
I remember set out for GIST with full of excitement, a little bit of nervous and unconfident of what lay ahead and what I am going to do or accomplish. But it was a quest for new learning, a quest for mind adventure kept me keep going and never giving up. Looking back today, with more reflection, I am happy that I’ve changed. From just looking for learning new knowledge, understanding about the application of process and toolkits, I discover it’s not just all about that. It’s about the change the mindset and applying the mindset. And five of us, each started with individual direction, focus and interest now see a common theme emerged as we shared our learning, our discovery. To me, it is all related and linked to that mindset, the mindset that takes for people to work together to solve complex challenges. It’s the mindset of empathy, the mindset of collaboration, the mindset of experiment and learning from failure. It’s not an end..it’s the beginning. It’s something that we learnt to say to each other in APLP. It’s the mindset of continuous learning and discovery. And I look forward to learning more and having more opportunity to share and work with others through this approach with the right mindset. I’d like to thank EWC, APLP team, all individuals and organizations who have provided much support through my journey.
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It’s time for reflection. I’m still trying to synthesize my learning from the past few months…Still working in progress.
But the last three meetings in Singapore and the meeting with UNICEF Innovation Lab in HCMC were quite interesting. I shared with them my learning and questions from the workshops and somehow it led to the discussion of creating environment and leadership for innovation and creative problem solving (i.e design thinking). One trainer shared with me that it is not that leaders don’t know that they have to empathy with people, with their team; but they find to have insufficient time to prioritize given the pressure of business performance. Similarly an associate professor from Innovation center of NUS shared the finding from his Ph.D that most of the creative ideas fall short in the implementation phase as there seems to be a gap between the knowledge creation space – the routine operations and the idea creation space – where innovation happens. So the challenge is to create and nurture the environment for creativity and innovation. It can comprise of many factors like leadership, the organizational culture and the physical space. We find the physical space is just as important as other factors as it can influence people behaviors when they are in that space. Maybe that’s why big corporation like Google create working space that makes people feel free and creative when they are in. Working process, policies are also factors that make up the physical structure that will support or not support the innovation space in organization. I guess, it takes holistic approach from physical to mindset, attitude and skills to help people become more creative and create creative culture in organization. But as we always said, start small and experiment. We can always start somewhere..small but meaningful. And it requires collaboration as UNICEF identify as key for innovation to happen. Another week in Kuching, I’m grateful to be given opportunity to conduct another 2 workshops with a group of ‘think tank’ teachers and a group of teachers from other MRSM in Borneo. If I felt the students enjoy the sessions as it is something new to for them to learn, I guess the teachers went through it as a reflection. We realize our thinking habits and pattern through simple activities.
We realized as adults we tend to judge more often even realizing that we’re passing judgement. Is it because of critical thinking habit as a participant point out? But I guess it comes at the right time. We realized that as adult, we want to jump quickly for solution. In fact, we often have pre–determined solution in our head when we see a problem/ a challenge. And it somehow makes us frame a narrower question? Maybe to lead to the answer that we think of. Another thing that I found interesting from the last workshop is sometimes the thing that we say and things that we do are so different. It was many stories about passion in teaching and engaging with students that we heard. But suggested solutions were mainly about rewards. I wonder maybe because the process did not remove the biasness? And as an adult, sharing about creativity and design thinking to various groups, I felt the creativity skills that we discussed – questioning, observing, association, networking, experiment are really something that we never heard before. Design thinking is also not a brand new idea but it’s just a reinvention that people put it together and called ‘design thinking’. But these concepts and framework reminds us all of having and maintaining the right mindset.
What I found interesting are how kids find themselves to be creative and become more creative under challenge. It’s also to learn from each others. A group share with me how the came up with better way to complete the challenge is by looking at other group and find a better way to do it :). It’s creative! And ‘Imagination’ is a buzz word as they talk about creativity. It’s how they look at a car and see a dragon or a sexy girl. It’s how they draw out of the circle to make caterpillar, glasses, etc. It’s how they can be so spontaneous in role–playing games.
Under design challenge, I find interesting that most people often talk negative experience in their conversation. And therefore, the discovery phase is to empathize how people have such experience and then later find ways to improve their experience. I’ve been thinking about both design thinking and appreciative inquiry approach. I see it as much similar to each other when I read it but now I seem to realize a difference. Maybe it’s not because of the approach that creates the difference but because of tendency and nature of people (talking/ complaining about negativity). So I think it’s all about asking the right questions to determine the approach. That’s all for now! Will post when I find access to wifi. I’m excited about learning more through upcoming experiment. Happy Easter Weekend :) Innovation encounter – it was my experience last week coming back to KL. It was the name of the module that Edwin is teaching at Taylor’s University and I am grateful that he was willing to share with me his knowledge and experience. It was maybe the first time that I have a proper orientation about design thinking. I'm glad that I came back to KL for that.
Design thinking was reframed into the process of Understand – Observe – Ideate – Prototype. As I associate it with my previous experiment and readings, it really helps me organize and strengthen my understanding and his sharing from the perspective of technical expert and consultant provided many practical insights of design thinking. It builds more knowledge and confidence for my next trip to Kuching. Preparing for the workshop, I also explored techniques to enhance thinking and creativity in design thinking. Edwin shared with me some Lateral thinking technique from De Bono. It came from different form, but I found interesting to link with 5 creativity skills of innovators (HBR). I was introduced to the book ‘The Luck Factor’ by Richard Wiseman. From his experiment, he found that lucky people are the ones who can spot obvious opportunities that others miss. I find myself not so good at this skill and need much more practice. Reaching the last stage of GIST, I wonder sometimes of what I have achieved. But the process of going through the learning has helped me to understand about myself, strengths and weaknesses. Hope that the experience and learning will be good with more synthesis effort – a way to practice creativity & design thinking. Second week in Bangkok, I had opportunity to conduct a future thinking workshop at Bangkok University – School of Entrepreneurship & Management and 2 design thinking workshops: one was with a group of PhD students and some faculty staff from Institute of Knowledge Innovation – Southeast Asia (IKI–SEA) of Bangkok University and one was with a group of staff of Green Net SE, a social enterprise producing organic forest coffee.
I felt glad and thankful that the participants patiently and eagerly went through each step and engaged deeply in the conversation. We came up with some ideas for the challenge that we wanted to solve. Most importantly the experiment of going through the process and sharing with others give me lots of learning: – Adaptability & flexibility: like the value of design thinking, we focus on the people, the customers. As I observed participants through the discussion, given with the pre–planned activities, I had to prepare to change spontaneously to adapt with the momentum and enrich the learning of the participants. I know that there are still many things that I need to learn more to conduct a better one in the future. – Collaboration: is key and take great intention and effort even though people do not always like the people or group that they are with as a case that I had in a workshop. Two of them found it hard to have empathy conversation. As I noticed, they often judge on each other’s questions and answers. One was from Asia and one was from Western. They said maybe because the culture is different. Only when they put aside the judgement, they can listen and appreciate other’s point of view. – Trying to jump too fast into the solution/ conclusion is a barrier of creativity: we often think that we’re smart enough to come up with answer and solutions based on our past experience and knowledge. Many share that spending time and effort for empathy can be considered time consuming if they have it in organization. – Idea selection is important: yet challenging. Through the discussion, there were many ideas come up. Most of the time, they can require lots of resource and big decision making and some said it is the boss who has the power to make it happen. But I guess, select idea that we (people who are having conversation) can do NOW is more important. First few thoughts. Hope to learn more in KL and apply in Kuching. I recently read an article from Harvard Business Review, which talks about the 5 core discovery skills that foster innovation:
– Association: connecting the dots, divergent thinking, solving challenging problems by drawing on diverse ideas or knowledge. – Questioning: asking questions that challenge assumptions. – Observing: observing people behaviors, immerse in people experience – Networking: engaging and talking with a diverse set of people to find and refine new business ideas – Experimenting: creating new ways of doing things and trying them out However, creativity like design thinking is not just a methodology or a skill set but it also a mindset. It is how we work. As I talked with academia from business schools and creative consultants, they said they train and teach these skills in their curriculum and training program. But it depends on how people apply it and whether the organization/ community create an environment that encourages people to be creative and trying new ideas. ‘I’m not creative’, ‘We are doing well’, ‘I don’t want to fail’, etc are often some barriers that prevent people to be creative. Some western people shared with me if it is Asian culture – afraid of failure. I guess it is partially due to our long–rooted education. I saw it in myself sometimes, which prevents me from trying new things. But as I force change with myself, I saw new opportunities open up and people are willing to give me a chance to experiment and learn (from success or failure). As I go on the experimental phase, I hope to gain more confidence and experience to share that with more people. First week in Bangkok, I happened to join some events about social enterprise (SE) in Bangkok and gain some understanding about the social enterprise ecosystem in Thailand. It is good to see so much interest about social enterprise, especially in education and support of government through to drive the development of this sector.
Talking to some SE entrepreneurs, I was shared about the challenges of sustainability and scalability in most of the SEs – not just because of the financial factor, but because of the lack of innovation. One of them came to share about the current challenge of the organization in a design thinking workshop and seek participants support in creating new solutions. Without understanding the workshop in Thai language, I still can see how design thinking as a process can help stimulate discussion and generate ideas to help the business owners. It opened up an opportunity for me to come and meet with his team to share about design thinking and see how we can use that to tackle another challenge later this week. Bringing the thought of innovation to Bangkok university, I was shared they are driving to make creativity a core of the curriculum. It is needed not just for social enterprise but for all businesses, and especially entrepreneurs. And it is tied closely with leadership. As creativity is perhaps one of the most important leadership qualities of leaders in the 21st century. And I remember a CEO of a start-up group here shared with me that most social enterprise/ entrepreneurial businesses fail because of the CEO..Innovation starts with the people. We first met in Bangkok for a GIST team update. It was fascinating to listen to each other field stories – what they have learnt, what they have discovered, what challenges that they faced, low and high moments, etc. As I listened, Ialsoasked myself how have I been doing for the past one and a half month. There were moments that I felt highly excited for having great conversations with some people and reading interesting stuff about design thinking. And there are moments that I wonder what I am lost in my own direction. I told myself challenge is opportunity. And perhaps, it would be hard to have such an opportunity like GIST to spend time on my own in the future. And I keep going.. Sharing my update, it seems to some that I need more practical experiment. The rendezvous group project, helping the Lion Rattanakosin School to set up the school stay program, came just as nice opportunity for me to apply my design thinking learning. I actually had thought about it when I knew about the project and was glad that the group encouraged me to take that opportunity to practice.
Design thinking is simply a tool to help identify problems and create creative solutions through collective approach but the concept seems to be very new to many. And it is definitely is very new concept in Vietnam, including among designers as I was shared from conversations with some people in Vietnam
The co–founder of Art, Creative & Design Academy is considered one of the first few people who tried to teach about design thinking and introduced about it students in designing universities. He said Vietnamese designers often think that their job is to design according to the order of the customers but this is just one step in the whole design thinking process. Although designers may not be the only one who are accountable for every step in the design process but they need to understand the whole story and the needs of end users to come up with the right prototype. What he observed now is most designers and even entrepreneurs often just copy what others are doing or already exist and do exactly the same or similar. A CEO of another start–up in Vietnam also shared similar observation about many start–up businesses in Vietnam and when talking with students from universities. He said 70–80% of students who wanted to start their own businesses think about opening coffee shops or F&B restaurants like everybody else. Creativity seems to be a lacking skill for many people – ‘We were not trained to think creatively and critically’. And it made it difficult for many entrepreneurs to understand about ‘value creation’ as another entrepreneurship educator in Vietnam shared with me. These are some common barriers for the understanding and implementing of design thinking and solving problems. Bridging that gap and bring all the tools and knowledge that I learn from GIST to reality of problem solving is a challenge that I am trying to figure out and an opportunity that I may take.. |
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