Design   Thinking   for   Innovation :    University   of   Virginia   ­   Coursera , 

 Final   Assignment 

 Federico Ragni    Italy ,   07/29/2016 

 The   Challenge   to   Be   Tackled      My daily work as project manager within an innovation centre is developing and implementing 

 projects aiming at devising innovative solutions for a wide range of techno­economic , 

 organizational and institutional issues , which involve various stakeholders with different ( often 

 divergent ) interests . Usually , in order to raise the financial resources necessary to realize the 

 interventions ,   we   apply   for   financings   to   European   public   funding   programmes .    When I started to attend this course on Design Thinking , I was finalizing a project proposal 

 dedicated to build a transnational incubator that should help to launch social innovation 

 initiatives answering both local and transnational territorial challenges . After having submitted 

 the application form to the funding programme , my colleagues and I were called to present the 

 devised solution to some of the stakeholders that should be involved in the project 

 implementation in the case we are granted the financings . In particular , we had to present the 

 project to a group of mayors administering some territories on which the incubator should have 

 some branches . In doing so , the tricky issue to be tackled was to translate a complex 

 international project written according to the bureaucratic rules of the funding programme in 

 something understandable for people not directly involved in defining it and looking for concrete 

 solutions to very contingent local problems . For this reason , our coordinator asked us to prepare 

 a   presentation   using   a   simple ,   clear   and   concrete   language .      The   Selected   Tool      On the basis of what was presented during the Module 2 of this course ( see the ‘ Storytelling 

 Tool ’ video ) , I decided to propose my colleagues to use the ‘ storytelling tool ’ in order to draft our 

 presentation . I thought about such a tool as it puts stakeholders and their priorities at the centre 

 stage of a product / service / initiative , it makes abstract concepts and models concrete , and 

 involve the audience through entertaining and emotional techniques . I was therefore convinced 

 that storytelling could have helped us to simplify the explanation of the project ’s intervention 

 logic avoiding too technical details , to tune the incubator ’s activities and contributions to the 

 contingent and concrete needs of the mayors , and to gain their attention through a fresh and 

 smart   communication   approach .      The   Application   of   the   Tool 

 My colleagues approved my proposal and we started to think how to draft the project 

 presentation through storytelling . That meant , first of all , to decide on two key aspects of our 

 presentation : a ) the narrative to be implemented ­ that is , the story to be told and its structure; b ) 

 the technical means to be used to tell the story . On the one hand , we decided to put at the 

 centre stage of our story the challenges these mayors and their local stakeholders had 

 highlighted as territorial priorities in a recent programmatic document ( e.g. sustainable urban 

 development , labour market , healthcare ) , highlighting that all these problems shared a common 

 element that could be activated to solve them (= the people ) and presenting the incubator as the 

 instrument to be used to activate such a factor . On the other , we were convinced that we should 

 have avoided to use Power Point ( too analytical and too static ) and then we opted for Prezi , 

 which enables to draft powerful presentation based on a canvas graphically representing a topic 

 and which can be navigated through . In our case , we decided to cartoonized the towns and the 

 surrounding territories administered by the mayors with whom we had to talk and to use the 

 graphic visualizations of the territories as a means to explain the meaning of the challenges . We 

 worked hard for some days on the presentation , more than usually as finalizing the graphic part 

 was   time­consuming .    And finally the D­Day came . We launched our Prezi presentation in a meeting with all the 

 mayors sit around the same table and we started to tell the story prepared . And we failed . Our 

 audience was firstly captured and amused by the graphics implemented and followed with 

 attention and agreement our evocative presentation of their territorial problems . But when we 

 passed to talk about our solution to help them , they started to be confused up to get completely 

 lost during the presentation of the transnational partnership ( although the organizations involved 

 are main players in the field of social innovation at European level ) . The boss and all the work 

 team   were   really   disappointed   and   disheartened .      The   Learnt   Insights   and   the   Approach   To   Be   Adopted   Next   Time       In the following days , we started to think about what went wrong . Did that remain the first and 

 last time in which we used storytelling to present a project ? At all ! In fact , it was immediately 

 clear to all of us that such a tool allows us to translate the technical language we use in devising 

 the innovation solutions and in submitting them to the institutional financiers into a discourse 

 more accessible to all the other stakeholders . After all , our presentation of the mayors ’ territorial 

 problems was well understood and enjoyed , and enabled us to connect a project taking into 

 account the prerogatives of very different actors to the specific needs of a specific stakeholder . 

 Yet , it was also clear that the presentation ’s section dedicated to the more abstract aspects of 

 our innovation solution was the real problem : in this case , we failed to make our language 

 concrete and to present an intangible innovation ( a service ) as a tangible instrument to use in 

 the day­to­day work . In this regard , the use of examples of concrete social initiatives that can be 

 launched through the incubator could have helped to clarify how the incubator actually works 

 and   which   benefits   can   provide .     Such considerations convinced us that the logic behind the storytelling tool ­ that is , the very 

 logic of design thinking which suggests to start from real needs expressed by real people to 

 arrive to devise simple and concrete solutions easily understandable and usable by them ­ is to 

 be implemented not only for presenting the innovations but also and foremost for developing 

 them . Consequently , my work team decided to deepen the design thinking approach and to try 

 to   adopt   it ,   updating   our   work   tools   and   models . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: Federico Ragni
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Design   Thinking   for   Innovation :    University   of   Virginia   ­   Coursera , 

 Final   Assignment 

 Federico Ragni    Italy ,   07/29/2016 

 The   Challenge   to   Be   Tackled      My daily work as project manager within an innovation centre is developing and implementing 

 projects aiming at devising innovative solutions for a wide range of techno­economic , 

 organizational and institutional issues , which involve various stakeholders with different ( often 

 divergent ) interests . Usually , in order to raise the financial resources necessary to realize the 

 interventions ,   we   apply   for   financings   to   European   public   funding   programmes .    When I started to attend this course on Design Thinking , I was finalizing a project proposal 

 dedicated to build a transnational incubator that should help to launch social innovation 

 initiatives answering both local and transnational territorial challenges . After having submitted 

 the application form to the funding programme , my colleagues and I were called to present the 

 devised solution to some of the stakeholders that should be involved in the project 

 implementation in the case we are granted the financings . In particular , we had to present the 

 project to a group of mayors administering some territories on which the incubator should have 

 some branches . In doing so , the tricky issue to be tackled was to translate a complex 

 international project written according to the bureaucratic rules of the funding programme in 

 something understandable for people not directly involved in defining it and looking for concrete 

 solutions to very contingent local problems . For this reason , our coordinator asked us to prepare 

 a   presentation   using   a   simple ,   clear   and   concrete   language .      The   Selected   Tool      On the basis of what was presented during the Module 2 of this course ( see the ‘ Storytelling 

 Tool ’ video ) , I decided to propose my colleagues to use the ‘ storytelling tool ’ in order to draft our 

 presentation . I thought about such a tool as it puts stakeholders and their priorities at the centre 

 stage of a product / service / initiative , it makes abstract concepts and models concrete , and 

 involve the audience through entertaining and emotional techniques . I was therefore convinced 

 that storytelling could have helped us to simplify the explanation of the project ’s intervention 

 logic avoiding too technical details , to tune the incubator ’s activities and contributions to the 

 contingent and concrete needs of the mayors , and to gain their attention through a fresh and 

 smart   communication   approach .      The   Application   of   the   Tool 

 My colleagues approved my proposal and we started to think how to draft the project 

 presentation through storytelling . That meant , first of all , to decide on two key aspects of our 

 presentation : a ) the narrative to be implemented ­ that is , the story to be told and its structure; b ) 

 the technical means to be used to tell the story . On the one hand , we decided to put at the 

 centre stage of our story the challenges these mayors and their local stakeholders had 

 highlighted as territorial priorities in a recent programmatic document ( e.g. sustainable urban 

 development , labour market , healthcare ) , highlighting that all these problems shared a common 

 element that could be activated to solve them (= the people ) and presenting the incubator as the 

 instrument to be used to activate such a factor . On the other , we were convinced that we should 

 have avoided to use Power Point ( too analytical and too static ) and then we opted for Prezi , 

 which enables to draft powerful presentation based on a canvas graphically representing a topic 

 and which can be navigated through . In our case , we decided to cartoonized the towns and the 

 surrounding territories administered by the mayors with whom we had to talk and to use the 

 graphic visualizations of the territories as a means to explain the meaning of the challenges . We 

 worked hard for some days on the presentation , more than usually as finalizing the graphic part 

 was   time­consuming .    And finally the D­Day came . We launched our Prezi presentation in a meeting with all the 

 mayors sit around the same table and we started to tell the story prepared . And we failed . Our 

 audience was firstly captured and amused by the graphics implemented and followed with 

 attention and agreement our evocative presentation of their territorial problems . But when we 

 passed to talk about our solution to help them , they started to be confused up to get completely 

 lost during the presentation of the transnational partnership ( although the organizations involved 

 are main players in the field of social innovation at European level ) . The boss and all the work 

 team   were   really   disappointed   and   disheartened .      The   Learnt   Insights   and   the   Approach   To   Be   Adopted   Next   Time       In the following days , we started to think about what went wrong . Did that remain the first and 

 last time in which we used storytelling to present a project ? At all ! In fact , it was immediately 

 clear to all of us that such a tool allows us to translate the technical language we use in devising 

 the innovation solutions and in submitting them to the institutional financiers into a discourse 

 more accessible to all the other stakeholders . After all , our presentation of the mayors ’ territorial 

 problems was well understood and enjoyed , and enabled us to connect a project taking into 

 account the prerogatives of very different actors to the specific needs of a specific stakeholder . 

 Yet , it was also clear that the presentation ’s section dedicated to the more abstract aspects of 

 our innovation solution was the real problem : in this case , we failed to make our language 

 concrete and to present an intangible innovation ( a service ) as a tangible instrument to use in 

 the day­to­day work . In this regard , the use of examples of concrete social initiatives that can be 

 launched through the incubator could have helped to clarify how the incubator actually works 

 and   which   benefits   can   provide .     Such considerations convinced us that the logic behind the storytelling tool ­ that is , the very 

 logic of design thinking which suggests to start from real needs expressed by real people to 

 arrive to devise simple and concrete solutions easily understandable and usable by them ­ is to 

 be implemented not only for presenting the innovations but also and foremost for developing 

 them . Consequently , my work team decided to deepen the design thinking approach and to try 

 to   adopt   it ,   updating   our   work   tools   and   models .
### Output: 