SDSN Amazonia
Mapping the System for Climate Change Solutions in the Amazon
Role: Innovation Consultant/Account Manager/Project Lead/Workshop Producer for ORGE Innovation
Innovation Consultants:
Project Lead:
Workshop Producers:
Eileen Ellis, Andrea Morales, Leah Cabrera Fisher
NYC Team: Eileen Ellis, Andrea Morales, Leah Cabrera Fisher, Janson Zhi Yuan Cheng, Laura de Alencar Dusi, Gertrud Hogh Rasmussen
Brazil Team: Izabella Neves, Danilo Cruz
Peru Team: Carolina Vidal, Luis Miguel Hadzich, Gracia Chamochumbi, Carla Donayre, Tiffany Soto
Clients:
Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Amazonia is the regional division of SDSN, which was launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in August 2012 to mobilize scientific and technical expertise from academia, civil society, and the private sector in support of sustainable development problem solving at local, national, and global scales. We aim to accelerate joint learning and help to overcome the compartmentalization of technical and policy work by promoting integrated approaches to the interconnected economic, social, and environmental challenges confronting the world. The SDSN works closely with United Nations agencies, multilateral financing institutions, the private sector, and civil society.
ORGE Innovation Consulting is a design-led innovation consultancy that provides organizations structured methods to help them stay innovative. ORGE Innovation offers services in the areas of Knowledge Brokering, Open Innovation Consortium, Design Strategies, Project Framing, Innovation Capacity Building, and Leadership Mentoring.
Collaborators:
EISE Brazil is a school for service innovation founded in 2012 to teach service design to entrepreneurs, designers, and Fortune 500 executives.
INSITUM is a leading innovation consultancy based in Latin America that specializes in helping companies improve their products, brands, services, and processes.
LIQUID is a digital transformation agency based in Lima, Peru focused on digital business consulting, service design, and communications and advertising.
ORGE Innovation Consulting and graduate students from Parsons The New School for Design worked on an ongoing multi-country project in partnership with the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network Amazonia (SDSN Amazonia) and with the support of individual designers and design firms INSITUM and LIQUID. The goal of the SDSN Amazonia project was to develop transformative, scalable solutions to problems related to climate change, environment, sustainability, poverty, health, education, and communication for Amazon countries. The results from the project influenced universal international government environmental policy including the Amazon Vision 2030 http://www.fao.org/americas/noticias/ver/en/c/262553/.
Two consultations were completed, one in Manaus, Brazil with participants from the Academy of Science Brazil and Amazonian Academy of Sciences, among other organizations. The second consultation in Lima, Peru was for the international leadership of Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA), as part of the 2014 COP 20 Lima Climate Change Conference. The consultations included attendance and analysis of various conferences and panel talks in Manaus and Lima, as well as one workshop in each city.
Open Innovation Consortium
Open Innovation was used to bring together participants with varying expertise, motivations, and experiences to collaboratively generate ideas and concepts without the overriding influence of a singular viewpoint.
Project Framing
The objectives of the project were distilled into goal-oriented activities that acted as conversation points to broaden perceptions of the themes, problems, and solutions. Project framing provides parameters to focus the thinking process when working with large and complex concepts such as those discussed in the workshops.
Knowledge Brokering
Facilitators inspired deeper analysis and empathy for thematic stakeholders by prompting participants with thought-provoking questions, providing examples, and acting as guides throughout the workshop process.
Design Strategies
Design strategies were used to visually guide group members across the numerous activities within a tailored workflow.
Innovation Capacity Building
Participants were exposed to a new way to convey and blend their individual insights with those of other group members and apply that collective knowledge to analysis and concept generation.
Leadership Mentoring
Findings both from the conferences and workshops were used to guide SDSN Amazonia in the creation of development projects in the Amazon region.
Analysis
Results from the workshops were studied framework-by-framework, across groups, and between the two workshops. Content was analyzed for insights, principles, commonalities and gaps, as well as the overall goals of the consultations.
Workshop Structure
MVP Survey
Since the timeframe in which to perform the workshops was fluctuating, a Minimum Viable Product Survey was created in order for key information to still be collected from participants.
Key Player Mapping
Part of the goal of the SDSN project is to recruit partners in the public, private, and government sectors, so having participants map the direct and indirect stakeholders they interact with was an important part of the consultation process.
Ideal Visions and Clustering
Having an ideal goal to strive for in the analysis of themes and creation of solutions helped drive participants out of the usual problem-solution mindset and into the dream-reality thinking process, although analysis of problems and creation of solutions remained objectives of the workshops.
Theme Identification, Problems, and Criteria
As the ideal visions were clustered, clear themes arose which were then unpacked and grounded in reality by exploring the problems related to each area, clear principles that needed to be adhered to in the creation of a solution, and current projects that exist related to these issues on a local, regional, and global scale.
Problem Analysis, Resources, and Solution Ideation
The chosen theme was then analyzed further as to why the problems in that area remained, as well as the resources needed to address the problem. From there, a solution was created incorporating all of the previous information and grounding it to a goal, user base, and region.
Stakeholder Map
A stakeholder map was created to envision the partnerships that should be created in order to design and implement the actual solution.
Role-Specific Tasks
Project Leader
This role included being the direct contact for the various partners involved in the SDSN project, as well as the lead manager of the multiple teams operating from NYC, Peru, and Brazil and executor for aspects including: recruiting, project design, production, budgeting, scheduling, training, facilitation, and creation of project deliverables.
Workshop Production
Since I was project lead, that entailed that all aspects of the workshop production were done or overseen by me, including creation of the budget, acquisition of materials, and scheduling and coordination of all teams and client partners.
Workshop Design
I led the NYC team in the design of the workshop, to which we all contributed. Workshop goals and deliverables were formed by our SDSN Amazonia partners, while the flow and activities were created by the NYC team. The locations of the workshops in Manaus and Lima were coordinated by our SDSN partners, while the physical layout of the workshop was designed on location by me.
Workshop Materials Creation
All of the materials were designed by our NYC team (including myself) and were drawn out on a white board and finalized using Adobe Illustrator. The materials were designed to help the knowledge brokers through different aspects of the workshop, as well as be interchangeable and easily revised if changes to the workshop timing or context were made (and which did occur).
Knowledge Brokering and Workshop Management
The Manaus and Lima teams were assembled by the NYC team as ORGE's international group of on-location knowledge brokers. The international teams were trained twice by the NYC teams over Skype in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and once again on location by myself. For the Manaus workshop, I acted as workshop manager, who oversaw that all activities were done correctly, that parts were improvised when needed, and timing was on schedule. For the Lima workshop, I stepped in as knowledge broker and guided a group of English-speaking indigenous leaders from Suriname and Guinea, along with SDSN Amazonia partners. In Lima I also managed the data collection of the conference section of the event.
International Team Recruitment and Training
Facilitators for the workshops were either contacted through our NYC team's personal network of design groups and firms or cold-emailed after an online search. Those recruited were based in Lima, Peru and different areas in Brazil and received multiple rounds of training in English, Spanish, and Portuguese over Skype and in person on-location.
Analysis and Design Brief
After the conferences and workshop were completed, the information collected from the conference was put into a summary document completed by the Lima and Brazil teams, Carlos and I. A Design Brief was created by the NYC team (including myself) to translate, contextualize, and synopsize the ideas generated in the workshops. The Design Brief would be used to guide the future projects that would be pursued by SDSN Amazonia and its partners.