Who: Open Value Foundation in partnership with Acumen Academy
What: A university project for a social impact client
When: Winter 2020
Where: Madrid, Spain
Why: Improve the learning experience of the fellows for the newly established Acumen Academy in Spain
How: Using the double diamond approach with a team of 5 students
The Context
Acumen is a global community changing the way the world tackles poverty. One way they do this is by developing leaders to help disrupt poverty, for example, through their Fellowship program. Which is what we worked on in this project.
The Open Value Foundation has been looking for best practices to develop Spain’s social impact scene further. That is why the Open Value Foundation is now offering the educational program “Acumen Academy” to train outstanding Spanish social leaders who can create real impacts in the economy in line with the foundation’s values.
This is a strategic service design project for a social impact client completed as a 2-month project during my master’s degree at IE University. Mentored by Andrew McCarthy and Max Oliva. Client contact was Álvaro Pérez Plá.
The challenge the clients proposed was “how might we create a deep and meaningful learning for our acumen fellows, both offline and online.” However, student teams were free to reframe this if it could bring more value to the clients.
How might we create a deep and meaningful learning for our acumen fellows, both offline and online.
Initial challenge
The Process
Reserach
Following the TSDD service design research methods, the first step starts with better understanding users to reframe the challenge in a 4-week research phase. The research consisted of:
- A Benchmark analysis showing what similar programs are available and what they offer.
- 6 phone interviews and 1 online interview with current fellows this year, the first Acumen Academy program in Spain. The purpose was to get to know what motivates them to be social leaders and their program expectations.
- An analysis of existing interviews with alumni from all over the world. To be familiar with what they have to say about the program, especially getting to know what they liked the most, to make sure the same gets done in the Spanish program.
- Stakeholder Map.
- Customer Journey Map of the Discovery Phase.
- In-person interview with the leader of the program to understand what the client wants for their fellows. What aspirations they might have and what resources they have available.
The Users
A fellow is a participant in the one-year educational program called the Acumen Academy. The fellows of the program are most prominently characterized as change-makers.
The fellows are both men and women, and they are in the middle of their career. Most are already working in social entrepreneurship, but some are also employees within other organizations to create an impact.
They are looking to become better leaders and inspire people around them. But they are often alone in their aspirations in their environments. Their motivation to be a part of this program is thus not only to elevate their personal skills – but it is also driven by a need to surround themselves with people going through the same problems they face.
She loves traveling and seeing the world, always looking for ways to use new technology and innovation framework to improve it.
Maria enjoys sharing her experience and learning from others that have similar jobs and passions.
She found Acumen the perfect place for her to improve her skills and find like-minded people.
Reframing
The research showed a gap in expectations of what the users wanted the program to give them and what the program actually offered in terms of connecting with others. The users are characterized by being changemakers seeking to meet and connect with others in the same situation. We saw an opportunity to help continue creating value beyond developing important skills through seminars.
Reframed CHALLENGE AROUND THE USER
HOW MIGHT WE CREATE A SUSTAINABLE AND VALUE ADDING COMMUNITY FOR MARIA?
Ideation
10 plus 10 ideation generated many ideas for activities that the client could set up to help support a self-sustained growth of the community. Other ideas came from looking for analogies or understanding other associations with similar concepts. This required some more research in the form of face-to-face interviews with people who have been working with creating a community in Emzingo U and RedInnova.
IDEATION-1ST-ROUND-1The Result
A Community Building Guide
To meet Maria’s wish for meaningful connections outside of the program, we presented a community building guide. Detailing 6 initiatives to give the fellow opportunities to connect outside and after the program.
Feedback
Feedback after pitching the project to our client and mentors:
“I was blown out with your ideas”
“We are already starting to implement the Show & Tell meetings”
“Working with you has been a pleasure, and I really really liked the last meeting. I know you have done more work than can present in 10 minutes and all of your ideas.”
“This is our first year, but we are very excited to try using some of this years fellows as mentors in the second year”
“Using an intern is a very good idea due to our lack of resources and I like how you have incorporated this into the initiatives in order to make this something we can actually implement”
– Álvaro, client
“Great run of your user through your solution”, “Loved the visualizations, very clear and easy to understand.”
– Max, mentor