Co-creation for healthy communities

Recently, I was contacted out of the blue by someone who had enjoyed and used the materials from our Co-Design Workshop article, and wanted to learn more. “We want to host some sessions of co-creation for different purposes. We would like to know more about techniques or tools we can use.”

Her name was Yolima, and she was part of a group called International Creative Women. We set up a time to have a video call. The call was incredible — a wonderful time to learn, not just about Yolima’s story, but also about the vision of her organization, and how co-creation can be used in their context.

Yolima is originally from Colombia, but “fell in love with a Dutch guy” and ended up moving to the Netherlands, to the city of Eindhoven — the country’s 5th largest municipality. Here she found herself in an a less-than-appealing situation: in a new place, needing to learn a new language, with unclear career prospects for herself.

It turns out, she wasn’t the only person having this experience. She was on the inside of the unnoticed fallout from Eindhoven’s boom, and it was a serious problem. Global companies headquartered in Eindhoven (like Philips, DAF and ASML) have attracted large amounts of international workers, who had relocated from places like India, Colombia and beyond — and they were mostly men. The result was that a great number of their partners, like Yolima, who had travelled with their spouses to come to the country, were finding themselves alienated.

The impact on the women was obvious: they were experiencing disconnection, depression and disempowerment. The impact on the companies was that their newly-relocated recruits weren’t staying long, choosing to turn around and leave the Netherlands to achieve healthier family balance. As Yolima felt the strain of this experience personally, she also saw the impact on her peers in the international community.

The vision for this organization is to create a supportive and diverse community of women in Eindhoven, to help kickstart their own independent entrepreneurial pursuits.

Yolima’s brainchild, International Creative Women, turns one year old this October. It now has 12 key volunteer staff, is working with 45 entrepreneurs whose founders come from 18 countries, has reached hundreds of women through major events held monthly, and has achieved a healthy buzz on local social media and newspapers.

Her vision is to spur on social entrepreneurship and increase social cohesion at the same time. In a time of increased discrimination towards the international community, she senses it’s more important than ever to showcase that people from multiple countries can come together and and thrive.

Without a strong community, the core problem remains. But within the core community—that’s where the magic is happening. Yolima is partnering with Sally. Originally from Colombia, trained as an architect, arriving in a new country meant Sally wasn’t able to work. So she started her own organic-material jewelry design company, and helped Yolima co-found ICW. Then there’s stories like that of Prajitha from India, whose stellar cooking is bringing delicious cuisine to Eindhoven in the form of an emerging business. Prajitha has joined the fold, meeting new friends who are working through the same social and language challenges.

I could see from our conversation that the model Yolima has created is already demonstrating co-creation at its finest. She is showing what it looks like to truly harness diversity, strengthen community, and spark innovation. These might be the hoped-for mandates for any progressive organization, yet Yolima’s pathway is courageously blazing trails that show how to actually do it well. Groups like Phillips and the City of Eindhoven need to pay attention to her organization’s work. [See the end of this article for an update on this]

So back to Yolima’s question about co-creation. “We face now a problem we want to solve through co-creation sessions. We actually want to build a bridge between groups.” She wasn’t asking a question about how they could grow as an organization, but rather, how they can use co-creation to actually solve the core problem.

What if more of us asked this: “How can we use co-creation to solve the core problem we’re facing?”

I wanted to offer some recommendations, but needed to add a caveat: I’m passionate about co-creation, and yet not connected to her community. So these recommendations come from a place of wanting to suggest a pathway forward, but I also must acknowledge that Yolima herself is best-equipped to lead forward in the way she sees best. So as I share my suggestions, I want to emphasize that it’s truly Yolima’s call. (Any and all of these ideas can be completely discarded!) At the end of the day, what matters is that Yolima and her group are empowered to keep co-creating in the everyday-way that has already become their signature.

If Yolima wants to use co-creation to help get at the heart of the key social problem, it’s time to use her strength as a convener to invite these key forces into the conversation. She and her group of International Creative Women have an opportunity to act as hosts, creating a space where the challenge can be worked on holistically, with voices that represent corporate and municipal interests, anchored in the reality of her community of innovators.

I recommend that Yolima and ICW host an invite-only gathering of corporate and civic leaders, alongside her group of women leaders, to participate in a design thinking session to explore the problem together.

Why?

• New solutions and approaches may emerge that could help advance her core mission.
• Co-creating with her team of leaders, alongside civic and corporate leaders, would help these “organizational” entities gain more empathy and understanding about a situation that may currently escape them.
• The civic and corporate entities are already beneficiaries of the behind-the-scenes work she is doing, strengthening the community. Involving corporate and civic leaders might be able to influence generate financial support, sponsorship, or their own internal programs.

The first thing we need to do is build a creative brief, or a guiding question. In design thinking, this is often done in the form of a “How Might We?” question. In Yolima’s case, she’ll want to select her HMW question in advance.

Why select it in advance? Wouldn’t it be possible to co-create a HMW with your fellow participants? Yes, and in situations where we are open to problem-framing as a collective, that could be encouraged. But Yolima is in a unique spot:

• She needs to attract participants who are aligned with the core challenge. The question itself will help describe the event she is going to be hosting. It needs to be clear, and pre-decided.
• She is also the subject matter expert on the problem itself. She has been a key “audience” from the time she first arrived in the city. She went on to create an organization dedicated to solving the challenge. She knows the way to frame this problem more clearly than anybody.

What type of HMW would be healthy to pick here? We want to make sure we narrow the challenge enough to be clear, but keep it open enough for creative problem-solving.

If we wanted to position the issue as a value proposition for anchor companies and the city, we might frame it like this:

How might we increase retention of international workers by increasing the health and well-being of their family and partners?

If we saw the city as the key audience, we might say something like:

How might we help Eindhoven become a thriving, healthy community, known for its social cohesion and innovative output?

But the women are clearly Yolima’s main focus. The impact on the city and the companies is downstream and residual. Yes, we anticipate that by increasing the entrepreneurial endeavours, the city benefits. Yes, we anticipate that by increasing the health and thriving of the family members, workers are more motivated to stay at their companies. But neither the companies or the city are the users/ audience/customer here. The women are. Investing in women is the most significant influence that can be had here.

From what I was hearing from Yolima, we would want to land on something like this:

How might we help international women—who are new to Eindhoven—find creative business and social opportunities?

All worthy problem statements have a human audience and a human need. You can shift it to focus on your bottom line, but your bottom line is not a human, and does not have unmet needs. Innovation comes from unmet needs. In this context, Yolima is showing us a need and an opportunity: a path forward for greater social cohesion and entrepreneurial output will come from giving new attention and focus to this under-served community.

If you’re a leader at one of the companies based in Eindhoven, or from the city of Eindhoven, it’s important to tune in to this important distinction. You’ll be tempted when you read this statement to make this about you and your goals in the more immediate term. You’ll want to shift back into one of the earlier draft statements, choosing terms like “increase retention” or “improve economic output.”

Don’t do this. Resist the urge. Don’t short-circuit your focus by making this an abstract, high-level goal that does not have a human at its focus. I want to invite you to recognize the benefit to you from pursuing this problem statement. When the women who power your city and companies are strengthened and have their needs met, a social fabric is created that can last for generations, and gives your organizations a powerful foundation. But it has to start with human needs first.

With the question chosen, it’s a good time to select a venue, invite participants, plan the agenda, and turn it into a real-life event. I’ll trust Yolima and her crew to find the right details here, and just supply a few parameters:

• Space says a lot. In the room itself, we want beauty (natural light, an aesthetically uplifting space) and function (open wall space for post-its, whiteboards, moveable tables and chairs, a TV or projector screen).
• Location matters. For the location, we want it on turf that sends the right message. If you need city buy-in, host it in a city building. Corporate buy-in, host it at Phillips. If creativity is the message, book a room at the museum. If thrift and cost savings is the message, book a room at the library.
• Participants: To move effectively through a co-creation session with humans, you’re bound by “classroom parameters.” How many people can one facilitator effectively lead? Probably 24. More than that, and you’ll need to advanced techniques or additional facilitators.
• Who to invite: Ideally, we’d bring together people who represent HR functions in major companies, economic development portfolios in the city, and social innovation leaders. I’d like to see 12 of Yolima’s leaders, and 12 people from corporate and city roles.
• Naming and marketing: Here is Yolima’s chance to position the event for the audience she wants. If she is hoping to build partnerships with the city and corporations, she might want a name or sub-title that speaks their language. If she wants to retain the focus on the creative women who are her main audience, she may wish to ensure that kind of naming and language is at the core.

The arc of the day would could look like this:

• Set the tone and welcome people into a constructive, co-creative space.
• Share the purpose and the brief: help people see the problem frame.
• Interviews and dialogue: create a space for user research, where participants can hear the stories and realities of the women.
• Synthesis: spend time distilling key insights from the interviews.
• Design sprint: Do a sprint to explore new solutions based on the new perspectives.
• Deciding: narrow down the concepts to achievable, workable solutions.
• Commitments: together in the room, commit to next steps to move these ideas forward.
• Networking: create the space for the participants to spend time getting to know each other more deeply.
• Sharing: in the room and afterwards, plan for public sharing of plans, concepts, photos and stories of the day, into the media and the community at large.

This makes for a full day, but with a clear agenda and crisp facilitation, I anticipate that Yolima could run the entire session within a 9:00 – 4:00 window, including a lunch break, and perhaps leave some time afterwards for a social hour.

Resources:

• This slide deck is what Domain7 has used for running one-day design thinking sessions
• This design thinking canvas can be used by Yolima as an independent journaling tool, to review her problem space and see if this truly an approach she wants to take
• Priya Parker’s Art of Gathering is a wonderful work on setting the tone and creating intentional gatherings

Yolima’s group, International Creative Women, is already modelling what co-creation looks like as a business model. Inviting partners into the conversation can help her spread these methods and mindsets more widely, and in turn, hopefully unleash new support for the women whose lived experience has been less-than-satisfactory.

A new methodology for effective change

Co-creation is emerging as a path forward for groups that are serious about strengthening social ties, harnessing diversity, and sparking innovation. Choosing to try it in the form of a single-day event is a way to showcase how to collaborate across disciplines and seek new opportunities. It can often reveal other ways to try co-creation at a deeper level.

Co-creation is waiting as a model that can elevate how we solve problems, together. It can benefit:

• Governments who are serious about partnering with their citizens to explore new solutions
• Companies that are ready to listen and collaborate more openly with their employees and customers more closely
• Teams that are ready to try new ways to collaborate

By showing genuine curiosity and interest in how to adapt co-creative methods to solving a foundational social challenge, Yolima is modelling a path forward that awaits any of us who would seek it out.

• I am testing what happens when you do the bullets manually instead of pasting
• This is what happens
• Is it better?

The co-creation community is large and distributed, and you might be able to find people in your own city who can help. If you’d like to arrange a call like Yolima did to unstick the challenge you’re facing, drop me a note at kevan[at]domain7.com

Since sharing this article with Yolima, her team has planned a meeting with the City of Eindhoven…and possibly one with Phillips, soon too. Keep your fingers crossed.