The Value Web responded with lightening speed to a request by Rokk3rLabs and the Knight Foundation to co-design and deliver a session that would get Miami’s startup community working together with clear commitments to grow and strengthen in 2013.

We designed the session around Brad Feld, who is a central player in the Boulder startup scene, and his book and his blog. (You can get a lot by listening to parts of this youtube interview).

One of the hardest things to get right, as Matt Taylor says, is, creating the conditions for success. This session managed to get them right and I now have a much clearer understand about how having the right sponsors, the right participants and the right design can align to deliver an impactful and amazing event!

Though our session was short, around 3-4 hours, it built upon an earlier info-heavy session by Atlantic Cities and the Knight Foundation, which provided the necessary ‘scan.’ A few other factors helped get the conditions right. I interviewed around 10-11 key players before the session to better understand their role in the ecosystem and their thoughts about its future. I scribed these interviews and Alfredo and the Housatonic design team turned them into knowledge objects. I don’t think I’ll ever do another event without spending the up-front time in one-to-one conversation with the key decision makers. It was essential to our success.

We curated the invite list and targeted only the key players– no substitutions. What emerged on a Monday afternoon, was a highly energized group of around 130 people who showed up ready to work! After a level-setting module of ‘history of the future’ we put them in mixed teams, each with its distinct twist on the startup world: early stage investors; mid stage investors; early and second stage entrepreneurs; accelerators; universities; government; branding. We tasked them to turn around the most important actions that they together could deliver in 2013. The Value Web artists captured the actions on a roadmap, that was quickly turned-around for a press conference following the event.

We are working on next-moves with this community. One thing surely resulted because of our session: folks know much better what is happening, who is doing what and what their role is in building the kind of startup community that was envisioned.

You’ll want to have a look at the real-time video/scribe capture that Alicia did of the insights, that is, well, WOW! See it here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The team was first-rate and we not only worked great together, but also we had a lot of fun! Thanks a mil to Alfredo Carlo, Lucia Fabiani, Sita Magnuson, Jeff Shults and Caroline MacDonald for their amazing delivery and energy.

For a quick summary of the event, watch more here.

The UN Millennium Development Goals have only been partly achieved and the time has come to lay out new global targets for sustainable development. The UN’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons has been soliciting inputs form around the world and, to ensure that the voice of civil society is heard, turned to the Berlin Civil Society Center to provide clear inputs.

In mid-March, the Berlin Center invited 260 individuals from over 200 civil society organizations to a three-day conference in Bonn to shape these messages. To help make sense of the richness of the debate, a Value Web team, led by Christoph Kellner, provided on-going graphic facilitation (visit our Flickr page to see more in detail) and support to a team of so-called Harvesters, synthesizing the rich messages into a clear call for Human Rights, Planetary Boundaries, Social Reform, and Accountability, or, in a word, Justice.

The World Economic Forum just published an insightful article by Patrick Frick (and Alicia Bramlett and many others from The Value Web) about our adventure with the Forum over the years and how process design can help changing the future of the world.
Enjoy it!

UNICEF is working to bring vaccines to the 20% of the world’s children who today lack them. Last November, a Value Web team designed and facilitated a three-day DesignShop in New York to build a technical consensus around changes to the Cold Chain needed to ensure that vaccines arrive at local health centers un-damaged by heat or freezing. The 65 participants came from UNICEF, WHO, the GAVI Alliance, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, from academia, industry, and across the community of experts seeking to ensure that the right vaccine reach the right child at the right time and place, regardless of infrastructure and logistical challenges. While technology such as solar refrigerators and novel data capture tools will be essential to improving vaccine coverage, the real challenge is in re-thinking the broader systems which link these technologies with the people who use them, the processes these people employ, and the knowledge they leverage that will make the difference in the long run.

The Value Web was very proud to have the Intervening in Complex Systems report published by the World Economic Forum at Davos this year. The report was a culmination of a yearlong collaboration with the WEF’s Young Global Leaders community to take a systems view of global issues and to use collaborative mapping techniques as a platform for discussion around where leaders could best intervene.

The initiative involved over 300 leaders from across the world in business, government and civil society, getting perspectives on leading issues in everything from the rule of law to resources and energy. As a collaborative process, it was also a large-scale experiment in how to drive substantive dialogue down to root causes in a fast paced, open, conferencing environment. The complex process of mapping non-linear cause and effect from a blend of influences in the complex systems field was designed into a series of fast-paced, self-facilitated exercises, with the results captured, designed and iterated in-conference in order to get the results from conversation to narrative.

Both as a process of deriving insight from gathered leaders and as a snapshot of insights from across global domains, we are proud of the results in developing a more systemic, connected view of global issues.

You can read and download the report here.

Alicia Bramlett and Aaron Williamson provided live graphic facilitation at the Banff Forum on Canada’s Innovation and Productivity Challenge in Collingwood, Canada. A diverse group of participants from the business, government, academic and not-for-profit sectors, the Banff Forum engaged members in broad-based dialogue on matters of public policy.

This event marked the first time that The Value Web has collaborated with the Banff Forum. We look forward to future collaborations with this interesting and vital community.

Alicia Bramlett and Aaron Williamson are attending the Banff Forum on Canada’s Innovation and Productivity Challenge in Collingwood, Canada. Bringing together a diverse group of participants from the business, government, academic and not-for-profit sectors, the Banff Forum engages members in broad-based dialogue on matters of public policy.

This event marks the first time that The Value Web has collaborated with the Banff Forum; Alicia and Aaron will be capturing insights throughout the summit through live graphic facilitation and digital visualization, producing a visual summary of key concepts as the conversation unfolds.

“Innovation occurs when problems and potential solutions are reframed, reimagined or recombined in new ways to achieve a transformational product, process or service. Innovation in the social context not only generates new ground-breaking products but restructures and re-organizes social systems to yield better solutions and create stronger, more resilient societies.”

~ Rockefeller Foundation ~

On June 25, Circle of Blue Co-Founder Carl Ganter received one of four Centennial Innovation Awards from the Rockefeller Foundation. Ganter and team received the award for developing a “unique, multi-disciplinary approach to documenting and reporting on the global freshwater crisis.”

The Value Web is thrilled Circle of Blue is receiving this well-deserved, well-earned recognition and looks forward to continuing to work with them to inform, enrich and enable decision making about the global fresh water crisis. It is gratifying to see many of the ideas that were developed in our 2010 Waves and Memes Design Session taking root and resonating with organizations of such caliber as Rockefeller.

Congratulations Carl, Eileen, Keith, Aaron, Andrew, Nadya and everyone at Circle of Blue. Carry on, and keep on shifting that vector!

Need to be outside!

Last week the Value Web team was in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico supporting the Young Global Leader’s Annual Meeting. Around 250 YGLs were there, spread out from the pool to the restaurant to the window-less conference room.

Our challenges were many. I’d like to describe 2 of them and hear your thoughts on ways that you’ve managed similar conditions.

Challenge numero uno: how do you herd a band of cats? Even in the best of times, the YGLs ignore our timing in favor of their networking conversations. Here, with a pool and a beach and an all-you-can eat buffet, we knew we’d have to up our game if we were to ever gather them.

Imagine my surprise when the team met to talk about herding and el Nacho came up. I’m no newbie to wrestling: my 17-year-old son is a fan. But who would have guessed that a 30-something Swiss dude would kiss his 2 biceps and call out El Nacho? The next thing that emerged was a team member who volunteered to dress as el Nacho and run through the resort ringing a Swiss cowbell. We bought a Nacho costume (they were plentiful in Mexico) and (mostly he) planned his entrances.

But our response was nothing compared to that of the YGLs. El Nacho turned into a meme! He reminded us of our playful sides and irrepressible spirits. The YGLs invoked el Nacho in presentations, in conversations and in calls for him to be part of the ‘family photo.’

We couldn’t have planned this. The idea caused us to erupt in laughter—always a sign that something is worthwhile. It occurred to us spontaneously as our team came together to troubleshoot thorny design issues. The subject was dead serious. The solution erred on the side of playfulness. I intend to err on that side again.

Our herding hero-- El Nacho

Challenge numero dos: The marker boards were unfit for use and forced us to mostly abandon them and change the design at the 11th hour. Our design had tricky transitions — moving the boards around to enable 250 people to break into small groups in the aforementioned windowless ballroom. All of these plans had to be scrapped in favor of immobilizing the boards and finding a solution for 14 additional breakouts.

Once again the team huddled together with our sponsors. We arrived at a brilliant solution that was so much better than our original ideas: Let the participants work outside in the gorgeous environment. Duh.

Originally, we were working under the assumption that if we ‘let them out’ they would never come back. That proved to be false. In fact, by allowing them to work outside the participants didn’t feel like they were ‘missing out.’ We were pleasantly surprised at how prompt they were in coming back to the ballroom when el Nacho rounded them up.

I’ll question our environment decisions differently from now on. I see how much value can be gained by completely using the environment offered. I believe that this action alone increased the participant engagement more than any other design decision we had made.

Bioversity is an international research institute focused on using agricultural biodiversity to improve people’s lives.  Bioversity works in three broad areas: sustainable agriculture, nutrition and conservation. It is part of the CGIAR consortium of research institutes, which is itself undergoing a major reform and transformation.

The collaboration between Bioversity and its sister institutions, with donors, with other researchers, and with smallholder farmers lies at the core of its new ten-year strategy.
Bioversity turned to The Value Web to design and facilitate a major strategic alignment DesignShop, bringing together 86 senior scientists, economists and administrators and other experts from around the world. Working for three days near Rome, the group deepened their understanding of the new strategy and translated it into individual strategies for eleven research programmes and research themes, as well as drafting guidelines for operationalizing the institutional strategy.

Emile Frison, Director-General of Bioversity International said of the event, “The DesignShop was extremely effective. The three days not only delivered the expected draft strategies, but the participants left with renewed enthusiasm for their implementation. This is by far the best facilitation I have ever experienced”.