- How can we create a community benefits system?
- What are the prospects for young people in Cornwall?
- How can we design a better service for people living with dementia?
- Who wants to be a young entrepreneur?
- Could a community work exchange help people find employment & skills?
- How can we present GB expenditure & benefit data to show opportunities for innovation?
- How can people do more for their community?
- Where there are difficulties, there are opportunities.
- Imagine if Cornwall was a Worldwide Superbrand...
- Can Big Society be delivered with small change?
- Challenging Big Cornwall to Design in The Time
- Is there such a thing as 'Hard to Reach' people?
March 2011
Imagine if Cornwall was a Worldwide Superbrand...
by Robert Woolf
Last weekend (11 - 13 March), 20 volunteers had less than 48 hours to design a new service for Cornwall based on the theme "superheroes". This was part of ‘Global Service Jam', an event which over 70 cities across 6 continents took part in, all with the same superhero theme. The team worked together using a service design methodology to define this theme into the following challenge - how can we take advantage of Cornwall's super powers in order to grow Cornwall's economy? They explored the issues in more depth using top down and bottom up techniques, and they then designed and prototyped a new service called ‘Oyster'.
This event was held at Pool Innovation Centre, and live streamed, to showcase the opportunity for Next Generation Broadband. We were watched for 60 hours, by 120 unique viewers, who used social media tools to contribute to our insights and ideas from a remote location. This remote expertise helped to shape the challenge and opinions of the volunteers.
The volunteers had no previous experience of service design. There were a mix of age groups - ranging from 17 to 70. There was a mix of experiences too - including architects, teachers, businessmen, designers, students, quality surveyors and so forth.
When you think about it, to have come up with any service at all in 48 hours is quite an achievement - and yet this team managed to not only understand the challenges facing Cornwall post-Convergence (European funding) but also to identify a unique and beneficial solution that does not exist in Cornwall.
Here's how they did it:
// Friday 6.30pm - 9pm // Brainstorm
After an initial icebreaker, we started our Jam with a very open plan brainstorm about the meaning and connotations of the word "superheroes", with a view to defining a challenge at the end of the evening. The open format helped people to start thinking about suitable challenges for Cornwall and as the facilitator, it was interesting to observe the ebb and flow of +/- energy as people with very different views shared their ideas and opinions.
The team was heading down the route of defining their challenge as one of bridging the gap between younger and older generations. And then, after supper, they turned on a sixpence, rejected the notion that we should try to make superheroes out of normal people and began to think of Cornwall as the superhero. I was impressed, and our challenge was set: "How can we take advantage of Cornwall's superhero qualities?"
// Saturday 9.30am - 1pm // Diagnose & Co-discover
If Friday night was all about talking, Saturday was all about doing. In the morning the group set about understanding the nature of the challenge in more depth 
and undertaking wider community research to examine the local issue. Armed with Flip cameras, chalkboards and anything else they could lay their hands on, five groups travelled to different parts of West Cornwall to explore the issues, needs and motivations of people and business; whilst another group stayed at the Innovation Centre to analyse the economic landscape of Cornwall in more detail.
Once again, I was impressed by the team's willingness to get out of their comfort zones and reach out to people. As I followed the tweets of other jams around the world, I noticed that many other cities had delved straight into the ideas whereas we were continuing to define the challenge. These fresh insights clearly helped the team to sharpen the challenge around economic development in Cornwall.
// Saturday 2pm - 2.45pm // Sharpening the brief
After lunch, our final challenge was set: "How can we take advantage of Cornwall's super powers in order to grow Cornwall's economy?" This was when the team learnt about the importance of a good question, it must be well defined and focused on a clear outcome. The impact of this is that the team moved as one from here on, successfully working in collaboration and harmony.
// Saturday 3pm - 5pm // Co-design
Possibly the most unfamiliar activity of the weekend for the group was our co-design exercises. By now, everyone was beginning to form ideas based on a linear train of thought. I mixed this up by taking three teams of five people through a very non-linear process for generating new ideas and innovations. Each team then had to develop their best idea, looking at the idea/service through a number of different perspectives and role play.
One of the ideas fell a part at this point and so we took the best of their idea and embedded it into a stronger idea. Indeed, bringing the three ideas together into one service - a service that would answer our challenge in a unique way - was a big challenge but by now the group were building on each others ideas and respecting everyone's voice as equally valid.
// Saturday 6pm - 9pm // Co-develop
A day of structure, definition and idea generation ended with the team getting extremely creative, developing the service prototype and rallying to each others cause. Working in small groups but coming back together as one team, the night ended with each team presenting their prototypes to the team. In a make or break moment, I pulled together the various strands together into one all inclusive sketch - the energy and relief was palpable. Everyone agreed with the solution, and everyone believed in the new service...even though it didn't have a name.
// Sunday 9.30am - 1pm // Document working prototype
In a crazy morning session, the team conceived and developed storyboards, scripts, logos, strategic and operational goals, and a brand called Oyster (helping Cornwall's pearls to shine brighter). The results can be seen here: http://planet.globalservicejam.org/content/oyster-cornwall-remove-grief-growth
// Sunday 1pm - 3pm // Lunch and Legacy
We then fell apart, exhausted (well I did).
So what did we learn?
For me, the Global Service Jam demonstrates that service innovation can be achieved by anyone, on any subject, across any sector...so long as you adopt the right process.
The team thoroughly enjoyed the process, they took ownership of this idea and to my surprise they are currently exploring the opportunities for developing the service further. Now that is something I hadn't envisaged. Here is their top-line pitch, not bad for just 20 hours of collaborative working:
"Imagine if Cornwall was a worldwide superbrand. Where Cornwall's economy grew as a result of a unique mandate. Where ‘collaborative consumption' removed the grief from growth, to deliver global advantages. A bank of everything, except money. A bank that invests the best of our resources, to help our pearls shine brighter. Welcome to Oyster - owned by people, powered by Cornwall, loved by the world."
