Thinkergy was invited by UNICEF Thailand to run an X-IDEA Innovation Project aiming to create a more effective, productive and innovative UNICEF office of the future.

The social innovation project was part of a staff retreat in Hua Hin, and Thinkergy had only 2.5 days to guide the 44 UNICEF delegates, split into 4 project teams, toward the desired results.

Due to the time limitations, Thinkergy conducted a series of pre-workshop staff interviews as well as preparation meetings to become aware of possible innovation challenges (relating to both issues and opportunities). We used the insights gained in the interviews to structure the overall flow of activities and pick those X-IDEA tools that we believed would help the project teams to become aware of their real challenge.

In the Xploration stage, the teams checked on their core assumptions and on the existence of “rules for fools”, walked a mile in the shoes of key stakeholders, looked at their challenge from different scales by examining the big and small picture, had to answer powerful —and at times provocative— Xploration questions, among others. The teams realized that compliance with audit guidelines and internal bureaucracy had made them too inside-focused, slow and passive. The teams consensually agreed to reframe their Final Challenge to reflect their real challenge: “How to make UNICEF Thailand fast, flexible and fearless?”

Next, the teams produced over 3,000 raw ideas during Ideation, which built the ground stock to then design over 130 realistic, meaningful idea concepts in the Development stage. In the Evaluation stage, each team elected its 3 top concepts, which they then pitched in the final Action stage.

Interestingly, while the Final Challenge was more internally focused, more than half of the pitched top idea concepts made meaning for UNICEF Thailand’s external stakeholders (e.g., local and migrant children, partners, and donors).

Is it time for your organization to become fast, flexible and fearless? Contact us to find out how X-IDEA may help your teams uncover their real challenge and turn it into concepts that make a difference, inside your organization and out in the world.