People and the relationships they build are at the core of meaningful innovation.

This global hackathon activated youth to create peer to peer solutions that addressed challenges caused by the pandemic. Working in teams of five, we learned the design process by doing it alongside the DSIL coaches  and peers including Syrian refugee teens living in the Arbat refugee camp in Northern Iraq & US teens. This hackathon was unlike any other and showed exactly what can be done globally virtually, and together locally.

We expanded as humans, as creatives, and as future leaders who harnessed the mindsets for the future of work- besides building solutions. Bonus! Money was raised to support families in the camps while AID money was absent. Check out our mad collaborators Hello Future!

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is in a collaboration with several other global INGO's in an effort to work for the eradication of diseases. Millions of dollars were being spent with brilliant minds at the table to achieve a specific goal, yet the leadership was struggling to cultivate the trust that was needed because brilliant minds only take us so far. DSIL stepped in to design and facilitate a custom gathering where leaders would roll up their sleeves to get honest about how they were getting in the way of the larger eradication goal and try new tools to liberate collaboration between organizations. Together, we moved through conflict, re-connected as humans, and set a new way of working so the goal could be achieved sooner paved with a path we could be proud of.

INGOs, UN and local, governmental services are often limited and lack coordination and referral mechanisms along migratory routes. Services are therefore disconnected and ineffective in supporting children and families on the move, who face heightened vulnerabilities. In this mad collaboration with those actors, the DSIL team is designing with those communities and working to mock-up possible durable innovations/solutions with the knowledge that resources are low and challenges are always shifting and unique to each place. Children and families are at the centre of the design allowing insights to emerge from that point of view and create solutions that not only stick but build the capacity of everyone who is involved along the way to better understand equity-based co-design processes and how to engage those meaningful ways that honor people's wisdom at every stage.

We have worked with several colleges, schools, and companies to tackle the virtual transitions that are upon us. A misconception is that virtual moves will take away our ability to communicate well, feel connected, and impact the way we can collaborate. Our teams have been doing this for a long time and so training large groups of committed teams to practice new mindsets and use a simple few tools to liberate the online space, means that we get to see more

co-creation than ever! We can create engaging learning experiences and meetings- and it can be fun! Just ask the Columbus College of Art & Design or Te Pā o Rākaihautū! or UC Berkeley Law School.

DSIL was hired through a project fuelled through the Circular Economy Initiative called "Global Ocean Plastics Data challenge." Our team co-designed a "live" pilot-readiness assessment tool that added a new, more meaningful conceptual framework for understanding how levels of relevance, resilience, and connectivity influence the performance of early-stage innovation pilots. The aim was to learn how to best support innovators to develop new technology that could help our oceans breath. Watch for open-source material soon from this project both on virtual facilitation and some fun and new design tools to use that can be contextualized!

DSIL designed, trained facilitators, and implemented the International Development Design Summit in 2017, the first-ever to be hosted in Asia. The summit brought over 25 participants and 50 team members together with the local community to focus on 6 challenges. The 16-day event inspired a more inclusive & sustainable approach to development in Southeast Asia. New solutions and wild experiments emerged to meet the challenges in farming, entrepreneurship, and local health. The innovation lab and mindsets are still thriving in this community! Click here to see what we learned together with MIT D-Lab, Winrock, and Raitong Organics, and people from around that work in mechanics, social work, chemistry, government, and many more fields. Diveristy= the best thinking!

Asia Catalyst fights for the right to health around the world. Board members, senior management, and field staff came together to get honest about past successes and failures so they could identify areas to pivot in the face of a changing political and financial climate. DSIL facilitators moved the group through days of co-creating new strategies while introducing new tools for reflection and innovation that leaders could take back to their teams. Always thinking on a systems level, DSIL ensured the new strategy had agility built-in. AC's Leaders also worked on their personal development through 1:1 executive coaching sessions and checked in with their mental wellness too.

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Geneva needed to upskill in innovative ways to disperse aid in local communities and market to donors. DSIL customized a hands-on design thinking training using real challenges ICRC teams identified prior to the session. Teams practiced how to spot new opportunities by truly listening to how beneficiaries experience the organization's work. The results? The organization’s internal capacity grew, the team left with a specific path on what to test and experiment (safely) with over the next year. This improved the way ICRC walked alongside communities and unlocked authentic stories that invited in more donors to fund useful things.

DSIL led Thailand-focussed design research to inform global guidance for Randomised Controlled Trials as part of the Good Clinical Trials Collaborative in collaboration with Quicksand, Wellcome, the Gates Foundation and the African Academy of Sciences. We discovered there were deep cultural and structural issues around community engagement, as well as informed consent, where institutionalisation over time drove performative community participation. We also discovered we CAN do better and improving guidance is one way we can start to make gold-standard research a great experience for everybody. That starts with listening to participants as experts in their own experience.