“We’re here to try to do something different,” said Continuum’s Ed Milano, kicking off a panel discussion at the company’s Boston-area offices last Thursday to address a growing crisis within the field of microfinance. Milano, Vice President of Program Development at Continuum, set the stage with an apt quote from the de facto “father” of microfinance, Muhammad Yunus: “My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see…Poverty in the world is an artificial creation…Poverty is unnecessary.”

A proven tool for fighting poverty on a large scale, microfinance provides very small loans to people, mostly women, to start or expand small, self-sufficient businesses. In fact, 155 million of the world’s poorest people have received a microfinance loan—giving them the opportunity to transform their lives. But as these organizations face meteoric growth, managerial operations needed to effectively scale these institutions are suffering. Industry leaders claim that finding a solution to this “talent gap” is critical to the future of the field.

Continuum, in collaboration with a remarkable team, has just begun work on a project to solve this social challenge. The project’s goal is to create an innovative leadership development solution for middle managers, and, in essence, groom the next generation of leaders in these crucial organizations. The team includes Continuum Social Innovation Principal Anna Muoio; Peg Ross, director of the Human Capital Center at The Grameen Foundation; Lynn Pikholz, President of the microfinance development company ShoreCap Exchange; and Lyndon Rego, Director of Innovation at The Center for Creative Leadership, an international leadership education and research firm. “This is a burly problem,” says Muoio, “and we need the power of all these different disciplines and expertise—from microfinance to leadership development to organizational effectiveness and innovation—to solve it.”

Over the last decade, microfinance has experienced explosive growth, with local banks expanding anywhere from 50 to 100 percent year-over-year to serve the needs of their clients. “But because of this enormous growth,” says Pikholz, “resources are stretched, staff isn’t adequately trained, and there’s no methodology in place for managing, grooming, and attracting talent.” For example, one microfinance bank in India has hired close to 1,000 loan officers and branch managers this year alone. The branch mangers, for instance, are largely in their mid-twenties with little experience in managing hundreds of employees, significant loan portfolios, and “non-textbook” situations, such as a local government officials urging people to default on their loan repayments or the death of a loan officer in the field. To put things in context: A comparable job in a city at a traditional bank would require seven to eight years of experience. “Microfinance institutions can’t reach their mission without help,” says Rego.

During the discussion, the team opened up the conversation to guests, who included individuals from the microfinance and financial service sector as well as graduate students from Harvard, Tufts, and Boston College. They helped to imagine what the solution would look like. All agreed that a trail-blazing mentality is needed to get the job done.

Although the project is still in its infancy, Grameen’s Peg Ross has already felt that working with Continuum has been eye opening. “This company has introduced me to a whole new way of finding a solution,” says Ross. “And with the work that the team will do on this project, they will effectively train the next generation of leaders.”

Click here to read “No Footsteps to Follow: The talent gap in the development finance sector in India,” field notes from the team’s initial trip to India in the fall of 2009.

On February 19th, students from the Otis College of Art and Design visited our Los Angeles studio. The students are part of a multi-disciplinary class called “Design for Social Impact.” In the class, the students work with local non-profits to focus their designs on specific and relevant needs.

With this in mind, we tailored our presentations to give the students a feel for Continuum’s social innovation process. The morning started out with a tour of the space and its project-specific installations, led by the studio principal Alex Hennen. Then, design strategist Brian Wen led a presentation and discussion on design strategy and ethnography in emerging markets.

Below are some impressions from the students:

“I began to realize all the types of people, methods, and practices that go into social design. It is a complex system.”
Alexandra Cantle

“[I got] a chance to see more ways that design can create social impact. It also was good to see the importance of video interviews and what they can reveal.”
Stephanie Treinen

 ”Being in product design, I’ve come to the realization (or more left the state of denial) that you really need to get out there and talk to people when doing research. Not just sit and google things on a computer.”
Ryan Robinson

“[I got] a better understanding of the effectiveness of systems thinking, the process involved, and the importance of beginning with people’s values, and how to work with and understand people in a ethnographic design context.”
Julian Rood

On March 3^rd, Continuum and CCA hosted a panel discussion on the future of consumerism. The event drew an impressive crowd and great connections were made. 

Our LA team hooked up a dual quad-core CPU Mac tower to enable Professor Tim Kasser to present and participate remotely. Supported by a great deal of analytical data supported by psychologists, Professor Kasser predicted a future focused less on extrinsic values (materialism) and more on intrinsic values (spiritualism). This is important, he explained, because when people focus on extrinsic values, their level of happiness and gratification goes down, and vice versa. To further explain the difference, he compared people who focus on the material against those who focus on the spiritual the day before and after Christmas. 

Nathan Shedroff presented a thought-provoking piece around meaning and how to find it. He said that traditionally, when people say “Less is More,” it generally makes people nervous, as they believe things are being taken away from them. He proposed re-phrasing it as “getting more for less.” With a strong focus on meaning, he also spoke about how any two people can have their own definition of values such as freedom and security, but the expression of those values can be very different. One example of this is that while NRA folks believe possessing firearms is an expression of security, others may think the exact opposite. 

Sean Brennan’s presentation looked at a shift occurring in Gen Y; the first generation that will not be as economically successful as its predecessors. Since they can’t afford more, their aspirations and spending behaviors will be different (and incomparable to previous generations). He looked at how this generation is using the internet as a way to rapidly prototype new identities, form relationships, and use their creativity and experiences as currency (Flickr travel photos, twitter updates). They spend their money on tools and services that allow them to do these things. Sean also echoed Professor Kasser’s points by sharing some of the thinking that’s happening in Continuum’s NEXT community, particularly around how sharing plays an important role for members of this new generation and how technology and services allow this generation to be green and thrifty by default. 

The crowd was very engaged in the panel discussion and raised some very good questions. Since half of the audience was design professionals, the conversation focused around what the implications would be for the future of design. The event lasted well into the evening hours, and everyone walked away with new insights in the future of consumerism.

Does design have a role to play in the face of disaster? That’s the conversation the Cooper-Hewitt sparked through a panel they hosted the other week which I was invited to join. The conversation was moderated by Chris Hacker, CDO of J&J, and included panelists who have been on the frontlines of relief for some of the world’s most horrific disasters, Jean-Cedric Meeus, Emergency Coordinator of UNICEF Supply Division, Gerald Martone, Humanitarian Affairs Director for the International Rescue Committee, and Pierre Fouche, a Haitian earthquake engineer.

The conversation focused primarily on the disaster in Haiti. Frontline reports from Jean and Gerald underscored the extraordinary challenges the humanitarian community faces in delivering aid to a country hobbled by a threadbare infrastructure (including a lack of basic governance) and debilitating poverty. Taking a step back, we looked at a country that has been the recipient of over $4 billion in aid over the past 20 years. Pre-earthquake, there were over 10,000 private aid organizations working in Haiti, providing basic services in every arena of life. Depending on which source you choose to believe, the estimated cost of recovery hovers in the range of $7.2 to $13 billion. The main focus now is pure “rescue:” How to deliver and distribute it. This is the horse before the cart of reconstruction.

And it all reminded me of something I heard the founder of a social enterprise working in Haiti say, post-disaster: “Rescue is important, but doesn’t lead to anything more than rescue.” That’s not to say immediate relief isn’t a must have—but what’s the role design can play in the long-term recovery (and we’re talking decades) facing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere? That’s the big question to ask—and some of what we touched on during the panel conversation.

You can view the video of the conversation here.

Last week, Continuum was asked to lead a Design Thinking workshop with over 60 Harvard University students. Professor of Sociology, David Ager, brought us in to share the basics of design thinking with his Social Entrepreneurship students to help them approach their endeavors in a new way.

The students filed in, having been told by Professor Ager that the night’s session would be different. They settled in among a sea of Post-Its and Sharpies—the building blocks of great ideation.

The facilitators for the evening, Anna Muoio and Jon Campbell, kicked off the evening with a simple task—write down the steps that one would go through to pick up a rental car at the airport.  Bulleted lists were scrawled on paper at tables across the room.

The students, like most of our workshop attendees, were confident that they covered everything. Over the next few hours of the workshop, the students would come to view the same experience with very different eyes, and would realize that, in fact, there is much more to see.

After hearing about the basics of Design Thinking and Service Design—methodologies, principles, tools and ways of working effectively—the students learned how to use them. Encouraged by their facilitators and supporting cast from Continuum, including strategists, designers and engineers, the students explored the gamut of the rental car experience.

Armed with Post-Its, Sharpies and nimble minds, students used a tool called ‘Journey Mapping’ to examine the total experience and understand each step from the consumer’s point of view, along with accompanying needs, anxieties and emotional connections. This exercise enabled the students to view the entire picture of how the experience flows and the holistic implications of potential changes and improvements.

Students were then charged with defining the ideal rental car experience, and, in the spirit of using new tools along the way, teams were challenged to convey an individual brand attribute through the experience. One team, charged with creating the experience with the brand attribute “edgy,” decided that ideally the rental car experience should be like a fashion show. They designed individual touchpoints along the journey that would help to create an “edgy” rental care experience.

The workshop was lively, and the students were both engaged and interested. After the workshop, one student said he is always asked to learn linearly.  This workshop, however, took the “Atlas globe” off of his back and allowed him to think more freely. The students departed the workshop in love with their favorite new office supply and excited to apply what they had just learned to their work.