The Ask

Help us impart design thinking skills to select cross-team staff members so that we can start the journey towards improving internal innovations as a Safaricom

The Observation

Cross-department collaboration is not common among large corporates and products taken to market are mostly driven by individual departments.

The Process

In collaboration with Utu, iSC ran a three-day design training workshop involving select staff members from different departments at Safaricom. iSC used a learn-by-doing approach to the training where the participants went through lectures on specific topics followed by hands-on allowing them to practice what they learned on real-world problems. In total, there were 36 participants divided into two groups. Utu worked with one while iSC worked with the other group.

The curriculum covered the fundamentals of design thinking, introduced different methods, and then focused on how to do user research, prototype, test ideas, and pitch to get managerial buy-in. The participants did guerilla field studies and testing.

Post workshop, iSC provided design thinking support as the groups implemented their ideas. 

Outcomes

At the end of the workshop, the participants had developed, tested, and pitched five ideas to the management team. The five teams were then given 6 months (December 2018 to May 2019) to implement their ideas with iSC and Utu providing light design thinking support during implementation. 

The second round of pitches were recently done and we are waiting to see which ideas will be taken to market. 

Through a practical approach, we were able to impart hands-on design thinking skills to participants who had never used the design thinking approach before. They were able to work on real-world ideas and get buy-in from relevant stakeholders. We are looking forward to seeing some of the ideas taken to market.