Final Reflection Post

Having taken Customer Insights for Innovation this past semester, I was very excited to take Sustainability Inspired Innovation. Customer Insights for Innovation was a great exercise in gaining creative confidence. I was both eager and excited to continue using creative confidence within the consideration of Sustainability Inspired Innovations. I consider Sustainability something that guides my life, so being able to delve into an exploration of how it manifests within design was very exciting! 

To give more specific takeaways, I created a list that outlines my big a-ha moments that I hope to carry forward from Sustainability Inspired Innovation.

1. Sustainability is more expansive than the environment; a helpful framework to capture the more significant meaning of sustainability is the Living Principles Analysis.

Admittedly, my conception of sustainability before this course was constrained to the environment. I think it is a commonplace for people to use sustainability to refer to the environment. However, this course elucidated that sustainability should not be conflated for just the environment. It relates to more significant ideas, which the Living Principles Analysis considers to be the Environment, the Economy, the Culture, and the People. Expanding definitions of sustainability to encapsulate other ideas is a powerful tool in assessing businesses' impact on society.

Before this course, I was cognizant of evaluating companies on a basis outside of the environment. However, having experience using the Living Principles Analysis, I can better assess businesses' impact on society. It creates an organized structure for me to evaluate companies. In Customer Insights for Innovation, my project focused on how Generation Z, my generation, has difficulty assessing fashion brands' impact on society. In framing our project, our group had trouble understanding what values should be analyzed to determine a brand's impact on the community. In hindsight, utilizing the Living Principles Analysis would have been perfect! This tool answers questions we attempted to but does so in a more clearly articulated and thorough way. I know moving forward, I will have a tool to help handle the ambiguity of deciding whether I should support or avoid a particular brand.

2. Creative Thinking is more productive when you say the things you think are " not strong enough."

One of the favorite themes within this course, and Customer Insights, was the suspension of self-judgment for creative thinking. The nature of William & Mary, I think, is both a blessing and a curse. Often, you find yourself in a room of very bright, accomplished students and professors. The idea of "imposter syndrome" is something that many people here grapple with, myself absolutely included. Imposter syndrome induces this horrible tendency to self-edit in fear of judgment. This climate of thinking you should not say something in fear of judgment is a counterproductive force, especially for projects like our Design Thinking project. 

The emphasis on creative confidence we championed within this class allowed a free flow of ideas and ultimately more compelling design thinking solutions. I sincerely think a class utilizing Design Thinking would benefit everyone at William & Mary, regardless of their discipline. It develops creative confidence, empathy for others, and resiliency for iteration. It showcases that there is value in understanding that all ideas are essential. Every idea creates a framework for a solution, whether in emulation or avoidance. Even during our "Wild Idea" portion of ideation, we developed novel ideas that we refined to make our final solution more creative. Many of our group members had experience with Design Thinking, which allowed them to be adamant about suspending self-censorship. Consequently, we had a very productive ideation session.

3. Empathy is a productive force; for your team and for your solution.

Understanding other people's feeling is essential for designing solutions. For one, it is necessary to be empathetic to your teammates. This year was a challenge, hands down! Being empathetic to teammates and their journey creates a better team dynamic. I know I am ultimately both more willing and happy to work when it is with a team that champions empathy. The groups' priority to upholding empathy led our working environment to be enjoyable and overall productive! We were able to pivot to alleviate the stressors of particular individuals with it being reciprocated at some point thereafter. 

Regarding solutions, it is essential to have a framework for whether something is useful. In this course, this manifested as utilizing our persona Maggie the Millenial Mom. Maggie guided our innovation because we constantly were able to ask the question, but how would this help Maggie? Moreover, Maggie championed being a working mom, so she also represented a need for being empathetic to children in our design thinking innovation. I think utilizing personas is such a fantastic tool to ground projects into offering value to others. You could have a novel, excellent idea, but if it ultimately does not serve anyone, what's the point? 

4. The future holds a lot of opportunity for sustainability; Generation Z holds both the instinct towards and spaces to exercise sustainability in their professional careers 

Overall, I think my big takeaway would be that there are many reasons to be optimistic regarding sustainability-inspired innovation. This year has been a challenge across more than a few lenses for people. Whenever I attended class, I was reminded that there was light at the end of the tunnel and that there are excellent initiatives to make the world a better place. Just the sheer presence of the class and the interest of all my classmates in exploring sustainability was an exciting thing to consider! 

When you take the time to look at the positives, it is overwhelming to see just how many there are. I remember being in such awe watching the Circular Economy videos, exploring the incredible shifts being made towards sustainability. While some ideas that we studied are relatively niche (for the time being, of course), there were large brands we explored, like GM making only zero-emission vehicles after 2035!  The opportunities that exist within sustainability seem to be expanding each and every day, and rapidly at that. I think my peers and I find ourselves in great seats in being active actors in this sustainability expansion.