Professor of Sustainable Business and Sharpe McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business Jay Friedlander.Professor of Sustainable Business and Sharpe McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business Jay Friedlander.

Trying to change the world is tough work. Social and environmental innovators face thousands of decisions every day and operational details can be overwhelming. Bootstrapping an idea into reality, they get mired in the minutia and fall victim to analysis paralysis. While attention to detail is important, building everything from scratch wastes time, energy and resources, impeding success. 

Instead, learn from tactics change makers are using to maximize impact and grow successful enterprises. These tactics provide two essential elements of design thinking: stimuli from fresh perspectives to catalyze iteration and discovery, as well as prototypes of demonstrated pathways to market to speed testing and implementation. 

Tactics solve design problems. Unbundling streamlines a product or service into its most essential elements. M-Pesa did this with basic mobile money transfer services for Kenya’s unbanked. Today millions of previously unbanked people in 89 countries have access to critical financial services. 

Using the power of the people to design or fund new ideas with crowding has become commonplace. Kickstarter alone has funded over 100,000 projects to the tune of over $2 billion since they launched in 2009. Designers and engineers increasingly look to nature and biomimicry to inspire everything from trains and clothing to currencies and turbine blades.

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