Workshops and Events

   

Session 1: Solving the Capital Paradox with Capital Design
Date:   21st Feb: noon-1pm

Description: 
Facilitated by Jordan Ostapchuk - a strategic advisor to institutional investors, and the former head of infrastructure investment strategy for a $130B+ Canadian fund. Jordan is completing his PhD in Design from the Institute of Design, investigating the role of choice-making in institutional capital allocation.

The Capital Paradox: Institutional capital allocation has never been more difficult, nor more important to civic society. The capital is there, and the opportunities are there, but a challenge stands in between. Capital Design is a way for institutions to solve the paradox, and generate returns while doing good, by reorienting how we think about investment trends and opportunities.

Based on extensive experience and research with some of the world’s largest pension funds, this session explains how Designers can play a critical role in influencing significant investment decisions. There will be a case study on how Capital Design was applied inside a $130B+ Canadian fund to completely redesign a 5 year investment strategy on the future of infrastructure.

Session 2: Predictive Models for Service Delivery 
Date:   20th March: noon-1pm

Description:  
Facilitated byEverton Lewis, Partner-  Impact Signal 
Given the uncertainty and the possibility of many future scenarios, the challenge was to plan for a post-pandemic world. The team used various tools to communicate customer behaviour and needs, validate the discovered needs, and project possible ridership behaviour into future scenarios. In this presentation, we will share learnings on combining qualitative research with quantitative models to understand customers better. We will revisit that time in history to see what we can learn about scenario planning and quantitative modelling with our current understanding of the situation. We will also learn how tools like behavioural personas, segmentation analysis from purchase data, and natural language processing can be combined to inform business decisions.   

Co-Facilitated by Emma Aiken-Klar, PhD, Academic Director of the Business Design Initiative and Lisa MacVicar, ACC, CMP, WELL AP Faculty

Leading teams through EDI Innovation not only requires a clear vision of what to change, but also a deep understanding of the intercultural needs, beliefs and behaviours of the people you’re designing for. This session uses human-centered business design, which integrates inclusive design principles, as an innovation approach to develop the skills to identify and inspire organization change levers. Participants will gain knowledge in pursuing and ensuring that EDI innovation is relevant and meaningful from both an organizational and customer perspective. Drawing on tools from anthropology, strategic foresight, business design and inclusive principles, we will work through a model of change that will help you prepare your organization for a human-centered future.

Learning Objectives                                                                                                                                            ●      Explore the role of human-centered design in corporate innovation 
●      Learn how to problem frame to identify assumptions and hypotheses 
●      Learn and apply inclusive design principles
●      Understand how to use change drivers to identify & inspire areas of focus for innovation 
●      Understand how to use empathy and human insight to identify needs, pain-points, motivations
         and beliefs of the people you’re designing for 

Facilitated by Josh Greenhut, Founder of Josh Greenhut & Associates and Strategic Storyteller-in-Residence at Bridgeable

Successfully presenting a new idea at work requires more than strong thinking, research, design, and strategy. You’ll need to distill information into a crystallized form that makes your idea more likely to be supported, invested in, and adopted. This highly practical workshop examines the unique challenges of sharing new ideas with decision-makers, whether it’s your manager, a potential investor, a prospective partner, or the CEO. Armed with a practical toolkit and hands-on opportunities to practice, you’ll gain a foundation in crafting presentations that hold attention, sidestep pitfalls, and advance decision-making.
Learning Objectives
•       Understand the unique challenges of business presentations 
•       Learn the universal structure of compelling presentations, and how it can be adapted to business design
•       Develop strategies to build credibility and make a compelling case for your idea
•       Practice storytelling skills and tools that help move decision-making forward