Capella University has created a novel approach to innovation by blending design thinking with appreciative inquiry, a strengths-based approach to organizational change. In this workshop, participants will practice “appreciative listening,” one of the first steps in this process, to uncover, anticipate, and heighten positive potential to create solutions with a human-centered approach.
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation increasingly applied in higher education contexts. The design thinking process includes five components: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. It is extremely useful in tackling complex challenges in its solution-oriented approach to defining problems, creating multiple solutions, and iterating with prototypes. Capella University has been developing design thinking capabilities across the organization since 2014 to support innovative solutions that are desirable, feasible, and scalable.
One of the cornerstone offerings of the Center is “3D Innovation.” 3D Innovation is a holistic approach to innovation that includes three dimensions: the innovation mindset, an innovation model, and innovation collaboration. 3D Innovation was inspired by contemporary classics like Change by Design and The Innovator’s DNA. Participants learn expanded concepts of innovation using a compelling innovation challenge. This includes deeper prototype design, user testing, and presenting your innovation. This workshop is designed for teams who wish to explore a challenge they are facing and create an innovation solution. During this day-long event, participants create user personas, strive to see the problem through the eyes of the user, generate as many ideas as possible to address the need, and then create visual prototypes of best ideas. Later in the day, user testing is conducted to help refine the prototype before it is pitched in the organization for more formal prototyping.
While these 3Di experiences have garnered much positive feedback and resulted in the implementation of a number of high-impact innovative solutions, the Center for Academic Innovation is continually striving to improve and refine. Not afraid to innovate on its own process, the CAI recognized that when we were innovating an existing service or model, we weren’t doing enough to capture the “magic” that was already happening or to truly understand and empathize with our users.
Appreciative inquiry (AI), created by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva in the 1980s, is an approach to organizational change that can result in transformative results by inquiring collectively into the “best of what is” in order to create a future through innovation and action. AI is typically facilitated through the 4-D cycle: Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny. The Discovery phase illuminates what’s already working in an organization through an appreciative interview process that results in stories about times when people and processes were at their best, and then analyzes the forces and the factors that created the magic to be applied to future solutions. We have coined the term “appreciative listening” to underscore the importance of truly being present and open to hearing the solutions that already exist in the user stories.
Not only does the appreciative interview process generate information that can be useful to create desirable, feasible, and scalable solutions that are increasingly relevant to the user, but this process also engages the users themselves with each other. When appreciative listening sessions are facilitated, as many users as possible are invited to interview each other and then share back their partner’s story. Questions like “think of a time you felt your best” or “tell a story about a time you felt “flow” doing this work,” or even “share a story about when you really felt valued” are powerful prompts to elicit shared empathy and a greater understanding of what’s already working. The appreciative listening process can also include questions like “name three wishes for the future” to start to translate current magic into future solutions.
We added the appreciative listening interview process to a 3Di workshop that was seeking to improve and scale an existing and successful faculty community of practice. Faculty members were grouped in pairs in web conference breakout rooms and spent about 30 minutes interviewing each other, and then sharing back their partner’s stories. The themes that arose were powerful and compelling, and – as is often the case in AI sessions – also exposed some areas where more improvement was needed. We learned about moments of transformation that faculty members experienced through the community of practice and later were able to generate ideas about how to hasten that transformational experience and mitigate some of the confusion and frustration that preceded it. After the success of piloting appreciative listening to the 3Di workshop, we are incorporating it as a core component to the experience.
In this workshop, presenters will lead participants through the appreciative listening process after providing a high level overview of both design thinking and appreciative inquiry. Participants will interview partners and share stories, and the group will identify common themes that can elicit ideas about innovative solutions and new possibilities.
Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion, participants will be able to:
- Describe the design thinking process
- Describe the appreciative inquiry process
- Conduct an appreciative interview