Who we worked with
Local businesses
What we did together
Online and in-person workshop
Skills
Applied innovation, problem discovery
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“Wellington businesses to be provided free access to innovation thinking” – Wellington NZ
In 2020 more than ever we have realised the importance of rising to common challenges with a spirit of community and contribution.
COVID-19 forced business owners who had run their business the same way for a decade – or longer – to look for new ways to generate revenue and keep their doors open. Businesses had to adapt to remote delivery reality, and client-facing businesses had to quickly re-think their offering in line with the ever-evolving quarantine restrictions.
“I came out of the workshop with a completely different plan than what I thought I would be doing. It was making time to look back over what you’ve been doing and see opportunities that you hadn’t thought of yet. It was great being around a group of other creative, motivated people. It was energising.”
Raechal Ferguson, Field & Green
How we did it
We developed a series of workshops with online course support, run in partnership with WellingtonNZ, to reach SMEs in Wellington who were facing challenges due to COVID-19.
The programme involved cohorts of up to 10 participants per session who attended workshops virtually and, during COVID Level 2, in person. These workshops were supported with online course materials and work done by participants between sessions.
With the Thrive self-directed course and facilitated workshops, we’ve effectively created a crash course in entrepreneurial problem-solving.
The result
We’ve helped 118 businesses across the Wellington region to rethink their post-COVID-19 strategy, to pivot or validate new ideas. Some of the key learnings Thrive participants took home were:
- re-thinking the way they approach problems and brainstorm solutions
- how to interview customers to understand their problems and validate that new solution concepts are valuable to them
- learning new, valuable tools they can apply to solve any challenge in their business.
