Here at TED we are always on the look out for new ways to collaborate and new methods for engaging a range of people from different disciplines or industries to create some great sustainable innovation ideas.
Clara Vuletich, as part of her PhD research, has been exploring how some of the methods for change being used by grass roots community groups, are now being shared and used by businesses. Clara has recently been working closely with Tom Rowley from The Pipeline Project on a social business idea for VF Corp, a large US clothing company, which can be shared soon!
In the meantime, Tom and the Pipeline guys asked TED to be part of a two day ‘hackathon’ for one of their clients, where we worked together with a range of different creatives, including graphic and web designers, an interaction designer, a product designer and Tom and his colleagues, who are branding, innovation and social business experts. We all spent two intense days together working on a very open brief where we were encouraged to follow our instincts, collaborate, and make stuff. You can see some of the ‘rules’ they have developed for the hackathons on their poster above.
We had such fun being part of the way they operate. A lot of the work they do is now under the banner of their Good for Nothing initiative, which is using these creative ‘hacking’ methods to help not-for-profits and social enterprises on their communication strategies and income generation ideas. Their mission statement says it all: ‘Good for Nothing is a community of thinkers, do-ers, makers and tinkerers applying their skills and energy to accelerating the work of cause led innovators and change makers’.
If you would like to see how this hackathon method works and you are based in London, we recommend you get down to the next Good of Nothing day which will be in Lambeth/South London on June 21st ad 22nd. More info here.
