17 Feb Sandpits & Hack-a-thons
Deep-dive, immersive approaches to community problem solving
Sandpits and Hack-a-thons were developed with the primary goal of creating a more engaging and effective way to solve a problem. Both provide value by building an ecosystem in situations where some infrastructure might exist, but its components are dormant, unconnected or pursuing other objectives. The goal is to bring the mix of players and stakeholders together connect them to each other. Once they collide, new thinking emerges, as does a sense of commitment to taking action on any project ideas that are generated.
What’s a Sandpit?
A Sandpit (aka an Ideas Lab) is an intensive, interactive workshop designed to produce radically innovative project proposals. Participants, from a diverse range of disciplines, domains and perspectives, come together in a creative, free-thinking environment – away from their every day routines and responsibilities – and are invited to immerse themselves deeply in a collaborative process around an important challenge.
The event itself is usually a 5-day residential program that follows a relatively structured process. Typically, 20 to 35 participants are invited, from different organizations and areas of expertise. Over the course of the week, the group works to deepen their shared understanding of the designated challenge, to redefine the problems within the challenge and to generate novel project ideas that are peer reviewed on the spot.
What’s a Hack-a-thon?
Like a Sandpit, a Hack-a-thon collects different agents and stakeholders together, inspiring cross-pollination and collaboration to develop new projects, policies or community efforts to address a big, sticky challenge.
The genesis of the term Hack-a-thon comes from the world of coding: inviting a group of programmers together to code with the aim of mitigating a problem or inventing something cool. Time pressure is a key aspect; it’s often a 24-hour event with a strict end point.
A Hack-a-thon can be a bit less structured than a Sandpit, allowing for groups to self-moderate within a specified time frame and then presenting their work. Again this varies, depending on the challenge at hand, the size of the facilitation team and the design of the event.
Getting Started
For a Sandpit, the initial step is to determine the specific challenge you want to address. It should be a complex challenge, or a persistent problem that requires the attention of a diverse mix of stakeholders. Once this is defined, you can identify different types of participants who can impact the challenge and invite them to apply to attend the event.
A Hack-a-thon can start with a pre-defined challenge or by defining the ecosystem and the individual or organizational players in the community whom you’d like to bring together around a broader challenge. In the latter case, part of the work of the participants at the event is to decide what aspect of the challenge they’d like to tackle.
Getting the right people in the room is a critical piece. With a Sandpit, there’s an application process. The event is publicized through a number of different channels to attract people from different domains that have a stake in the outcome. It’s also important to attract individuals who aren’t the “usual suspects” and who bring a fresh perspective. It’s extremely important that the people who are ultimately invited to attend have a mindset that will allow them to thrive in this type of environment; people who are open-minded and have a tolerance for ambiguity. KI often uses an organizational psychologist to help select the best mix of participants.
A Hack-a-thon can also involve an application process, but it could also be invitation-only or open enrollment, depending on the nature and scope of the event.
Motivation
Another critical piece is having a stakeholder to drive momentum and outcomes. Connections between participants grow stronger when there is a meaningful challenge to solve. It needs to be specific enough to a) help define the ecosystem the organizers hope to build, and b) keep participants from spinning their wheels at the start of the event to generate some traction around the problem they are trying to address.
The momentum driver could be in the form of emotional commitment by members of the ecosystem, or a third party recipient for whom the risk of failure is high (like potable water to a village population), or it can be in the form of the incentive of grants awarded at the end of the event to successful project ideas. Even small amount of funding ($10k) can be enough to drive momentum for a local entrepreneur, a university post doc, or a village project organization team.
A recent Hack-a-thon for the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) had a very simple but important objective: to radically simplify the process for approving projects. Sixty staff members were invited to attend the 24-hour event. Using an iterative process, candidate process proposals were developed and presented, and ultimately the best elements of each were extracted and incorporated into a new streamlined process.
Approach & Methodology
Inclusive Innovation approaches every meeting as an opportunity to solve problems. It’s not about “moderating” a meeting, but rather facilitating a highly interactive event in which people roll up their sleeves, engage in thoughtful and useful conversations that lead to productive output. We use activities that invite participants to explore a challenge and define it, collectively, before jumping to premature conclusions. Sometimes it involves activities that help them to generate a number of options before settling on one. And in almost every case, the Sandpit or Hack-a-thon (or staff retreat or All-Hands meeting) is designed to create or reinforce a shared understanding of the topic at hand and to inspire higher commitment to taking action as a result of having participated in the event.
We “choreograph” our events; moving people around into subgroups and small tables in order to stimulate their thinking and give them a chance to hear from each other in comfortable doses. We know there are moments where full group presentations and discussions are important, and, we like to balance plenary activity with small group conversations and exercises, to maximize the participation of everyone in the room. We try to do this in a relatively understated way, without making people feel uncomfortable or over-chaperoned. Generally, people report that they experienced the right amount movement and interaction with a mix of participants.
Our method employs elements from a number of creative processes. At the core is Creative Problem Solving (CPS), the oldest and most researched deliberate creativity methodology, which is flexible, and resilient, in a wide range of situations. It offers a non-prescriptive approach to problem solving. We also employ the tools and techniques of Design Thinking and Appreciative Inquiry. With a range of different tools in our back pocket, we can remain agile and responsive to what’s happening in a meeting, even if it’s not what we originally put on the agenda.
Experience and Expertise
Knowinnovation has designed and run workshops on subjects ranging from improving upon photosynthesis, using big data to advance education, how to seed and grow an ecosystem that supports innovation and entrepreneurship to creating a new paradigm leadership for African scientists.
We typically bring people from different departments or disciplines together to redefine or prioritize the challenges of a complex question and catalyze each other’s thinking to create innovative solutions. We’ve run workshop events for national funding organizations including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Biotechnical and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Health Institutes (NIH), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US, and the Department of Homeland Security in the US and UK.
Inclusive Innovation
In the field of economic development, Knowinnovation has developed innovation initiatives, workshops and trainings for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Fintrac, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the World Food Program (WFP) in conjunction with the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). Members of our team have also worked with the Consultative Group for the Poor (CGAP) and Unitus. Our work with Future Africa involves changing the paradigm of leadership among African scientists with the Africa Science Leadership Programme (ASLP). We’ve designed a similar program for scientists from ASEAN countries and have worked with the Global Young Academy (GYA) and InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) to run collaborative workshops for early- to mid-career scientists. We’ve run Sandpits for the Multilateral Investment Fund, a division of the InterAmerican Development Bank, in Guadalajara Mexico and we’re developing one now for Quibdó, Colombia.
Want to know more?
Contact Maggie Dugan: maggie.dugan@inclusiveinnovation.org
or Tim Dunne: tim.dunne@knowinnovation.com