The sixth session of Ivey's Innovation Learning Lab took a new approach in January, offering participants a series of workshops on three consecutive Fridays in which they worked together to tackle six "wicked problems".
Wicked problems are the most challenging and complicated problems we face as a society. Many of these problems are interconnected, such as poverty, climate change, and the response to COVID-19.
Terry Irwin, Professor and Director of the Transition Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and Gideon Kossoff, Associate Director, helped company participants navigate wicked problems related to climate and natural resources, workforce well-being and resilience during the pandemic, executing on innovation, and trust in a digital world.
Participants worked together to map the history of their wicked problem, then projected a desirable future and proposed interconnected interventions that served as a step towards the desired future.
Ivey HBA students, PhDs and post-docs participated in the event and shared their key observations in this brief video.
Two HBA students developed a blog post to describe their insights from the session (Learning by doing and embracing complexity), while a group of PhD students from the US, Spain and the Netherlands provide an international perspective on the process (Collaboration vital to solving wicked problems).