Post-Sprint Recovery: Introducing the Continuity Canvas
All around the world, organizations host hackathons and workshops and sprints to gather bright minds to tackle complex problems. Often they result in creating new companies, focusing energy around a key community issue, or bringing about the robot apocalypse.
Over the course of a couple days, ideas are generated, business plans proposed, prototypes created, and concepts validated with potential users. A few weeks later, most of those ideas are forgotten, relegated to the Good Ideas drawer, stymied by a lack of momentum or a clear next step.
This is an epidemic of grand scale. Hundreds of thousands of hours are wasted, and countless frustrated individuals wind up disillusioned, dissuaded from participating in another event. The sunk cost of all those resource hours is probably equivalent to the GDP of a small island nation.
Of course, not everyone participating in a hackathon is seeking to continue working on their product. Some do it just for fun, to network, or to develop their skills outside of work. And all of those are fine! But for those of you who seek a cure to these Early Stage Idea Asphyxiation, please read on.
New ideas are fragile. Too much skepticism, and their creators lose the confidence to keep developing them. They might never be able to build any momentum.
Meanwhile, people who are able to give up a weekend might not be able to give the time commitment required to evolve the idea. (And for a separate blog post — not everyone can give up a weekend to come up with cool startup ideas.)
Design-thinking tools are hypertuned to the workshop format. Consultancies and design firms promote the power of sticky notes and Sharpies. This is an outdated way of working. The intent behind these tools is to promote velocity, but we already live in an acceleration-obsessed society. Without continuous support after that adrenaline rush, these ideas fade as fast as they arrived.
These workshops sometimes become design sprints, which beget prototypes, which lead to proofs-of-concept. But they are designed for short bursts, not continuous development. And if it takes several weeks to go from one phase to the next, the momentum is gone.
There are few tools that connect these phases, and even fewer that enable the ideas that come from them to make use of the power the ultimate user community can provide: from user validation, to customer testing, to mentorship, to advocacy, to funding.
We’ve designed a tool we think can help identify how to continue beyond the workshop to what comes next.
It’s designed to encourage idea holders to solidify their concept’s audience, stakeholders, and beneficiaries and better understand how they can maintain the momentum.
We believe this can help the top ideas emerging from these events potentially find a home, further validate their hypotheses, or connect to individuals and organizations who have already been thinking about a particular problem and its possible solutions.
We believe this tool can increase the likelihood of success for fledgling ideas, and improve the odds for those seeking to generate traction and create meaningful change.
We’re calling it the Continuity Canvas, and we’d be honored if you’d take it for a spin:
How to Use It
We designed the canvas to integrate with our favorite, effective design thinking tools, but it also works by itself. If you’re using this as part of a longer workshop or engagement, we could see these tools helping inform some of the components:
Quick Start
If you don’t have time to utilize the other tools, here’s how to use it as a standalone canvas.
- Start in the center with the Problem Statement. What is the problem your team is trying to solve? This might be the prompt from the workshop or hackathon, or it might be the business problem your organization is tasked with solving.
- Next up is the Product Concept. Describe the product or business solution you are proposing. Is it a platform, a mobile app, or a service? What does it allow its users to accomplish? How does it address the problem statement?
- Why Now? What is unique about this moment in time? (This was inspired by this excellent blog post by Ashley Mayer from Social Capital). Is it a new technology that has made it easier to solve a previously unsolvable problem? Is it a shift in public policy or a regulation?
- How do we Know We’ve Solved It? This is what we are working towards. How do you measure it along the way?
Next, move towards the left-hand column.
- Whose Needs are Being Met by this problem? Is it a consumer, an age group, an under-represented portion of the population?
- Who is Mutually Benefiting? This might be a source of potential sponsors, advocates, or subject matter experts.
- Who is Paying for it? Note that it might be the same or different from the two questions above.
- How are we Making Money? Describe the business model. Is it a non-profit, a service model, a product that you sell? Are you applying for grants? Raising money? Bootstrapping?
Next, move on to the right-hand column.
- Who are potential Mentors for this product? Think of people who have looked at this problem statement before. They could come from a variety of sectors, from the public to the private. Focus your initial search within coffee shop range. Look for folks that you can reach out to in your community.
- Some individuals have been blessed with a combination of a great network and a sense of altruism and purpose behind making sure that all the nodes are connected. These are Connectors, and they are vital components of a healthy startup ecosystem. These individuals might not be able to help with the immediate needs you have, but they likely know someone who might. Give them a hat tip and pay it forward. Be willing to make an intro or take a coffee with someone some day.
- Advocates are a more focused version, high touch form of a connector. They might be able to unlock a powerful ally by not just making the intro, but also vouching for you and your team, maybe even taking part in some of the conversations. They might be a subject matter expert in the area your idea is focused in, or someone who is generally interested in advocating for folks who are just getting started out. They might one day make a great member of your board.
- Tools What is needed to maintain traction? A data set, an API, or a piece of hardware? How will you stay in touch? Will you set up a new Slack account or use your own? How often will you communicate? Weekly stand-ups via Hangouts? Many ideas fail to gain traction after an event because there’s no agreed upon way to stay in touch.
Remember old posters on telephone poles or in coffee shops? We’ve borrowed from those tear-aways to help guide your conversations with folks you meet along the way. The intent is that the top portion stays relatively the same, but that you customize the bottom part into two pieces for people who help provide continuity:
- Your ask to the helper, formulated as a Call-to-Action.
- And a counter-signed piece, which they’ll take with them, What am I Doing? This is designed to be a soft commitment to how that individual will help out, from mentoring to connecting to advocating for your concept.
Concluding Thoughts
We know not all concepts born at a hackathon are destined to become a product, or a company worthy of investment. The experience of participating is often a motivator enough.
But as more and more organizations rely on the workshop and the hackathon as a proxy (or starting point) for innovation, we thought this might help maintain momentum beyond the initial surge of adrenaline.
We encourage you to take it for a spin, post your thoughts and filled-out canvases in the comments below!
We’re looking for technical, design, and production talent in our Portland office, if you’re interested in helping build the future of collaboration and creation together.
