1. Challenge: Describe your challenge, including all relevant information.

I work as a self-employed startup-consultant in Berlin, Germany. In truth, this is a fancy way of  saying I am currently unemployed. I struggle to find clients and if I do it is usually low pay for a  very dull sort of work: fundraising. While I have strong experience in this field – having raised  over 10 million dollars for my own startup-projects – and people often come to me for advice in  this field, I find it hard to monetize this capability. Startups cannot pay high retainers for lack of  money and I cannot risk doing unpaid work in projects with a fail-rate upward of sixty percent.  Stuck with low retainers, I wanted to improve the way of doing my projects, make them more  profitable and less dull.

2. Selection: In your own words, briefly describe the tool you selected (e.g., what it is and why

you selected it for your challenge -- including any appropriate video lecture references).

I selected Mindmapping as an appropriate tool for my challenge. The problem is wicked in that  there is no clear path how to achieve my goals by simple analysis. Mindmapping helps me chart  the reality I and my clients are in and allows me to see their perspective as well as my own. It  allows to extract meaning from data points – my and my clients’ experiences in fundraising  projects – and describe the patterns that emerge from connecting various such data points or  clustering them into groups. Also, doing this exercise in a group ensures a variety of experiences  and opinions that ensures covering a large part of the problem space.

3. Application: Describe how you applied the tool you selected to your challenge (e.g., what

you did and how the tool was applied effectively or ineffectively).

Having a lot of experience in various fundraising projects for a variety of companies I have a  broad perspective of the process of fundraising, the challenges along the way, and the necessary  tools to use. However, in the Design Thinking context mindmapping involves multiple minds to  get a clear picture of “what is” and thus generate better input for the next phase of “what if”.

So I invited seven people whom I know and trust – clients I have worked with and other  entrepreneurs who have successfully raised money for their ventures – for beers and snacks to  do a mindmapping session. I chose a centrally located co-working space where I could have a  room for free and let the adjoining bar deliver the beers. My wife prepared the snacks to save  money. Five people actually showed up, I expected a few no-shows and that was fine. I know, a  larger group of ten or more is preferable but I opted for a small group as the problem space is  very clear-cut and I am working with a type of people who are struggling to make time for such  things. I also felt that in a small group I might be able to get the discussion flowing faster and get  deeper insights from each single participant.

I had a wall prepared with big sheets of paper and gave every attendant post-it notes and a  marker pen. We talked about their recent experiences in the fundraising process and which parts  of my work were most/least helpful, most/least novel to them, had the most/least impact on the  process and the outcome, and also where they felt that they would have needed more input or  different input.

Whenever I or one of the participants felt we had found a worthwhile point he jotted it down and  stuck it to the wall. Being entrepreneurs the group also quickly generated ideas to improve on the  points mentioned, we decided to also put ideas on post-its and mark them with an asterisk to  differentiate from the data points. Within two hours we had a wall full of notes and used a third  hour to cluster the points on two axes: impact and standardization. This gave us a four-field  matrix:

•  High impact – high standardization

•  High impact – low standardization

•  Low impact – high standardization

•  Low impact – low standardization

I chose to modify the mindmapping approach with this matrix because it was pretty clear from the  outset that I would be looking for ways to streamline and increase productivity rather than come  up with completely new ways of doing this sort of project. With the matrix I hoped to get a broad- based assessment of how to achieve productivity gains the fastest way possible.

4. Insight: Describe the insight you gained from applying the tool you selected to your

challenge (e.g., how an insight affected your thinking about the challenge and about design  thinking more broadly).

Overall, this exercise helped me map out the various pain points of my clients in this context and  compare these with my abilities to solve their problems or improve their situation. While there was  hardly anything new, it helped me get a clear and fresh picture of the whole process in a  fundraising project. I now had (nearly) everything I needed to think of in front of me on one wall.

The modification with the matrix worked as expected. As usual with such matrixes, the four fields  were not equally filled with notes. The high impact – high standardization and low-impact – low  standardization fields were nearly empty. Most points were also easily grouped into the two  remaining fields. The discussion around where to fit in some points, however, was very  interesting. Some people found the standardization aspect low, other people found it high and  could well explain why. One example: part of the group felt that the business model of a company  was in every case unique and my input regarding how to best explain the business model to an  investor was always unique to the client company. Another part of the group argued that most  companies fall into a category of business models or a mix of two types of models. What follows  from this insight is that while every product and business model may be unique, there is finite  number of fundamental ways to describe a business model. As a consequence there are parts of  my work in this area that can be standardized, others I need to tailor to every single client.

How did this affect my thinking about the challenge? I could see clearly now that the value I  provide does not necessarily have to be provided in a consulting project. I had always described  my approach to this type of project as coaching but now I realized that I could outsource a big  part of the work – mostly the parts that are high standardization – to some form of media (video,  text, presentation) and focus my work time and especially face-time with clients on the high  impact – low standardization parts. As a side effect I got great feedback from my clients, which  made me feel better about this type of project. I also hope by focusing on the higher impact parts  the work will become more interesting overall.

While this might not be the typical problem to use design thinking tools, using mindmapping in  this challenge has improved my understanding of design thinking especially the value of having  real people tell their stories and the sometimes surprising insights that can come from this  approach. The outcome is definitely superior to sitting at a desk and analyzing a problem alone  as it generates a broader and more diverse picture.

5. Approach: Describe what you might do differently next time -- applying the same tool you

selected or a different one -- and the reason(s) why.

Overall, I think my approach was appropriate while the type of challenge might not be a  prototypical case – it was the challenge I had. While not super-creative, the challenge was wicked  enough to warrant using this approach. I am a bit proud of the modification I made with the  matrix, it helped me improve my result by a small margin and gave me a head-start for the “what  if”-phase.

Based on the experience with my group of entrepreneurs, I would make sure to have multiple  color post-its for distinguishing different types of data points and ideas. This would keep the wall  more organized and more visual. With a more multi-dimensional challenge this would have its  benefits.

