In this milestone, you will ideate and develop potential solutions to your selected sustainability problem using structured visual tools and collaborative brainstorming.
Innovation begins with ideation. After analyzing your sustainability problem and uncovering market opportunities, the next step is to transform your insights into actionable solutions. Naturally, this milestone emphasizes the ideation competency—encouraging divergent thinking, exploring creative possibilities, and generating diverse strategies to address the problem. By using mind mapping as a visual tool, you’ll organize and expand your ideas, identify patterns, and prioritize solutions. This structured approach sets the stage for developing relevant, impactful, and problem-oriented solutions.
The ideation phase is a dynamic process designed to foster collaboration and innovation within your team. Together, you’ll lay the groundwork for building a sustainable and effective solution.
Here’s how you should complete the milestone:
Step 1: Choose a tool for visualizing your ideas. Recommended options include
Miro,
Canva, PowerPoint, or any software that allows for collaborative mind mapping.
Step 2: Define the central node of your mind map by focusing on:
The problem
Market opportunities
Future challenges (or insights from your data analysis)
Step 3: Spend quiet time brainstorming individually. Write down ideas and questions related to:
Potential users
Affected areas
Identified needs
Early solution concepts
Add these ideas as branches extending from the central node.
Step 4: Schedule some time together with your group and present your individual ideas. Foster understanding by sharing your thought process, connect your ideas with others, and identify how your contributions align with or build on your team’s insights.
Step 5: Collaboratively develop your mind map by connecting and expanding on individual ideas. You should also highlight recurring patterns, explore additional concepts, and prioritize the most promising solutions to address the sustainability problem effectively.
📖 Additional Resources:
Engage with the
following resources to support you in your journey to developing a clear and concise problem statement, supported by evidence.
Task Evaluation
To self-assess on your way to the capstone
🎯 Competency: Ideation - Generating innovative and creative solutions to address complex problems
📦 Deliverable: Mind Map of Solutions
🌟 Deliverable Guidelines:
Connect your specific problem to market opportunities.
Illustrate key branches showing user needs, affected areas, and initial solution ideas.
Show sub-branches illustrating expanded and interconnected ideas.
Highlight patterns and prioritized solutions based on team discussions.