Ripple Effect: Access to Safe Drinking Water

Acumen Fund & The Gates Foundation | Ripple Effect: Access to Safe Drinking Water

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Social Impact

At IDEO, we believe in the power of design thinking to create significant social change. As perhaps the purest example of our human-centered approach, social impact mobilizes design thinking as a tool to address global social issues such as poverty, health, water, economic empowerment, access to financial services, and the need for basic services. Design for social impact seeks to create transformational change in underserved, underrepresented, and disadvantaged communities.

We believe that engaging in design for social impact advances the craft of human-centered design, as social design challenges are typically complex, systemic, and inherently human. We work domestically and internationally to bridge markets and inspire multidisciplinary conversations about the role of design in large-scale problem solving. We engage in projects with a variety of clients in the private, public, and social sectors to enable communities, individuals, and economies to grow through thoughtful design approaches. We believe in technology in service to humanity, not the other way around.

IDEO helps clients better understand the needs of their constituents and design desirable products and services for them by gathering qualitative data using in-context observations, ethnography, and cultural sensitivity. We often design not only the offering, but also the system around it and take into account the impacts of the design on the community and the environment. We use prototyping as a quick way to test, pilot, and iterate on program design. As we engage in challenges, our process seeks to uncover unforeseen implementation challenges and unintended consequences earlier in order to have more reliable programmatic success in the long term. Finally, we use storytelling and multi-media as a dynamic and effective way to communicate to a very diverse set of stakeholders particularly across language and cultural barriers.

Social Impact at IDEO

Ongoing Alliances

Good Capital is an investment firm that increases the flow of capital to innovative ventures creating market-based solutions to inequality and poverty.

The Skoll Foundation advances systemic change to benefit communities around the world by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs.

Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.

Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab Network is a global consortium of private and public stakeholders using business to address the needs of the poor.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation works to reduce inequalities in the U.S. and around the world and has supported IDEO projects related to agriculture, water and sanitation, and basic health services.

The Rockefeller Foundation supports global efforts to expand opportunities for poor or vulnerable people, and to help ensure that globalization’s benefits are more widely shared.

Press & Events

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Jocelyn Wyatt at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service
San Francisco, CA

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Tim Brown Interviewed on Health Care in India
The Economist

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