NATIONAL INNOVATORS INITIATIVE

To power 100,000 Filipino Innovators by 2023

SEGMENT

01

The Empathy Project 101

TEP is The Empathy Project, a 60-minute conversation between 2 people guided by digital flashcards served up by the TEP app.

Reasons Why We Need It

The Empathy Project practices us in the art and science of walking in the shoes of another, understanding and connecting with them, not just from the narrow view of a transactional customer, but from the far more expansive view of a whole human being: what are their pains, needs, wants, desires, aspirations, as well as doubts and fears?

This more expansive view based on Empathy is the foundation of all good solutions (not to mention all good relationships) and gives you a deeper well of insight from which to draw up out-of-the-box innovations.

Beyond Empathy, TEP also nurtures your sense of Compassion – not just knowing how the pain of others, but wanting to do your part in healing that pain. Compassion, in turn, increases your commitment and grit to solve the problem – because you care.

How It Works

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Quotable Quotes

SEGMENT

02

LAUNCHPAD 101

Launchpad is an app that guides us step-by-step through 12 hurdles as we launch customer-centric, market-driven innovations fast, lean and agile. These innovations can be new products, services, solutions, projects, systems, processes, workflows, models, campaigns – anything that makes life better for someone else.

Reasons Why We Need It

Launchpad practices us in the elusive art and science of human-centered design thinking and agile sprints that everyone preaches about but very few people know how to apply in practice.

Launchpad helps us birth new solutions, from nothing to an idea to rapid prototypes and iterations, all the way to minimum viable products.

How It Works

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Quotable Quotes

Greatness is a matter of practice and what the launchpad does in these twelve hurdles that guide you step-by-step is that they make you practice over and over until everything is muscle memory.

The first few hurdles in the launchpad are built entirely on this whole idea that we call the Empathy Project and if applied correctly, it can change everyone’s view on someone they thought that they knew.

The Guild is by far my favorite project ever since I started doing launchpads because this time, the target stakeholder is myself. I used to be in their shoes and the target stakeholders that we’re targeting right now? I used to be them and honestly, I’d even argue that I still am them to this day. This whole idea of walking in their shoes became so much easier for me because I literally am those people.

Putting imperfect things out there and testing them allows you to see if they really resonate with the target stakeholder and if they also address their motivations and needs. Although we’re all similar in certain aspects, there are nuances to how we feel about the things we need.

It really takes a lot of courage and humility to go through each of our tasks because I’ve always been a stickler for things when it comes to work. I used to teach leadership in the evasion industry and they would always say that failing to plan is planning to fail. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we should always expect our work to have feedback because that’s how we really build innovative ideas.

We spent a few months finalizing a playbook to approach a certain school. We thought it would be a simple step-by-step process because of the playbook we developed but we soon realized that every school is completely different. You could already guess that each university has their own separate thing that makes them interested in Ni2 and we had to adjust accordingly.

03

DAILY FLIGHTS 101

Reasons Why We Need It

Learning 4.0 operationalized at scale!. Learn based on live business cases across a diversity of people, teams, industries, markets and a variety of challenges and solutions involved.

Launchpad helps us birth new solutions, from nothing to an idea to rapid prototypes and iterations, all the way to minimum viable products.

How It Works

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Quotable Quotes

One time, our mentors connected us with business owners so that we could learn from them and hopefully develop the skills needed to pitch our business proposal. After leaving those sessions, I honestly felt pretty good about myself because I now knew exactly where to go.

We once brought someone to a Daily Flight doing consultancy work for this manufacturing firm and she kept mentioning how stuck they were because no one was responding to the product they made. When we brought her in to do the hurdling, one thing I noticed was that they skipped a very important step and that was getting to know their customers. This honestly validated in my head the sort of discipline that I’ve established in my time in Ni2 and that was to always remember who I’m building this project for.

A week ago I met with a contractor and designer and the first thing I noticed was that they first focused on the stakeholder first before even starting their initial design. Can you imagine that they were able to develop this mindset just based on all of the Daily Flights that they have attended prior? You really have to start with the stakeholder in mind if you want to create a design that can satisfy the needs of your consumer.

I get to learn from these business cases week after week that I never would have learned in college since I never studied business or entrepreneurship. All of these things were new to me and that’s what immediately drew my interest towards these Daily Flights.

04

SUPERPOWER-6 101

Reasons Why We Need It

Learning 4.0 operationalized at scale!. Learn based on live business cases across a diversity of people, teams, industries, markets and a variety of challenges and solutions involved.

Practice them like Lebron James – that’s the only thing that matters is the frequency of reps.

Self-awareness to know what I do well, how I practice and apply in various scenarios and where I need to put extra effort to get better. This is an O/S for lifelong Skills & Growth, with direct impact on Work & Income upward mobility.

How It Works

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Quotable Quotes

Having a good looking CV and even being a valedictorian will definitely help you land a good job in the corporate world, but if you can’t manage a project well, own your role responsibly, and even work well with others, you won’t last long at all in whatever job you landed.

Just like any sport, there’s a lot that you have to think of in terms of positioning and where you want to be, and sometimes, it just happens suddenly without you even knowing what just happened. That’s what the SuperPower Six [highlights] and that’s being self-aware of how you made that success and what brought you there in the first place.

Juggling Ni2 with my full-time job teaches me to prioritize since I’m given responsibilities that I’ve committed myself to and I take them on knowing that I have to commit to it till the very end.

How I use the superpowers is not by defining what I have but what I currently fail or suck at. Like owning the Project, or Sprinting to Market, and maybe MApping zones of Opportunities. This clearly lays out a list that I need for me to get better on. From there it's just figuring out how I get better on it and the how is just a matter of going back to Ni2 and doing BTL cycles and TEP.

[Andre] You did call Ni2 as an operating system and the biggest challenge that I personally had to face was how do I operationalize value or competencies that you need to achieve the objective of the organization. The thing I liked about the Superpower 6 was that they are very actionable. And that's the reason why we were able to translate them into specific elements and features of Ni2 whether it's in the app or in the daily flight experiences that's one of the major differences..

05

MARKETPLACE 101

Reasons Why We Need It

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know – but how do you methodically on a daily basis expand the network of who you know? MP does this for you 24/7/365 – even while you’re sleeping. Data and algo to give you smart recoms (ala Amazon) on people you should meet, jobs and gigs you should look into, collaborations and partnerships you should explore, etc.

Practice them like Lebron James – that’s the only thing that matters is the frequency of reps.

How It Works

Quotable Quotes

Being able to talk to people with similar values but who also approach problems from different points of views allows Marketplace to give us several opportunities to meet people that we can collaborate with. For example, when we’re working on a certain project and another group of people happen to be doing something that can help contribute to our work, we can collaborate and connect through the Marketplace.

Imagine an application where 24 hours, 7 days a week even while you’re sleeping or doing something else, there’s an algorithm searching the network of participants to match you with people, projects, and even businesses that you should collaborate with.

06

GPS 101

Reasons Why We Need It

Joy, meaning, fulfillment

Live our deepest truth and so fulfill our highest potential and greatest promise – not just for success, but for joy, meaning, and impact.

Personal navigation for life. When the road is dark and rough and you want to give up, GPS will keep you going where you really want to go.

How It Works

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Quotable Quotes

When you are able to live your deepest truths, you then are able to fulfill your highest potential and your greatest promise. Conversely, if you are living your mediocre truth, then you will only be able to fulfill mediocre potential, fake truths (like so many swayed by social media, and by others) amount to you living your lowest potential.

I've always been a self-aware person. I'd like to think that I've always known my purpose in life ever since I was young. And I was surprised to realize when I was going through my GPS session with Joanna, there were more parts of me I didn't know. The reason why I’m so passionate about helping people is because of my pains in life - I've realized that all the choices I’ve made, even when I was young, all point to my purpose which is to help people. And it was only when I was asked about these things that I realized that. I don't think I would have realized that I subconsciously do these things.

I own a barbershop in Marikina, and with regard to the pandemic, it is difficult to be a small business owner at this time, let alone to run and manage a barbershop right now]. The pandemic really woke me up and made me realize that I have this huge responsibility, to lead my four employees, who are all the breadwinners of their family. I’m not only taking care of 4 people but 16 women and children. These circumstances pushed me to keep trying to understand how I can make my barbershop successful in this time. This pandemic has really pushed me to improve in terms of; “how can I make my services successful throughout this pandemic? How do I serve clients better to ensure revenue and profit?” All so that I can tell my employees “I can take care of your families, I can provide for your families, just trust me.”

My purpose and what I want is this - to believe in what I’m doing. I want to be successful and sometimes I feel like I can do something bigger. I want to believe that what I’m doing can create some good, create impact for other people. That’s why I really resonate with this feature in Ni2. I feel good knowing that I’m also helping others. So in the Guild right now, I’m helping them adapt to this new environment since Ni2 can be a lot to absorb and I want to ensure that their experience is as smooth as possible and that’s what keeps me going - knowing that I’m capable of helping people too.

My dream is to learn languages and bring that expertise into a corporate setting. I want to bring that dream and purpose into my Genius and maybe someday become a bridge for people and make them feel that what we’re talking about is meaningful, to communicate in a corporate setting in their own language. So working in Ignite and practicing the ability to talk to people in a corporate setting really helps. And since I’m studying language on the side, I think in the future, I’ll be able to practice more of that service, and more of that purpose.

GPS is a very introspective exercise. Throughout the session, it helped me remember my “why”. Bakit ba ako nagigising sa umaga? Which was my tendency to put others before myself and to have a positive impact on others and I live by that because I want to reduce the pains of the people I serve and I hope that can be alleviated in my service in Ignite, NI2, and in the Guild.

The thing that I've seen in terms of GPS’ impact is (1) people who thought they can’t do something, get these aha moments na kaya ko pala to. I always encounter people before going on this GPS journey - they already have their limiting beliefs, like “Aileen di ko kaya yan.” But when they get into this process to stop, think, and to ask themselves these three fundamental questions, they would apply that into the work they do. They would come back and say “ I did it” and that’s empowering for them. GPS has an addictive property because the moment they taste it, they will try to dig deeper and try something else that compels them to action and realize this aspect of self-discovery in GPS.

07

PEAK/X 101

Reason Why We Need It

The peak of every human experience arises from personal truths drawn from these experiences. These deep truths do not remain in the experience. They come alive in everything else that we do, unleashing each of us to navigate around life’s challenges, to keep finding our ways forward – be it towards peak performance, peak leadership and transformation, or peak wellness.

How It Works

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Quotable Quote

The National Innovators Initiative is not just an ordinary innovation program that teaches people how to become an innovator. Ni2 takes care of people holistically while bringing out their innovator spirit. And this spirit comes in the form of three statements: [I care, I can, I will, Nothing will stop me because I found my answer to who am I and why I am here]. Innovation is super fast-paced and chaotic. We need to be humble, courageous, generous, agile and resilient. Throwing old habits and embracing new ones is very challenging. That’s why it’s important to take care of oneself, to keep us centered. Focused and mindful everyday. That is what Peak X takes care of. We want to help you practice caring for at a whole new level by developing new habits to allow you to be in control of your thoughts, manage stress and anxiety so you can be at peak performance.