Summer 2024 brought great opportunities to bring my vision to life: active ideation for businesses, nonprofit organizations, and community members to learn purposeful innovation.
What is purposeful innovation?
Purposeful innovation is a process that aligns new ideas closely with your mission and strategic plan to create long-term value, increase team engagement, and achieve more positive societal impact. It can take place in any role, department, industry, or sector.
I have learned that the most impactful solutions come when we collaborate with those outside of our industry and sector and often when we are outside of our normal work environment. This insight sparked my idea to have the first-ever active ribbon cutting for my official business launch, bringing together the community members in the Grand Traverse Region on a bike ride and community workshop with TART Trails.
What did I learn from the Innovators on Wheels experience as my business launch?
It takes a village to start a business, and I truly could not have done all of the encouragement, wisdom, and generosity of several local businesses and organizations over the years. We rode our bikes through Downtown Traverse City on the Boardman Lake Loop and ended at Commongrounds, highlighting the following organizations:
- Peace, Love & Little Donuts
- Northwestern Michigan College Extended Education Services
- Valor Skincare
- Grocer’s Daughter
- Chateau Chantal
- Commongrounds
- Hearth Sauna
- Office of Possibilities
- Shannon Vistisen
- Wave Lumina
- We Heart Local
- Heather Witkop Design
When discussing what the TART Trails mean to the Innovators on Wheels, four themes emerged:
- Promote community fitness and wellness
- Enable efficient commuting
- Promote youth engagement
- Serve local nonprofits
We practiced preparing the design thinking tools: Point of View Interviews and Analogous Research to share insights with the TART Trails on how they can bring the community together to fund trail networks.
What did I learn from the Innovators on Water experience?
When community members have multiple event options in the same evening, it is important to rethink how we host and meet people where they are and where they want to be. September is coined “locals’ month” in Traverse City and often an ideal time to be on the water. With an Illuminate Opportunity purposeful innovation conversation in the works, as well as Discovery Cruises’ Sunset on the Bay with the Traverse Connect Northern Navigators, Jennifer Szunko and I put our heads together to bring one exciting event for our community.
We had a beautiful evening cruising Lake Michigan with over 50 people. We heard many examples of purposeful innovation from local organizations across industries and highlighted some of the freshwater innovation efforts of AquaAction, Northwestern Michigan College, Wave Lumina, Discovery Cruises, The Watershed Center, Bell’s Brewery, and more.
As two connectors, Jennifer and I are both passionate about bringing people together, and creating synergies to promote innovation and collaboration, all while enjoying our community’s greatest resource: Lake Michigan.
Where should we go next?
Seeing the growing interest in being outside while innovating and networking, I look forward to continuing to host “Innovators On…” events into the new year. Have an idea or want to bring this concept to your organization? Let’s connect!