BioSherpa: We want scientific knowledge, with the capacity to create wealth, to be easily accessible and digestible to all. We want entrepreneurs to think circular to create businesses that are regenerative from the start.
Project Type: Individual Final Major project for the MA Service Design at University of the Arts London.
Project Outputs: Service Concept BioSherpa, a platform that allows entrepreneurs and designers to find digestible and reliable information about the properties & commercial applications of often-overlooked & wasted organic resources, examples of the simplest applications to the most complex ones, and a set of tools to help people develop a circular mindset when developing business or project ideas.
Project Rationale & Guiding Principles: The pandemic was a call to reflect and rethink our world and what business as usual meant. There was this “build back better” narrative, a calling for a change and at the same time, this frustration of people wanting to intervene and do more to address the climate crisis but feeling absolutely powerless. I asked myself, “why do people feel they cannot act?”, “what is the change everyone is waiting for?” and “who is going to make the change happen?”. I decided to use my major project to explore these questions: “How can we democratize the future and allow more people to participate in shaping it?” “How can we empower people with the right tools to take actions to address systemic issues like climate change?” I didn't know how it would look, so In order to keep myself in check, I put together the following guiding principles:
1) Do not design for the linear economy. What is the new economic model you should design for then? Design for the world you want to live in.
2) Think systemically & long term. What are the collateral consequences of creating this service or technology?
3) Democratize access to opportunities and income: Guarantee opportunities for all.
The Challenge:
How we can democratize the future and allow more people to participate in a new economic model that allows society to meet its needs within planetary boundaries? (Raworth, 2017).
This was the brief I gave to myself at the start of this nine-month final major project, in the middle of a pandemic and inspired by Doughnuts Economics and Design for the Pluriverse. Applying a systemic approach, I started this project by looking to understand the pain of individuals looking to drive change. I immersed myself in communities looking to drive change, shadowed their ways of working, interviewed community members & field experts, reviewed the literature, and condensed the data by mapping four aspects of change that caught my attention: discourses, stakeholders involved, tools to drive change & power dynamics. This exploratory and inspiring initial research helped identify the following key insights:
There is a generalized notion that change should be top-down, resulting in a concentration of programs and services around stakeholders that are identified at the top as the change-makers.
Knowledge and data are key to driving change and innovation, and they often flow towards stakeholders with the power and wealth to acquire it.
There are three main players: designers, scientists, and entrepreneurs, who very often feel powerless even though they are big forces of change.
There is a need to transition to a new economic model that allows humans and the planet to thrive, but also, that reflects how humans are really wired. “First, rather than narrowly self-interested, we are social and reciprocating. Second, in place of fixed preferences, we have fluid values. Third, instead of isolated we are interdependent. Fourth, rather than calculate, we usually approximate. And fifth, far from having dominion over nature, we are deeply embedded in the web of life” (Raworth, 2017)
This exploratory stage was key to identify the principles of the new economic model I wanted to design for but from a theoretical point of view. My ultimate goal was to use the knowledge acquired to inform the design process of a service that could operate in a paradigm in which humans and the planet can thrive (Raworth, 2017).
Area of interest & research delimitation
Mapping change & power dynamics
Communities Immersions
“Modernism’s methodologies of mapping, designing, planning, for controlling and changing deeply complex systems may not be the answer to the challenges we face. Maybe we need to go underground - working in networked, symbiotic companionships, like mycelial arrangements to generate infinite micro resolutions”
- Anab Jain, Calling for a more-than-human politics.
Design Process
The research started in March 2020 while in lockdown in London. Therefore, all the interviews, community immersions, and co-design workshops were conducted online. As the mapping exercises highlighted the need to empower scientists, designers, and entrepreneurs, I explored the three stakeholders simultaneously as a way to be able to identify and map dynamics between them. I went deeper into the research process in order to understand each of their particular pains and frustrations.
Parallel to this work, I continued to look for ways to, practically, design for this new economic model. This process was very challenging, not only for me but for fellow designers looking to tackle the climate crisis. In one of the co-design sessions, I noticed participants using interchangeably words like sustainability, eco friendly, green economy, and circular economy. I saw this pattern over and over again when attending events and interviewing experts. To simplify my research process, I decided to focus on the circular economy as the principles to design were clearer. However, I extracted key concepts from doughnuts economics as I felt it provided me with a new and broader mindset.
Understanding motivations and obstacles
Designers:
I immersed myself in three communities: Climate Designers, The Planet Life, and D+C. I observed interactions, mapped dynamics, engaged in conversations, and interviewed members. I also partnered with the Climate Designers UK Chapter to run a co-design session with the goal to understand fears and challenges experienced by designers when looking to take actions/drive change.
Looking to find tools, knowledge, and data that allow them to take actions from their current jobs and roles.
Wanting to act but unsure about what “taking action” means to them and which actions will make them feel that they are contributing to a larger cause.
Feeling frustrated as they find themselves “trapped” in linear structures that see sustainability as something external and not a mindset.
Often feel guilty for working in certain companies or contributing to the development of certain products, but feel that they do not have many choices.
Scientists:
As interviews with scientists were not as easy to get, I scoured the internet to analyze blogs, articles & community posts made by scientists. Later in the process, I was able to find two scientists that helped me corroborate the information found.
Looking to make a “difference”. Seeing science as a chance to intervene and make the world a better place. Many driven by curiosity and their intrinsic motivation to explore the world around them.
Often feeling conflicted as they struggle to see the tangible impacts of their contributions.
Feeling stuck or trapped in a competitive and rigid system of “publish-or-perish” in which they constantly have to be thinking about “what's good for their career vs what is good for science”.
Struggling with the business aspect of their discoveries when they want to pursue something on their own.
Aspiring Entrepreneurs:
I mapped the services supporting the journey of an entrepreneur and found that there was a large concentration of services and programs after they had come up with the idea. However, there were just a few to help them come up with one. Through surveys and community immersions, I was able to identify people from this target group.
Inspired by existing entrepreneurs driving innovation to tackle the climate crisis, but frustrated to not see a clear path in which they can make an impact too.
Afraid of the financial risk from being an entrepreneur. Feeling that they did not know where to start or have the knowledge needed.
Often confused about their role in the change, which specific systemic problem they should intervene in, and how they could make it sustainable over time so it could become their permanent source of income.
Entrepreneurs
I noticed a concentration of efforts to support the transition of big corporations to the circular economy, and an increasing level to support designers, but very little to support entrepreneurs. While there is a justified focus on big corporations, there are many businesses being created on a daily basis following a linear mindset, which guarantees the perpetuation of the linear economy. This understanding helped me narrow down the research to only one target user: aspiring entrepreneurs. For me, entrepreneurship seemed like the strategy to distribute income, democratize the future and drive transformational change.
Entrepreneurs were interviewed with the ultimate goal to gather learnings to design a service that could help aspiring ones.
Co-design workshops and community immersion
Mapping data gathered while interviewing scientists
Entrepreneurship Journey & Interviews
Finding commonalities in their journey
Key Insights
Entrepreneurship is not generally perceived as a way to make an impact: When looking to make an impact, the first option is to do charitable work, as entrepreneurship is related to “capitalism & profit”, meaning it is not often seen as an option.
Acquiring a circular mindset is key: Being exposed to a problem and seeing data around it triggers the need to solve it. Being exposed to circularity principles & sustainability concepts helped them shape their business idea and understand what was ok and not ok to do.
The majority of entrepreneurs were working on repurposing organic waste. Entrepreneurs were looking to extract value from something considered waste and were not particularly identifying themselves as a circular business.
Lack of knowledge of waste commercial applications: The hardest thing for them in the early stages of their business journey was to find out what to do with the waste. They pointed out that scientific papers were the only way to see the potentialities, but they were difficult to navigate, often written with complex jargon, and not easily accessible by regular people exploring causally business opportunities.
Additional insight: William Neale from the European Commission, mentioned the following when I asked about the support for aspiring entrepreneurs and the creation of circular businesses: “We have tried to make sure that the right data is available to the right people in the value chain at the right time. This is key for the circular economy to work. The potential is there then for digital technologies to help us become more circular”
Narrowing the scope
Based on these insights, I identified two interesting HMW questions that I wanted to explore:
Acquiring a circular mindset is key: Through the insights gained, these considerations became very relevant:
Could Service Design methods help people to find problems worth solving?
Are business ideas being thought of from a circular perspective?
Are human and environmental costs being considered when incubating and accelerating businesses?
Are we educating for a new economic model that allows humans and the planet to thrive?
The ecosystem supporting circular entrepreneurship is underdeveloped: There is a big opportunity to support the entrepreneurship of circular business to end the perpetuation of the linear economy and business mindset.
Lack of knowledge of organic waste commercial applications: This was noticed first while interviewing entrepreneurs and validated with scientists. This specific insight aligns with the need to redistribute knowledge - which has been pointed out by several economists and academics.
There is a need to use digital technologies to enable the circular economy: This insight was gained while interviewing experts but also mentioned by one entrepreneur who is using digital technologies to reuse packaging safely and in a compliant way.
“Inequality, it turns out, is not an economic necessity: it is a design failure. Twenty-first-century economists will recognize that there are many ways to design economies to be far more distributive. It means going beyond redistributing income, to exploring ways of redistributing wealth, particularly the wealth that lies in controlling land, enterprise, technology, knowledge, and the power to create money”
- Kate Raworth, Doughnuts Economics, 2017
Co-designing & testing ideas
Based on the insights, two service ideas came to life: (1) A toolkit to help entrepreneurs develop a circular mindset and (2) a platform to help entrepreneurs to find organic waste commercial applications.
The toolkit was validated by lecturers in Design Innovation at the Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship of the University of Bristol and tested & iterated with 30 students at Bristol University and 60 students from Universidad del Atlantico in Colombia.
A toolkit to help entrepreneurs develop a circular mindset:
The Initial toolkit consisted of four parts:
Find a problem: As finding a problem was the first stage of the entrepreneurship journey and one that could democratize opportunities, I included an activity to connect systemic issues to businesses & guarantee the development of purposeful business ideas.
Ideate: As the goal of the lecturers was to ideate, an activity was designed to help them do that.
Evaluate the circularity of your ideas: With the goal of the research being to develop tools to help them think from a circular perspective, an activity was designed to test if they could re-think the ideas in circular ways.
Think long term: An activity was designed to allow students to think about the long term aspects of their business ideas. This was specifically intended to support the guiding principles set up at the beginning of this project.
A platform to help entrepreneurs to find organic waste commercial applications.
Parallel to the iteration of the first service concept, in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs were analyzed and further mapped to identify insights that could become the main features of the platform.
The features identified were tested with material and food experts, circular economy experts, entrepreneurs, designers and data scientists. Competitive research was conducted to identify similar platforms but also platforms that these features could be integrated with. The main goal was to be able to create partnerships and avoid the duplication of efforts.
Testing toolkit with Bristol university & Uniatlantico students
Project Outputs
A Digital Platform:
In a post-pandemic world and in the context of a climate crisis, it is imperative to build an ecosystem of services and tools that accelerate the transition to a circular and regenerative economy. BioSherpa is just a piece of the ecosystem, a platform that allows aspiring entrepreneurs to find digestible and reliable information about the properties & commercial applications of often-overlooked & wasted organic resources, examples of the simplest applications to the most complex ones, and a set of tools to help anyone develop a circular mindset.
“The benefit of this platform is to channel information already existent but scattered and make it available for the business to born. There is so much investment on the new, but very little on connecting ideas and market, connecting pieces of data, connecting actors with the right information. ”
BioSherpa Toolkit: The Minimum Viable Change
The service includes a set of tools developed as a response to the absence of a circular entrepreneurial mindset. The first tool is the Minimum Viable Change, which has the purpose of helping people in general, but fundamentally entrepreneurs, to come up with business and project ideas that address systemic issues, to provoke a change of mindset and motivate people to look for the Minimum Viable Change they could do in society.
“I learned how to think big. You can always narrow it down. Also, no matter how small an idea is, it can have an impact. ”
BioSherpa Toolkit: The Circular Mindset Cards & Impact Business Model Canvas
The Circular Mindset Cards & Impact Business Model Canvas is a toolkit for anyone looking to rethink their business ideas from a circular point of view. The tool was also created with the purpose of allowing entrepreneurs to think about the long-term impacts of their business ideas, how to include non-human stakeholders from the start, and take responsibility for the services & products they put out there.
“The canvas is much more comprehensive than the regular one. It makes you think about the service not only from a business perspective, but consider the impact, either positive or negative, that your service can make.”
Special Undertstanding: Decolonializing Knowledge
Professor Escobar, author of the book, Design for the Pluriverse, mentioned the importance of reframing discourses about the Global North & Global South, which have been constantly dominated by the first (Escobar, 2018). While developing this concept, this idea was brought back when listening to the History of Medicine podcast by Diana Uribe. Diana pointed out how the knowledge of many cultures was dismissed and excluded from medicine and how in recent years this has been corrected and their value considered (Uribe, 2018). These findings led to questioning if BioSherpa should be built exclusively with scientific knowledge and if there was a possibility to include indigenuos and ancestral knowledge too. This understanding was not included in the service concept as It requires further research and evaluation. However, sharing this special understanding about knowledge was important as its distribution has been central to this project.
“Our goal is decentralized production, I’m talking about a business case for an efficient enterprise where the traditional concept of scale becomes irrelevant. Our new concept of scale is about distributing economic power far and wide”
UAL Postgraduate Live Shows
We presented our concepts and discussed our learnings during the online postgraduates shows. Our goal was to disseminate the understandings gained over these nine months research project with the wider design community.
Self Reflection & Learning Outcomes
Switching to the circular economy is vital for our survival, but that will not happen if we do not learn how to think circularly. The linear economy is more than just a simple economic model. It is a way of living and thinking. I hope this research inspires educators to develop circular curriculums as a tool to drive change.
The journey to find circularity was long, as this project started with concern about climate change. However, throughout the project, it was noticeable that confusion and multiplicity of concepts were delaying action. Words matter. The way we call things matter because it unites people around the same understanding. Experts will debate whether the circular economy is the right word or concept we should all align with or not. However, this project allowed me to find in the circular economy a common language and clear guidelines on what was needed to do. This understanding was shared with entrepreneurs who found in the circular economy a guide to operating their businesses.
Empowering people has been my long-standing obsession. I truly believe that we all deserve opportunities and chances. Therefore, being able to embed that goal in this project was a dream come true. Inspiring literature shaped my way of thinking and served as a framework to keep me focused and not lose sight of the systemic issues I was looking to design for. Hopefully, BioSherpa is a reflection of it.