How do you collaborate with people you’ve never met before?

…When you can only interact in virtual spaces?

…In order to identify a social impact problem that matters to all of you? …Then to design a solution?

…In only 4.5 days—at which point you will present that problem-solution set to a CEO panel?

That is exactly what students from a dozen schools in NYC and Philadelphia have been doing this week during a virtual Expedition. They have formed teams around: the overpolicing of BIPOC communities; the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses; and persistent wage inequalities.

Those are weighty issues for kids who don’t know each other and who can’t collaborate in the same physical space. So how do they do it?

In a word: prototyping.

As the founders of IDEO have famously said, “A prototype is worth 1000 meetings.” Yet in school and in the world of work, we typically think, then talk, then act.

By contrast, in Expeditionaries, we think, then prototype, then we talk. Then we think and prototype some more.

In a world of increasing complexity, are you preparing learners to participate in meetings? Or are you preparing them to prototype their way to solutions that might just save the world?

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We are taking applications for our next virtual Expedition, August 3-7.

Deadline is July 17.

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