June 2023

I had a few exciting learning experiences over the last month, from innovation design sprints to tech conferences and start-up pitches. Each taught me unique lessons, as well as some general learnings from the process as a whole.

The Innovation Design Competitions (organized by Ivey Business School) were 15-day sprints to come up with novel, innovative ideas for companies including the Sick Kids Hospital and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). In teams of six or seven, we were assigned specific cutting edge technologies to explore and design use cases around. Although the solutions for the healthcare and financial industry were quite different, there were overlapping themes that helped our teams find novel ideas.

To top off the exciting design sprints, I was also fortunate to attend the Collision Conference in Toronto; one of the biggest tech conferences in the world where leaders of the industry come to share ideas and collaborate with start-ups. I ran a booth with my colleague Michael Lewski and his start-up, MentorFi. There were various synergies between the conference and my design sprints. Listening to the hundreds of start-ups at the conference helped me find novel ideas for the larger companies in my design sprints, while listening to the needs of large corporations helped us tailor our strategy around MentorFi to better meet their needs.

The greatest lesson I learned from all three events was that teamwork is essential for innovation, especially teamwork across cultures and even continents. What I would never have though of were the defining ideas of our project.

The book that really helped me throughout this process was “When” by Daniel Pink; a book about the art of timing and our cognitive abilities throughout the rhythms of the day, week, month, and year. I learned that there are times of the day that are better for certain tasks, and when to time some of my activities like exercise or eating to increase my energy and focus. This helped a lot as I was challenged with various kinds of workflows and places travelled.

I want to give a big thank you to the all the faculty and organizers who put on such great events and my team mates:

Sprint 1: Namrata Raina , Kezia Joshua, MSc , Nabila Naz , Anyang Liu, MSc, CISA, CFA level1 , Zichun Wang

Sprint 2: Shanshan Zhou , Zichun Wang , Ziqian Lu , Gary Miao , Huitao Yan

It was a pleasure working with you all!