Emory Students Innovating in a Crisis
While crises are often moments of heightened anxiety and challenge, they are also opportunities for innovation. A group of Emory students (Felicity Lin, Rurie Yi, and Hannah Jian) and an alumna (Naam Srisaard) having opted to seize this moment as one for innovation. They created whats' cookin' a not-for-profit initiative that provides a number of services to local restaurants and coffee shops affected by the pandemic. Their recent Peer to Peer Master Class provided all innovators powerful lessons about how to act fast to make a difference.
The team displayed a powerful bias towards action in their work and urged fellow innovators to resist the urge to get everything just right before putting something out into the world. They encouraged people to start launching and start learning. Another key lesson from their experience was about the power of a diverse team and a diverse set of collaborators. The whats' cookin' team has from the beginning been honest with themselves about gaps in capacity and proactive about reaching out to potential partners to help fill those gaps. What is crucial in the midst of this team building and acting quickly is agreement around a shared mission by the team. This shared mission provides a north star for decision making and keeps everyone on the same page.
Whats' cookin' provided an amazing exemplar of the power of innovation and their class was a thoughtful reflection on the foundations of a successful initiative building. To see their presentation you can head over to The Hatchery's Resource Library. Next week's Peer to Peer Master Class will be about BlockChain and is coming to us from Robert Greenfield IV (MBA 2020). Register for that here.
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