I designed a week-long course for financial inclusion practitioners on financial innovation in emerging markets.  It was titled, Beyond Mobile Money: Practical Tools for Powerful Finnovation, and I delivered it in Turin, Italy at The Boulder Institute of Microfinance 2018 training.  The course started by discussing the concept of innovation, and the unique aspects of well-known businesses that we thought were innovative.

Each of the next four days was focused on a different aspect of strategic management, introducing a tool or technique that could be used to innovate.

• The first topic we discussed was using concepts from design thinking, behavioral science, and the Field Study Handbook to improve market research techniques in situations when new product ideas are hard for potential customers to grasp.
• Next we introduced the Google Design Sprint Methodology and the Thin Canvas for lean product development and rapid prototyping and testing.
• Then we introduced basic chatbot interfaces, and android-based digital data collection tools that could be used for agent networks.
• Finally, we examined a framework for creating a data dashboard and free data visualization software that helps companies make better decisions from the data these digital tools can produce.