People come to me with all sorts of elaborate ideas to "change the world," like games, festivals, art projects, films, and apps.
Often, these ideas have little connection to how the idea will make a real change happen on the ground once people have "experienced" the idea . . . (i.e. "I suppose we'll just put a link somewhere, then people will . . . ")
This entrepreneurship model is back-to-front. If you have an idea to make an impact, you need to forget your crazy idea and go straight to a real human being and get them to make the change you are hoping your idea will influence them to make. Talk to ten people on your street. Call every person you went to school with. Talk to your dad's golf buddies. Get them to do a real thing and observe what it takes.
I'm calling it the ACTION DESIGN THRESHOLD. Pass it before you write any code or spend any money - or before you even have an idea at all. Use Slack, Google lists, Zoom, Instagram, Canva, Figma, and Discord. Do it using your own email and your own phone number.
Just get a real human to do a real thing in the real world. You can do it with a conversation, a party, a poster, or a sticker. Create a 21-day challenge. Offer free consulting calls. Start a group. Just get out there and practice making change happen by talking to a human in real life.
Once you've succeeded in getting your first real human to do the action, then try and replicate it with two humans. Then try and get ten humans to do it.
What will it take to scale your actions from ten humans to 100 humans? Look for a pattern and an opportunity. What kind of actions do you need to design this scaling for? This is your idea that will work.
Any idea you have before you get ten real humans to change is probably a junk idea. At the least, it will need much pivoting. And if you can't get ten people to make a change from a conversation with you and any simple tools you give them, or you don't have the networking and marketing skills to find these ten humans, there's no way your idea will fly in a theoretical future when you have millions in funding.
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How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based techniques you can use to get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com
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This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.
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