What’s a Catalyst?
At Columbus Regional Health, a Catalyst is
someone who has been formally trained by
CRH Instructors to use Design Thinking Tools
on innovation projects and in their daily work.
Catalysts are trained on Innovation concepts,
processes and the application of human
centered design, also called Design Thinking.
Why did we develop this toolkit?
Columbus Regional Health has been learning
about and using Design Thinking since our first
engagement with IDEO in 2011.
Ultimately,
we developed our own customized Design
Thinking curriculum that could be taught by
CRH practitioners to others.
While the CRH
curriculum is grounded in best practice, tools
and techniques developed by IDEO, Gravity Tank,
Stanford D School, and other academic and real
world practitioners, our Catalysts asked for a
single source toolkit that they could easily use and
reference when they were out of the classroom
and back in the workplace.
Thanks to a grant
from the Columbus Regional Health Foundation,
we were able to put together our own CRH
Innovation Catalyst Toolkit with input from our
Catalysts.
This toolkit is a foundation for you to build on.
When we started our journey with Design
Thinking in 2011 there were not many resources
on line or elsewhere on Design Thinking.
Now
you’ll find hundreds of resources out there. Our
Innovation Catalyst Toolkit is not meant to be an
exhaustive selection of Design
Thinking tools and
practice. And, as you advance in your practice,
you’ll likely turn to outside sources for inspiration
and instruction.
Our Innovation Catalyst Toolkit
presents CRH’s “tried and true” tools and our
core innovation and Design Thinking processes
and concepts.
These are what we teach in our
Catalyst classes and what Catalysts will be most
comfortable with after finishing our classes.
We
hope you’ll find this Toolkit useful as you apply
Design Thinking to your own workplace problems
and opportunities.