Two Next – where digital innovation creates social impact
Digital tools have been a catalyst for our development as a society over the last three decades.
Innovation as a process gave us great results: better access and connectivity with each other, reduced inefficiencies, faster progress, growth and opportunities. Thus, with the right use of technology, a plethora of pressing social issues can be addressed.
Let’s pause here for a moment and ask you a question – when you think about organizations making a social impact, which ones come to your mind?
Non Profit Organizations (NPOs), right? They are usually the answer – organizations that are driven by the one and only goal of making our society inclusive, fair, and equal!
That’s why at Two Next we combine elements of digital and social to create innovative technological solutions to solve key problems of our society!
Digital
…being the years of experience we have in innovation management and product development, along with an understanding of all the possibilities technology can bring.
Social
…being our expertise in the social sector and wonderful network of nonprofit organizations supporting vulnerable communities.
So how and what do we exactly do?
We aim to accompany non-profit organisations in developing innovative and user-centric digital solutions for the pressing social topics of our times. By doing this, we support them in building skills and competences in innovation and digitalization, as well as foster new collaboration models and networks across sectors.
How we do it?
One way is by being a trusted partner and guide for NPOs in their transformative innovation journey within our Inclusion Lab.
The Inclusion lab is a structured 6 weeks innovation programme, which is designed for civil society actors to address some of the most pressing social challenges of their beneficiaries through problem exploration, ideation, prototyping, all the way to digital development.
Until now, our track record includes 7 NPOs from 2 counties and 6 great solutions in a variety of topics: inclusion of people with mental disabilities, informal caregiving, psychiatric recovery and integration, addiction prevention, the inclusion of sex workers, support for parents, etc.
There were so many aha moments during the program! The content delivered by the Two Next team supported us in pushing forward our idea as it was delivered in a way where we could immediately work with it and share it with our colleagues within the organisation.
Over the years we have developed and validated a 3 step process of creating an innovative solution that addresses a specific social issue.
Step 1 – Exploration Phase
A big failure of a lot of new startups and solutions on the market is a clear misalignment of problem/solution fit. That’s why our participants start their journey with one important question “What is the problem we are solving?”.
And to answer this question, NPOs conduct stakeholder interviews and an in-depth literature review to pinpoint all the needs and pain points of their beneficiaries.
Step 2 – Ideation
Through an intense Design Thinking workshop with hand-picked experts, we ideate, prioritise and visualise potential solutions that could address the identified needs of the NPO’s beneficiaries.
Step 3 – Digital Development
This is where the “magic” happens. Together with our development partners, we form solution teams and jump into the development process. During this stage, the NPO gains hands-on experience in product development and what it means to work in an agile team using Scrum methodology to develop a functional prototype.
There was a moment when we saw the Click Dummy (functional mockup of the prototype) for the first time and I realised that our idea had come to life. You could see all the inputs given by our team, Two Next and the development team in the prototype.
The other way we do it is by rolling up our sleeves and taking the lead in developing our own products, supported, of course, by trusted partners who support us by providing a deeper understanding of the market and the needs of the target group.
We started with our first solution in 2020 seeing the intense need for revolutionizing the informal care sector. And that’s how Clara was born!
Clara supports people in supporting others by offering transparent, continuous, individual, low threshold and empowering help. Family care is personal, caring for a loved one is seen by many as their duty and life’s work. The key is to enable informal caregivers to help themselves.