Applying The Mindsets Of Design Thinking To Fund My Book Project

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think" Edwin Schlossberg 

Being passion driven by an idea is an amazing feeling. And if you are a design thinker passion driven by an idea is even better, because you know the procedures and skills needed to try to make your idea real.

Furthermore, What if you google-it and find no conversation...nothing? Well, it's even greater, because it means that you've come out with a worldwide NEW IDEA...It's the final kick off: You know that you HAVE TO DO SOMETHING.

My idea is a VISION I want to share, because it is not only mine: It came out to me through amazing synchronicity, spontaneous co-creation and self understanding...I only had to connect the dots.

My challenge is to make my idea real by applying the skills and mindsets of design thinking to come up with a solution.

Prototype of my book

My idea, my vision

-->Background:

My mode of thinking involves images. I image-think. I literally envision my thoughts, ideas and I also elaborate what I think, how I write and talk and communicate through images. Since this is how I operate since I can remember, so I have analyzed and found the pattern of my image-thinking mode, and developed my own techniques and processes.

On the other hand, I work as Marketing Communications Strategist: I had learned to adjust my image-thinking to a rationalistic mode of thinking context, since that is how the world interacts. I'm  a hub between the two ways of thinking, at the intersection of two worlds.

I also embrace design thinking (created my own definition)  

Design Thinking (wikipedia): As a style of thinking, design thinking is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context. [...] its broader use in describing a particular style of creative thinking-in-action is having an increasing influence on twenty-first century education across disciplines.

A question that was bugging me lately: WHY Design Thinking now? 

Connecting Dots

By reflecting on "Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking" by Yuasa Yauso, I had a kind of epyphany:

Yuasa Yauso, i(湯浅 泰雄 1925 – 2005) was a Japanese philosopher who wrote "Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking": Yuasa's last writings reconsider the modern Western paradigm of thinking and in its place proposes a more holistic worldview. Many topics are examined, including the relationships between language, being, psychology, and logic, synchronicity, the Yijing (Book of Changes);  mind and body... This new paradigm involves what Yuasa calls "image-thinking," a mode of thinking that incorporates image-experience". 

I wanted (needed) to start a book project: 

-->My book Title: "Image-thinking: The Why of Design Thinking" 

"Inspired by Yuasa Yauso, I will share with you my own thoughts and connections found between Image-Thinking, Design Thinking and Synchronicity. As well as my image-thinking techniques and processes".

I need to investigate the following insights:

• Image-Thinking: A new language, a new philosophy?
• Image-thinking as the previous step to Design thinking?
• Is Design Thinking spreading Image-thinking? (Overcoming Modernity)
• Design Thinking as a collective response to centuries of rationalist supremacy?
• Could Design Thinking be categorized as a discipline of this new philosophy?
• Image-Writing, Image-talking, Image-Communicating and Co-creation
• Is social media the paradigm of Synchcronicity as "world of the collective unconscious"?

But...How Am I going to fund my project?

And then (again), it occurs one of those amazing synchronicity-situations: 
For professional reasons, I 'm enrolled at Stanford’s Design Thinking Action Lab by Leticia Britos Cavagnaro (I recommend it to you). In this course, Leticia and her team break down the roadmap of a challenge: Identifying a problem, generating ideas and testing them.
While preparing the different assignments proposed by Leticia during the last 5 weeks, I was inspired to create a roadmap adapted to my own challenge:


My Book Project is 100% driven by Design Thinking mindsets:

Problem Statement

• I'm not a famous author
• I need to do some research: I might need to travel to a couple of places 
• I write in English but I’m not native: I'm definetely going to need an English Editor...A good one 
• I want my book published in English and Spanish 
• And a MUST: I need my book beautifully designed and printed!!! 
• And I need time. Time=money 

I need 30.000€ to fund my project.

Ideate, Pretotype and Test

--> This is how I'm going to try to crowdfund my book project:

Step 1 - Pretotyping my book. I will share my idea quickly and inexpensively, by creating a extremely simplified version of my book project. 

I'll publish an ebook in Amazon and others sites, 

TITLE (of the simplified version of my project):

"50 reasons for you to believe in my Image-Thinking project" 
at a symbolic price of 5€. 

Step 2 -Feedback:  By buying the simplified version of my book project, you would be crowdfunding the complete and beautifully designed and printed version of "Image-Thinking. The Why of Design Thinking". (Hope I can release it on 2014)

-->Just for you to know: The "50 reasons for you to believe in my Image-Thinking project" will interest you also besides its final purpose. Hope it'll inspire you also.

This is my plan: If I fail, I'm going to learn from the experience. That's for sure. If I make it...It'll be fun!

My special thanks to:
-Leticia Britos Cavagnaro and team. Stanford’s Design Thinking Action Lab Novoed 2013
-My colleges at Google+Design Thinking Action Lab - Diverse Team