Guest Post

Guest Post: Compass-Guided Ghanaian Social Startup Wins Award


We’re delighted to share that food security startup Soyko Agro Food has won an innovation cash prize for their Compass-guided work.

They share more in this letter to their CorpsAfrica mentor Garrett Mason that founder Jerone Agyapong has kindly allowed me to share, and on their LinkedIn page.  

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Dear Garrett,

My team, Soyko Agro Foods, has just won the Kosmos Innovation Center Agrictech Classic Challenge! We're a small startup, and this win is a huge milestone for us. We took home a prize of $2000 USD, which will go a long way in helping us grow our business.

Our team produces a unique flour formula using locally grown tubers, nuts, and legumes. I'm thrilled to say that our success is in large part due to the tools and methodologies you taught us, particularly the Innovator's Compass and ABCD. Your guidance and mentorship have been invaluable to me. Myself and team are grateful for the impact you've had on our journey.

To answer your question, here's how we used the Innovators' Compass and ABCD…


We started by identifying the problem using the Innovators' Compass:

1.⁠ ⁠Who: We looked into the lives of people in the central region of Ghana, particularly those affected by malnutrition.

2.⁠ ⁠What: We observed that malnutrition was a common problem, not just in rural areas but also in urban centers.

3.⁠ ⁠Why: We discovered that the root causes were high cost of nutritious food options and limited availability of nutritious foods compared to processed foods.

4.⁠ ⁠What matters: We asked ourselves what mattered most to our target persona and realized they wanted nutritious, tasty, and affordable food options that were multipurpose.

5.⁠ ⁠What ways: We generated many ideas, narrowed down to three: a flour, a plant-based yogurt, and a plant-based drink.


To refine our ideas and pick one, we used the ABCD approach: We considered the assets and strengths of our community, including:

•⁠  ⁠What food crops were readily available in the south and how these crops stood out in terms of nutrition.

•⁠  ⁠How to get the crops at what season and cost.

•⁠  ⁠How much impact the product would have on the smallholder farmer and the average consumer.

From there, we asked the people what they really wanted and how they wanted it. We then started experimentations, taking feedback until we arrived at our end product.

Thank you again for your support and guidance. We're excited to see where this win takes us, and we look forward to staying in touch.

This story was originally published in the Spring 2025 Innovators’ Compass newsletter.

Guest Post: The City of Somerville’s Compass-Fueled Collaborative Turning Point


Daniel Koff, adjunct professor at Olin College and founder of Solomon Office, shared this story about the Compass' impact on a city’s collaborative rebirth—a powerful why for this work. In Daniel’s words…
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I'm galvanized that I got to play a key role in realizing a turning point for the city of Somerville, Massachusetts: its first-ever cultural plan—co-created with city residents, Forecast Public Art, and Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and leveraging the long history of this work by the Somerville Arts Council.

The Somerville Cultural Capacity Plan engages the local arts and culture community to explore ways to strengthen and improve access to Somerville’s cultural assets. 

It was grounded in community conversations around the Innovators’ Compass questions: what’s happening in the arts and culture community and why, principles to guide development, ideas to preserve and grow opportunities, and experiments to try right away. 

Local Ambassadors, identified by a citywide survey, worked with Ela to create a discussion guide, then hosted thirty community affinity groups, totaling 195 participants: arts groups (media, visual, performing, etc.) and other residents (newcomers, elders, parents, etc.) for the initial conversations. 

Community conversations in art studios

Community conversations in art studios

The City held a “Citywide Forum”, an open house sharing the 150 resulting easel Compass pages, typed Ambassadors’ notes (via QR codes), and synthesized themes with the entire Somerville community for further input. The Ambassadors continued to collaborate on the Plan’s development. 

Dan Koff giving a community update and inviting collaboration

Two of the Ambassadors displaying their community conversations around the Citywide Forum

A community member looks at the overarching themes

Already the Plan is having an impact. In one of the first in-person hearings Somerville hosted since the pandemic, over 135 people signed up to testify about changes to zoning for Arts and Creative Enterprise uses. The vast majority were in favor -- as long as the City makes those changes after a Community Benefits Agreement is signed with a major developer. This Hearing, plus additional upcoming convenings hosted by an Ambassador who was first engaged through the planning process, show how the Compass has helped to galvanize a community around making structural changes to their city that will incentivize the preservation and growth of the arts and culture sector. 

As Mayor Katjana Ballantyne shared at the citywide forum, “The success of the plan lies in our collaboration and co-creation. It lies in our ability to be inclusive more than we have ever been before in our outreach and engagement to ensure that all voices are represented in the plan…Participants have come up with some bold and transformational ideas. That kind of expansive thinking will better enable government and residents to work together to maximize our resources for the Community.”

Beyond the Plan, one Ambassador continued to use her platform to communicate with and convene musicians, pointing to the opportunity to continue enabling Ambassadors’ ongoing work supporting their respective slices of the Somerville community.

This story was originally published in the Spring 2025 Innovators’ Compass Newsletter.

Guest Post: "Innovators' Compass: My Swiss Army Knife of Choice"

(Compassing changing roles at work and home)

By Ginger Rowher

Ginger Rowher Compass-navigated a newly created education+business leadership role in a statewide STEM network. Along the way, she improved programs with educational staff, coached an executive…and saved Christmas with her family. In her words…

Human-centered design is a process designed to foster innovation and creativity, and the Innovators' Compass is my tool-of-choice when applying this approach to challenges in my professional and personal life.  I was introduced to design thinking in 2018 at a workshop at Grand Valley State University. I had just started working for a statewide STEM network after 21 years of teaching mathematics, and I didn't realize at the time how valuable human-centered design would be in this newly-created role.  

The STEM network had been recently formed and consisted of sixteen regions across the state.  No one had done the job before, and one of the focus areas was integrating education and business - something that I didn't have experience with.  While some skills from my former role of teaching undergraduate mathematics translated to this new position, much of the work was new to me.  The iterative cycles of the design thinking process became an invaluable process for navigating my way through figuring out effective ways to do the work.

A few months later, GVSU invited Ela to lead a series of presentations on the Innovators’ Compass and how it supports creative problem solving.  I invited my son, Isaac, who was a freshman in his first semester at GVSU.  He graciously agreed to attend, and during the session, we were asked to identify a situation where we felt stuck.  Isaac and I chatted for a few minutes, and because it was the end of November, the topic of how our family celebrates Advent came up.  Our family had developed traditions for celebrating Advent that began when our kids were toddlers, and now all of them were adults.  I had been holding on to the traditions despite multiple protests, and we were stuck.  We brought the challenge to the rest of the family and used the Innovators' Compass to find a new way forward.  Now our family spends time preparing our favorite meals together, with my kids taking the lead.

The Innovators' Compass has been a tool for way-finding in multiple contexts over the last six years.  The staff I work with at the Regional Math and Science Center at GVSU has used the Compass for improving multiple projects, including this STEM summer program, and I have used the Compass to facilitate an improvement cycle for the Michigan Girls Future Flight Challenge, hosted by the Women of Aerospace Industry Association of Michigan (WAIAM).

A few years ago, the Executive Director of a statewide organization that our Network works with asked me if I would be willing to meet with her in a consulting role.  She had noticed a particular organizational tool that I had been using in our interactions and wanted me to teach her how to use it.  I suggested that we use the Innovators' Compass instead, with the challenge being, "How might I get more organized and efficient at work?"  While my organizational system worked well for me, I wasn't sure that it would be the best solution for her, and I knew that the Innovators' Compass would reveal possible solutions that centered her priorities

This story was originally published in the Winter 2024 Innovators’ Compass Newsletter.

Please use and share. Just credit innovatorscompass.org and share back stories to ela@innovatorscompass.org.