How to remain innovative during Covid-19 times, Fiona Descoteaux, Innovate Communities

Interview with Fiona Descoteaux, currently CEO of Innovate Communities (previously Innovate Dublin) an organisation she initiated working within a multi-stakeholder environment.

What is your own background briefly?

From as long as I can remember I was interested in design and solving problems, I was going to become an architect! In my teenage years I took up work experience in an architecture firm and a few aspects of the position threw me off track, and with my teenage wisdom I decided business management would be a more rounded degree! Shortly after graduating I worked as a business support officer in a deprived community in North Glasgow. What an eye opener that was! Pockets of the community were poverty stricken; homelessness, begging, people queuing to receive their next meal – it was life changing for me and impacted significantly on my career pathway.

In my early twenties I was always looking for my next adventure, and working abroad was it! I moved to Dublin in 2007, and it wasn’t surprising that I began working as an Enterprise Officer in a local community development company supporting disadvantaged individuals and communities. From there I progressed to Economic Development Manager and Acting CEO by twenty-nine.

Did you know that we are now facing 51% unemployment among our 15 – 25 year olds? To support in the fight against youth unemployment we are launching an online mentoring programme with LinkedIn, INSPIRE. For more information on how to become a Mentor: https://t.co/Lgq0HjwTYM pic.twitter.com/W1PgFnvsjF

— Innovate Communities (@InnovateCommun) June 10, 2020

Remain innovative during Covid-19 times, Fiona Descoteaux, Innovate Communities

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

Yes, very much so, my love of design and problem solving never left me it just diverted into designing services to solve community problems! In 2015 I founded Innovate Communities. However, the journey to founding Innovate Communities was not an easy one. While working as Acting CEO in the local development company our main contract was cut. 90% of the company income was lost. My team of 25 lost their livelihood which was the hardest thing of all for me to accept. It would have been very easy to walk away.

I had been interested in social innovation at the time and how the process worked to create new and more effective answers to the biggest challenges of our communities such as unemployment and mental health. In other fields such as medicine and business, methods for innovation are well-understood but there is little comparable in the social field.  For our newly revived company, innovation meant turning bold ideas into reality. It also meant putting people first to change lives for the better.

I wanted to launch services for communities that were designed by the residents who lived there. Human centred design was an incredibly simple concept that was used extensively in the business world. I thought that it could work in the non-profit world too. This time was my time to revitalise the Company.

Innovate Communities & LinkedIn are launching INSPIRE – Online Mentoring Programme for 18-25. Interested, and from Ballymun,Liberties,Finglas? More info: https://t.co/Rg7OoVM3Ld
#LinkedInIreland #Covid19Response #onlinementoring #youth pic.twitter.com/j9XPSkc5A5

— Innovate Communities (@InnovateCommun) June 16, 2020

How did you revive your company after you lost 90% of your income in 2014?

I looked at the loss as an opportunity – a time to reinvent and a time to learn! It was about keeping perspective. I decided to revive the Company but with a different focus – working with communities to develop creative programmes to address some of their needs, such as activating unused community spaces, youth unemployment, and recidivism.  The worst that could happen is that it failed. On the positive side there was always going to be good story and lessons learnt if that occurred!

So in 2015 I set-up Innovate Ballymun (our name changed to Innovate Dublin then Innovate Communities as we expanded our reach) with a small team of 3. To cover immediate costs we leased our building to provide a small income.  We then compiled a business plan to determine if my idea was viable. The figures worked. Now we had to go out and determine what our core service/product was going to be. We didn’t rely on anything we had done in the past, other than our professional network. We were working from a clean slate. All our services/products were to be designed around the needs of our target markets, the community.

Most importantly we constantly went back to our target market and consulted with them throughout the design process. Anything we launched needed to be used, needed to deliver value and most importantly needed to have an impact socially and economically! We learnt very quickly that we were not the experts in this space – our target market was but we also had to rely on others in the community space to bring their knowledge and paradigm of thinking to the fore. It was a complex situation, tiring and long hours were worked. I was incredibly thankful for the team around me!

Our first project needed to make us money, or else this would have been a very chaotic learning experience! After our design thinking process was completed with our first community, Ballymun, we launched our first Social Innovation Hub, it was a test bed not only in concept but for working through community challenges presented by local people. It had set us aside from our old brand and Company, and it was starting to make us money.

How was the last 12 months? What were your big wins?

I was off on maternity leave having my second baby! But I did work a little – I wanted to. When you are invested in something personally and professionally you strive to keep it going. So, in a personal capacity my biggest win was my baby. Professionally, I needed to diversify our income. As I had learnt the hard way, a business needs to have much more than a few income sources, even in the non-profit world. So I worked to ensure we had varying contracts ranging from the corporate world to government.

We were extremely fortunate to partner with LinkedIn, where we have now launched INSPIRE, a mentoring programme designed to work towards alleviating the exceptionally high (51%, May 2020) youth unemployment rate Ireland is currently facing. We are also scaling services that worked, such as the Social Innovation Hub model and we are working with local government and Enterprise Ireland to launch our second Social Innovation Hub in The Liberties, Dublin City.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now / how are you managing during these corona times?

My team laughs at me…we pivot, pivot, pivot! During Covid-19 some of the contracts we were about to start were put on ice, so we started on the journey again to secure new ones. We looked at the new challenges being faced by our target market and used our methodology to explore their needs, and build projects that would alleviate those challenges. During this time of uncertainty and chaos we stayed true to our mission and vision and kept communicating to our biggest assets…our team and our target markets. We have now started to secure new contracts!

How can people find out more about you personally & your work?

You can find out about Innovate Communities, our work and my fabulous team (and partners) who I couldn’t live without and who make all of this possible (Anne, Annabelle, Elaine):-

http://www.innovatecommunities.ie/about/who-we-are

http://www.innovatecommunities.ie/about/our-views

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionadescoteaux/

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