Between 2015 and 2016, over 130,000 asylum seekers requested asylum in Austria - taking the country of 8.7 million people by surprise. As politicians were reluctant to act, civil society jumped in and founded hundreds of grassroots initiatives intended to alleviate the integration process into Austrian society. However, seeing as there was no central coordination, high language barriers and little marketing budget, there was a missing link between the thousands of refugees and the surplus of offers by civil society. This is where radical innovation was needed and “I am Refugee” stepped in - our non-political, online platform that holistically depicts the user journey of a refugee on his path to integration in Austrian society.

This talk will show you how we used elements of the Lean Start-Up to go from domain name to wireframes to a registered society and an up-and-running website within just 4 months. How we built a story map around the integration journey of a refugee. How we gained and integrated our users’ feedback to pivot and grow our product portfolio. How the agile elements of a strong vision, transparency, team work, iterations and pull principle are the best mechanisms for managing and leading an intercultural team of volunteers. How we dealt with our diverse variety of impediments ranging from governmental funding to right-wing trolls. And you will hear about how our culturally-adapted and yet solution-focused coaching approach makes our product range more than unique.

This talk will not only show you how Agile methods are great for starting an innovative initiative in a low-to zero-budget sector, it will also show you how you can use Agile to make a difference in this world.

Speaker:
Stephanie Gasche