Article
WorldClass - UNLEASH
Riikka Poukka, Leader of Sustainability Services, Deloitte Finland
As part of our global WorldClass initiative, Deloitte is collaborating with UNLEASH to bring together the brightest young minds to develop new solutions to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This is the second year that Deloitte will facilitate the UNLEASH innovation labs, guiding ideas to actionable solutions. Over forty Deloitte professionals facilitate these labs, applying their professional skills to solve global issues. Read more from one of our facilitators from the first UNLEASH, as they explain their role and how it has impacted their development at Deloitte.
During UNLEASH 2017, Rikka Poukka was a facilitator based at a folk high school near Fredericia, Denmark. In her role, she provided guidance for participants to translate their ambitious ideas into action-oriented solutions that would appeal to project investors.
How does UNLEASH connect with your client work?
My working experience with sustainability, large corporations, and systems thinking gives a certain degree of subject matter expertise and a somewhat healthy reality check. A growing number of my clients are looking at novel ways of doing things like teaming up with small companies, students, etc. They are in the need of new fresh thinking. At Deloitte we need that too, and facilitating UNLEASH is a great way to internalize new thinking.
How did you apply your professional skills to the innovation labs?
Many of the problems our groups were trying to solve were too broad, and the solutions too risky and costly for potential investors. We had to narrow them down and be more specific on how we were solving a single problem.
When you want to make innovation a reality for any type of company, it requires tools, structure and a disciplined approach. One thing is ideation, another is actually building something that will fly.
How would you describe the UNLEASH process?
Many of the UNLEASH attendees came here very solution-oriented. But UNLEASH is really about finding the problem. And that is what I see in client engagement in general - it’s 90 percent about understanding the problem. Once you get that right, everything that follows becomes easier.
What impact did UNLEASH have on you?
People come from different backgrounds, geographically and professionally, and I am humbled by the level of cooperation and openness – there is no judgement. I think it comes down to the fact that they share a similar value set. They want to make the world a better place by solving problems on a very hands-on level.
