We are a global research, innovation, and design collective tackling some of the toughest problems around the planet – in financial services, agriculture, water and sanitation, education, and alternative energy. Our work helps organizations better understand the populations they hope to serve and combine those insights with a proven scientific process that delivers more predictable results. To thi
s end, we create and facilitate training workshops, ideation sessions, and collaborative research and design projects around Africa, Asia, Latin America, and North America. We are here to support:
• Philanthropic organizations
• Social enterprises and non-¬profit organizations
• Multilateral development agencies
• Domestic and foreign government agencies and policymakers
Our core principles:
Our team employs a hybrid research and design approach to complex social, economic and human challenges. The main principles of our strategy include:
• Understanding users and the behavioral biases they face in context.
• Recognizing that preferences and actual behaviors are often not the same!
• Putting all designs through an iterative cycle of prototyping, testing, and review.
• Bringing users in to participate as consultants, testers, reviewers, and co-designers.
• Changing the context, environment, or product – not the person!
• Ensuring that empathy lies at the foundation of all insights and ideas. Our story
GRID Impact is not your typical social enterprise – we are a collective of development professionals with member consultants on five continents from a wide range of backgrounds. All of our consultants bring expertise in a specific domain or technical area and have experience with a wide range of clients and projects. Our engagements are organized by Alexandra Fiorillo, who has over 14 years of experience designing human-centered products and services for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). After years working for various international development organizations, Alexandra developed an independent portfolio of social impact projects focused on designing products and services for the base of the pyramid. She embraced the flexibility and freedom of working on her own but soon realized that independent working created particular disadvantages for some of her engagements. She wanted to work on larger-scale challenges and create bigger social impact than she felt able to as an independent consultant. And she wanted to involve professionals from other disciplines to enhance her work. As it turned out, many other independent social impact consultants felt the same way. And thus the collective was born. GRID Impact allows independent consultants who specialize in a variety of domains and technical areas to come together as larger interdisciplinary teams and leverage both specialization and team-work for social change. Member consultants are able to continue working independently but also have the opportunity to join GRID Impact project teams for specific engagements. This flexible and adaptable model allows GRID Impact to offer its partners hand-selected teams and tailored solutions.
