More than 800 people took part in a Hong Kong online forum that explained how design thinking can help organisations navigate the current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world and turn challenges into opportunities.

The virtual event, Unleash! Design Thinking e-Forum, was hosted by Hong Kong Design Centre with the South China Morning Post serving as the media partner and Morning Studio, SCMP’s award-winning branded content arm, handling the event management.

Morning Studio’s events team provided two days of keynote addresses, panel sessions and discussions on July 30 and 31, which featured 22 speakers from locations as diverse as Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Taiwan and mainland China.

Speakers included Chris Pacione, co-founder and CEO of LUMA Institute, who described how using design thinking to solve challenges could increase companies’ chances of success, and Charles Hayes, executive managing director, Asia and partner of IDEO, who told participants how the right mindset could help organisations understand consumers’ changing needs in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Other sessions included panellists from companies such as EY HK, HSBC and CLP Power, who discussed subjects including the value of co-creation, implementing digital transformation and instilling a design-thinking mindset in employees.

Morning Studio also organised a free Design Thinking Taster workshop as a teaser for the six Unleash! Summer School Design Thinking 101 E-Workshop series.

The workshop, which was held on June 9 and attracted more than 100 participants, was hosted by three teams of facilitators who gave an overview of design thinking for the public sector and NGOs, the private sector and the educational sector.

Participants joined three different groups for breakout sessions, during which they had a chance to put into practice what they had learned.

Both the forum and the taster workshop were originally planned as in-person events before the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, Covid-19.

The Morning Studio team reacted quickly to provide a virtual event solution, by helping to identify the best webinar software to use, giving online training to the forum’s speakers on how to use it and creating a technical guide for attendees, which offered guidelines on using the software and trouble-shooting tips.

The events team overcame several technical challenges posed by holding the event online, such as providing a simple registration-to-login process, having a live polling facility, enabling simultaneous interpretation and creating breakout sessions. They successfully delivered a highly satisfactory attendee experience for the virtual event.

The forum was promoted on a number of SCMP channels, including our Facebook page, LinkedIn page and newspaper.

In addition, the team produced six forum synopses and six workshop synopses, giving those people who were unable to attend a summary of what they missed and the key takeaways from the sessions.

The team also created a case-study video and article as a pre-event teaser – find out more.

Contact our friendly and professional team to learn how we can help you to successfully stage your own virtual event.