Video by Sophie Braga de Barros. Music: Bensound.

Many organizations and startups claim to foster innovation. But do they really? That is why Jessica Do and Mariana Rego, co-founders of Design Thinking Miami, started organizing social and educational events on design thinking, a way to arrive at solutions by putting user experience first.

From June 25 to June 27, the group partnered with Refresh Miami to host a Design Thinking for Innovation event, part of Refresh’s annual Summer Startup Series. Refresh Miami is a Knight-sponsored nonprofit that supports South Florida’s entrepreneurial and startup community with events and educational content. The weekend event kicked off with an informative talk and Q&A session with Andy Hagerman, co-founder of The Design Gym in New York and a mentor for Do and Rego.

“Our mission is to empower people and organizations with the tools to create change,” Hagerman said. “Something we found is that a lot of organizations say that they have innovation, or say that they have creativity or different thinking and entrepreneurial spirit values. But they don’t actually know what that means on a daily basis, but they do know it’s something they should believe in.”

Design Thinking Miami, created 10 months ago, hosts events every month to create networking opportunities among participants and to teach entrepreneurs how to reach solutions, develop ideas and execute change.

“Design Thinking can be described as a way of thinking and a way to arrive at solutions that can better reach your customers,” Do said. “We hope that participants in our events gain a little bit more of creative confidence. We use that term a lot and it just means having to have the confidence in their ability to make and create awesome change.”

The weekend event also included a networking happy hour on Friday, and an intensive six-hour bootcamp on design thinking skills on Saturday.

“Creativity encompasses a lot of things,” said attendee Milagros Aspillaga, brand marketing and design director at Visa in Miami. “You need to be creative in not just coming up with solutions for your clients, but also be creative and understanding while balancing that against whatever business needs might be necessary to solve for. The solution can’t be so creative that it’s impossible to apply and at the same time it has to be new and avant-garde for your clients.”

Refresh Miami is partnering with other organizations to host three Summer Startup Series events this summer. Design Thinking for Innovation marked the first event and it covered the themes of idea validation, verification and prototyping. The two upcoming events will focus on team building and fundraising, and on how to launch and grow a product. The series will lead up to a demo day in September, where participants will have the opportunity to show what they learned and how it has affected their organization.

“Our goal is to encourage the community to embrace entrepreneurship via the events that we have, meeting people and potential partners, but as well knowledge about the industry and how to start or grow a business properly,” said Peter Martinez, co-director of Refresh Miami. “These are things that people wouldn’t normally be able to have access to. We’re really here to try to grow the community as a whole.”

Sophie Braga de Barros is a communications intern for Knight Foundation. Email her at [email protected] and follow her on twitter @sophiebraga.

Photo: Design Thinking gathering in Miami. Credit: Sophie Braga de Barros.