Media Release: Re-Imagine Garden Route Think Tank

For Immediate Release
06 July 2020

Update from the Garden Route Business Continuity Workstream – Re-Imagine the Garden Route

What do the names “Tomorrow Matters Now”, “FreedThinkers”, “Mindmill”, “Moxworld”, “Institute for Future’s Research”, and “Brilliance in Business” have in common? They, together with Vodacom, the FD Centre, and the African Crowd Funding Association, all form part of the “Re-Imagine Garden Route Think Tank”, recently formed to look at solutions and different ways to approach the rebuild and recovery of the Garden Route economy.

The people behind the names bring a wealth of experience and forward-thinking to the Garden Route, and willingly and freely sacrifice their time to collectively brainstorm the way forward district. The group is diverse in their fields of expertise and sector knowledge, and through that allows the natural synergy needed to think about the “Next Normal” after COVID-19. What makes it even more exciting is that three of the members are based overseas -Finland, Mexico, and Northern Ireland. The other members are based in the Western Cape, but they however have something else in common – they all love the Garden Route and would like to see it grow and prosper.

The Re-Imagine Garden Route Think Tank group, under the guidance of South Cape Economic Partnership (SCEP) and which forms part of the greater Garden Route Business and Economy Cluster under the Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM), identified the need and opportunity to introduce a first-ever and quite innovative WebiShop on 22 July 2020. The Webi-part will consist of a webinar in the morning (an online meeting or presentation held via the Internet in real-time, which connects individuals with viewers across the world), practically addressing several topics relevant to the re-imagining of the Garden Route, and in the afternoon the shop-part will consist of journey-mapping exercises with the three focus sectors namely Tourism, Agriculture and Construction.

It is envisaged that the first part will see invitations going out to all businesses and public sectors as an open invitation (hence the webinar), and the second part will see specific invitations to selected role-players in the abovementioned sectors, as this will be interactive workshop processes.

Themes for the webinar will include:

• Keeping it tight – The Circular Economy model, concepts, and examples.
• Design it right – Service design for the new normal.
• Get Connected – Solutions for a Smart Region.
• Funding for impact – Crowd funding as an alternative to conventional funding.
• The Next Normal – Alternative business models.
• What about the customer – Customer Experience Design – key pointers to keeping customers during the pandemic.
• Flip-it – scenario planning concepts with a difference.

This WebiShop will be followed by a variety of sector workshops, webinars, training opportunities and sector experts and business mentors being deployed in the district to assist individual businesses.