Hopscotch Labs is a partner and instigator in the community. As a design innovation consultancy, Hopscotch regularly works with companies to design better products and services by understanding consumer needs. Three years ago, Hopscotch Labs came on board as a company sponsor for the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSELI) entrepreneurs hosted by the San Diego Diplomacy Council. YSELI brings young entrepreneurs to the U.S to learn from their peers. Hopscotch has taken on two entrepreneurs, teaching them the tools of product and business innovation by having them explore untapped needs in San Diego and border tourism.
During the pandemic Hopscotch turned its attention on the challenges of local businesses. Ever the instigator, Hopscotch Labs’ founder, Kris Angell held a design hackathon at the onset of the pandemic with local students and design professionals. The resulting project, Common Salt, aims to amplify business efforts—both for the individual business by driving business their way, and also for other entrepreneurs by surfacing solutions that work. Their goal is simple, help our neighborhood shops and restaurants survive in this time of ambiguity and be more resilient for future disasters.
Like their projects with our YSELI alums, Hopscotch Labs and the Common Salt team interview businesses and write articles about their COVID experience which are published on commonsalt.org, and Instagram. Recent stories about Bahn Thai (University Heights) and Hoppy Daze (Otay Mesa) struck us—these businesses are doing incredible work to just survive day to day. We love that our partners are able to help make our community stronger by democratizing their work.
If you would like to help out with Common Salt, reach out to kris@hopscotchlabs.com and send any small business owner to: https://commonsalt.org/business-survey/. We encourage you to learn more about Hopscotch Labs and how they can help your business adapt to our new reality.
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