Mason Lyn is an HBA ’26 candidate who participated in the Studio Showcase event on January 18 hosted by Ivey’s Innovation North and BMO Academy as part of the 2025 Systems Innovation Challenge. The Studio Showcase event encouraged participating student teams from across Canada to apply systems thinking to find ways to address the growing loneliness epidemic. The Showcase event provided students with an opportunity to collaborate with BMO Academy executives before their Systems Innovation Challenge final deliverable presentations on February 14. In his blog below, Lyn reflects on the importance of spending time to map out the problem before rushing to solutions and how the exchange of perspectives at the session helped teams develop more holistic solutions.
My experience at Innovation North’s Systems Innovation Challenge Showcase reminded me of the well-known quote from Google CEO Sundar Pichai displayed on the company’s diversity page: “A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone.” Whether we were relating our personal mental health experiences or learning how to engage with complex systems, the event highlighted the tremendous value of taking the time to consider and share diverse perspectives before brainstorming ways to improve mental health and wellness outcomes in our workplaces and communities.
Tackling complex issues requires multiple perspectives
The Systems Innovation Challenge included a series of virtual workshops leading up to the Studio Showcase taught by Mazi Raz, MBA ’05, PhD ’14, Assistant Professor Strategy, and Valen Boyd, PhD Candidate at Ivey. Throughout these workshops, Raz and Boyd coached us on how to explore different perspectives, scopes, and timelines to create holistic solutions to complex challenges.
Each team at the Studio Showcase event was tasked with addressing the complex challenge of loneliness in Canada. My team chose to approach the problem with a clear focus on Canadian teenagers because we are only a few years removed from this demographic and have some understanding of their experiences. I noticed other student teams took a similar approach, selecting demographics and solutions based on their personal and anecdotal experiences. For example, a team composed entirely of international students decided to focus on the effects of loneliness on international students. Several unique ideas and solutions were developed by teams that focused on demographics where they had personal experience because they could relate to the complexity of the challenge. One notable example was a team from Brandon University whose members’ personal experiences inspired their proposal for a localized approach to funding a provincial mental health-care program in Manitoba.
One team particularly stood out by deviating from this course. Team Ponderosa Pine –
consisting of students from McMaster University, the University of British Columbia, and Durham College – focused on Canada’s elderly population. The team initially considered focusing on international students, as it aligned with their personal experiences, but they ultimately chose to explore an unfamiliar demographic. This decision allowed them to apply a broader, more multifaceted approach to the challenge. Their systems map and intervention suggestions ended up being a key talking point at the event because the perspective they chose was so unique among the other teams.
Taking time to map the system
During the virtual workshops, several times Raz and Boyd highlighted the importance of staying with the problem and situating it before jumping to solutions. This proved to be a very helpful strategy during the Studio Showcase event because it challenged my team to more deeply understand how different elements of personal, societal, and workplace systems interrelate and how they could be contributing to the loneliness challenge among Canadian teens.
One of the exercises at the event was to take a piece of paper and add notes to it that were gathered from observing the systems maps and suggestions of the other teams. This exercise made us realize that there were even more elements to the system that we had overlooked in our systems map that would have been valuable to consider. It also highlighted how the other teams had developed ideas that would have made our ideas stronger.
I reflected on how, in business, there is a tendency to jump to problem identification to solve issues quickly. The Systems Innovation Challenge and Studio Showcase event really emphasized to me the importance of not rushing the problem identification process as it can result in overlooking important elements.
Seeing the forest for the trees
Overall, the Showcase event underscored the importance of spending time to situate complex problems, incorporating diverse viewpoints, and acknowledging biases to develop holistic solutions. I will carry these lessons with me throughout my time at Ivey and beyond, ensuring that traditionally overlooked viewpoints are included in discussions and embracing the complex, sometimes messy conversations that are vital for education and progress.
If I were to summarize all of the lessons from this session into a single thought, it would be this: The event reinforced the importance of the classic idiom – we must see the forest for the trees.
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