Impactful innovation formats – How to design them?

People innovate – you only need to give them the room to do it. 
That is why designing an impactful innovatio format matters.

Click on the link below and register to the free webinar.        

When you are planning an innovation session and know the topic, what should you consider? Four aspects are key: (1) embed it in the context of the future users, customers, beneficiaries, (2) bring together the right group of people, (3) schedule sufficient time and (4) provide structure.

About the context. You cannot innovate in isolation. When you do something for retail, you have to go out and be immersed in retail. Healthcare projects without contact with patients, hospitals, care giving centers, … will not work. Design your innovation format in such a way that the team goes where the problem or challenge is and not the other way around. When you join your users in their environment, you also see the impact of ?the building, the routines, the unspoken conventions, … These are things which are so normal for people that they forget to mention them when you ask about it. That is why the mantra “do not invite but get invited by your customers” is something to remember.

Then there is the team. When your innovation project is about generating ideas, look for people who are eager to be part of it and have an open mind. Finding them might be easier than you think. Start spreading the word and people will come back to you and ask if they can join. Embrace them, they bring the energy you need. When your innovation project is closer to implementation, you also need get implementors and champions (those who can convince others in the organization) on board.

Making sure that the team has sufficient time and a safe space to experiment is the third key aspect. Teams need to have time to get stuck and get out of it. All innovation projects experience at least one frustration phase. That is the time when the breakthrough insight, idea emerges. When teams bypass this uncomfortable frustration phase, the result will probably be mediocre at best. Then make sure that it is ok to try out things and fail.

Groups need leaders who tell them what to do and guide them through the activities. Therefore structure your innovation sessions with that in mind. The best that can happen is that the team revolts and wants to do things differently. Then give them the leeway. The structure is there to support, not to direct. Strong ownership and commitment is a stronger driver for success than the structure you designed.

The innovation bus - an example for idea generation.

The innovation bus was a format we designed to generate ideas in an organization which has multiple sites. Visiting only one site, did not feel right. To get a good understanding of the needs, we had to visit multiple sites. For that we designed a 4 day innovation session where we would visit multiple sites and travel from one to the other by bus.

But how to make good use of the travel time? Here we learned about the AMPION venture buses where a group of entrepreneurs go through the design thinking process while traveling to multiple locations by bus. We refined it and converted the bus into a meeting room by taking out some rows and replace them by tables. This allowed 6 teams of 4 to work together while driving from one location to the other. To be one of the participants, departments had to buy a seat on the bus. We trusted that only people who are really into innovation would enroll to a 4 day innovation initiative. That proved to be correct. The team we got together was incredible. ?

Working on a bus has some limitations, but from an innovation perspective also some cool upsides. The bus forced everyone to be present. You need to be on it. When not, you are stuck in the middle of nowhere. At the same time, it is so loud that it was impossible to dial in into calls. So people are 100% present. This catalyzed teams to get into the frustration phase much faster than in meeting rooms. It resulted in teams finding high quality ideas fast. Of the six ideas generated and prevalidated during the bus ride, two were prototyped and one of them got implemented. Having a direct interaction with the users, and working very intensive on it were for sure success factors.