Practical Innovation Leadership - 20th September 2012

A Flash Innovation Workshop with Victor Newman and Simon Evans, Innovoflow Ltd.

Developing Responsive Fast-Twitch Muscle Training for Rugby! 

Date: 20th September 2012 @ Hamilton House, University of Greenwich         Timing: 0900-1700

Overview

Innovation Agility combines flexible thinking about your innovation process, the willingness to exploit the full range of options outside current products, services and business models, plus the ability to learn rapidly.

Agile Innovation Leadership skills are especially valuable in turbulent markets and for developing Open Innovation strategies to work with great ideas from both inside or outside the company, and also for going to market with external partners.

 This workshop provides a model (through simulation) to help innovation leaders to develop agile thinking and the necessary decision making ability to operate successfully and meet the needs of the emergent, post-recession world.

Content 

·         A warm-up task to stimulate innovative thinking.

·         Current challenges and problems with innovation.
·         Use of simulations to accelerate innovation learning.
·         Introducing the concepts of the “Innovation Eco-System” the “Idea lifecycle” and “Agile Innovation leadership”.  Discussion.
·         Learning from experience - using simulation components to illustrate examples of failed innovation initiatives and how they could have been rescued.  Participants illustrate their experiences using the simulation.
·         Constructing an optimal innovation ecosystem with constrained resources.
·         Reverse Innovation Thinking: Identifying barriers to innovation and harvesting experience to develop antidotes.
·         Who is the custodian of the eco-system?  Discussion
·         Summing up, review and take-aways.

Learning Objectives

1. To understand that innovation is at the core of all businesses
2. To understand the nature of an idea and how it survives
3. To take the broad view of innovation and ensure that ideas have the best chance of generating real value – it’s not just about coming up with ideas
4. To recognise that innovation must be “part of the day job”
5. To treat the innovation eco-system as something that requires feeding, watering and nurturing in order to be successful
6. (Most importantly!) recognise that innovation is not a free lunch -  you must invest many different types of resource

Who should attend

All SMEs or entrepreneurs who care about developing innovation agility in a turbulent environment, who realise that new ideas sometimes need new ways of thinking and working, to turn them into practical products, services and business models.

Benefits to you and your business

·         Acquire a new and practical way of discussing and thinking openly about the way you innovate in your organisation.
·         Discover how to design and test a comprehensive innovation eco-system to ensure ideas are supported throughout their whole lifecycle to generate maximum value
·         An opportunity to share experiences of successful or failed innovation approaches and how to learn from them
·         Have an enjoyable learning day, much of which can be taken back to your business
·         To start to build a relationship with the Centre for Entrerprise & Innovation which could lead to other opportunities