Innovation 101: What is innovation?

Are you interested in innovation but unsure how to begin? Perhaps you know you’d benefit from new ideas but feel stymied by pressure and expectations.

It’s a common misconception that innovation is the preserve of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Fortunately, that’s not the reality: innovation can take place in every corner of your business—from changing how you manage staff working hours to boost productivity, to transforming waste into a new value stream.

In Innovation 101, we’ll discuss perceptions of innovation and explore case studies that demonstrate how you can innovate in any part of your organisation.

We’ll talk about the challenges that can arise when trying to introduce new ideas and the need to strike a balance between experimenting with new approaches and maintaining stable operations.

Finally, we’ll introduce you to some of the techniques you can use to promote creative thinking and foster an environment conducive to innovation.

Introduction to B2B customer research and development

When you’ve got a great idea for a new venture or opportunity it can be easy to get caught up in the process of developing and delivering, without taking a moment to understand your customers. What problems are they trying to solve? What motivates them? What will they pay for?

Investing the time in answering these questions early has been shown to save companies weeks of product development.

During this session, we’ll explore the benefits of customer research and development and discuss how you might identify the various stakeholders involved in a transaction. We’ll introduce you to a range of research methods—from observing a “day in the life” to workflow analysis—and provide you with practical guidance and examples.

By the end you’ll be ready to start gaining a better understanding of your existing and/or potential customers so that you can base critical business decisions on facts rather than assumptions. 

How to conduct great customer interviews

Do you know what it is your customers value most about your product or service? Are you wondering how to pitch your new technology or solution so that it resonates with your target market? Have you learnt to speak your users’ language and really understood their needs?

Conversations with your target market can reveal valuable insights—from what your customers are trying to achieve to what they will pay for—and help you identify new opportunities.

In this practical workshop, we’ll discuss how to identify the candidates that will provide you with the most valuable insights together with the techniques you can use to ensure you gather honest feedback.

Once you’ve crafted your own interview script, you’ll have the opportunity to practice with each other and hone your skills. By the end of the session, you’ll have everything you need to start interviewing your customers and discovering opportunities to grow your business.

Introduction to Customer Jobs To Be Done

Customers are at the centre of any business model, and rightly so. By understanding what your customers are trying to do and the process they go through before selecting the right tool for their job, you'll be able to create an experience matched to their needs.

Customer Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is an innovation framework designed to help businesses understand the factors involved for their customers in choosing a new product or service.

By focussing on your customers’ aims rather than their demographic or psychographic characteristics, you’ll be able to segment customers in more meaningful ways. As part of the process, we’ll teach you to trace the steps in each segment’s journey—from first thought to achieving their aims—so that you can identify any opportunities to innovate and add value along the way.

Armed with the tools to understand what motivates and concerns your customers, you’ll be able to design a value proposition that really resonates with your target market.

Rethinking leadership to drive innovation

As leaders, we all know that organisations that don’t keep evolving can easily be left behind.  On the other hand, the inherent uncertainties of innovation can seem overwhelming and unmanageable, making it difficult for new ideas to gain traction.

But innovation and normal operations don’t have to be in conflict; by learning to assess your ideas pipeline, create a portfolio that balances risk with opportunity, and define a strategy that makes room for innovation, you can help your organisation succeed.

During our Rethinking leadership to drive innovation session, we’ll explore the different forms that innovation can take and discuss how both experimentation and business as usual can be aligned around a common organisational goal. Together, we’ll examine how you can avoid the chaos of contradiction and delve into the details of how you might measure innovation without stifling imagination. 

With the help of relevant case studies, we’ll generate ideas to help you empower everyone in your business to innovate and explore a framework that will help you foster a culture of creativity.

Introduction to Organisational Ambidexterity

Are you focussed on maximising returns from your current business model, leaving no time to explore new ideas and possible markets? Or are you so intent on finding the next big thing that you struggle to invest in the customers and products that you already have?

It’s not uncommon for businesses to focus on one of these approaches to the exclusion of the other. By learning to balance the two so that you can consciously choose how to apply business as usual and innovation, you can ensure your business keeps delivering without missing opportunities.

Our Introduction to organisational ambidexterity workshop will help you identify where your organisation is currently and what steps you need to take to succeed in both exploration and exploitation.

Introduction to the Business Model Canvas

Mapping out your business model is a valuable exercise, whether you’re just getting started and looking for a way to communicate your business plan effectively, or you have an established business in need of some strategic thinking.

The Business Model Canvas is an established tool, proven to assist companies in understanding and articulating their business models.

By mapping out what’s involved in delivering your value proposition, whom you deliver it to, the costs involved in doing so, and your existing or potential revenue streams, you’ll gain valuable insights into how your business works.

Your completed Business Model Canvas will form a valuable framework for facilitating alignment across multiple streams of activity and identifying opportunities for innovation and growth.

Introduction to the Non-Profit Business Model Canvas

Running a non-profit comes with its own particular challenges. The tension between delivering value to your beneficiaries while raising funds to ensure you remain viable can create conflict and make it difficult to align around a coherent strategy.

Mapping out your business plan with a Business Model Canvas specifically adapted to the needs of non-profit organisations provides you with a visual tool to assist you in communicating your current approach.

By understanding and articulating how both sides of your organisation create and deliver value, you’ll be able to promote strategic alignment and put yourself in a strong position to start innovating your approach.

Introduction to business model innovation

Coming up with a great idea is fundamental to setting up a new venture, but all too often the idea and the model for delivering it are treated as one and the same.

As markets evolve and circumstances change, business models for existing products and services need to keep innovating to stay effective. Research shows that companies that invest in innovating their business model benefit from improved performance and higher returns.

During this workshop we’ll use a range of ideation techniques to provide you with inspiration and help you come up with innovative ways of structuring your business. We’ll explore approaches that have been adopted by successful companies in related industries and challenge your preconceptions with alternatives that you might not otherwise have considered.

By the end of the session, you’ll have all the tools you need to keep innovating your business model, together with a whole host of ideas to explore further.

Financial feasibility for new ventures

When you’re contemplating the prospects of a new venture, it can feel like the only way forward is to take a punt, with all the risk (and wishful thinking!) that that entails. But there is another way—one which involves deciding what success looks like for your organisation, identifying the uncertainties on which your plan is based so you can take steps to address them, and adjusting your course as you go.

Using the Discovery-Driven Planning framework, we’ll start by defining your financial goals and use a simple set of calculations to determine whether your proposal can deliver the returns you expect. We’ll then draw up a working financial model for your new venture so that you can identify any flaws in your plan. 

By highlighting the assumptions on which you’ve based your estimates, you’ll have a clear picture of all the factors that will impact your forecast. Armed with data and evidence, you can then decide whether to pursue an idea, pivot to a different approach, or kill the idea with minimal losses.

Feature architecture: new product or service

When you’ve worked hard to develop a product or service that fills a gap in the market, it can be difficult to take a step back and view it from a potential customer’s perspective. Which aspects do they ascribe most value to? Can you change their perception by grouping features differently? And which elements of your value proposition are you giving away without realising?

During our Feature Architecture workshop, we’ll look at both your ‘whole product’ and how you might break it down into individual features that each offer value to your target market. We’ll show you how to determine which of your features are leaders, which are the fillers that augment the overall value, and which are the killers that can cost you the deal.

According to your organisation’s needs, we’ll also explore different ways to bundle or unbundle your features to meet the needs of your different customer segments.

Using prototypes for agile innovation

If, like many organisations, you follow the traditional approach of building and launching a new venture before putting it in front of customers for the first time, you run the real risk that your design won’t quite hit the mark. And the larger your upfront investment, the more difficult it is to change the business model, service design or feature set. So why not start testing your ideas and validating your assumptions from day one?

In this workshop, we’ll draw on techniques from agile development, lean startup and design sprint to show you how to squeeze as much learning as possible from each stage of development.

With over 40 different experimentation and prototyping techniques to choose from, we’ll introduce you to the myriad ways in which you can test hypotheses and reduce risk when developing a new product, service or technology.

Whether you need to establish market demand, identify the language that resonates with your customers, or test willingness to pay and perception of value, we promise there’s a tool you can use to validate your assumptions and protect your investment.

Customer experience mapping

When you’ve invested time, money and effort in designing and building an innovative solution that you know offers real benefits to customers, the last thing you want is to read negative reviews or hear about a bad experience with your payment or support team.

That’s where customer experience mapping can help. By treating every interaction with a customer or prospect as an opportunity to deliver value, you can increase retention rates and amplify your reach.

In this workshop we’ll draw on the latest developments and best practices in user experience and service design to shape the customer journey for your product or service.

Having learned how to map out each of the touchpoints and departments involved in a process, you’ll be able to identify a host of opportunities to earn customer loyalty, improve operational efficiency and put your venture on the road to success.

Customer Research Bundle

Understand the benefits of customer research, learn how to put theory into practice, and get to grips with your customers’ motivations with this targeted workshop series.

Introduction to B2B customer research and development

We’ll explore the benefits of customer research and development and discuss how you might identify the various stakeholders involved in a transaction. We’ll introduce you to a range of research methods—from observing a “day in the life” to workflow analysis—and provide you with practical guidance and examples.

How to conduct great customer interviews

Not only will you learn how to identify the candidates who will provide you with the most valuable insights, but we'll share top techniques to ensure you gather honest feedback. Once you’ve crafted your own interview script, you’ll have the opportunity to practice with each other and hone your skills. By the end of the session, you’ll have everything you need to start interviewing your customers and discovering opportunities to grow your business.

Introduction to Customer Jobs To Be Done

Customer Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is an innovation framework designed to help businesses understand the factors involved for their customers in choosing a new product or service.

Armed with the tools to understand what motivates and concerns your customers, you’ll be able to design a value proposition that really resonates with your target market. As part of the process, we’ll teach you to trace the steps in each segment’s journey—from first thought to achieving their aims—so that you can identify any opportunities to innovate and add value along the way.

Build Your Own Bundle

Virtual Design Sprint

Do you have a potentially significant idea, project, opportunity or challenge? Are you looking to make rapid progress but concerned about the need to engage multiple stakeholders and the time required to establish consensus?

Design Sprints offer a proven methodology for accelerating decision making, advancing development, and achieving buy-in. Whether you want to progress a new feature from initial idea to prototype or address an aspect of your customer experience, a design sprint provides the tools and framework to move from initial ideas to real user feedback over the course of just five or six workshops.

Sprint on your terms

Working at a pace to suit your organisation’s needs, our Virtual Design Sprint is ideal for distributed teams and situations where a week-long in-person commitment just isn’t feasible. Through a series of online workshops, we’ll guide you through the process of scoping, designing, prototyping, testing, and improving your solution.

By using collaboration tools and techniques to help democratise discussion, design sprints ensure all voices are heard and consensus is achieved while maintaining momentum. Rather than endless cycles of ‘collaboration over email’ and design by committee, we’ll bring the right people together to ensure you have the skills, domain knowledge and authority to make real progress.

Make tangible progress

According to your organisational structure, business needs and unique challenge, we’ll advise on the sprint format and participants, and devise a series of workshops to make efficient use of each person’s time.

Together we will begin by clarifying your long term goal, outline a clear set of ‘How might we’ challenges, map out the target customer journey and find great inspiration using lightning demos. We’ll give your team time to reflect and create in order to develop a range of exciting ideas and possible solutions, before designing prototypes ready for testing. You’ll then be ready to recruit and interview customers so you can iterate your prototypes based on their feedback and retest with version 2.0. 

Take your learning forward

Once the workshops are complete, we’ll synthesise all the incredible progress you’ve made into a concise report so that you can keep forging ahead while demonstrating the process you’ve been through to your colleagues and leaders.

You’ll be amazed at the seismic shift a design sprint can make to your understanding, insight and progress in such a short period of time!

Concept to Commercialisation

When you’ve come up with a great idea, the next challenge is to work out how to turn it into a profitable product or service.

• How should you position your product or service for your target customers?
• What’s the best business model for it?
• Is it financially viable?
• And where does it fit into your overall strategy?

Our Concept to Commercialisation programme is designed to help you address these questions and more. Using our unique Sprint & Learn approach, you’ll work as a team to develop your chosen idea while learning a repeatable process that you can use again and again to turn future ideas into commercially viable propositions. 

From long-term goals to hands-on prototyping

Over the course of 12 workshops, we’ll introduce you to a range of best practice innovation and new venture approaches used by organisations around the globe. We’ll start by agreeing and getting sign off on your definition of success and explore why the way you segment your customers might be leading you to the wrong conclusions.

Along the way you’ll discover why there is so much more to a successful solution than the solution itself and find out why choosing the wrong business model might ruin everything. We’ll also show you how to apply Discovery-Driven Planning to your strongest prototypes and help you rule out those options inevitably doomed to failure. Plus lots more!

Building your skills while building your solution

Whether the balance of your team is weighted towards beginners or pros, you’ll all come away with new skills and techniques to help you innovate, collaborate, and validate new lines of business.

Our workshops are practical and action packed, giving you the opportunity to put theory into practice with expertise on hand to support you on your journey. You’ll be amazed how much progress you make on your idea—and how much you learn—in such a short amount of time. 

Set up for success

By the end of the programme you’ll have developed a more innovative, viable solution that delivers both for your customers and your internal stakeholders. You’ll get there faster, with less financial investment, and you’ll have an engaged team ready and able to drive the idea through to completion.

You’ll also walk away with the completed Miro board full of your thoughts and ideas to explore further, together with the slides, templates, resources and additional reading lists to refer back to. As an optional extra, we can also provide you with a detailed report covering the steps your team went through, a clear summary of where you’ve got to and the challenges we would suggest still lie ahead. Together with our strategic recommendations, we will also capture all the additional opportunities and ideas that your team came up with over the course of the series. Having developed the skills and learnt the techniques, you’ll be ready to take them forward in future.