A step-by-step, pragmatic workshop to help your team create an innovation strategy.
This is a broad outline of a workshop that I use to help companies get started when a clear strategy isn't always available. Feel free to adapt it to suit your own purposes.
Preparation
Schedule a meeting for the senior team in a month's time (ideally no more than 12 people, fewer is preferable). In my experience you'll need the best part of a day to do this justice. Don't be tempted to shortcut it – you will definitely regret it on the day.
As part of the invitation provide each person with three blank postcards. On each postcard participants must write one critical milestone that the company needs to have achieved in three years' time. This is a milestone for the whole company, not just their function. Keep it deliberately vague at this stage (you'll see why in a moment). Also ask them to consider emerging trends and their potential impact on these milestones, too.
Book a meeting room (ideally offsite) with a large wall that everyone can comfortably stand in front of, and that you are allowed to write on or cover with flipchart paper. (Nothing worse than the first step of your innovation strategy failing because the venue doesn't allow Blu Tac!)
The Meeting
Copy the chart provided onto the meeting room wall.
On a separate piece of flipchart paper, ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month, and much more.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
