Innovation is for everyone
Brett’s set up with co-host Basil the cat and Fluxxer Toby, talking all things Innovation with one of our ISK cohort
Our Innovation Training
We created the Innovation Starter Kit as a fast and accessible way to help businesses adapt during lockdown.
Why we do this. At Fluxx we’ve spent the past ten years supporting hundreds of businesses across sectors to place the right bets and create winning products and services. We’ve helped thousands of people to build their own innovation capabilities.
During the first days of lockdown this year, we wanted to make these skills available online to a wider audience. The challenge was how to recreate the momentum and the buzz that happens when lots of people get together in a room. There’s an atmosphere, camaraderie and a momentum that usually comes with getting 20 or 30 people in a room, to work on something solidly for two-days, and this is what fuels new ideas and innovations. When we all suddenly found ourselves working from home, that was not going to be possible any time soon.
We wanted to create a training course that helps the learning process by re-creating the atmosphere of a workshop — to bring people together to solve real, engaging problems. We called it our Innovation Starker Kit (ISK).
How it works. The course consists of daily 90-minute ‘innovation workouts’, four days a week for two weeks, to fit around people’s other work. The workouts are hosted by Brett and Toby, our expert Fluxx practitioners and they’re designed for mixed-ability groups. Each day, there’s a combination of theory, examples and practical exercises. Smaller, bite-size chunks of learning worked really well for our previous ISK cohorts:
“The pace of the course was good. A little bit at the start of every day is very workable and it gives you time to absorb the content between sessions.”
We start off by outlining what problem the people on the course want to tackle — they bring the problems. Then step-by-step, we set about solving it, learning specific methods and techniques along the way. We learn how to frame a problem, get to know customer, shape ideas, sketch out assumptions, experiment at pace and start to build an investment case — in just two weeks. Participants come away confident in their understanding and application of innovation, design thinking and agile methods. Innovation can be learned.
“The techniques were really useful; it wasn’t just looking at a powerpoint, it was about getting your hands dirty. We used live and relevant examples and worked through it step-by-step so it’s really practical, relevant and easy to apply.” ISK Cohort on practical learning
Unlike our usual workshop-based training, for the ISK we have a diverse set of people joining from different orgainisations in totally different sectors. On one course we tackled how we might make employee learning and development work in our new remote setting. There was a content producer from the prison service working with someone from a huge insurance company. She was looking at it from the point of view of her own personal development because that’s why she was on the course, and he was in a senior position, looking at it from a manager’s perspective. They were so open to new approaches and ideas, and absorbing each other’s perspectives, that we almost didn’t need to be there. They could have done it together by themselves and it would have been just as magical. We also run Insurance specific ISK courses in partnership with the CII, it’s a great way of looking at industry specific problems and challenges and solving them with a cross-section of insurance professionals.
Get involved and find out more at innovationstarterkit.com or email brett.bircham@fluxx.uk.com.
Brett Bircham is a Managing Consultant at Fluxx. Click here for useful links to all things Fluxx.
Are you curious as to how Fluxx has helped companies such as Condé Nast, Mars, Thames Water, HSBC, Addison Lee Group and many more? Learn the secrets for sustained, repeatable innovation models, from expert practitioners, or Get some tips on Making remote workshops, work. Get in touch now Brett.Bircham@Fluxx.uk.com.
