Innovation Sprints
Research and design collide
The digital economy is facing more and more wicked problems that are ill-defined. How do we solve youth unemployment? How do we reduce scam victimisation? How do we address transparency in government decision-making? How to we solve the problems of plastic waste?
While scholarly work is gradually embracing these complex research questions, industry is working at a different pace. To address the time lag between rigorous, bleeding edge research and applied solutions to real-world, wicked problems, we use Innovation Sprints.
What is an Innovation Sprint?
A rapid, co-designed ideation process, grounded in academic research, to explore opportunities and solutions to wicked problems.
Our Approach
While there are a range of approaches to “Sprints” (see our friends at the Maastricht University’s Service Science Factory), the QUT Chair in Digital Economy’s Innovation Sprints are conducted over a 6-week period and are grounded in academic research.
Following a design-led innovation approach designer teams, business managers, academics, and subject matter specialists work rapidly, collaboratively and iteratively with customers and stakeholders. A key aspect of design-led innovation is uncovering deep customer insights, where the team is searching for the meaning behind the data. These insights form the basis for the creation of future services, products, processes, policies, regulations, systems and strategies, which are underpinned by and a set of criteria that proposed solutions can be evaluated against. Then these understandings are translated into prototypes and early models of solutions. The organization is challenged to constantly ask why the problem occurred, rather than (initially) how can it be solved. It is this collide of design mindset and academic rigor that generate actionable recommendations that align internally with an organisation’s strategy and resources.
The Process
Conducted in the Sprint Hub at QUT Gardens Point, an Innovation Sprint takes 30 business days scheduled as three 10-day blocks to:
. research and consult (pre-sprint)
. ideate and develop solutions (core Sprint), and
. report on outcomes (post-sprint).
The core Sprint phase explores the digital future around a given problem space and provides concrete concepts into how this future can be implemented.
During this 10-day intensive program, the facilitators lead project stakeholders through a ‘problem divergence’ process that quickly leads to ‘concept convergence’. The objective is to develop a Proof of Concept (POC) of a strategy, process, technology, or service, within the 10 days.
Applying these methods to solving wicked problems is a great first step, but then they need to be applied to removing the common institutional barriers to transformation like policy and legislation. These challenges are addressed in the Sprint process as part of the roadmap to implementation, signalling what tasks need to be done in 20 days, 20 months, and by 2030, to execute the reimagined future strategy.
The Results
Since 2015, the QUT Chair in Digital Economy has completed 28 Innovation Sprints with 50% in further development and 20% in market. The problems, and opportunities, have been varied, including; youth homelessness, revenue resilience in the timber industry, reimagining public record keeping, and process transformation of Queensland’s tax administration.
Transformation is an ongoing process, that takes boldness and optimism. It improves service delivery, internal processes, organisational culture, and customer satisfaction. Our Innovation Sprints have proven successful to help organisations on their transformation journey. The academic rigour that underpins our Innovation Sprint process makes this approach stand-out globally.
Have you got a wicked problem (or a wicked opportunity)?
Contact us about Innovation Sprints.
