People Driven Innovation
No. 2 ~ March 2022
RiverStoneBlue
How an innovation consultant turns into an Innovation Constructor building innovation labs.
Read about the previous roundtables, download the results report and/or watch the recording.
Online, interactive conversation about how to drive innovation through people. All for free so register now!
In December 2021, I was approached by a hospital in The Netherlands. The question was if I could support them with building an innovation lab.
Initially I was a bit hesitant. I’m a consultant and not a constructor. Also, often these innovation labs are more lip service than actual innovation.
After various chats, it became clear the lab was intended to break down silos and enable people to innovate: right in my alley off ‘People Driven Innovation’! And from my practitioner and consultancy experience, I could add value by making it a working space that supports innovation activities instead of just making it look nice.
And so, all of a sudden, I was an Innovation Constructor working with painters, carpenters and electricians. Still mainly concerned about how the end results would actually answer to the goals of the hospital, but sometimes actually building a prototyping table or custom lamp. I’m really enjoying this combination of working with my brains and hands at the same time!
In short, we’re building a space to intrinsically attract employees and create these unexpected encounters. That’s also where they can invite guest speakers to inspire or have people pitch their ideas at the end of the cycle. That cycle is represented in other rooms where every room represents a step in their innovation process. A room with a round table to bring together different views and detail the problem statement, a room with tools and materials to build a prototype, a (clean) room to interview end users about your (by then prototyped) idea.
We’re getting closer to the delivery and I expect to share more in the next newsletter!
In January, we ran an online roundtable event to share thoughts about The Innovation Manager’s Personality with almost 40 innovation managers and related experts.
Together, we looked at the ideal personality for this role from multiple perspectives and attendees shared their views via various polls.
Based on the poll results, we created a report that you can download via the button below.
In February, we ran an online roundtable event in which we looked at the 4 Ps of Innovation Management. These four P’s are: People, Program, Process and Place.
In four sections we discussed these elements that make or break your innovation program. Obviously we all saw overlaps between the four elements but all attendees did agree on the value of all P’s.
Eventually, we were short of time to fully discuss People. The elements that was already identified as the most important element upfront, was again triggering most discussions.
Therefore, we directly identified People as the only topic for the roundtable event in March!
Scroll further down to register for the next roundtable event! And please know, we’re organizing such a roundtable every last Tuesday of the month.
During the various sessions I was involved in over the past two months, I noticed I kept on advising to read the book “The Four Zones, by Geoffrey A. Moore.
The book advises how to setup your organization for innovation. The overall advice is to setup four zones to create a clear definition of people’s role in innovation according to the zone they’re in.
The four zones are created by separating Disruptive Innovation from Sustaining Innovation, and Revenue Performance activities from Enabling investments.
The four zones are:
The book is available here and a true must read if you’d like to level up your organization for innovation!
You can find this and other favorites in my online Innovators’ Bookclub that you can access here!
People are the most important driver of innovation success. That was concluded by the participants of our previous roundtable about the Four P’s of Innovation Management.
That’s why we will now run an entire roundtable to talk People only! People as the creatives that come up with potential solutions for your innovation challenges, People as the human interface between systems and society, People as the connector of different opinions, backgrounds, views, etc.
How do we engage, educate, enable and endorse them? What makes them tick and how to allow them to innovate and try new things, while most of the attention goes out to perfectly performing current procedures?
In this highly interactive and open roundtable, Roel will take you through various elements that affect People. Based on behavioral studies and his hands-on experience from running and supporting innovation programs. Then the floor is for the attendees to share their experiences, insights and recommendations to together create a common set of recommendations.
WHEN: March 29th from 4pm to 5.30pm CET
WHERE: Online via FlowOS’ Sessions ~ Register here
WHO: All attendees, moderated by Roel de Vries
Would you like to get details about any of the topics discussed in this newsletter? Would you like to explore a potential collaboration? Or would you like to get some feedback on your efforts to drive people to innovate?
Happy to have a free call with you! No obligations whatsoever! Just use the below calendar to schedule something directly in my calendar.
Looking forward to our chat!
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