Innovation Workout, The

Lucy Gower is an innovation specialist. She is a freelance innovation trainer, coach and consultant. She established the first innovation programme at the NSPCC, one of the UKs largest children’s charities in 2007. Since 2012 she has worked with a range of organisations in the charity and corporate sectors, both in the UK and overseas to help them develop their strategy and operational approach to innovation. Clients include 100%Open, Amnesty International, Cystic Fibrosis Trust, Deloitte, Institute of Fundraising, Nesta, nfpSynergy, Oxfam and The Children’s Society.

PART 1       10 Steps to enhance your innovation skills
Step 1   Pinpoint your purpose
Get your innovation off to the right start by thinking big to understand your problem or unmet need and articulate it in a way that inspires others to get involved.
Step 2    Know and understand your customers
Learn techniques to understand your customers to enable you to develop innovations that meet their needs.
Step 3    Your market today and predicting the trends of tomorrow
Get to grips with what is happening in your market today and spot trends to help develop innovation for the future.
Step 4    Build your creative capacity
Learn how increase your personal capacity for having ideas through expanding your experiences, breaking routines and connecting ideas together.
Step 5    Creative superstardom and lots of ideas
Have fun practicing different techniques to help you and you colleagues generate lots of ideas.
Step 6 Don’t expect anyone else to like your idea
If your idea is new, or different you will have to spend time getting others to like your idea. This step provides some practical ways to get others on board.
Step 7    Filter and choose the best ideas
Techniques to filter and choose the ideas that have the greatest chance of success and way to confidently say ‘no’ to weaker ideas.
Step 8    Prototype, fail fast and refine
Learn ways to prototype ideas quickly and cheaply with your colleagues, managers and customers and then adapt and refine your ideas.
Step 9    Pilot, adapt and invest
How to design, deliver and evaluate a pilot for your idea as well as tips on how to secure resource required to deliver your pilot.
Step 10 Take your ideas to market
How to build on your pilot and develop your idea in the marketplace for real, and build on the business case you developed in the pilot to pitch for investment.
PART 2       10 innovation skills in action
Skill 1    Innovating in a big organisation
Skill 2    Innovating on your own
Skill 3    Innovating when no one else gets it
Skill 4    Innovating with your team
Skill 5    Innovating with clients and customers
Skill 6    Innovating your managers
Skill 7    Innovating with confidence
Skill 8    Innovation by imitation
Skill 9    Innovating with no budget
Skill 10 Innovating when you feel like you are stuck
PART 3       10 common innovation challenges
Challenge 1   How do I develop my own innovation process or framework?
Challenge 2  How do I build an innovation network?
Challenge 3 How do I make time to innovate?
Challenge 4   How do I measure innovation?
Challenge 5   How do I motivate others to start to innovate?
Challenge 6   How do I create a culture of innovation?
Challenge 7   How do I manage failure?
Challenge 8   How do I innovate quickly?
Challenge 9   How do I approach a niche product?
Challenge 10   How do I recruit good innovators?
Putting it into action (the mentor toolkit)
How to work with a mentor to put your new