problems with innovation workshops avoid these pitfalls

PROBLEMS WITH INNOVATION WORKSHOPS

AVOID THESE PITFALLS

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For additional information about Innovation

please visit www.InnovationGrow.com

www.InnovationGrow.com

Running an innovation workshop can be a great way to increase the creative power of your team and give your company a boost of innovative ideas in a single day.

With all of the resources and focus on that one productive day it is important to make sure that the workshop itself is optimized so that you can get the most out of your investment in creativity.

Most businesses run into problems that make their innovation workshops inefficient and possibly a waste of resources.

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The standard innovation workshop consists of the following components:

• a warm-up activity to get everyone in the right mood;

• statement of intent for the workshop;

• a framing of the problem with details;

• division of the team into smaller groups;

• various idea generation activities;

• idea refinement;

• and group discussion.

Using this process is a great starting point but most organizations tend to have one or more problems with this workflow.

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These problems tend to derail the outcome of the workshop and can often be just minor details that are overlooked or gross errors.

The missed opportunities can be remedied by minding these potential problems and fixing your innovation workshop process; before it costs you another innovative gem.

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PROBLEM: PRIORITIZING SINGLE IDEAS INSTEAD OF SIMILAR GROUPS

If you are lucky enough to end up with too many good ideas, then you have to prioritize them.

The problem lies in how you list the ideas. It is much more beneficial to group ideas into categories so that you can prioritize effectively.

This way you can focus your attention and resources on developing a few ideas that are all in the same category.

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PROBLEM: LOSING SIGHT OF THE BIGGER PICTURE – COMPANY INNOVATION VS. PRODUCT INNOVATION When you reframe the innovative process and all of the workshops around innovating not only on that product or service, but on how it integrates with your overall customer experience, you can make sure that all of the innovative ideas are pushing your company forward.

Having a great idea that doesn’t apply to your overall company direction isn’t what you want to be spending your resources on and what you don’t.

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PROBLEM: BRILLIANT IDEAS CAN BE COMPROMISED BY GROUPTHINK

When you have a group discussion you can have everyone in the group confirming an okay idea while they dismiss a great one.

A great way to get the most out of the individual creativity within a group setting is to spend a few minutes at the beginning of each exercise to allow them to come up with innovative ideas on their own.

Doing this will process allow the group to discuss all of the individually created ideas to help refine and improve them, which is the best way to get and keep brilliant ideas.

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GROWING BUSINESS WITH INNOVATION

For additional information about Business Innovation

please visit www.InnovationGrow.com