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

1. PROBLEMS WITH
INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
AVOID THESE PITFALLS
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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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8. GROWING BUSINESS WITH INNOVATION
For additional information about Business Innovation
please visit www.InnovationGrow.com