Smart Innovation Workshop · Erik Ehasoo

This trademark innovation workshop is a powerful tool to find real business value from innovation design. The goal is to tackle a growth challenge to create a smart innovation strategy in 5 days.

According to MIT Sloan Management Review research, most companies today focus their efforts on what it would take to disrupt existing markets. This narrows their vision and blinds them to the wealth of nondisruptive, market-creating innovations they could unlock.

In Smart Innovation© Workshop, we are taking a holistic approach to analyse all of the different innovation opportunities available for the company and choose the distinct tactics accordingly.

The workshop is designed for management teams of up to ten people. The workshop takes place off-site and is including a social program for an effective tacit knowledge transfer.

Build New Business Growth With Smart Innovation© Workshop

Tangible Results and Business Value

Practical Growth Path

Change of Mindset

Highly Creative Output

Five-day Program

The program will be finalized based on the specific needs and growth opportunities of the customer. Here are some blocks and principles included in the program:

Preparation

The workshop requires preparation and research from both the client and the mentors. Some of this preparation and opportunity mapping will be done before the workshop and some of it during the workshop.

This includes both a detailed view of the company’s internal strengths and obstacles as well as external market opportunities and challenges.

Mapping the Innovation Landscape

From sustaining to disruptive, from incremental to radical innovation – during this phase, we will be using the latest innovation modelling methods to map out the innovation landscape in the specific industry.

What is the maturity of the industry and its players? What are the opportunities and capabilities as well as challenges and risks open for the business? What to consider to enable new growth from innovation?

Building the Innovation Strategy

Acknowledging the internal and external opportunities and challenges, what are the possible innovation paths to consider? What are the innovation strategies to enable and how much resources to dedicate for each of those? Should the action steps be immediate or conservative?

From wait-and-see to going all-in with eating-your-own-lunch kind of strategy, there is no bad innovation strategy per se except not having one. Making a conscious strategical choice and understanding the innovation landscape is key to future growth and market leadership.

“Learned to break patterns and routines, shift between regularities and take time off to engage in completely other activities.”
Allan

Practical Knowledge

With both entrepreneurial as well as corporate background, I have practical knowledge of implementing strategies from a variety of perspectives. We will have a few practical lectures during the workshop around case studies and external experiences based on the needs of the participating team.

Creative Disruption

During the workshop, each member is actively challenged with a variety of creative exercises and disruptive thinking models. This will ensure that the team is considering every possible scenario and opportunity that might not be obvious in the first place.

Social Program

About 16 hours of social and self-development programs tied within the program to boost inspiration and creativity as well as increase the tacit knowledge transfer between participants. These can include the practice of mindfulness, yoga, physical exercises, fireside chat, coaching and others.

“Very easy to follow, sharp and to the point, covered many areas, got some interesting ideas. Also liked the stage presence and jokes :)”
Kadri

Optional: Strategic Fitness Process

Once the initial strategy is drafted, it is advised to immediately take the next steps to align strategic goals with the wider workforce, have everyone on the same page and have an honest discussion. The strategic fitness process is a great way to achieve this – to understand the mindset of your employees, identify emotional blockages and company culture as well as take specific steps to transform the organisation toward the envisioned strategy.

What is Strategic Fitness Process?

The “strategic fitness process” is designed by Harvard Business School in partnership with senior executives to enhance their capacity to implement strategy quickly and effectively. It does so by fitting the organization to the strategy and increasing fitness, the capacity of the organization to learn and change. Since then, this process has been used in more than 150 businesses in the retail, hospitality, high technology, banking, and pharmaceutical industries.

The process effectively creates an honest conversation between the senior leadership team and the rest of the workforce. As a result, this can enable a broad discussion and implementation of strategic goals as well as organisational change and transformation.