So I continue with Innovation Arena and the agenda of an Innovation arena run.
The get-together
The room is
prepared and the experts dropped in. Now it is you term to introduce into the
ceremony of Innovation
Arena. If Innovation Arena is well known to most of the
experts, you might decide to shorten this step. In case of new externals as invited
experts, I recommend do introduce in full length. External experts need to
understand what is expected and to feel welcome and comfortable.
As moderator
explain the overall objectives and every single workshop steps. It is important
to highlight the collaborative nature of the workshop. All participants act on
eye level. All participants have the chance and are expected to give feedback.
Transport the idea that Innovation Arena is a positive meeting, so participants
shall focus on adding and improving ideas instead of critics and risks.
It is very
important to explain:
- the way pre-selection of ideas is done (if used)
- how to use the prioritization criteria
- how the rating is executed
- how the results will be determined
- what the next steps are, when this Innovation Arena run is closed
Now all
experts are prepared and hopefully in the mind set to drive the ideas of your
organization with motivation and creativity.
The pre-selection of ideas
In Innovation
Arena, the crowd of experts shall concentrate on a restricted set of
ideas. We recommend taking 5 to 15 ideas into one run.
For sure
this is an option to play with. Some organizations use two full days on a
similar type of workshop and take a hundred ideas of potential features of
future development into one run. If you act more local and internal, a higher
frequency, but shorter timeframe (as proposed in this blog) typically is preferable
because of faster feedback cycles and reflection. If you are more globally and
distributed, with many externals like key customers representatives, a lower
frequency with longer time boxes might better suit the constraints of
distribution. Play with these options and you will find the best fit for your
organization.
Even this
pre-selection step is optional. I recommend a pre-selection only in case you
run Innovation
Arena in higher frequency in your organization, with a more local
setup, and based on an already established shared understanding of the ideas. With
this setup pre-selection is easy. The majority of experts already know the
ideas presented on the pinboards.
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| Image 1: How to arrange ideas pinboards in an Innovation Arena run |
If the
pinboards are placed as in the image, a collaborative and self-organizing way
of pre-selection is to please the participants to place themselves in front of
this one pinboard with the most promising ideas in this workshop run from their
very personal view. Explain that we will work in this Innovation Arena run with about
five ideas pre-selected by the most experts in front of the representing
pinboard. This way of pre-selection fosters collaboration, movement and a
positive start.
If you run Innovation
Arena regularly in your organization, the experts understand the
criteria “the most promising ideas in this workshop run from your personal view”.
If the experts do not understand, this is a signal that you have to work on
this shared understanding. This shared understanding under the experts in your organization
reflects the alignment with strategic objectives. But that is a different story
and maybe some time a blog on its own.
This pre-selection
works better with more experts in the room than pinboards. Ideal you have at
least twice the number of experts than pinboards. And you should have at least
twice the number of experts than pinboards. Otherwise the group of experts is restricted
to the idea owners and this is for sure a sub-optimal setup.
Next Blog will be about pitching ideas and probably the most important step: the rating...
