TALENT AND TEAM DEVELOPMENT
Goal
Stakeholders and students at EiT will work together for 1 day to develop new entrepreneurial skills. Everyone learns new creativity and innovation tools by working on realistic industry challenges.
Context
Such an innovation day is initiated within the setting of the Experts in Teamwork course as a supplementary event. We have coordinated the content with the overall course program.
STRATEGY AND NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Strategy: Bring students, researchers, entrepreneurs and experienced industry managers together to develop an array of innovative business concepts.
Business development: The brainstorming and idea scouting day will enable students to develop creative thinking and foster entrepreneurial mindset. The gathered proposals will be transferred to the next stage of the Bootcamp days.
INNOVATION DAY 1 AGENDA
An immersive 1-day dive into innovation and changemaker strategy.
Take one day to inspire students, channel that inspiration into relevant new business concepts, and learn new innovation tools along the way. The overall focus for the day will be put on practical activities depending on each team goal for the day.
Planned Schedule
Total time needed: 7 hours, including catering, breaks, and network moments.
Kick-off at 8:45 AM and closing at 15:45 PM.
Intro: Innovation day (0.5h)
Brainstorm: Trends VS. Markets (0.5h)
Inspiration & brainstorm techniques (2×0.5-1h)
Develop business concepts (2h)
Sharing and discussing new project ideas (1h)
Conclusion and fill in survey (0.5h)
BRAINSTORM EXERCISES – Look beyond academic borders.
BRAINSTORM: TRENDS VS. MARKETS
Trends can be a great source of inspiration for new opportunities. Every industry is challenged by disruptions. To kick-off another brainstorming round, we start with a short presentation of eye-opening cases (relevant to the industry we’re focusing on) showing how the world is changing.
Selecting Trends
The goal of this exercise is to link a small selection of trends (take 5) with specific market segments for the company. How does a trend (such as the rise of data protection and privacy) impact a specific market (such as students and their parents)? Each cross-section between a trend and a market will generate new business ideas or new problems to solve.
ANALOGY THINKING: SMART COPYING
We start our innovation day with presentations from startups and some easy brainstorming exercises. Participants are asked to look beyond their academic borders. Stakeholders will present innovative business ideas and startups in different domains. Every case presented will be distributed into physical cards for different teams.
Each team gets 3 or 4 different cases inherent to different industry sectors (e.g. public and private). They write down on sticky notes or personal laptops all different aspects for separate cases, by proposing creative and innovative solutions to challenges (e.g., “solution X leads to startup Y enabling product/service Z”). In the next step, students discuss and analyze with the present stakeholders their product or service ideas.
HOW WILL BUSINESS IDEAS BE FOSTERED?
Every stakeholder, coming from public and private industry sector, will make his best to present ideas.
Students will make use of online resources to explore idea originality
Notes and ideas will be tracked on A3 format papers so participants will have ample space to write down.
BRAINSTORM: EXPLORE OPPORTUNITIES
Innovator journey: Every table should start a discussion to describe the topic, challenge and proposed solution based on storytelling and empathy.
Steps:
Come up and use the client’s story to solve relevant needs and detect new ones.
Explore existing solutions or brainstorm to find new ones.
How are you creating value: Start this brainstorm from the existing solution (e.g., we sell pens). Ask your participants to explore different levels of abstraction (e.g., help users express themselves). This is an easy framework to discover new product ideas.
How technology triggers enable you: Provide futuristic solutions. Build prototypes that are applicable to the domain and your team background.
Tip: Remember to always think out of the box.
IDEA SELECTION PROCESS
From the previous brainstorming, presentation, and discussion round, we ask students to highlight the most interesting ideas.
Moving forward
Before a team can go forward they need to pick at least one more disruptive idea. Importantly, not everyone needs to agree that this is the smartest idea. Consensus-building is the worst enemy of innovation!
PRESENT: BROADEN YOUR PROSPECTIVE
Present for other teams
Every team should start presenting to other teams and making convincing arguments why their solutions will work.
Get stakeholders on board
Encourage external stakeholders to follow up your solution and become part of your dream as a changemaker.
HAPPY STAKEHOLDERS: THINGS TO TAKE AT HOME
Stakeholders feedback: Are proposed solutions feasible for the market. Are you tackling interesting ideas for both parts?
Get stakeholders on board: We will follow up your ideas. Tell us how we can help.