Slide1

For a first time traveller discovering new places can be very intimidating, you don’t know how long you will need in each city and country, you want to make sure you don’t miss any of the important sites, you want to visit at the right time and see the best bits, which is why lots of first time travellers get a travel agent who organises an itinerary for their trip.

It’s a similar story to innovation, most organisations are pretty intimidated about where to start, who to include, how long to spend in each area and stage and when to move things along, which is why an innovation itinerary is a pretty cool idea. Your first time at the innovation table can be treated like your first trip overseas – let’s get a pretty good plan and then be prepared to tweak it for our next trip.

So why not start with a defined plan, what is the best area to start with – think like Goldilocks and don’t make it too hard or too easy, what are the important targets for innovation, what would you like to achieve, which conversations should you be having and how long do you think they should take, and be prepared to pause and learn at each stage – what worked, what didn’t, what was too hard and what didn’t give us the results we wanted.

With the right planning at the start of your innovation process, you should become seasoned travellers in no time.

Avatar photo

Written by Lisa Smith

Twitter LinkedIn

Lisa is a professional thinker dedicated to helping people unlock their innate creativity and to empower them to think differently – for themselves. She is passionate about building innovative cultures and about harnessing and engaging talent to create thinking communities. Lisa holds an MBA, specialising in organisational change and innovation, which forms the nucleus of her work. She relishes opportunities to share the Minds at Work thinking strategies with government bodies, socially responsible corporate, educators, community groups and farmers, helping them to turn their big ideas into realities.