Idea Time Innovation with Dr. Jo North

TRLs: Accelerating Sustainable Innovation

Sometimes a promising idea or discovery is so exciting that it's tempting to rush ahead, risking missing key steps along the way. Other times, it's challenging to figure out how to progress the innovation at speed and scale, causing it to get stuck.

In this episode, I explain how Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs)—originally created by NASA in the 1970s and now used internationally—provide a valuable framework for identifying and communicating the maturity level of your sustainable innovation. TRLs can help you build a roadmap to ensure your innovation makes the impact you want it to make. Don't let the term 'Technology Readiness Levels' put you off if you're not in tech. TRLs are used for all kinds of sustainable innovations, including new products and services, materials, engineering, medical solutions, and more.

I cover what TRLs are, where they came from and why, how to use them, and most importantly, how to progress your sustainable innovation from an idea to an applied solution that makes a real impact.

For my article on this topic, please go to What are TRLs? Technology Readiness Levels Explained. 

How to Bring Your Company Values to Life

Company values are more than words on a wall or a website. They're the heartbeat of an organization, guiding decisions and behaviors. Yet, bringing them to life is where many companies struggle. In this show, I share practical ways to help your team infuse your company’s values into your everyday work.

 

I’ll share:                                                                                                                   

• How to facilitate workshops with your team to identify behaviours for every role that embody your values
• Why and how to make your values the foundation of your business decisions, hiring practices and recognition programs
• Keeping your values front-of-mind with storytelling and visual communication
• How to check-in and monitor your progress

 

Creative Thinking Techniques for Strategy and Innovation

Join me in this dynamic session on creative thinking techniques to elevate your strategy and innovation sprints, workshops and meetings.

 

Whether you're looking to tackle complex problems or pave the way for fresh, more ambitious ideas, this session will equip you with practical techniques to think creatively and act innovatively.

 

We’ll cover:

• Foundations of Creative Thinking: Understand the core principles that underpin creative thought and how it can transform your approach to strategy and innovation.
• Techniques and Tools: Explore a range of tried-and-tested techniques to stimulate creative thinking and apply these tools in your work.
• Real-World Applications: See how organizations have successfully applied creative thinking techniques to solve problems and innovate.

 This show is ideal for business professionals, team leaders, managers, and anyone looking to:

• Enhance strategic thinking with creative approaches.
• Drive innovation within teams or organizations.
• Solve complex problems with out-of-the-box solutions.

 

#creativethinking #psychologyofcreativity #innovation #strategy

 

 

How to Facilitate a Scenario Planning Workshop

This podcast, "How to Facilitate a Scenario Planning Workshop", will guide you through using scenario planning to help you to develop and strengthen your sustainable innovation strategy.

 

Key takeaways:

• Understanding sustainable innovation: Balance environmental, societal, and economic impacts for long-term success 🌱.
• Scenario planning insights: How to prepare for various futures, mitigating risks and spotting opportunities 🔍.
• From theory to practice: Real-world applications that show the impact of effective scenario planning. 🚀
• Tools and processes: Effective strategies and tools for developing actionable plans based on critical scenarios 💡.

 

Who should listen?

Leaders, strategists, and anyone interested in sustainable innovation and strategic foresight.

 

I hope you can join me live or on replay to explore how scenario planning helps to innovate towards a more sustainable future. 🌱

 

Build a Successful Innovation Team

🚀  Build a Successful Innovation Team 🚀

 

🎥  🎙️ In this week’s Idea Time show, I explore how to build an innovation-driven team.

 

Highlights are:

• Innovation as a Core Value: Essential for product development, adding technical, process, and functional value.
• Innovation Time Off (ITO): Learn from Google, 3M and others . Balance innovation and productivity.
• Set the Innovation Stage: Effective communication and real-life examples to spark creativity.
• Lean Start-up Approach: Validating ideas early with a Build-Measure-Learn cycle.
• Diverse Team Composition: Diversity fuels creativity. Importance of a guiding team leader.
• Skills for Innovation Teams: Creative, critical thinking, empathy, curiosity, problem-solving, and collaboration.
• Sustaining Innovation Culture: Top management’s role in fostering an ongoing innovative environment.

How to Facilitate a Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Stakeholder mapping is a strategic process used in innovation, project management and business planning.

It involves identifying and analyzing individuals, groups, or organizations that can impact or be impacted by a project or business activity.

The goal is to understand these stakeholders' interests, influence, and the nature of their involvement.

By mapping stakeholders, innovators can better navigate complex environments, minimize risks, and leverage support for successful outcomes.

In this mini-show, I share helpful ideas on how to facilitate stakeholder mapping, an essential tool for innovators, design thinks and project leaders.

We cover some practical techniques for identifying, mapping, and prioritizing stakeholders, how to develop tailored communication strategies and why keeping your stakeholder map updated is vital.

 

Horizon Scanning & Foresight for Innovators

In this content-packed live show, I dive into Horizon Scanning & Foresight for Innovators.

No crystal balls, prophecies or predicting the future, though!

Horizon scanning is about detecting weak signals of potential change before they make it big. It keeps you prepared, and gives you and your innovation strategy a competitive edge.

In this show, I share:

• What horizon scanning is, and why it’s important
• The differences between foresight, forecasts and prediction
• What ‘weak signals’ are, and how to spot them
• Emerging trends
• Tips and approaches for horizon scanning in a fast-moving, information-dense world
• How to do horizon scanning with your team
• Data for horizon scanning
• A horizon scanning toolkit, including:
  • Seven Questions interview technique
  • The Delphi technique
  • Futures Wheel
  • Text Mining – using AI to scan through large sets of text data, spotting trends in news, social media, or academic publications.
  • Cross-impact analysis
  • Scenario planning
  • Importance / certainty matrix
  • Transformation maps

It really is a value-packed whopper of a show – ideal for you if you’re planning your innovation and business growth strategy. I also share how you can access my free horizon scanning toolkit.

As always, I'd love your comments and questions on my social channels!

Lead A Sustainability Workshop for Your Business

This episode is a really good one if you're interested in leading sustainable innovation in your business. I go in-depth on how to facilitate a successful Business Sustainability Workshop for your team.

I give you a start-to-finish guide on how and what to prepare, a workshop agenda with specific activities and tips to turn your ideas into action after your event.

 

What I cover:

1. Workshop Preparation: Why having a solid plan for your workshop or sprint is crucial and what materials and information you should prepare in advance.
2. Circular Economy Principles: How to incorporate these into your business model and why it matters.
3. Resource Flow Analysis: Pinpoint waste and inefficiencies in your processes and develop a plan to tackle them.
4. Stakeholder Perspectives: Understand sustainability concerns from various stakeholders' perspectives, enhancing your corporate social responsibility efforts.
5. Building a Roadmap: Building your sustainability plan.

 

As always, please do share your ideas and questions in the comments on my social channels, it will be great to hear from you!

 

Sustainable Business Model Innovation

In this episode, I dive into the world of sustainable business model innovation and discuss why it’s essential in the contemporary business environment.

 

Key topics I cover are:

• The rising demand for sustainability from customers and the global trend towards sustainable value propositions.
• Examples of businesses committing to Net Zero targets.
• The role of sustainability in attracting and retaining talent, and the link between environmental ethics and job satisfaction.
• The creation of new opportunities through sustainable business model innovation, such as supply chain innovations.
• The definition of a sustainable business model and the purpose of innovating one.
• Steps to build a sustainable business model: deconstructing products and services, walking through business processes, focusing on people, and using data for continuous improvement.

How Open Innovation Can Transform Your Business

Open innovation is all about expanding your business horizons. Instead of keeping all your ideas and projects in-house, you collaborate with external partners, startups, or customers. This approach speeds up innovation, cuts costs, and could give your business the competitive edge it needs. Tune into my livestream to learn how you can make open innovation work for you.

 

Get to Know Open Innovation

I'll start off by demystifying what open innovation really means. I’ll explain the difference between open and closed innovation models.

 

Real-World Cases

Hear about companies that have thrived by adopting open innovation. Their success stories could be inspiration for your business.

 

Practical Benefits

I'll cover the ROI of implementing open innovation strategies. Learn about faster product development, cost reduction, and increased creativity within your organization.

 

How to Get Started

Thinking about jumping in? I'll provide actionable steps on how you can integrate and facilitate open innovation into your business operations.