Idea Time Innovation with Dr. Jo North

Plan Your Product and Service Portfolio

How well are your products and services performing? When was the last time that you sat down and did a strategic review of your portfolio?

 

For some businesses, it’s a regular, ongoing activity. They’re always on top of what’s working and spotting early signs that something needs to be tweaked or changed.

 

In many cases, entrepreneurial leaders know what’s going well and what isn’t, based on intuition, but don’t get thoughts out on paper often enough to help them think through their next moves and strategies to get clarity on future plans.

 

If you’d like to take a snippet of time (30 minutes or so) to hit pause and reflect on your business’ performance, join me for this show, either live or on replay.

 

I’ll be sharing how you can use some classic frameworks that are just as valuable today as when they were first created to take a snapshot of your business offer and gain clarity on your next moves.

 

I bet that you are familiar with these frameworks – but are you actively using them to help your business grow?

 

Work alongside me to use three classical innovation and business growth concepts – the Product Lifecycle, BCG Matrix and the Innovation-Adoption curve – for your new product development, business planning and strategic thinking.

 

I’ll also stop off to take a very quick look at the Gartner Hypecycle and their Technology Trend Summary for 2023, but don’t worry if tech isn’t your thing! The principles apply to so many other things, and it’s great to have a quick look at what might be ahead.

 

Mintel have published their Global Consumer Trends for 2023, too, so I’ll give you a heads up on those.

How to Facilitate a Mission, Vision and Values Workshop

One of the members of my Idea Time for Workshop Facilitators Facebook Group asked me for some ideas for creative facilitation activities to use when working with groups to establish their Mission, Vision and Values.

 

So, in this show I’ll share a toolkit that will help you to facilitate a super-successful Mission, Vision & Values Workshop for your team or client.

 

You can use my tried-and-tested toolkit to lead your delegates through the steps to co-create their Mission, Vision and Values from scratch, or to refresh and update the ones already in place.

 

As well as the toolkit, I’ll share:

• An agenda to save you loads of planning time
• Activities that have been tried and tested in a wide range of organizations
• Fresh ideas and approaches to build into your wider toolkit
• Tips for leading a workshop that achieves a great delegate experience AND valuable outputs

Growth Hacking Sprints

Have you considered a growth hacking sprint for your business?

 

It could help you and your team achieve a flying start to the year ahead, in just a couple of hours.

 

Growth hacking is an approach that helps businesses to scale by combining powerful data, technical expertise and marketing flair to find and test promising new ways of driving growth.

 

It’s not about ‘hacking’ in the sense of too-good-to-be true short cuts. Growth hacking means finding creative, low-cost strategies to help businesses acquire and retain customers, testing those strategies and learning fast.

 

A growth hacking sprint is a short, focused event that gets all the right people in the physical or virtual room to collaborate on growth solutions for your business.

Growth hacking sprints are designed to get the very best collective creativity and wisdom from everyone present in an efficient, dynamic, and creative way, in a short space of time.

 

If you’d like to know more, listen in as I'm sharing...

• More about what growth hacking is, how it works and how to get started
• Example agendas for growth hacking sprints, and what to expect
• How to set up and deliver a growth hacking sprint for your business
• How to use your first growth hacking sprint to accelerate and maintain momentum throughout the year – by working smarter, avoiding burn out and building a more resilient business

What is eco innovation?

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

- Einstein

 

It’s brilliant that so many businesses want to be part of the solution when it comes to combating climate change and protecting natural resources through improving day-to-day processes.

 

And, as Einstein observed, new challenges call for new solutions.

 

In addition to Government decarbonisation target dates looming ever closer, consumers and communities are demanding more transparency and products that are environmentally and socially responsible.

 

Eco innovation is aimed at driving progress towards sustainable business models and green economic growth, through new technologies, services, products or processes.

 

Eco innovation involves:

• Thinking about the full life cycles of products and services, to gain maximum use from materials and retain their value in the economy
• Making strategic changes to build sustainability into the DNA of every business process
• Collaborating with customers, suppliers and partners to drive sustainability across the full supply chain

 

In this show, I’ll be giving an overview of what eco innovation is and sharing some examples of eco innovation in business.

 

#ecoinnovation #sustainableinnovation #sustainablility #innovation #entrepreneurship

Influencing Skills for Innovation

You don’t have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they’ve taught me.
– Scott Adams

In my day-to-day, I encounter so many great innovators who have what they think are brilliant ideas. However, some of them struggle to get these ideas across the line, because others don’t see the opportunity the same way. What’s obvious to an innovator may not be obvious to others.

Influencing skills go hand-in-hand with entrepreneurship and innovation, to onboard team members, customers, suppliers, stakeholders or investors to make great ideas happen.

I see influencing as a reciprocal process. It’s not all one way. Listening and taking other people’s good ideas on board often makes a promising idea even stronger.

In this show, I’ll provide a process and toolkit to support your influencing strategies for your innovation ambitions.

Sharing my Innovation Influencing Mix, I’ll cover:

• Prioritising stakeholders
• Innovation collaboration between organisations
• Making your case using fundamental influencing principles
• Building trust in business relationships

The focus will be on external partners, organisations and stakeholders, but these approaches work internally, too.

Deep Dive into Intrapreneurship

I’ve always been fascinated by what makes some people innovative and enterprising – or intrapreneurial – at work, and why some people prefer to be more risk averse and focus on managing the day-to-day, rather than actively seeking to shape the future.

 

Businesses need both, of course, to be successful.

 

It was this sheer passion and joy for all things intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship and innovation-related that led me to study for 6 years part-time to achieve my doctorate in my late forties (whilst working full time too).

 

In this show, I’m going to do a deep dive into intrapreneurship, including:

• What is intrapreneurship, how is it different or similar to entrepreneurship?
• Why and how all businesses benefit from intrapreneurship
• Characteristics of successful intrapreneurs – based on research, including my own
• How to develop intrapreneurial skills in yourself and others
• Intrapreneurial culture

…and much more!

 

Whilst always grounded in evidence and research, the insights I share will be packed with practical things that you can do to improve intrapreneurship where you work.

 

#iintrapreneur #intrapreneurship #corporateentrepreneurship #innovation #businessgrowth

How to Facilitate a Goal Setting Workshop

"Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction." — Kenichi Ohmae

Setting meaningful, stretching but realistic goals is one of the keys to success in business innovation and growth.

When individuals and teams collaborate to set goals, they create an environment where team members work towards a shared vision, collaborate and perform better overall.

In this show, I discuss some of the science and evidence that inform effective goal setting for teams.

I also share a proven goal setting workshop agenda and toolkit of activities that you can use to facilitate your own goal setting workshops.

#goalsetting #facilitation #virtualfacilitation #innovation #businessgrowth

2022 Trends – a Round Up for Innovators and Entrepreneurs

Are you looking ahead yet to 2022? Now’s a good a time to start as any, and I’ve done a bit of the hard work for you. 

I’ve reviewed a range of the leading trends reports for 2022 and will be sharing my overview for innovators, entrepreneurs and business leaders in this episode.

Join me for a practical, evidence-based view of what’s likely to be important for consumers and businesses as the world continues to change in these unusual times.

You’ll get some useful tips and suggestions for how to use the 2022 trend insights that I share for your own business.

Plus, I’ll point you to all the original 2022 research references in case there’s a theme that you’d like to explore more deeply.

#innovation #entrepreneurship #innovationleadership #intrapreneurship #2022trends

How to Power Up Your Innovation Mindset

Do you want to put a ding in the universe?

Steve Jobs did.  And I think many of us want to, as well, in our own way.

It doesn’t have to be a huge ding. Lots of smaller dings add up.

As ding-making team members, innovators and leaders, we can all develop our innovation mindset to massively multiply the positive impact that we create.

We can learn to strengthen and maximise our unique, personal innovation thinking style by understanding it, and then by using approaches, tools and practice to help our minds work their magic in wise, brilliant and sometimes surprisingly cool ways.

The more we take our innovation brains for a spin and give them a great workout, the better, smarter and faster they’ll get at spotting interesting dots and connecting them to shape new opportunities.

We can learn to get better at hanging in there when ding-creation gets tough (it invariably does) because we recognise that there can be no great breakthroughs without having something to break through first.

Innovation mindset is at the origin of every successful – and unsuccessful – endeavour.

The ideas you and your business have, and how well you execute them, are what separate you from your competition. At the root of your innovation is the quality of your individual and collective thinking.

Mindset is a hugely important and, for me at least, endlessly fascinating aspect of innovation that is underexplored.

 

In this episode, I cover:

…What an innovation mindset is and why it’s important

…How to work out your own innovation thinking style preferences, and how they might affect the people you work with, and your own decision-making

…Practical, scientifically-proven and often fun and enjoyable ways that you can power up your own innovation mindset, and help your team to do the same.

Collaborative Innovation

Collaborative innovation happens when different organisations, or teams from the same organization, work in partnership to create new products, services or solutions.

It can be a brilliant approach to solving big, important challenges that need diverse inputs, pooled resources, and shared learning.

Collaborative innovation also has its ups and downs, at times! The key to success lies in understanding the potential challenges and benefits, being prepared for them, and developing the discernment and skills to both lead and contribute well.

 

In this episode, I’ll cover:

…What collaborative innovation is and how it works in practice at its best, with examples

…When collaborative innovation might be useful for an organisation, and when not

…The importance of selecting great partners for your collaboration, and some tips that might help

…Common pitfalls and critical success factors

…Collaborative innovation leadership skills, and how to develop them.

 

This is a content-rich episode, packed with pragmatic insight based on years of first-hand experience!

It would be great to hear your experiences of collaborative innovation, too.

• What works or doesn’t work from your perspective?
• What questions do you have that you’d really like me to answer?

 

As always, let’s see what insights and ideas we can co-create in the moment.

Looking forward to collaborating with you.