Why?

The time that a company could develop a product and service and then sit back, is over. The ever-faster occurring changes have, in the last years, resulted in a real ‘innovation-explosion’. We are literally harassed with a continuous flow of innovations. The internet causes increasing competition in which everybody is looking for his own niche, his part of the cake. And on top of that, the time to market is continuously getting shorter.

This has caused a permanent need for new ideas for these products and services. It is clear that many companies do not yet have the structure to generate all these ideas on their own. Even when the competency is available within the organisation. The key is to find a way to use those competencies in the right way.

And so they face a choice that has to be made: invest in idea generation, the ‘fuzzy front end’ of innovation, to become an innovation leader, or be downgraded to an innovation follower, who can do nothing but watch how others determine the future.

How?

To give organisations the chance to take the future into their own hands, we help with structured innovation bootcamps that generate as many new ideas as possible within the shortest possible timeframe.

As with everything we do, we have based our approach on our evidence based Cromax innovation model. This results in an extremely high succes rate. 100% of our bootcamps up until now have been succesfull. With an average of 70% of business cases that are presented, getting a green light for development.

Our facilitators do this with an ‘internal pop-up innovation team’. This team consist of people from all departments of the organisation to have a high diversity in knowledge. In addition, we also look to characteristics like intrinsic motivation, creative skills, network, etc. This pop-up team will work part-time (1 -2 days per week) on this innovation process for a specific period of time and is then disbanded. It is possible that after that, some team members also become project managers of their own ideas.

Each innovation program consists of 3 phases:

1. The orientation phase:
   In this phase, we ensure that all parameters are correct to be able to start: what is the exact innovation assignment? How will the team be build? Does the team need training? Is there sufficient knowledge within the organisation or is additional research necessary? 

2. The phase of idea generation?
   With the acquired knowledge from the first phase, the team starts with idea generation. Ideally this happens during a few days in isolation so no one is distracted by the daily operation. This is done by using the creative methodology of divergence and convergence. It is not unusual that in the phase of divergence in such an innovation program, more then 1000 ideas (!) come up. So only the best ideas are selected and detailed.

3. The realisation phase
   In this phase, the selected ideas get their final shape. Depending on the assignment that can vary from a prototype to a business concept or even a business case. These will be presented to a jury that will decide which proposals will be actually implemented.

What?

Depending on the assignment, the question and the outcome, different approaches are possible:

COMPACT

• Is the question clear and simple? Do you want a short, powerful effort and a quick result? Is the team already set up? Then this is the perfect solution:
• 8-14 participants
• 5 days, spread over two weeks
• outcome: 4 groundbreaking prototypes 

LARGE

• Is the question more complex? Is additional research needed? Is result more important then speed? In that case, choose this thorough approach. The perfect mix between price and quality:
• 8-14 participants
• 10 days, spread over 2 months
• Outcome: 8 revolutionary business concepts

 XXL

• Do you want to bring in the artillery and literally blow your competition away. Then choose this ‘Alma Mater’ of innovation processes:
• 8-14 participants
• 40 days, spread over 6 months
• Outcome: 8 disruptive business cases

Result?

Depending on the approach you will end up with prototypes, business concepts or business cases. Since they originate from people in your organisation, the proposals will fit with the DNA of the organisation.

Finally, the participants can activate their own network in the organisation to create even more buy in for each of the proposals.