Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Three Imminent Innovation Events

Friday, August 27th, 2010

There are three upcoming innovation events that you can take advantage of.

1.  Gaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation Workshop.

To be held in London on Thursday Sept 16th.  This is a one day workshop in which you practise and learn creativity and innovation methods.  It will help you to develop new products and services.

2.  Innovation Unit Meeting on Open Innovation.

A half day event in London on Tuesday 5th October.  The Guest Speaker is David Simoes-Brown of 100% Open.  This is an interactive meeting where we review and discuss best practice in Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing.

3. Master Class on Innovation in the Public Sector

This is a one day workshop on Wednesday 13th October in London.  It will focus on the leadership, culture and processes for innovation with emphasis on government agencies and the public sector.

I hope to see you at one of these events.

Paul Sloane

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Workshop on Open Innovation

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will take place on the morning of Tuesday 5th October in central London.  It will focus on Open Innovation and it will be interative and instructive.  It will be led by David Simoes-Brown of 100% Open, a consultancy that focuses on Open Innovation. 

Topics include

Open Innovation Accelerator

  • Why open innovation can get you better ideas, faster, cheaper
  • Opportunities in crowdsourcing, corporate collaborations and customer co-innovation
  • Pitfalls in open innovation and how to avoid them
  • Collaboration mindsets – how to develop Business Empathy

The meeting is open to BQF members and to non-members.  You can see more details and register here.  I look forward to meeting you if you come.

Paul Sloane

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Ideas Jam – How it works

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

We ran the Ideas Jam meeting yesterday and it went well. It was an intensive idea generation session. There were 18 participants from various companies who each brought a challenge from their business – e.g. How can we communicate our new strategy to thousands of people? The morning worked like this:

After an initial ice-breaker we had 45 minutes of ‘speed dating.’ Each person met another person for 3 minutes and acted as a consultant for their challenge. The consultant asked questions and made suggestions (which could not be rejected or criticised). Then the roles were reversed. After the six minute date people moved on to their next date.

Next we divided into three groups of six. Each group choose one challenge and then used the ‘nominal’ brainstorming method to quickly generate 60 ideas. We used the Novel, Attractive, Feasible criteria to select the best ideas from each group and then presented back.

We formed new groups of six and used ‘Reverse the problem’ to generate ideas for another challenge. Finally we used Pass the Parcel to come up with really radical ideas for a further challenge.

Each delegate then chose the best idea(s) for their challenge and identified the benefits and next steps.

The feedback showed that the participants went away with great ideas and some powerful new tools to improve idea generation and implementation in their businesses.

Paul Sloane

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Intensive Bottled Creativity

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will be an Ideas Jam on the morning of July 13th in central London.  It will be fun, challenging, interactive, intensive and creative.  You will learn new ideation methods, meet interesting people and work with them to develop radical ideas.  It is open to members and non-members.  Details and booking here.

Paul Sloane

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Come to an Ideas Jam on July 13 in London

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Author: Franek, Wikimedia Commons

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will consist of an Ideas Jam to be held in central London on the morning of Tuesday July 13.

This is a highly interactive workshop style meeting in which people generate creative ideas for challenges which have been brought to the meeting.

It works like this:

  1. The meeting starts with an intensive speed dating session where every delegate meets every other delegate and discusses business opportunities and challenges. They are encouraged to find collaboration opportunities.
  2. We divide into small teams and use various advanced brainstorming methods to quickly generate creative ideas for different challenges submitted by the participants.
  3. Delegates select the best ideas and commit to feedback on progress against them.

You can bring your challenges with you but you are also encouraged to participate before the event via this blog and to submit your own business challenges as ‘How can we ….?’ questions.  You can also email them directly to me. 

There is a small charge to cover lunch.  To book please contact Pat Myles on 020 7654 5013 or E: pat.myles@bqf.org.uk

More details and booking.

It will be an exciting morning where you will meet great people and learn powerful creativity methods.

Paul Sloane

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Innovation at Nokia

Monday, April 19th, 2010

At today’s meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit we had an interesting talk from Pekka Pohjakallio, VP of Concepting and Innovation at Nokia.  Because of the ban on flights he was unable to attend in person so we had a voice over IP link to go with his powerpoint presentation.  He covered a tremendous amount of ground in his talk and in the subsequent Q&A session.  He explained the philosopy of innovation at Nokia and the efforts they make to embed it into the corporate culture.  I will not try to paraphrase what he said but I will give you some quotations that I think are of high value:

“In Nokia we believe that nothing is an innovation until it is in the hands of the consumer.

In the early days of the cable business financial constraints forced us to be innovative.  We could not afford to develop our own processors and had to use standard chips so we had to find ways to be different.

We made a big bet on GSM and fortunately this paid off.

R&D spend is 14% of net sales.

Nokia is now the biggest camera manufacturer in the world.

Most of our innovation is design led rather than technology led. For example we offer language training and horoscope applications in India.

Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero are good examples of design led innovation.

We believe that teams need to be as cross-disciplined as possible.

When we put together the team to work on an initial concept we try to think it right through to what will be in the launch press release.

We talk to the people who are the far extremes – the geekiest of the geeks.

A big challenge for us is how to make our teams independent.  How can we give them enough freedom?

We focus on ‘what is the user problem we are trying to solve?’  Then we prototype, prototype, prototype.

We have an intranet where people can post videos of their ideas.

We crowdsource internally by asking all our people to help with a problem.

We collaborate externally with suppliers and Universities.  A lot of our innovation comes from our partners.

Our message to small companies with ideas is,  ’Don’t be afraid.  Approach us.’

We want to be the world’s best partnering company.

Innovation is not a separate thing – in Nokia it is part of what you do.”

I would like to express our thanks to Pekka and to Anno Koetje for the efforts they made to make the event a success despite all the travel and logistical challenges.

Paul Sloane

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Next Meeting of the Innovation Unit – London Apr 19

Friday, March 12th, 2010

We have a new agenda for the next Innovation Unit meeting on the morning of Monday 19 April and we will have a leading speaker from Nokia.

 

Since the early 1990′s Nokia has invested close to €35 billion in research and development to build one of the strongest and broadest intellectual property rights (IPR) portfolios in the wireless industry. They invest heavily in innovation because ‘our business is about delivering new technologies, products and services to our customers and consumers’. Nokia now owns approximately 11,000 patented innovations and its global patent portfolio includes approximately 42,000 patents and patent applications. Nokia files approximately 1,000 new patent applications annually.

One of Nokia’s characteristics is their innovative approach to innovation. For example, their Growth Economy Venture Challenge will provide a venture capital investment in the winning proposal of $1 million. The Challenge is looking for one idea that stands above all the rest; one that could truly change the way people use Nokia mobile devices and that demonstrates how mobility improves the lives of millions of people in developing nations.

The morning will be a great opportunity to learn about innovation from leading practitioners and to network with fellow professionals.

Date:
Monday 19 April 2010
Title:
Innovation at Nokia
Venue:
Central London
Time: Registration and refreshments from 0900. Meeting from 09.30 – 1300 followed by a sandwich lunch
Guest Speakers:

  • Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Concepting & Innovation Solutions Unit
  • Paul Sloane, Head, BQF Innovation Unit
    Paul will lead an interactive workshop exercise on corporate differentiation and positioning

Please also forward this invitation to others in your organisation who may be interested in attending.  Book here.

Paul Sloane

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Competitive Advantage through Innovation Workshop

Friday, January 15th, 2010

I am running three one-day workshops for BQF entitled Gaining Competitive Advantage through Innovation.  These workshops will cover advanced idea generation techniques that really work for new products and services.  Delegates will practise and learn practical methods that they can take back and use in their organisations to help improve innovation.

There are details here.

The dates are

London    Feb 25 and Sept 16

Midlands   June 17

These workshops are open to non-members of the British Quality Foundation.  Places are limited so please book early.

Paul Sloane

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Next Meeting of the Innovation Unit

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Innovation in a competitive environment – BQF seminar kindly hosted by Glaxo Smith Kline at their Weybridge offices on 3 Nov.  Non-members are welcome http://ping.fm/O2Nt6   The speakers are from the consumer products division of GSK and include:

Simon Gunson, VP, New Product Development and Site Director

Alexis Roberts-Macintosh, VP, Aquafresh Future Team R&D

Peter Harding, VP,  Aquafresh Future Group

It will be instructive to hear from leading practitioners of innovation in the competitive world of fast moving consumer goods.  Places are limited so book soon.

Paul Sloane

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Innovation Master Class – Sept 15th

Friday, August 14th, 2009

PaulSloaneI am running a one day Master Class on Innovation for Competitive Advantage for the BQF on Sept 15th in central London.  It is guaranteed to give you great techniques for generating innovative ideas.  More details here:

Paul Sloane

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