Innovation Speed Dating

Recently I was traveling on a train reading some papers for an innovation workshop I was attending. In the papers there was a press release, from a leading newspaper website, taking about a recent new service that had been implemented. It even included quotes from satisfied users of the service and people within the organization. I thought things have been moving fast in the last couple of months because I don't recall this being implemented or even being discussed. Had I lost my finger on the pulse. I then glanced to the top of the page and noticed the date of the press release was 2011! Ah I thought this is a mock up of the possibilities the innovation workshop could achieve. It got my attention.

So the innovation workshop commenced following a short intro of the objectives it was straight into the first of three themes to brainstorm. We brainstormed and threw out ideas that stimulated other ideas for 20 minutes then it was over. We agreed as a group our top 3 ideas and fed this back in 5 minutes. Then onto the next theme in the same format. At the end all the ideas where collated and we are going to vote on the top three to take forward.

It was like Innovation Speed Dating.

However it got result and some really interesting ideas were discussed. You could see the passion in people as an idea took hold and the possibilities became apparent. Some of the ideas I had never thought of myself. But when but forward were inspirational, inspiring and sometimes so obvious. Some of these may have been missed if we had gone down the traditional waterfall approach of requirements produced and then IT respond with a solution.

This was also innovation brainstorming as an organization not as the business or IT we were working as a group of individuals adding value to the organization as a whole. Something I am passionate about and talked about in my post on you never hear of business and finance alignment.

Technology is pervasive these days. Most people have a hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail personal email account. They use facebook, online banking, shopping etc. They can see what IT can do and with a little nudge, through innovation speed dating, are able to find new business value enabling services using some of the IT approaches and services they use everyday in their daily lives.

IT solutions are no longer the domain of a few geeks talking a foreign language in white coats in a basement. This workshop reinforces why I believe my vision of Real End User Computing is achievable

The workshop was inspiring.

However before I get carried away I am not advocating this is all you need to do to generate new ideas and make them a reality. You still to need to ensure that they produce a coherent whole, create enabling capabilities that could be used elsewhere in other ideas, for example process management capabilities. You don't want to end up building vertical silo ideas, services and capabilities. Who wants to end up with three process management capabilities with 3 times the implementation and operating/maintenance costs. Not good.

So you need to ensure all this is underpinned by good old Enterprise Architecture models, frameworks and governance. These will help to turn prototypes into pilots into full scale services. If we don't do this there will be anarchy. A good post by The Enterprising Architect on Is Architecture the Enemy of Innovation shows how the two can and should work together

This workshop was simple to setup and execute but was exciting, interesting and inspiring. I am really looking forward to seeing some of the ideas being taken forward and to the next innovation speed dating workshop.