In our ideation training, we cover the fuzzy front end of innovation: we teach you a diversity of ideation methods (such as SIT, SCAMPER, design thinking, dark horsing, trend analysis, …), so you can apply the best of breed in your practice. Preferably, we let you practice the tools we teach in your firm’s context, effectively coming up with your ideas. You also get a workbook that steers participants forward in the ideation process. Typically we end the program with an idea pitch to senior management.

While it is also a key ingredient of lean start-up methodology when we teach assumption testing and validation of innovation, we consider it as one. Beyond lean start-up, we use our own TMRO framework and inception method. We provide you with an easily accessible roadmap, specifically for market validation. At the end of the program, we expect you to have a solid understanding of validation principles and how to get started.

This training explains the origin and tooling of design thinking, from early need sensing to validation and experimentation of innovation ideas. We combine the transfer of tools typically with a case study on IDEO or Philips. Ultimately, we prefer you to apply the method to your own firm’s context and flow through the design thinking process with an idea for your firm.

We help gather the voice of customers at different stages of an innovation’s development: this can be from gathering VOC to better understand customer needs to develop new solutions, to gathering VOC when launching a new innovation to optimize the go-to-market strategy. Bringing tooling and our decades-long expertise we support you in using the correct methodology, asking the right questions, and drawing the right insights.

Open innovation entails companies working with external experts or partnering with other companies to innovate. It has been shown to be a very successful model for innovation. Look at companies like P&G and IBM that thrive through their cooperation with others. We support companies to set up open innovation initiatives to work, for example, with other companies or academics. We provide tooling to help them ideate together and develop innovation collaboratively.

We are proud to be among the first proponents of grassroots innovation worldwide. Grassroots innovation refers to the process where all employees within a company, regardless of their rank, can ideate and develop innovations. Through grassroots innovation, we bring organic and sustainable growth to companies and build an entrepreneurial spirit. In such processes, we support companies in setting up the process (including branding, governance, setting KPIs, process flow, ...) and developing innovations (from domain choice to ideation, maturation, inception, experimentation, and market launch). We bring our 20 years of experience in deploying grassroots innovation processes, and provide, among others, inspirational cases, tooling for each step of the process, market research support, and coaching. Over the years, we have developed countless innovations, and across assignments brought innovations to the market worth billions of euros.

The stage-gate methodology comes from NASA’s ‘phased project planning’ and gained popularity in the late 20th century. Most companies use one form or another of a stage-gate. We help firms to develop or optimize their gates for innovation. For example, we work on which stages it should include, what to present in each stage, how to select, and who to involve.

Spiral innovation was first introduced as a model for software development and enhancement. The process consists of numerous rapid iterations of the stages from ideation to testing a prototype among customers (similar in nature to lean innovation). Each successive spiral proceeds at greater speed and lower costs. Through this methodology, we help customers identify risk areas and gather customer feedback on increasingly higher-fidelity prototypes. Over time we increase investment and lower risk toward market launch.

White horsing refers to the generation of more conventional solutions. Dark horsing refers to generating wilder solutions that may seem unfeasible but with a chance to be great. Originally used in horse racing and later popularized in politics, a dark horse refers to a candidate that seems unlikely to win but yet emerges victorious. In the dark horsing phase, we encourage ideators to produce bigger and bolder ideas and help them let go of constraints (e.g., go beyond their expertise, fight negativity, and not be afraid to say something crazy, etc.). We have repeatedly seen that pushing for wilder ideas and having a special ‘dark horsing’ time leads to more impactful innovations.

Systematic Inventive Thinking, developed by Jacob Goldenberg and colleagues, aims to structure the creative process and focuses on ‘inside the box’ thinking. The process starts by listing the attributes and components of existing products and understanding the market and moves then to developing improvements. We guide you through clear paths for improvement, called patterns (i.e., subtraction, multiplication, division, task unification, and attribute dependency). The key to SIT is its clear structure and path toward innovation.

SCAMPER is an acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Similar to SIT, by using SCAMPER, we want to provide structure to innovation and guide the creative process. We give participants inspirational examples of how each path has led to innovation, and through a series of questions we work together to develop new solutions.