Innovation days were first popularized by Atlassian with their 24-hour events known as 'FedEx Days'. Small, cross-functional teams form around solving a particular business problem. At the end of the time period, each team demonstrates their solution in the form of a working prototype. Prizes for the most successful are awarded, usually across a range of categories.

What can we gain from running an innovation day? It demonstrates to our team that problems can be solved in a surprisingly short period of time, and although it may not result in completely polished solutions, simply working closely with members of our stakeholder group means that we're likely to get something that they want/need sooner. 

It is something they should be doing in their day-to-day work, but because an innovation day is a more "fun" environment, they are more likely to experiment with their approach. This is mainly down to the time-driven, sometimes competitive nature of these events.

While we mentioned earlier in this chapter that competition among teams and setting arbitrary dates can be counterproductive to collaborative, information sharing cultures. In this more playful environment, time pressure and an inter-team competition may spark a different type of creative thinking.

The business will often work closely with our team so that we can get ideas to innovate on. Here are a few options for how this can be set up:

• A more substantial problem with everyone working to contribute to the overall solution, either as a single team or as a group of teams
• A smaller problem with each team providing a different solution to solving it
• A mix of individuals and teams working on a single problem