14.1. Innovation Lab Overview

The Innovation Lab consisted of a series of five workshops in which we engaged a group of creative thinkers in educational, brainstorming, and hands-on problem-solving activities. Through the workshops, participants learned about the principles of innovation, flexed their creative muscles with new idea-generating techniques, and applied their collective intelligence to develop recommended courses of action for IT&S—all the while building up their networks for continued innovation.

The key players in the Innovation Lab were a core group of "innovators," a sponsor, subject matter experts (SMEs) on innovation and networks, and facilitators. We, the authors of this chapter, were external consultants engaged to design the Lab and act as SMEs and facilitators.

We chose as participants people who were considered particularly innovative and represented a cross-section of the organization. A network analysis can aid the selection process by identifying people who not only have a reputation for being innovative but also hold influential network positions (such as brokers or central connectors) or bridge otherwise fragmented parts of the organization. In this particular case, we did not perform a network analysis but instead used manager and peer recommendations. In compiling the final list of participants, we made sure that they represented a variety of functions, regions, and levels of seniority.

The Innovation Lab sessions were each conducted roughly two weeks apart. Each session was a half day, typically in the afternoon, followed by a social hour. We conducted the workshops offsite. The ideal situation is to hold the workshops at a venue that is in some way original and consistent with the theme of innovation while removing people from their routine environments. The venue we chose was an Adirondack-style lodge with a soaring ceiling supported by massive wooden beams and an expansive view of the surrounding countryside. It was decidedly low-tech, embedded in the creations of nature rather than those of humans, and a far cry from the ordered rows of offices and labs in which people worked day-to-day. (The lodge also provided no Internet access, an unintentional but effective means of breaking ingrained behavior.)

To create continuity between the workshops and an opportunity for informal conversation, we provided a virtual home space for participants. The space had the capability for discussion threads, photos and biographical information on the members, and the posting of documents such as workshop outputs and interesting articles.

What follows is an outline of the five workshops we conducted, followed by detailed descriptions of selected exercises. Although we started with a high-level design for the series, we remained open to changes from one workshop to the next. The following description contains a number of options and can easily be adapted to suit a particular group.