Working note 01 — Workshop design
An innovation workshop starts with a better question.
“Find ideas” is rarely a sufficient brief. Before choosing an exercise, establish what the group actually needs to move forward.
01. Name the tension
What situation prompted the workshop? An offer struggling to connect, changing user behaviour or an underused resource? A useful question has enough context to guide the work and enough openness to avoid dictating the answer. “What could we offer tomorrow?” opens a different conversation from “How could our expertise serve people who cannot access our current offer?”
02. Separate evidence from assumptions
Gather what the team already knows: customer feedback, technical constraints, prior decisions and available data. Mark assumptions explicitly. This prevents an attractive idea from being assessed against supposed certainties.
03. Choose the perspectives you need
The question helps compose the group. Who understands the user? Who knows the constraints? Who can experiment? Who decides what happens next? Adding people does not automatically improve representation. The format must give each person a useful role.
04. Separate exploration from selection
Judging every idea as it appears can interrupt exploration. Exploring without planning to select creates a pile of possibilities that is hard to use. Design distinct phases and make selection criteria visible before convergence.
05. Prepare for the following day
Who takes the opportunities forward? What needs testing? When will findings be reviewed? A useful conclusion names actions and open questions. It does not turn the preferences in the room into market validation.
The question to keep
At the end of this session, what will we be able to do that we cannot do today? The answer is a strong starting point for designing the workshop.
You bring
the question.
We give it form.
A question to clarify. A team to bring together. An idea to put to the test. Let’s start with a conversation.
Discuss your next workshop