At-scale grassroots innovation · Innovation Program
A grassroots innovation programme built for large organisations, surfacing what your own teams already know is broken, and turning the good ideas into working prototypes.
What it is
The people closest to the work usually know where the waste is. What they lack is a route from noticing it to doing something about it. The Innovation Program is that route, run at the scale of a whole workforce rather than an innovation team of six.
The ideas come from the people who already know where the friction is, and the strongest few get built inside the six weeks — by them, not for them.
Who it is for
This is usually bought by a chief people officer rather than IT, in an organisation of a thousand people or more, where AI literacy has been rolled out and there is still nothing in production to point at.
The pattern is familiar: a hackathon that produced enthusiasm and nothing shippable, generic training that changed no behaviour, or an innovation programme with no build capability behind it. The Innovation Program has engineers attached, which is the whole difference.
Six weeks, extended from an original four to give participants enough runway, with at least two weeks between the team being appointed and the sprint starting.
How it runs
Phase 1
Your own people learn what these tools actually do, on your own work rather than a generic curriculum. Nobody has to arrive already fluent.
Phase 2
The participants find the friction, because they are the ones living in it. Ideas are argued in the open and sized against what is feasible.
Phase 3
The strongest few get built as working prototypes — by the client’s team, with our engineers alongside them rather than in front of them.
Phase 4
Each team pitches a built thing and a business case for it. What wins can go straight into a scoping and build phase with the same people.
We encourage our clients to run this with their own people leading it wherever possible. The programme should outlast our involvement.
What you leave with
Built for organisations of a thousand people and up, where good ideas are plentiful and the route from idea to built thing is the actual bottleneck.
Your own people come out of it able to build, not briefed on AI. The capability stays behind when we leave.
Six weeks ends with something working and a business case argued for it, rather than a report to circulate.
If something is worth building properly, the same team can carry it straight into a scoping and build phase.
What else you will look at
It’s worth being precise about the difference, because the formats look similar from the outside and end in completely different places.
Two days, high energy, and a demo that nobody owns on Monday. The ideas are often good—there’s just no route from the room to production.
Well-run, well-documented, and delivered to your people rather than by them. The capability leaves when the firm does.
Useful groundwork, and the reason many organisations arrive here: everyone is now briefed, and nothing has been built.
The proof is in the pudding. A decade of running innovation workshops with world-class brands has taught us how to move a team from nothing good to something great.
“The most interesting thing I’ve done in my seven years at the company.”
Tell us how big the organisation is and where you think the good ideas are getting stuck.
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