Believing, hoping, praying, and expecting that your Innovation Workshop is going to solve your innovation strategy is a trap.
An understandable trap. But a trap nonetheless.
And I think it might be why Workshops - or, ugh, puke emoji, "Brainstorms" - have a bad name.
Because people pour so much expectation into a single event. And they're expensive and a hassle.
I've even heard people refer to their workshop as "the innovation project".
Ummmmmm.
And of course with that framing, the single event (even if it is in a nice offsite location) never, OK rarely, lives up to that expectation.
(Creating what a Systems Thinker calls a Negatively Reinforcing Feedback Loop...more on that another time)
But if you shift your expectation, see Innovation Workshops as just one element of your overall Innovation System or process, recognise that whilst the benefits are multiple, the likelihood of solving everything in one go is minimal, then you're going to manage your own expectations (and those of others) much more effectively.
Or put another way, accept that the Workshop won't produce "the answer", but will help you on the journey, and will help you move to the next stage with greater precision and greater engagement.
But if, and only if, you see the outputs of your workshop as the brief for the next stage of development.
Photos of Post-its, Screengrabs of Digital Post-its, AI summaries of what people said and scribbled are just not good enough. That's a record. A report.
It takes diligence, interpretation, imagination and pattern-spotting after the event to turn the workshop output, into the input, the recommendation, for the next stage.
Was that a rant? Felt a bit like one. Sozza.
Should I have quietly asked AI to re-write this for me, so the post is not a rant, but a movement? Because it matters. Not for the marketing industry. But for the future of humanity. Because this is not a prediction. It's already here.
Ummmmmm. Gonna save my tokens. Think I might be writing like AI anyway!