Innovation Workshops

i.c.i.c. offers various workshops to support customers with innovation, strategic innovative orientation or the search for solutions to various problems.

We conduct our workshops at a high pace and with great efficiency. Careful preparation of the workshop, precise objectives, optimal selection of participants, the choice of optimal methods and a precise protocol with action lists are a matter of course for us. If necessary, we use digital, software-supported tools for visualization, sustainable project monitoring and optimal decision-making.

The following is an excerpt from our range of workshops:

(The list is roughly in the order of a common innovation process.)

Define Innovation Strategy
Efficient, resource-saving, sustainable

In a one-day workshop, we go through the existing corporate strategy, core competencies, challenges, strengths and weaknesses regarding innovation. We determine an optimal innovation strategy and plan to improve the innovative power of the company.

We use a software tool for companies from approx. 100 employees or larger. In a thorough course of three workshop days, we create an optimal sustainable innovation strategy for the next few years; see InnoWINg©

Blue Ocean Jump©
Effective innovation strategy through differentiation for SME

For small and medium-sized companies (SME), we provide the “Blue Ocean Strategy” in a very compressed and affordable form.

In a saturated market, where there is tough competition (so-called “Red Ocean”), we research the potential and create opportunities for your company to clearly differentiate yourself from other providers in the market. In addition, we are looking for areas where you can attract a larger number of customers and “non-customers”. We go through some tools of the “Blue Ocean Strategy” in the compressed and structured workshop.

Together we set up a new, unique strategy curve (“Blue Ocean”) for your company and plan all the necessary activities for a successful implementation. See Blue Ocean Jump©

Customer Demand Assessment through Focus Group Discussion
Capture customer needs directly

Together with the cooperation partner Dr. Karl Ladler (expert for trends, market research and evaluation; www.derladler.at), we take a close look at your customers. We work with existing, satisfied and less satisfied customers as well as potential new customers. We moderate the workshop where you are attending and gain a deep understanding of customer satisfaction, handicaps and your customers’ willingness to compromise. This enables us to recognize where a clear differentiation in the market is possible for you, or where the greatest potential for your business lies.

Define Key Success Factors
Clear focus for high efficiency in business

With Key Success Factors (KSF), we define a few, but strategically important, attributes of how your company distinguishes itself on the market, strategically differs and directs all of its activities accordingly.

In a condensed workshop and based on customer feedback and market analysis, we define and review these attributes.

Define Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
Measure success with innovations correctly

In order to be able to assess developments in a company or its products, we have to define the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) as important parameters.

These indicators are structured and created using examples from various similar areas/applications. We set specific measurement targets for each indicator.

Definition of Goal and Criteria for the Project
Effectively en route with the right goal and evaluation criteria

We want to use our competent teams and our know-how optimally! We want to steer our projects purposefully and precisely towards success. To do this, we must define a clear, relevant target and several evaluation criteria at the beginning of the project.

Depending on the project size and strategic importance, we define the relevant criteria in a half-day or full-day workshop (“Stakeholder Analysis Workshop”) and in coordination with important stakeholders. This important step is essential for success and gives a clear direction for the subsequent project.

Idea Generation
(often called “Brainstorming”)
A large number of potential ideas for success

We are looking for good ideas in the early phases of an innovation project. It is important for us to allow great freedom in the search for ideas, but at the same time to work purposefully.

We design and moderate highly efficient idea workshops and generate ideas that will bring you success. Whether we generate a larger amount of ideas (for example 400 or 600 ideas in one morning) or we deal with the depth of the matter, depends on the nature of the project and many parameters. We access a large arsenal of creativity techniques and tools, including special methods of Different Thinking.

We help you choose the right people and location, as they are essential for the success of idea generation.

Synectic Workshop (the NASA Method)
With analogies, metaphors and intuition to new approaches in finding solutions

When it comes to challenging problems or if you have not yet found a satisfactory solution with other tools, a Synectic Workshop can make the breakthrough.

Synectics is a particularly intuitive method. We wander through the world of analogies and metaphors, discard logical thinking and analytical minds and instead we trust emotions, intuition and gut feeling (“hedonic response”) throughout the entire process.

The solutions from the Synectic Workshop are often completely new and at the same time surprisingly simple and logical. That is also the point of the matter.

First Preselection of the Ideas
(Screening Workshop)
Reduce large number of ideas to a manageable amount

Well-designed and professionally facilitated brainstorming can usually generate between 80 and several hundred ideas in a short time. These include ideas that are not relevant to the project or that were only used as a trigger (so-called “stepping stones”) during brainstorming. We have to sort out these non-relevant ideas first.

Depending on the number of ideas, we hold a two- or three-hour or a half-day workshop. We work according to clear screening criteria and involve all relevant specialists so that we can make the right decisions.

Concept Workshop
Create concrete solution concepts from ideas

Ideas alone are like newborn children: they have to develop, unfold and grow up first. In a Concept Workshop, we set ourselves precisely this goal: to develop the ideas and to give the ideas a first practicable form that comes closer to an innovation.

We form a first solution concept from sensible combinations of different ideas and use various features and technologies that are available to us. We then define the necessary implementation steps, mention the advantages, critical points, countermeasures to possible risks and the first steps for implementing them into practice.

Lead Users Research Workshop
Actively involve Lead Users; transfer Lead Users’ solutions to our topic

Lead Users are innovative people, companies, or applications in advanced areas/technologies that are a good step ahead in terms of our application. These lead users have already developed finished solutions or even put them into practice that can be advantageous for us. We want to use these solutions for our project.

A Lead Users Workshop is a special form of the Concept Workshop and aims to “incorporate” these innovative people, companies or technologies into our project. It reflects the useful elements for us and transfers them to our case. In a Lead Users Research Workshop, we proceed in a structured and analytical manner. We prepare ourselves very carefully, moderate the workshop and effectively take the project a big step forward.

Evaluation and Selection of Ideas and Concepts (Ranking Workshop)
Set the resources only on the best solutions

Sometimes we have several ideas or solutions to choose from. But which is the right solution?

In our “Ranking Workshop” we evaluate the ideas based on specific criteria so that we can pursue only the most promising idea(s) with little effort in the project.

We carry out this assessment in a structured and professionally facilitated workshop. Discussions and different insights are allowed, but in the end we get to the point. We use different types of criteria and work with clear scoring, weighting and calibration of individual criteria. Such decisions are solid – they form a good consensus and greatly increase project efficiency.

Team Coaching during Idea Investigation
Achieve high efficiency in development

Ideas and concepts often have to be investigated quickly, effectively and efficiently in the course of development. We want to get the most out of an idea – mostly in a short time – despite minimal capacities and minimal budget. Not every developer or team can easily accomplish this task. This is precisely why good team leadership and coaching are very important in such project phases.

We help to define goals, expected results and effort and to motivate the team. In addition, we hold review meetings where progress is communicated and immediate measures or rapid route changes are initiated.

A small step is often necessary – for example, questioning your own attitude, giving an impulse and making you curious, keeping the right communication in a team or even a phone call with an external expert – to make an idea that is considered very good even more attractive, or the other way – to bring down an existing idea.

Business Crossover©
Mutual learning of small and large companies

Are you a small or medium-sized company and want to drive your innovation in the way that the best and most innovative companies do?

Are you a large company and looking for competent partners and suppliers for your innovative product and service developments?

With Business Crossover©, we guide different companies together through a process to eliminate the weaknesses of one by the strengths of the other. We focus on innovation development. The common goal is:

  • jointly recognize customer needs;
  • large companies learn to understand the mindset of small companies; at the same time, they better recognize the wishes of the end user;
  • recognize the potential for innovation;
  • large companies efficiently come to the best know-how carriers (SME);
  • small and medium-sized companies learn how large companies/groups develop innovation;
  • together they learn how to incorporate the innovations into corporate processes;
  • mutual networking of companies with competence database;
  • best practice exchange.

Innovation Roadmap
Plan innovations and prepare what is necessary for them

Innovation Roadmap is a guide to how your company will drive innovation in the coming years and months. It contains all the necessary information, such as:

  • which innovations, when and on which market you will launch,
  • which internal and external activities you need for this (such as development of technologies, partnerships, sales channels or new marketing strategies),
  • which resources do you need and when (personnel, know-how, patents etc.)
  • and what budgets you have to have available.

We carry out a solid update of the innovation roadmap after every important innovation project, but also at regular intervals – for example, every six months or every three months. At the workshop, we involve all relevant stakeholders inside and outside the company. We support you in creating a strategically optimized plan with which you do the right thing at the right time – and have prepared everything necessary for it.

Project Review
Learn for future projects

We want to learn from the project together – not just things that should work differently next time, but also from things that were good to be set as the standard for the next projects.

It is a short workshop with a clear structure – at the end of every important project.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for further innovation workshops.