Introduction

Welcome to this short course on Innovation. Ministry today is complex and ministry leaders face many challenges. In a rapidly changing world, we need to be equiped to lead in this fluid landscape. If you are looking for the skills to tackle complex challenges and generate new solutions, you’re in the right place. 

Many people mistake innovation for invention, the novel creation that solves a particular problem. Innovation isn’t just a new creative product or solution, It’s a process you can employ to create solutions time and time again. It’s a new way of working. The good news is that innovation processes have been successfully employed and refined for over half a century. And you’re going to learn all about it.

In the traditional model, when creating something new – a new product or service – the first step is to come up with an idea. The second step is to create a business plan. You then share that business plan with people in the hope of securing investment for your idea. Once you have the money you need, you compile a team and create the product. The final step is launching the product to your customers. A crucial flaw in this model is that only once you have completed the product is the customer involved in the process.

To offset this risk, historically you would have employed market researchers to study the market and validate your idea. Market research is not cheap, and with the level of disruption experienced in so many industries over the last two decades, market research is not as reliable as it once was. So we need a new process, one that is better suited to a fluid landscape and can handle an increased level of complexity.

Today, it is cheaper and easier to take your product directly to your customers than to do market research. You can create a landing page in a matter of hours and begin testing interest in your idea.

A human-centric innovation process doesn’t start with an idea, it starts with listening. Start by empathising with the people that you are trying to benefit. Observe patterns, trends and behaviours. Conduct research and synthesise all of that information. The next step in the innovation process is clearly defining the problem or opportunity. Guided by the insight you have gained, clearly articulate the need and why is it important. Then, as a team come together brainstorm ideas, following a proven method like the double diamond process to generate a large volume and variety of potential solutions. Then, converge and select from these ideas. Rapid prototyping is key to the innovation process. Create prototypes which you can trial and collect feedback from real world testing to inform future iterations. This process is cyclical, it’s meant to be repeated, each time refining your product or initiative.

Different versions of this process have been employed across so many industries, from services to manufacturing to tech development. You can even create your own customised innovation process tailored to your organisational needs. Your process can look like this… or it can look like this, but the key ingredients are always there: Empathy, collaborative ideation and iterative prototyping.

In this course, we’ll be looking at each part of this process and how you can implement it in your ministry team. Let’s get started.