Designing and leading innovation workshops - an introduction

Designing an innovation workshop in such a way that you lead a group of people through a creative process defined from the outset towards a common goal is a major challenge. 

You can find a detailed introduction to this topic in this web-based training:

Planning

Through conscious planning and preparation, you help ensure that the people you accompany reach their goal and do not drift away unplanned. Good preparation is noticed and contributes to motivation. It is also easier to consciously deviate from a plan than to improvise.

Planning includes:

• Clarification of the workshop goal for you as the facilitator
• Dividing the goal into workable sub-steps
• Selecting methods that fit the sub-steps
• Determining the required material
• Generate your workshop plan as a PDF

1. Challenge and uploading

Challenge: At the beginning of each workshop, it is important to ensure that the workshop participants have understood the assignment or question very well. Give them the opportunity to ask questions. Where are any existing boundaries, helpful and disruptive?

Uploading: Uploading is just as important as clarifying the assignment. Make sure that the workshop participants can free themselves from their prior knowledge and existing ideas that could block the new ideas. The participants should also be able to save their skills and experiences they have already had, including their ego (e.g. their own attitude, opinion or personal state of mind). Provide a separate poster for this purpose, which hangs openly in the room and can be consulted, added to and, above all, used at any time (but definitely at the turning point).

2. Inspiration and intuition

In this phase, the participants should act purely intuitively and allow themselves to be freely inspired by the stimuli on offer to tune into the creative field. As this is not easy for many people, it is important that you create a relaxed atmosphere through your leadership. Methods that provoke a high speed of expression are helpful here.

3. Association of ideas

Already in this phase, the participants should express initial ideas associatively. This means more complex and more meaningful statements than in phase 2.

4. Turning point

This is a pivotal moment within the innovation process. Be aware that you are now moving towards the closing phase. From this point onward, it is essential to systematically reduce the volume of ideas and associations generated so far.

This moment marks a shift in focus — from expansion and opening to refinement, convergence, closing. Treat it with the necessary clarity and intention, as it sets the stage for the structured development of solutions in the following phases.

Take a final look at the upload poster. Are there any aspects noted there that could be useful in the closing phase?

5. Combination of ideas

After you have made it clear to yourself and the participants that it is now important to convergently reduce the previously generated large number of associations and ideas, you offer methods with which the participants are able to combinatorially link several ideas and drive them towards a solution.

6. Selection and choice

Suitable solutions should now be evaluated and selected from the combinations of the fifth phase.

7. Results and evaluation

The results are evaluated again with your guidance and prepared for subsequent further development. The innovation process is reflected upon and possible optimizations are identified. The selected results and proposed solutions are often sent to a new divergence-convergence process.