Innovation Workshops

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.