08. Driving Innovation Projects 1: Identify & Ideate

Know some systematic ways to drive innovation projects right from identifying areas to generating solution ideas for it.

In the earlier courses of this program, the focus has been on building the capability to generate innovative thoughts and to engage meaningfully with people. Those capabilities form the foundation for innovation work.

This course builds on that foundation by shifting attention from how to think to where to innovate and how to make it happen. It is split in two parts. This course, Driving Innovation Projects (Part 1 of 2), covers the first two stages of the innovation project journey i.e. Identify (identification of the areas to innovate) and Ideate (generation of innovative ideas for those areas).

As per the approach of MyInnovationJourneyS (MijS), innovation areas are treated as broad spaces. These may be reactive or proactive, stated or latent. The course explores structured yet flexible ways to identify such areas and articulate them clearly through project statements and success indicators – without jumping prematurely to implement first few ideas.

Once an innovation area is selected, the course moves into drafting a clear Innovation Project Brief. This brings together non-negotiables, supporting information, team considerations, and ways of working to establish shared clarity.

With this foundation in place, attention turns to uncovering the current dynamics of the context—including domain-related and people-related dynamics—and segmenting complexity so it can be engaged with meaningfully.

The course then focuses on generating innovative ideas as a response to a well-framed project and a well-understood context. You will explore ways to manage ideation flow within sessions and across multiple sessions, and how to capture ideas systematically for further exploration.

At key stages of the innovation project journey, the MijS approach encourages you to prioritise and focus on few high impact aspects of the project that have the potential to delivery disproportionate results. Frameworks for prioritising are suggested at each of these stage and you are encouraged to contextualise these all the time.

Note that the subsequent stages of the innovation project journey i.e. Incubate and Implement will be covered in the course on Driving Innovation Projects (Part 2 of 2).