Innovation isn’t just a spark of inspiration

Teaching the skill of innovation means tapping into real-world problems with an evidence-based toolkit, rather than just relying on light bulb moments.

Innovative ideas and new products are not the result of random inspiration and innate creativity. In fact, innovation is a teachable skill. So argues Dr Chris Brauer, director of innovation at Goldsmiths, University of London.

"There were a lot of organisations looking for different kinds of leaders: people who could think differently about the challenges that the organisation was facing," he says. "The digital transformation and disruption that businesses have been facing – particularly over the past 10 to 15 years – have led them to realise that they need a different kind of insight to take on those challenges."

In order to meet this business need, the arts-focused college at the University of London now offers a one-year MSc in the management of innovation, as part of the school's Institute of Management Studies.

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Students do use traditional methods for generating ideas, such as brainstorming, but there's more to innovation than that initial bright spark. "There are a lot of fundamentals involved in it, too," explains Dr Brauer. "There's the basic ability to scope a problem and be able to recognise what the challenges are – that's crucial. And then, having a toolkit that allows you to approach it with different methods."

Students will be taught how to apply design thinking, project management and digital research methods. The aim isn't simply to develop new products and services, but to also look for entirely new business models.

Dr Chris Brauer, Goldmsiths

Students will also learn about facilitating innovation within a business, from individual job design to corporate change management. "That can all be approached with rigour and with an innovation toolkit," Dr Brauer says.

To avoid ideas or thinking from becoming too abstract, students are sent to tackle real-world challenges. "One example was [getting] sleeping bags for homeless people in the Borough of Lewisham," he says. "A charity was trying to develop a way of gathering more sleeping bags ahead of harsher months. We were able to apply innovative thinking and say: there's a way that we could go about this using the principles of crowdsourcing."

That, he says, has emerged from the recognition that peer-to-peer networks can be invaluable; having a flatter, less hierarchical environment can be a much better way to source ideas.  

Other local projects have included increasing recycling rates at the college. For that, students used an agile, iterative process to trial a wide range of different ideas as quickly as possible.

Rather than create a big strategy upfront, students tried tweaking small components in the recycling process, such as bin placement and marketing. These real world experiments helped illustrate the principles of A/B testing and the benefits of small scale trials, and ultimately lead to a doubling of recycling rates.

Dr Chris Brauer, Goldmsiths

Another teaching method is to examine companies who got it right and those who didn't. "We look at existing empirical studies that were conducted within organisations," he explains. "It's a rich intertwining of human behaviour, organisational behaviour and a socio-economic environment in which innovation occurred… it's the actions of people, it's the aggregate of those actions, and collective context."

In practice, this means bringing in experts from a range of industries for a chat — including Paul Smith of the eponymous fashion firm. "When he was starting out, he was just a single entrepreneur trying to sell pants in a little basement market in Nottingham."

Mr Smith recognised that he needed to work elsewhere during the rest of the week, explains Dr Brauer. "So on Saturdays he would have this market stall, but the rest of the week he would be working in other retailers and learning about the trade."

That's a lesson in balance from many companies could learn. "A lot of businesses think that they don't have the time and resources to do what they really want to do," he explains. "Or they just make the leap straight into the things that they really want to do without maintaining the [successful] foundation of what they've been doing previously."

That's why having a framework and process for innovation is so important, especially for smaller businesses – and those with tight budgets. "Innovation isn't always a light bulb moment or something that will create an enormous leap in your existing capabilities," he adds. "It's most commonly a gradual, iterative process that sees you evolve into a more innovative organisational structure."

In other words, innovation isn’t an end in itself, says Dr Brauer. "Committing to the journey, as opposed to the destination, can be a very useful way of building a culture of innovation into your organisation."