Yesterday, I attended an all day “InnovationCamp” event… (http://innovationcamp.wordpress.com/)
The goal is open idea sharing and solution building, and the agenda is built on the fly by the attendees. Really fun, but made for an intense and tiring day! InnovationCamp has been held in India, but the Austin event was the first held in the U.S. The program is modeled after several other “camp” events that have been around for a bit: ProductCamp and BarCamp (http://barcamp.org/ProductCamp).
As the nature of the event is that it is largely unstructured and adpative, some sessions I attended were more productive than others… There were two types of sessions. The first were scheduled for two hour blocks and focused on a specific challenge or issue. The second were pitch, proposal or program reviews in one hour blocks. I participated in four sessions…
- Problem: Management of Distributed Virtual Teams – This topic had a lot of unrealized potential, and we had some difficulty clarifying the problem statement. The basic issue is how to develop working norms – process, culture, etc. – in dynamic teaming environments. This issue was proposed by a company that is developing a model that coordinates independent, peer-to-peer teams to deliver projects. (www.enterpriseteaming.com) Resources come into a project only when needed, but resources may be used on multiple projects over time based on need. I want to crystallize my thoughts on this topic in a separate post, but the session focused more on team building (e.g., the importance of social relationships) and accountability/project management than the broader concept of establishing the culture of teams and building cross-project communities and norms.
- Innovation Challenge - I didn’t quite grasp the mechanics of this fun exercise until about half way through! Six folks volunteered to participate. They each drew for an industry and a characteristic – e.g., travel and fun – and had less than an hour to create a pitch for a new idea. In the session, each participant had five minutes to pitch and five minutes to answer questions (some of them pretty tough!). At the end, we voted for the “winner” who received venture funding from some virtual mystery source! This ”challenge” could work well as a company team-building exercise, too, as the point wasn’t perfection but rather creative idea sharing.
- Topic: Socially Responsible Business – Non-Profit, For-Profit or both? This session topic wasn’t quite clear on the agenda. I was thinking – “How can we build stronger public/private partnerships?” – something I have thought a bit about. The actual goal was to discuss business models for socially responsible businesses. Interesting topic…
- Topic: Eliminating the Paper Receipt – Probably the most fun session I attended. This was a relatively small group of folks with diverse experience. The initial thought was that eliminating receipts has a positive environmental impact, but we explored issues around customer privacy, data collection, revenue models, retailer incentives, etc. Great, free flowing conversation that provided the facilitator with a richer problem statement and solution framework.
InnovationCamp is probably coming soon to a town near you; I highly recommend it!
