Companies need to innovate and transform to maintain their business. But this transformation can’t focus on technology alone. It requires a change of mindset catalyzed by the people working at an organization, an environment of collaboration and empowerment, and a process that seeks to generate value by identifying real business and human challenges.
To help organizations create a culture open to innovation, the SAP AppHaus has created an Innovation Culture Framework consisting of five interconnected enablers of innovation culture: People, Process, Place, Leadership, and Technology. The Innovation Toolkit complements this framework with unique methods and resources across these five areas, empowering companies to apply the Innovation Culture Framework and jumpstart their innovation journey.
Some of the latest additions to the toolkit are eight new MURAL templates for brainstorming, process mapping, project scoping, and designing your team’s future workspace. Each template includes instructions for the person leading the activity, so you can jump right in.
Set the right expectations for a new project
Aligning expectations among stakeholders at the start of a project is crucial for a successful outcome. This Vision Board template has six different questions to help the team define the main aspects of a future solution. Stakeholders are invited to answer each question and vote on the best-fitting responses. The answers with the most votes are moved to the middle. The board then becomes a visual reminder of what needs to be achieved.
Understand the challenge and find a clear direction
The Context Map template provides a simple method for understanding the different aspects of the challenge in question. You’ll invite team members to brainstorm their different perspectives, cluster responses, and decide on a clear focus area.
Generate as many ideas as possible
Considering multiple points of view and ideas helps teams identify the best solution ideas and convert them into prototypes that can be validated and explored with end-users and other stakeholders. The following templates provide multiple ways to generate creativity up your sleeve, so you can vary them by project and team personalities.
The Ideation Sprint template helps you lead your team through four different methods for idea generation, allowing everyone to create different associations and build on each other’s ideas throughout the session.
Another method for generating ideas collaboratively is the 6-3-5 method. This template walks you through how to generate 108 ideas built off each other with just six people.
And the 100 Ideas in 30 Minutes template is a great way to use creative prompts to generate a large quantity of ideas in a short amount of time. You can customize the constraints to fit your project, or use pre-built ones like “What if this had to work with no extra budget?” or “How would Superman solve the problem?”
Prototype your team’s future creative space
MOSAIC is a method that helps teams prototype their future creative space. It’s based on the idea that team behavior influences physical space — and vice versa. This method can be helpful for teams who have recently returned to a hybrid or in-person working model or plan to soon. The activities in this template will help teams drive a conversation for how to best set up a workspace to unlock creativity.
Build connections and introduce a large group in a workshop
Getting participants in a large virtual meeting or workshop comfortable can be key to unlocking creativity from everyone. Kick things off with this one-minute profile activity to facilitate introductions and connections when collaborators don’t know each other well.
Define a process step by step across different roles
The Process Steps template helps a team map the activities in a process and visualize its stakeholders, systems, and dependencies. Such a mapping makes the problematic areas more transparent to the team. Lead these activities with one stakeholder at a time until you have a clear representation for a current or future process.
Incorporate these and other SAP AppHaus Innovation Toolkit methods into your next project, workshop, or team-building session to unlock creativity and engage everyone virtually.
