Are you looking for new impulses and applications for your business area? Do you want to spark and encourage engagement with relevant trends in your company? An innovation workshop is a creative and playful first step in that direction. We present three different methods you can use for your own customized innovation workshop.

What is an innovation workshop?

An innovation workshop is a facilitated event that engages with trends and innovations in various ways. Together with your team, you identify the most important developments for your company. Afterwards, you will have a clearer idea of where to focus your future product and service innovation efforts. Use the innovation workshop to:

• encourage engagement with relevant trends in your company.
• develop new ideas for applications in your business area.
• formulate future hypotheses and visions for your company or department.

The prerequisite for a successful innovation workshop is prior observation of relevant trends in your market environment and beyond.

Use our Megatrend Map as the foundation for your innovation workshop.

The Megatrend Map provides a clear overview of our Trend Universe and presents the most relevant transformation phenomena across 17 Megatrends and 120 Macro Trends.

Goals and methods for your innovation workshop

The structure and flow of an innovation workshop vary depending on the method and objective. In general, your innovation workshop can be focused on one of three goals:

• Understand
• Evaluate
• Transfer

For each of these three goals, there is a selection of different methods you can use to conduct your innovation workshop. Below, we present three methods, each oriented toward one of these goals. To run them, you always need several groups of three to five people. All methods are suitable—with appropriate preparation—for both in-person and digital innovation workshops.

Method 1: Trend Café

The Trend Café method pursues the goal of "understanding." You need at least three groups and should allow 45 minutes or more.

Approach:

1. Present about five to eight selected Macro Trends in advance (use our Megatrend Map and the Trend Manager for trend content and set up a separate station for each.
2. Come up with three questions aimed at the impact areas of the trends, for example:
   1. How does the trend influence our industry?
   2. What opportunities could arise from it for us?
   3. What happens if we ignore the trend entirely?
3. Each group goes to one of the stations and discusses the trend using the questions. After 15 minutes at the latest, each group switches stations.
4. One person stays at each station as a group host across all rounds and briefly explains the insights from the previous discussion.
5. The group discusses one question per round and as many questions as there are groups.
6. At the end, each group host briefly summarizes the insights to the larger group.

Method 2: 4-Field Matrix

The 4-field matrix method pursues the goal of "evaluating." It works best with at least five groups. The time frame for this method should be between 30 minutes and a maximum of two hours.

Approach:

1. Create a 4-field matrix with two axes and choose the criteria for the axes. As possible criteria, we recommend the "relevance of the trend" for your company and its "disruptive potential" for your industry.
2. Each group receives a card with one Megatrend and the associated Macro Trends (use our Megatrend Map). Also prepare short descriptions of the Macro Trends (you can find these in the Trend Manager).
3. The groups read through the content on the Macro Trends and discuss them.
4. They then transfer the names of the trends onto small sticky notes and place them in the matrix according to their assessment.
5. Next, select the trends from the quadrant with the highest ratings (e.g., the most relevant trend with the greatest disruptive potential in the top right) and discuss the assessment across the whole team.

Method 3: Wall of Ideas

The Wall of Ideas method pursues the goal of "transferring." The number of groups is variable. Possible duration: one and a half to three hours.

Approach:

1. A facilitator presents about four to eight selected Macro Trends (e.g., from our Megatrend Map) in the form of an inspiring talk. Use current Micro Trends as examples (e.g., from the Trend Manager).
2. The groups discuss the trends and—depending on the available time—develop about 10 to 20 related "What If?" questions in total.
3. The facilitator then reads the "What If?" questions out loud.
4. Participants have between one and three minutes to write down ideas on sticky notes before the next question is read.
5. Then each participant reads out their ideas and posts them on the wall next to the matching question.
6. Clustering happens at the same time, with the facilitator grouping similar ideas, for example.
7. Participants jointly come up with a title for each cluster and add it to the wall.

Book your methods workshop now to get started

In addition to the three methods presented here, there are many more creative formats for a successful innovation workshop. Whether Gallery Walk, Future Wheel, or Radical Game—our consultants will present the entire "methods toolbox" of more than 17 results-driven methods in a compact methods workshop. Get expert advice!

TRENDMANAGER

Your edge in working with trends

With the Trend Manager, you create the content foundation for strategically grounded innovations.