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getting teams in the room to ensure that the
development of the innovation happens
across the group.
Also, through the social business model
canvas, we look at which resources exist not
just in terms of IP or physical resources, but
also in people. We try to ensure that
innovators are aware of how important
people are to their innovation. During the
mapping of the canvas we emphasise that the
delivery team will be part of the key resources.
We get innovators to draw out what their
team looks like at present and who’s got what
in terms of intellectual resources. Then we ask
which skills are missing. Who else do we need
to add to make it a more effective team? How
do we make it a more capable team of
delivering what we want? We use an
approach where we look at who is there now
and who should be added to the ‘family
portrait’ to ensure that the team is as strong as
it can be.
Can you give a specific practical example of
how you have support incubatees in building
teams?
Quite a lot of organisations that we support
are at an early stage, so we use a Theory of
Change methodology to map out the
knowledge and experience gaps. We sit down
with the innovators and go through their
processes and ways of working. This is a
simple way of diagnosing areas where they
need to add skills or additional members to
the team. It might for example become clear
that they don’t measure impact because no
one in the team knows how to do it. This is a
way of mapping where they are at and where
they want to be. It helps them understand
what gaps there are in the team and suggest
how they can go about to fill those gaps. We
can also offer to bring in people from our
own network that can help fill the skills gaps.
More specifically we run group-mentoring
events where we put all the innovators in a
room with experts in relevant fields. We give
the innovators time to go around and talk to
the experts, tell them what they do, what they
want to do and how they want to get there.