The Brain Innovation Project: An Innovation Mindset
INNOVATION FOR LIFE
Cultivating Cognitive Flexibility To Navigate An Uncertain World
Our biological brains – the astonishing product of four billion years of the evolution of life – are responsible for everything we think, feel, perceive, say, plan, create, do, imagine, invent or believe. Individually and collectively, how we use them will determine whether we thrive or stagnate in the face of profound change and uncertainty.
The Brain Innovation Project helps you change not just what you think, but how you think. This provides the cognitive flexibility to move seamlessly between big-picture vision and practical action, generate novel approaches to complex and stuck situations and enhance well-being and motivation, both personally and professionally.
How? As the cutting-edge work of Karl Friston (the most cited neuroscientist of the 21st century) shows, our biological brains are prediction machines, constantly filtering what we perceive through deeply embedded existing world models. By understanding this process, we can ‘hack into’ their functioning, literally rewiring our brains to expand the range of options we perceive as available to us and act more coherently and consistently towards our goals.
Whether you are leading organizational change, undertaking scientific research or developing social impact programs, you use the same brain. That’s why our approach works across every sector and scale – we’re not sharing industry-specific tactics. We’re helping upgrade your underlying cognitive operating system.
Our Value-Added in a Noisy World
Transformative Ideas Made Practical and Accessible
- Zbased on Cutting-edge modern understanding of our predictive brains
- ZSkills For Life - Metacognition: How You Think, Not Just What You think
- ZEntirely transferable skills and approach across organisations, themes, sectors and life areas
- ZSimple, Powerful and Practical Tools and techniques for all aspects of life and work
- ZAAA+ Innovation Mindset Framework applicable across all scales
- Pseudo-science and brain-myths dressed up in management jargon
- Generic creativity exercises to find 50 novel uses for a pair of scissors and a brick
- Narrow technical industry or sector specific approaches which quickly become outdated
- Temporary ideas which fade once the workshop is finished
- generic Off-the-Shelf Ideas that do not add novelty and value
An Innovation Mindset
for leaders, change agents and organisations driving impact
All too often innovation remains just an empty buzzword. A process to be managed. Delegated to specialist teams. Something to be saved for strategic retreats and away days.
We see it differently.
Innovation isn’t just a process – it’s a mindset. The ability to recognize when you are operating on autopilot and pivot towards intentionality. To move fluidly between big-picture thinking and practical action. To generate novel approaches when you are stuck. To lean into uncertainty rather than trying to eliminate it or put it into a box.
This mindset sits at the interface between personal growth, professional development, organizational innovation and societal impact. It is transferable precisely because we all use the same brain whether we are leading organizational change, conducting research, or developing social programs.
Our approach cultivates this flexibility through combining cutting-edge theory with powerful practice. Tools and techniques to literally rewire how you perceive and act upon possibilities.
Our workshops and coaching (online or in-person) are suitable for individuals and teams from senior executives to emerging talent.
We typically work in the areas of leadership, innovation and creativity, and wellbeing, focus and performance. However, our approach is inherently transferable and easily reconfigured across themes, topics and sectors.
Leadership In Uncertain Times
Embracing Uncertainty
The paradox is that while the fundamental operating principle of our predictive brains is to reduce uncertainty, new learning and action can only emerge as a result of uncertainty.
Beyond Resilience: Well-being, Focus and Performance
Beyond Resilience
The solution is not just to become 'more resilient'. Rather, to help people identify and access more of their inherent resourcefulness, creativity and desire for meaningful engagement.
Social Change and Innovation
New Solutions Needed
By understanding how our brains (and those of others!) make sense of the world, we open up new opportunities and possibilities for change.
Leadership In Uncertain Times
Embracing Uncertainty
The paradox is that while the fundamental operating principle of our predictive brains is to reduce uncertainty, new learning and action can only emerge as a result of uncertainty.
Beyond Resilience: Well-being, Focus and Performance
Beyond Resilience
The solution is not just to become 'more resilient'. Rather, to help people identify and access more of their inherent resourcefulness, creativity and desire for meaningful engagement.
Social Change and Innovation
New Solutions Needed
By understanding how our brains (and those of others!) make sense of the world, we open up new opportunities and possibilities for change.
Practical. Powerful. Surprising.
What Others Say
From leadership teams to diverse organisations across the globe, the words we most often hear are 'inspiring', 'surprising' and 'practical'. Here are some other things people have to say:
Brain-Hacks to Change The Way You Think
Simple Tools and Techniques
Although our brains are astonishingly complex, the tools and techniques we use are simple and practical.
They enable you to combine your existing professional expertise with the ability to move beyond current perceptions, world models and paradigms and access new ways of thinking and acting. It’s not that one mode of thinking is inherently better than another.
Rather, it is about having the agility to be able to switch between different approaches according to the task at hand.
After all, if you only have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. In a rapidly changing world, the versatility of a Swiss army knife is more useful.
No ‘gadgets, substances, super-natural powers or magical thinking’ are required; just a curiosity to explore how your extraordinary natural, biological brain works and the new possibilities this opens up.
While our brains are astonishingly complex, our tools and techniques are simple and practical.
They enable you to combine your existing professional expertise with the ability to move beyond current perceptions, mental models and paradigms and access new ways of thinking and acting.
It’s not that one mode of thinking is inherently better than another. Rather, it is about having the agility to be able to switch between different approaches according to the task at hand.
After all, if you only have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. In a rapidly changing world, the versatility of a Swiss army knife is more useful.
No ‘gadgets, substances, super-natural powers or magical thinking’ are required; just a curiosity to explore how your extraordinary natural, biological brain works and the new possibilities this opens up.
