MoreAgency - Curiosity - Agility - Creativity - Impact
Cultivate An Innovation Mindset
All too often innovation remains an empty buzzword. A process to be managed. Delegated to a special team. Or saved for strategic retreats and away days.
We see it differently.
Innovation is not only about the big breakthroughs. Although it can be. It is a way of thinking across both the big and small issues. The continuous openness to and search for better ways of doing things. It’s about thinking differently. Literally.
We do not seek to replace your existing innovation practices or system. Rather, to boost them by equipping people with the underlying cognitive tools and practices to embrace, respond to and promote change.
We must learn to work with – rather than against – our natural, biological brains; to understand how and why they respond, process and react to change in the way they do. Through leveraging and ‘hacking into’ our brains’ natural processes, we can both develop novel and effective solutions, while simultaneously transforming our own well-being, motivation, effectiveness and creativity.
The Brain Innovation Project seeks to help you and your teams do just that. Our unique workshops are highly experiential, combining the theoretical background with practical tools and techniques. They are also surprising and enjoyable.
Since we use the same brains for everything we do, our approach is inherently cross-cutting and transferable to all topics and sectors, whether you are seeking to develop a human rights campaign, go through an organisational development process or implement a leadership development programme.
What You Will Get
- A deep understanding of the way our brains respond, to and manage change, based on cutting-edge modern cognitive neuroscience
- Wide variety of practical, simple and transferable tools and techniques to transform your cognitive flexibility and innovation capacity
- Awareness of different types of creativity and innovation, enhanced confidence in creative abilities and understanding of importance of an innovation mindset
- Strengthened capacity to overcome resistance to and lead others during change
- The ability to rapidly and deliberately switch between different modes of thinking depending on the task at hand
- A deep appreciation of and tools to leverage your brain's vast untapped resources
- Enhanced professional and personal well-being, motivation and focus
- 100% of participants who provided feedback would recommend our workshops to others
- Appropriate for global audiences, with previous participants from throughout Africa, Americas, Asia, Australasia, Europe and The Middle East
Who Are The WORKSHOPS For?
Workshops are suitable all for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovation, from leadership teams to young professionals. While each workshop is tailor-made to the specific audience, the underlying approach is cross-cutting and adaptable. Thus, they are suitable to all topics, issues and sectors.
Where are they held?
Workshops are offered as in-house training opportunities, hosted by you. They can be either in-person or online. However, given the limitations of online interaction, only relativley short introductory courses are recommended in an online format.
How Long are They?
The length depends upon what you want to accomplish and how much time you have. They can last from a few hours to a few days, depending on how much depth you wish to go into..
How Much Do They Cost?
Please get in contact us for a quote.
Workshop CONTENTS
All of the topics and subjects below are accompanied by practical and powerful tools and techniques. Which are used will depend upon the specific workshop.
An Innovation Mindset
It is important to distinguish between a formal innovation framework or process and an innovation mindset, which is a way of thinking and acting on a day-to-day basis.
This helps people demystify innovation and recognise that most of people have scope to find better ways of doing things within their existing areas and responsibilities.
EMBODIED COGNITION
Our brains are often referred to as computers. But this analogy is highly misleading, since our brains and their functioning simply cannot be understood outside their biological function of keeping us alive. That is, they are ’embodied’ within us – natural, living organisms – rather than operating as some independent object.
Not only is this central for understanding how humans make sense of and interact with the world around us, it also makes clear the difference between natural and artificial intelligence.
Our Brains’ Beliefs, Expectations, Inferences and PRedictions
While we think we experience the world as it is, neuroscience shows that brains operate on the basis of extraordinarily complex internal generative model of the world.
Our modern understanding of our brains is that they fundamentally operate to minimise ‘prediction errors’, which are the ‘uncertainty’ or ‘surprise’ between our models and the world itself.
This deceptively simple principle has profound and far-reaching consequences as to how we respond to change. It provides the entry point and organising framework for all our workshops and approach.
Radical Curiosity
While our brains seek to minimise surprise or uncertainty, it is precisely here – and only here – that change can occur. Thus, our challenge becomes to is to help focus on what we don’t know rather than focus on what we do (already) know. This is often easier said than done.
Only then can we find the types of innovative solutions that we seek.
AGENCY
Our brain’s internal models of the world are not so much models of the world, so much as ourselves in the world. At the heart of our models is our sense of agency: the belief – strong or weak – that our actions and choices matter and are within our control.
Not only is a strong sense of agency crucial for our wellbeing; it also underpins our innovation capacity, as it provides the narrative, structure and boundaries for our brain to envisage the future possibilities open to us.
Changing Perspectives and Modes Of Thinking
A key to cognitive flexibility and innovation is awareness of and adaption to context, both in the short and longer term. Without this we become stuck in rigid thinking and action patterns, with our brains acting to reinforce their existing world models.
But our brains have innate capabilities to exist in different operating modes (e.g., lantern v spotlight consciousness), since we always have to deal with both wider-context and task-focused activities. The challenge is to make this deliberate.
COMMUNICATION
Our brains are hard-wired for cooperation with others, albeit not with everyone and not always for benign purposes. This is important, since innovation is essentially a team endeavor.
Understanding how, why and with whom we cooperate with provides us with new opportunities to extend and deep our collaboration. This is less obvious than it sounds, given the complex drivers behind communication.
Imagination and Planning
Imagination is what allows us to envisage different alternatives and is a fundamental characteristic of innovators. Many people have a strong self-perception that they are not imaginative or creative, but more often than not this based on a misconception as to what it really is.
Imagination is tightly related to more formal planning in that both seek to reduce our uncertainty about the future by envisaging alternatives and determining how to reach them. Formal types of planning methods in organisations, i.e., inverse (reverse) and forward planning, actually mimic our natural brain processes, which use a combination of both to resolve ‘prediction errors’.
EMOTIONS and FEELINGS
There is increasing awareness that emotions and feelings are absolutely central to the way we make decisions and choices. They are also critically important to how our brains process change. Indeed, they make the difference between change being threatening and anxiety-inducing or exciting and full of possibilities.
If we want to be truly innovative and creative, learning how to elicit and act from within a calm but energetic state is essential. This is also central to notions of well-being, motivation and focus.
Rest, Sleep and Dreams
Our brains actually rewire themselves (i.e., learn) during sleep, not during the activity itself. But it is not only important to get enough sleep. We can also deliberately and purposely use sleep and deep rest to bolster our brain’s creativity.
Our modern understanding of dreaming (especially during REM sleep) is that it has a crucial purpose in updating our generative models and integrating and reorganising new information. Hence, there are many famous documented cases of important insights – especially scientific and artistic – being developed during dreaming.
Practical. Powerful. Enjoyable. Surprising.
What Others Say
Our training and coaching are not just theoretical. They are experiential, with participants gaining practical and concrete tools and exercises to develop an innovation mindset.
But it goes beyond that, as people develop new insights as to how and why their brains respond to change, whether in a professional or personal capacity. And there are few things more important than the ability to respond to change in our shifting world.
From leadership teams to diverse organisations across the globe, 100% of respondents to feedback requests would recommend participation in our workshops to others.
Here are some other things they have to say:
