Stage One |
Stage Two |
Stage Three |
Stage Four |
Stage Five |
Stage One - Generating New Ideas
Innovation is by its very nature difficult to define but the experience of the Innovation into Action programme suggests that there are a number of useful ways to get started:
1. Adapting Existing Ideas
You often hear people say "there's no need to re-invent the wheel" -
but that doesn't mean to say with a little imagination you can't make
a better wheel!
The most common and simplest way to innovate is to take an existing idea and change it. This could lead to new ideas being generated. For example you could start by looking at an existing service and think about how it's delivered - and how you might improve things.
'Making Innovation Work' - Example 1:
IiA funded a project in Cumbria that used tenants instead of staff to
benchmark.
This involved examining ways of obtaining information relevant to the
tenants, methods to enable tenants to exchange information and work
together to test for best value. The project looked at logistical ways
of making this work across a diverse rural area and identified the
most cost effective mechanisms to support this initiative. It also
examined the support that can be provided by landlords and tenant's
organisations, and look at practical issues around time scales and
different landlord decision making structures.
As a result tenants felt empowered, were able to compare the performance of their landlord against others and were able to suggest areas of improvement.
'Making Innovation Work' - Example 2:
IiA funded a project in Barnsley to investigate Personal Effectiveness
Plans for potential tenant board members.
This involved a Personal Development Plan approach developed to
support individual tenants who wish to become ALMO board members. A
PDP approach is distinctive to a training based approach as its values
and techniques are different. The key aspects are that this is client
focused and the facilitation is non-directive.
As a result the tenants felt more confident in standing for a position on the board.
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