The Innovation Gym is in the starting blocks, managed by the innovation agency launchlabs from Berlin.

The workshop dates are 29 January, 26 February, 12 March and 26 March 2021. All workshop dates are scheduled from 9.30 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. with a lunch break of one and a half hours each (approx. between 12.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m.).

Who is launchlabs?

launchlabs Berlin enables experienced companies to act as quickly, agilely and creatively as successful start-ups. Since 2012, launchlabs has been supporting corporations as well as family-run SMEs, associations and NGOs with approaches such as Lean Start-Up, Scrum and Design Thinking on the path to a living culture of innovation.

The workshops will be led by the innovation experts Laura Krawietz and Tassilo Bossmann. In the following short interview, they tell you exactly who they are and what you can expect in the first workshop:

1. What exactly are your tasks and focal points at launchlabs and what exciting career stages have you been through before?

Laura: I have been working as an Agile Coach and Innovation Consultant at launchlabs Berlin since February 2020. As a cultural anthropologist, certified Scrum Master and HPI School of Design Thinking alumna, I enable companies to systemically illuminate the challenge of new work realities and environmental influences and support them in the strategic alignment and implementation of change processes on an individual, team and organisational level. Before joining launchlabs, I was a self-employed innovation consultant and also worked with clients from various contexts during this time: I advised several federal ministries on strategic issues, worked as a trainer for Google and accompanied numerous transformation and development projects with start-ups, (cultural) institutions, medium-sized companies and corporations, including SAP, the Robert Bosch Foundation or Bayerische. As a native of Westphalia, I am particularly looking forward to guiding the participating organisations through an exciting programme.

Tassilo: At launchlabs, I work as an innovation consultant and agile coach, empowering people to discover and elaborate opportunities through new methods and thus actively shape the future of their working world. During my master's degree in innovation management, I completed the basic and advanced track at the HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam. Afterwards, as a product manager, I worked with a team of developers and designers to develop a digital product for MAN in Munich. During my last station before the Launchlabs, I gained some experience in the German SME sector. As a business innovator, I supported the innovation team of the Stockmeier Group in Bielefeld. Besides new working methods, I was also involved in the development of new digital products.

2. What can the participants expect in the first workshop of the Innovation Gym?

Tassilo: In the first workshop we will focus on the topic of megatrends. In addition, the participants will also learn about an iterative working approach with which we will work on this and the next topics. All participants will work individually as well as in the group and develop initial approaches to solutions based on an underlying design process within the workshop series.

Laura: The first workshop, as a kick-off for the Innovation Gym programme, will give participating organisations a sense of the forces that Open Innovation can unleash as a process, but more importantly as an attitude. It is important for us to address trends and methods as well as individual contexts. Participants can look forward to a dynamic and interactive day including new inspirations, working on their own so-called "cases" and applying agile tools and techniques.

3. Due to Corona, the workshops will initially take place exclusively digitally. Another day in front of the screen, some may think. What digital tools and methods can the participants look forward to that will make it a lively and intensive workshop?

Tassilo: I think we would all prefer to meet on site at the Pioneers Club premises, but unfortunately the current situation does not allow for this. In the past year, we have conducted many experiments and put work into the conception and implementation of virtual workshops. For us it is clear: the workshops must be interactive and invigorating, both in terms of content and technical process. We will therefore implement the workshops with the digital whiteboard "Mural". This will not only provide participants with a visual working environment, but they will also be able to easily download the results of the workshop as documentation.

Laura: Besides the technical implementation, it is very important to us to promote a lively and sustainable exchange between the participating people and organisations - both during the workshops and beyond. We take this networking idea to heart and place the exchange on a content-related, structural and informal level at the centre of the programme. And who knows: Maybe the virtual implementation and thus already established (digital) channels will even be an advantage for further cooperation in the long run?

4. The companies and organisations that participate come from different sectors and have different starting points when it comes to innovation. How do you manage to get everyone on the same page?

Both: Certainly, every company will come to our workshop series with a different question or a different starting situation. But we believe that this diversity plays an important role in the development of innovation. Through the different backgrounds of the participants, new perspectives can be taken in the whole group. Experience has also shown that in cross-company cooperation, the needs of the individual companies usually coincide at the core.

5.What happens for the participants after the first workshop?

Laura: Of course, we don't want to give too much away yet. What should interest the participants is that the four workshops build on each other and are iterative. Each workshop will therefore go through a holistic design process and focus on a specific topic: megatrends, crowdsourcing, ideation and concept & validation. We will develop results in the form of prototypes and provide concrete tools that the participants can take (back) to their own organisations. To make sure that the (open) innovation energy is not just left within the group, participants will be given small tasks and initiatives to implement or apply in their own organisations during the course of the programme.