Effective Tips to Plan an Awesome Design Thinking Workshop

Design Thinking workshops are an innovative and user-centric approach of problem solving that is being extensively used across businesses. The workshops get together people from different teams to work towards a common goal.

What is a Design Thinking workshop and what are its benefits?

Design thinking workshops are activity-based workshops built around design thinking concepts that may last up to two hours or even a full week depending upon the goals. These workshops focus on developing empathy to understand the user end problems. The participants work together to generate innovative ideas to solve problems in their perspectives. Building prototypes of the ideas generated and testing on real user will be the final step.

These workshops benefit the participants by teaching them various techniques of problem solving, fostering innovations and teamwork. These activities can guarantee the participants to secure a competitive advantage. Besides all these, a design thinking workshop as well as a creativity and innovation workshop is extremely fun and engaging activities.

If you are planning to organize design thinking or a creativity and innovation workshop, continue reading to find out the effective ways to implement the same.
The workshop setting up can be done in two phases. The first phase, the planning and preparation phase involves setting up objectives for your workshop, finding the suitable location, planning the agenda and gathering up all the materials.

The second phase is the execution phase, which details the agenda listed in the phase one with integrated time slots for a one-day workshop.

1. Introduction and briefing (15 minutes)
2. Ice-breaker activity(20 minutes)
3. Introduction to design thinking(20 minutes)
4. Empathy building activity (1 hour)
5. Defining a problem(1 Hour)
6. Ideation phase (2 hours)
7. Prototyping (1 hour)
8. Debrief(15 minutes)

So, if you are planning to set up a workshop, then ponder on the plan given above. And if you have more points to add on, do so and make your workshop more innovative and fun. Connect with your team to know more about what they are expecting from your sessions and how to make it more effective.

Is Creativity and Innovation Training Essential for Millennials?

We are now dealing with millennials and this generation shift is affecting the way consumers behave and their attitude towards everything. Millennials hold a good percentage in the market as both customers and employees. They are difficult to attract because of their knowledge, connectivity, attitude, and perspective. With them being very impatient and moving jobs very often, there are great chances of you losing your employee talent very quickly, if you do not keep up with the changing technology and minds.

What does the market say?

Many millennials are open to the idea of leaving their current job very quickly because they want quick results and growth. They expect more transparency from their employers and their involvement in business decisions. The concept of storytelling workshops works well with them to make them aware of your policies and how they are working for them, and to show that you are listening to them.

Most of the companies have this generation as the face of the company on the frontend levels. They have good knowledge of technology and good sense of innovation. The companies should try to leverage their skills by organizing creativity and innovation training sessions. With great technology and availability of multiple options, many companies are now trying to attract this fresh talent by offering flexible working hours and other such arrangements to make sure their employees stick to them for long tenure.

Why training millennials is important?

They are more familiar with the world of technology improvements, policies, and are personally attached with the brands. They constantly keep moving and re-evaluating their work to ensure they are meeting their goals. It is important for companies to anticipate technology and industry changes through research. They should keep innovating with the help of creativity and innovation training sessions to stay in the market. Since you have millennials as your employees and customers both, you have a tough job to keep yourself prepared for new things ahead of time.

It is important to get in touch with the customers and employees personally. Storytelling workshops can be a best way to collect feedback or experiences to understand the areas of opportunity and improve. This technique would help employees to connect with customers, understand their issues and create amazing experiences with their storytelling skills.

Explore the web to know more about corporate trainings and workshops you can organize at your company.

Does Design Thinking Workshops Really Impact Your Business Processes and Its Performance?

Design thinking workshops set the ground for collaborating innovative minds, encouraging user-centric mindset to generate ideas and prototyping the innovative solutions. These workshops are indeed a platform where each stage of business processes, be it marketing, production or sales, is benefitted.

Why design thinking workshop is needed?

According to author Roger Martin, in his book The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the next Competitive Advantage, in traditional organization reliability-oriented managers depend upon reliability based upon historical data. He says that reliability-based thinking is old fashioned and traditional that contributes only to a marginal improvement to the status Quo. Thus, innovative future companies must include design thinking workshops in each of its business processes. Entailing design thinking workshops in your business processes saves your marketing time and retain your customers there by accounting to a major cost saving.

How does design thinking workshops benefit your organization (or your clients)?

Design thinking workshops are arranged to make your employees think how can they do things differently. Pairing these workshops with a creativity and innovation workshop is a perfect idea to encourage innovation in current business processes. How does this improve your overall productivity is what we are going to list out:

• Problem solving. As we all know, the foremost approach for any innovation is to analyze the existing problems. The design thinking workshops set the stage for the participants to come up with different innovative solutions for the problems.

• Out-of-the-box thinking. Different people have different ways of seeing a problem. A design thinking workshops nurture this skill of participants. The participants are encouraged to think above their assumptions. Thus, new ideas seed the innovation and also help in collaborating like-minded people.

• Ground-breaking innovations. The creative and innovation workshops teach the participants to think creatively. Arranging design thinking workshop with creativity and innovation workshop motivates employees to think creatively and its subsequent results add a competitive edge to your business. After all, all you want is your organization to stand apart from others, and innovation is the key to it.

How does the workshops work?

The design thinking workshops involve the following stages:

• Workshops initially involve collaborating innovative ideas and brainstorming the potential ideas.

• User is the king. The workshops analyses the current user experience and think about various ways to improve it.

• The team alignment. Sharing different perspectives and coming to a common understanding is what makes a good team.

• Prototyping. Of course, the next stage involves converting these concepts to code.

• The final stage of workshop involves discussing pros and cons of the supposed solutions. The design thinking tools help in finding out what motivates people.

Explore a range of courses online and prepare your employees for bigger and challenging roles!

Why Story telling Skill is Important for Managers?

Words and images have the power to feed a person’s imagination and fetch creative ideas. As a leader or a manager, it is important to communicate and make people understand the objectives, goals and challenges that are being faced by the organization and how to overcome them. Following the approach of storytelling in your organization can help your employees to have clarity in understanding the key points.

The companies should organize storytelling workshops and design thinking workshops which will allow the leaders to learn thinking outside the box and use different techniques to solve complex problems faced by the organization. It is important for the managers to learn this skill because of following reasons.

Why storytelling skill is important for the managers:

• It is important for the managers to communicate with their employees in order to share the company’s values and objectives, motivate them to perform well or basically to lead the team. Storytelling converts plain and simple words into something which helps to grab the listener’s attention.

• It is also essential for the managers if they seek to bring a change in someone. Rather than simply advising and arguing, telling people stories about real life examples can have a much stronger impact which will cause the transformation in a positive manner.

• Storytelling helps to build customer as well as brand loyalty as this allows you to present facts which can influence the customers to reach out for your brand. It can be a very effective tool for marketing managers.

A lot of business organizations are realizing the importance of storytelling and using it as a marketing and leadership skill. However, one can only develop this skill if he or she has the experience. Companies are now organizing storytelling workshops and design thinking workshops for their employees who will help the leaders to think in a different way and create innovative ideas to communicate the goals and objectives. It is important for the managers to learn this skill in order to be authentic while communicating either with the employees or with the customers so that there is a positive influence on others.

Encourage Your Employees to be Creative and Innovate Everyday

Innovation at the workplace plays a significant role in identifying new products and services. It is a great way to ensure better bottom lines in every company. Creativity and innovation training at workplace helps in improving the operational efficiency. Creativity and innovation workshops allow and recommend improvements to existing processes by encouraging employee engagement. Every company in Singapore should arrange creativity training of their employees to increase adaptability, confidence and bring excitement. It helps your employees to handle change management and become more open to challenges. It also helps them to get skilled quickly or equipped to do their job in a better way. Employees are always on the lookout of better opportunities where they can learn something new, develop their existing skills, knowledge, and attitude.

Conducting creativity and innovation workshops is a great motivator to support your employees to make them feel comfortable coming to work each day. Encouraging your team and/or your employees to innovate and take risk to come up with new ways to solve process related issues. A creative idea in Singapore is emerging as a great solution to be successful in your business.

Here are some benefits of encouraging employee creativity and innovation trainings

• Improves employee efficiency and productivity

Allowing employees to innovate and come up with new ideas in what they do everyday boosts their confidence levels and increases job satisfaction. They feel that they are equally responsible for all the actions taken in the name of the company, hence, continuously work towards improving their performance and ideas to do things differently.

• Reduce cost and increase competitiveness 

Innovation is a great tool to enable and promote healthy competition with your competitors and be prepared to welcome new partners and relationships with employees and clients both. It helps in encouraging networking and getting new and unique ideas to do business and have an advantage over your competitors. It increases your turnover and improves your profitability by looking at things differently.

Allow your employees to share their ideas and help you in gaining advantage over your competitors in the market. It’s time to encourage your employees to actively participate in group discussions and problem-solving activities to find the best possible solutions. Stay motivated and get in touch with a reliable trainer who can encourage creativity and innovation amongst your employees.

Top 3 Ways to Encourage Employee Creativity and Innovation at Work

With increasing competition between corporations, creativity and innovation training is the key to success. Several companies are offering the same product or service, hence, the differentiating factor is the way the service or product is being offered to the customers to attract them. All corporations should understand the importance of employee development and training and focus on strategies that can help in building competition amongst companies offering similar product or services in the market.

Leaders of the 21st century need to handle complex organizational issues by thinking out of the box, being creative, and innovative in their approach. Creative thinking has a lot of benefits to offer such as improved team work, better team bonding, improved productivity, and motivated staff. Business leaders should encourage and arrange creativity and innovation workshops for their employees to inculcate the habit of out-of-the-box thinking.

Here are a few ways to encourage creative thinking in the workplace:

1. Encourage brainstorming sessions

Discuss the problem with the team and conduct brainstorming sessions to find multiple solutions for it. This gives the opportunity to select the best solution amongst all the available ones. Encourage your leaders to conduct monthly or fortnightly sessions of this exercise where you discuss any projects or problems to streamline practical solutions for it. Ensure you encourage participation from all the team members to build trust and encourage fair practices at work.

2. Reward creativity

As a company, you should never let your employees be afraid of failures. Always try to reward the innovative solutions and encourage people to try out new things without being afraid of failures. Actively recognize the individual or teams who come up with the winning solutions. You can offer certificates of acknowledgement or monetary rewards to those who participated. This will motivate other employees to open up and discuss the possible solutions they have thought but never shared.

3. Make innovation a team activity

Make your employees understand the importance of creativity. Educate them about the benefits of taking creativity and innovation training and how it can help them to achieve their targets easily and effectively. Encourage them to talk about the ideas they have without the fear of being foolish. Arrange team sessions and activities that can help in bringing innovation at work and make it a routing habit to organize such sessions once or twice a month.

Companies should invest in conducting creativity and innovation workshops to encourage their employees and help them be efficient and successful.

Top 4 Ideas to Learn from Innovation Training for Workplace Efficiency

Innovation is the need of the hour. You need innovation to break the stereotypes and average performances. To beat the competition and stand apart from others, you need to have a creative and innovative outlook. While people believe that creativity is a natural instinct, it is not true. You can develop creativity by offering them the right ways and tools to explore their creative side and come up with impeccable solutions.

More and more organisations in Singapore are recognising this need for innovation and are opting for creativity and innovation training for their organisations. There are special training companies that conduct creativity and innovation workshop for corporate companies.

Here’s a look at some ways to increase your business’s efficiency with innovation training:

1. Training in intervals

In education, there is a concept known as ‘learning loss’ which refers to information which students lose over summer break. The same happens during workplace training. Whatever the employees learn, they will lose the benefits over time. For preventing the loss, it’s important to repeat, reinforce, and use lessons learned in training over time.

2. Keep resources in mind when designing a training program

No organisation can have all the time and money in the world for conducting creativity and innovation training. Every company has strict deadlines and budgets which need to be adhered to. When designing a training program, you should focus on what the goals of the programs are and which elements of the training are important for achieving these goals.

3. Reward programs

One of the best ways to motivate employees is to establish a reward program for employees who find faster and efficient ways of accomplishing basic tasks. With no reward, there is only little incentive for the worker to bring innovation to work.

4. Design training based on specific department

Training programs should not be designed in general. They should be custom-designed for every department so that they can improve their performance and give their best.

Explore the web for more information and suggestions on choosing the right creativity and innovation workshop for your workplace.