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Get Ready to Innovate – Young Business Edition

Sign up to Get Ready To Innovate here!

 

Get Ready to Innovate is an intensive design-led innovation support programme run by the Creative Fuse team at Northumbria University School of Design. It is an industry proven, structured yet highly adaptable programme that helps businesses to move forward; whether it is to put new ideas into action or address challenges they face. In essence… It is structured and expertly facilitated time out of working in the business, to work on the business.

We see innovation simply as “bright ideas realised”, these ideas may be completely new to the world, but also if they are just new to the business then that is also innovative.

Because Get Ready to Innovate is shaped around each individual business we collaborate with, it is suitable for a really broad variety of organisations. We have worked successfully with established companies, start-ups, sole-traders, micro and small businesses, and social enterprises. From tech specialists to artists, cultural organisations to soil scientists!

Our design-led approach means harnessing the power of creativity through proven methods and tools, during 4 carefully structured workshop sessions, to reveal new possibilities. Design thinking is applied to comprehensively explore the enterprise’s situation, but importantly focuses on the passions, ambitions and motivations of those leading that enterprise. Being design-led means that the business, it’s key people and situation set the context for the workshops. Therefore, Get Ready to Innovate is deeply tailored towards what matters to each individual business.

Young Business Edition

We understand that young businesses face different challenges to those that are established, so we are pleased to present our latest version of Get Ready to Innovate – the Young Business edition.

Young businesses often have new ideas and fresh thinking in abundance. With many opportunities and the freedom to head off in different directions it can be challenging to know where to start, or which direction of progress is preferable. This is often compounded because new businesses tend to have few staff, with a small number of people dynamically attending to all the many responsibilities that come with running a business.

Our latest Get Ready to Innovate programme offers unique support, empowering young businesses to learn proven methods and tools that allow them to move forward with confidence, build robust business foundations, and develop resilience. Some tangible examples include helping businesses to:

  • grow their client or customer base,
  • make sure their message is loud and clear,
  • take control of their priorities.

Equally, if the needs of a business right now are to create new revenue streams or to attract investment, the Get Ready to Innovate offers a strong platform from which to develop opportunities in these spaces.

The Latent Value…

What makes Get Ready to Innovate exciting every time that we run a workshop series, is that there is often some unexpected value for the business, which emerges as part of the process. For example, the workshops could be focused on understanding how to respond to the challenges of bringing a new product or service to life, but what is really rewarding is how the process can give renewed confidence on a personal level.

When there is no absolute right or wrong answer, thinking like a designer is a very powerful approach. We live in a world that is messy, complex, interconnected, and always moving. Logical reasoning can’t always keep up, or more often just gets stuck on dilemmas. Whereas creative thinking and a design-led approach thrives in the messiness, making sense of uncertain and complex situations, and identifying the most preferable options. Learning how to use this approach is highly empowering. It can help you have confidence to make judgements about how to move forward towards your targets and goals, not only now but in the future too.

Starting 15th February 2022, registration deadline 4th February 2022

 

This programme is specially tailored to young businesses and entrepreneurs in the early stages of their enterprise journey. Our support is available free-of-charge to:

Get Ready to Innovate is for you and the business you work in or run! If you are eager to understand how to use design thinking to harness creativity and start innovating, then this programme is for you.

To apply for the programme or to find out more please email our registration team at creativefuse@northumbria.ac.uk.

Sign up to Get Ready To Innovate here!