Inn8 Approach Summary

Organisations exist in a rainforest of opportunities. The Inn8 Approach provides a map to navigate the rainforest; a holistic approach to exploit opportunities, guiding you to:

1. Use structure and innovative thinking to exploit opportunities.
2. Build the right macroclimate for people to work on the opportunity more successfully.
3. Tap the innate wisdom of people from different functions, with different creative styles to build richer solutions and reduce obstacles to implementing your solutions.
4. Encourage use of behaviours that will enhance success.
5. Thoroughly prepare for the times when you use the Inn8 Model.
6. Build and maintain the right climate at a micro level to enhance creativity and collaboration when using the Inn8 Model in a meeting.

The Inn8 Principles

If you follow these principles you will exploit your opportunities more effectively because the quality of the solution will be higher, as will the acceptance it receives. (Effectiveness = Quality of Solution x Acceptance of Solution).

Ensure your approach encourages innovative as well as pragmatic thinking

The environment is changing and the approach of taking what succeeded before and applying it to the next opportunity will not always work. You need an approach that encourages innovative thinking. The Inn8 Approach does this through the use of the Inn8 Model and its creative tools.

Use a structured model

A structured model like the Inn8 Model ensures that everybody is working on the same stage, at the same time. This may seem obvious but think of how many times you have been in meetings which go in frustrating circles because one group is still generating ideas whilst another has started discussing implementation of the first idea. A structured, stage by stage approach ensures the thinking process is correct and everything is covered.

Involve key stakeholders in your thinking

How do you respond when someone asks you to support a solution you or someone from your functional area has not been involved in developing? If it is something you have strong opposite opinions or feelings about, it is likely you will be harder to win over. If you involve more people, from more functions in the thinking stage, implementation becomes much easier. Importantly, you will also increase the breadth, novelty and the richness of your solution and strategy.

Take time to think your opportunity through

This allows you to create a proposition that is acceptable to a wider range of people, meets less organisational resistance and requires fewer resources to implement.

Why Invest in the Inn8 Approach?

Personal Reasons

When exploiting an opportunity you have the chance to be a “hero”, to create a brilliant solution and implement it with few issues and minimum resources. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. The opportunity is lost as the solution solves the wrong problem or only part of it, meets resistance within the organisation and / or takes longer and costs more to implement than anyone imagined. You reputation is damaged.

Organisational Reasons

Financial

Organisations tend to introduce new products and services because they want to increase profits. However, this is just one way to increase profits. Imagine that all of your people are looking for new opportunities to increase profits. Think of the mine of information and skills your support departments are sitting on. How might they use that to add value to your core product or service? E.g. Might you offer your procurement expertise on a consultancy basis to other companies to help negotiate major contracts?

People

By extending innovative thinking beyond R & D, Product Development or senior managers, your organisation can tap into the innate creativity of the entire organisation and make work more interesting and stimulating for all.  This reduces staff turnover, the cost of recruitment and the opportunity costs of introducing new people.

Financial and People 

One way you can value a business is to use a formula: Valuation = Net profits x Multiplier.  The net profit is an objective measure; the multiplier is more subjective, being based on the attraction of your business to a buyer.  How much more attractive is your business if analysts know that you use every person to the optimal extent of their abilities? In essence, by helping your people to make the most of every opportunity, you create most value in your organisation.