12-13 December 2023
Kuala Lumpur
TBA
Overview
Facilitated by Simon Banks, a globally acclaimed expert in Creativity and Innovation, this course is your gateway to a world of transformative possibilities. With over two decades of experience and a remarkable portfolio of over 1400 events spanning four continents, Simon has been the trusted innovation partner for industry titans such as Google, EY, IBM, and many more. Simon's expertise resides at the crossroads of creativity and design, where he artfully blends his artist's curiosity with a 20-year corporate career. He's not just an expert; he's a catalyst for change. His mission is to empower businesses not only to survive but to thrive in the modern age. Through cutting-edge reimagination, co-creation, and radical collaboration, Simon will be your guide to igniting innovation and achieving extraordinary results. Join him on this remarkable journey, and discover how to solve complex challenges, craft strategic solutions, and foster a culture of innovation that will propel your business to new heights. It's time to embrace your creative potential and embark on a path to unparalleled success under Simon's expert guidance.
RAVE REVIEWS
I would like to thank you for your role as facilitator at the Department of Transport and Main Roads DG Customer Led Innovation Challenge. Your role was integral to making the day a success and was greatly appreciated by myself and all the participants.
Neil Scales, Director General, QLD Department of Main Roads.
The keynote was awesome. Your presentation style rocks. You have made the most of doing talks remotely, your drawing and visuals are such
a clever adaptation to this new environment. I really enjoyed spending time with you.
Peter Seaman, Head of Continuous Improvement and Innovation, nib Health Funds.
From the outset of our engagement with Simon, it was very clear how he could help our team to better solve business problems by avoiding tunnel vision thinking and improving the ROI of our most valuable resources, our people. His design thinking approach has helped accelerate our team development journey and has already started to produce great outcomes by making sure that the team focus on ready-to-use outcomes which are equitable, enjoyable and most importantly useful. Guaranteed, I would love to work with Simon again.
Nigel Nisbett, Director of Professional Services for Asia Pacific & Japan, Boomi.
Simon facilitated our inaugural innovation event in Melbourne, where over a dozen teams participated. He brought great energy to the session, engaged the teams very well, coached us along the way, and made the event fun. Simon is a great presenter and facilitator and I would recommend him for other organizations looking to run innovation sessions, hackathons, or similar events.
Kristian Kish, Head of Insights, eNett
WHY YOU SHOULD ATTEND
The programme will enable you to cultivate collaboration and interdisciplinary thinking. The course structure encourages participants from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on projects. This dynamic mix of perspectives enriches the ideation process, sparking unconventional ideas that might not arise in a more traditional setting. You will learn to appreciate the power of cross-functional teams and how to effectively harness collective intelligence to drive innovation whilst building the ability to empathize with users, comprehend their needs, and design solutions that truly resonate. Design thinking instills empathy as a core principle, enabling you to go beyond assumptions and involve end users in the design process. This leads to the creation of products and services that genuinely address real-life problems.
WHAT WILL YOU LEARN BY THE END OF THIS COURSE?
- The programme will enable you to cultivate collaboration and interdisciplinary thinking.
- The course structure encourages participants from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on projects.
- This dynamic mix of perspectives enriches the ideation process, sparking unconventional ideas that might not arise in a more traditional setting.
- You will learn to appreciate the power of cross-functional teams and how to effectively harness collective intelligence to drive innovation whilst building the ability to empathize with users, comprehend their needs, and design solutions that truly resonate.
- Design thinking instills empathy as a core principle, enabling you to go beyond assumptions and involve endusers in the design process.
- This leads to the creation of products and services that genuinely address real-life problems.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Design Thinking's principles can be adapted to suit the needs of Directors, Senior Managers, Head of Departments, Team Leads & Executives from:
- Innovation
- Product Development
- Marketing
- Sales
- Engineering
- IT
- Project Management
- Operations
COURSE FACILITATOR
Simon Banks
Creativity, innovation, and design specialist
About
Simon Banks a creativity, innovation, and design specialist, international keynote speaker, author, podcaster and a recovering professional artist. Simon has exhibited his art across the globe, lectured at the National Gallery of England, developed and delivered programs for institutions such as The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Vivid Festival (Sydney) and the Sydney Fringe Festival. He has written for Corporate Wellness Magazine, Kizzi Magazine, and MiX Asia. He has been featured in both newspapers and radio in Australia.
Achievements
- An international keynote speaker.
- An Author.
- A podcaster and recovering professional artist.
- Delivered over 1400+ events on four continents for industry-leading companies including: Google; EY; The Australian Federal Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, BAE Systems, Synechron and Volkswagen and more.
- Exhibited his art across the globe.
- Lectured at the National Gallery of England.
- Developed and delivered programs for institutions such as The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Vivid Festival (Sydney) and the Sydney Fringe Festival.
- Written for Corporate Wellness Magazine, Kizzi Magazine, and MiX Asia.
- Been featured in both newspapers and radio in Australia.
- His Podcast The Occupational Philosophers (A not-so-serious business Podcast) is a top 10% global podcast.
- His book, A Thousand Little Lightbulbs: How to kickstart a culture of Innovation is in offices and on bookshelves all over the world.
Has Worked With
Trainer Videos
Book(s) Published
Agenda
Unleashing Innovation Through Design Thinking
Day 1
Session 1
INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN THINKING
- Why Innovation and Human Centered Design is more important than ever.
- Introduction to a design led way of thinking.
- Innovation handbrakes and how to avoid them.
- The language of Innovation.
- Developing creative confidence.
- Understanding the real-world problems, by solving them.
Session 2
EMPATHY: GETTING A PHD IN YOUR CUSTOMERS PROBLEMS
- How to spend time in other people's shoes to understand their point of view.
- Understanding extreme users’ scenarios
- Empathy Case studies: Creating empathy maps for customers and user to get different perspectives.
- Creating Empathy Maps using provided templates.
- The importance of observation and being highly curious.
- Creating user journey maps
Session 3
DON’T BE AN ANSWER LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM
- Using the ‘five whys?’ problem solving framework
- Using a Problem Tree Analysis Framework
- Create design challenge statements and run it through a continuous checklist.
- Reviewing the work
- What did we learn from the empathy work?
Session 4
IDEATION: TAKING THINKING AS WIDE AS POSSIBLE
- Rules of engagement for divergent thinking
- Taking the team through a variety of different ‘stretch your thinking approaches’ or creative levers they can pull to shift their thinking.
- 99 Ideas
- Visual Ideation
- Using visuals to engage different neural networks.
DAY 2
Session 5
IDEATION - TAKING THINKING AS WIDE AS POSSIBLE
- Teams are introduced to and taken through a variety of different ‘stretch your thinking approaches’ or creative levers they can pull to shift their thinking.
- Disruptive Revolution and Blindly Assumed Truths
- Creative Poaching
- Different Perspectives
- Re-express your issue using different words, from a child’s perspective, from the future, from your competitor’s and see where it takes you.
- Constraints thinking
Session 6
THE DECISION-MAKING FRAMEWORK & RAPID PROTOTYPING
- Deciphering all of the information/Converging ideas
- Rapid Prototyping and Testing: Ideas Do Not Live In A PowerPoint!
- Introduction to prototyping: A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.
- Case studies of companies using rapid prototyping
- Introduction to fail fast and rapid experimentation.
- Examples of prototypes and Minimum Viable Products
- How to create a prototype
Session 7
RAPID TESTING
- Introduction to user testing.
- Exploring different methods of finding out what’s really important to the user.
- Understanding the importance of a storyteller and observer when testing ideas.
- Teams will go through 3-4 rounds of rapid testing.
- The importance of testing early and often with stakeholders.
- How to embrace a more agile/rapid experiment way of working.
Session 8
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
- What did we learn?
- What are we curious about?
- What surprised?
- Where can we use this approach in our organisations?
- Each team member creates a persona innovation action plan to take what they have learnt forward.
