Understand

Welcome to the first phase in the innovation process. It's a short but important one.

It’s all about looking for where you can innovate (improve something that already exists or creating something new). Watch the video to find out more.

You won't need to use every tool for every project. These are some tools that might be useful at the ‘understand’ stage 

Team planning/strategy - you should do these activities once every 12-18 months as a team to build your innovation plan for the year ahead. 

• Battlefield and/or opportunity map (tools 1a and 1b) 

• And then place these on the horizon scanner (tool 2) 

Project specific – you've got an area or opportunity from the above planning session that you are ready to progress. Use the tools below to help you complete a brief. When you’re ready, submit the brief to the innovation team for support with the next stages.  

Start with creating HMW questions for your opportunity (tool 3). You might want to try this AI tool.  

Open the brief template (tool 4) and fill out as much as you can. The following tools will help you to do this. 

• Opportunities map (tool 1b) 

• Project kick off (tool 5) 

• Stakeholder mapping (tool 6) 

• Triple win template (tool 7) 

Once you have completed the brief, you might find the Project Team Canvas useful (tool 8), or you can use Mind’s project management templates.