We describe in this post a way to bridge the perceived gap between the innovation capabilities and experiences across the workplace: a Ladder of Opportunities to progressively build skills, knowledge and mindsets for innovation, allowing employees to choose their own level of engagement a any given time. We also outline results from initial Proof-of-Concept tests and work underway with workplace partners.

image credit: Joel Dmitruk CC-BY-ND-NC 4.0

alt text: employees working together at a round table with caption text: Preparing Students for “Every Employee” Innovation

In our post in this weblog last month, we highlighted our inclusion amongst the finalists for the 2022 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence award in Europe. One element of this final stage was the preparation of a book chapter to be included in the finalists’ Anthology of Case Studies to be published as part of the award process.

image credit: Joel Dmitruk CC-BY-ND-NC 4.0

alt text: multi-coloured hands joining together with caption text: “Competence and Capability for “Every Employee” Innovation”

Here are some highlights from what we learned in the process of creating and analyzing these scenarios as a proof-of-concept tests. Some of the research insights from the corporate sector that we had expected to be useful did provide value in the scenarios, at times in surprising ways. Other research insights did not align with the context of the scenario institutions, although we noted other contexts where they might contribute value. We’ll focus here on the issues in Talent Management for Strategic Innovation which emerged in the scenarios; important insights also arose in the broader area of Governance and Management of Strategic Innovation.

image credit: Joel Dmitruck CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

alt text: cartoon dinosaur at the starting line of a running track with caption “Can Dinosaurs Learn to Sprint?”

In this post we’ll describe the specific challenges being tackled by each of the partners who will be working with us to test adaptations of the insights in our Research Synthesis, to meet their needs and contexts (and, more generally, helping us to understand the issues and benefits for adapting European research into Canadian contexts). his both project involves both a synthesis of past research and a set of organizational innovation projects to apply, critique and extend that previous research. We’ll describe in this post the individual focal points for each of our four Field Test sites.

alt text: text announcement: “WETech Alliance Partners with Future Skills Centre and Workplace Innovation Network for Canada on Quality of Work Research

We are delighted to announce that the innovations in teaching and learning developed by our WINCan team and our academic partners in Australia and Canada have been recognized in the 2022 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence award. The final stage of this international competition was on September 16th , hosted by Neapolis University in Cyprus as part of the 17th annual European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

image credit: Joel Dmitruk CC-BY-ND-NC 4.0

alt text: text announcement: “WINCan Teaching Excellence Recognized in European Awards”

In part I of this two-part series, we described the context and content of reusable course modules to introduce higher education students to Employee-Led Innovation in the Workplace, and how the modules were deployed in a course unit at a university School of Business.

In this follow-on post, we will also explore our initial methods for assessing the development of learner capability for workplace innovation, including use of a new workplace tool for assessing aspects of innovation mindsets.

image credit: Joel Dmitruck CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

alt text: image of employees working, discussing; with caption text: “Can Corporate Insights on Strategic Innovation be Adapted for Higher Ed.”