Overview

The Innovation Manager leads a project team and is accountable for the results of a Business Design project. He / she is a MacGyver type of person with an overview of all activities involved in the Business Design project driving the project team to high performance. As part of the project team, he / she prepares and participates in workshops and works on content-related tasks in between. The Innovation Manager is also the link to other divisions in your organization. It is essential that the Innovation Manager is trained in Business Design before he / she kicks off a project.

Key activities are:

Defining the setup of a project (Project Charter)
Establishing a high-performance work culture
Preparing and moderating workshops
Getting the project team up to speed
Assigning and tracking tasks (rigidly)
Working on own content-related tasks (e.g. field research, prototyping)
Managing other stakeholders (e.g. sponsor)

Education

We never came across a comprehensive development or training program for Innovation Managers. It is pretty much learning by doing. Run your projects guided by this Knowledge Base and learn right from experience. Additionally, the Orange Hills GmbH provides a short 3h ramp-up training specifically for Innovation Managers, which may help you avoid critical mistakes on the way.

Activities

Phase	Activities	Comments
Setup	Finalizing the project charter with Business Design coach and internal sponsor of the project Preparing Kick-off workshop Invitation to sponsor and project team Room booking, setup & catering Agenda Tools & methods Get-to-know calls with every team of the project team Participating in a basic training on Business Design for the project team (and the sponsor) and ramp-up training for Innovation Managers
Discover	Facilitating the Kick-off workshop with the Business Design coach Optional: Team-building exercise Supervising the documentation of the workshop and execution of tasks (clear task definitions and assignments for the Discover phase) Working on own tasks Leading the weekly status calls Preparing the Design workshop (see before)
Design	Facilitating the Design workshop with the Business Design coach Supervising the documentation of the workshop and the further detailing of the results (with designers, prototyping engineers etc.) Leading the first sponsor's sneak preview and reflecting the feedback with the project team Optional: Preparing and facilitating a dedicated Validate workshop (if time was not sufficient in the Design workshop) Making sure that each team members know exactly what to do over the next weeks to conduct the experiments (clear task definitions and assignments for the Validate phase) Working on own tasks Optional: Preparing and facilitating an IT-Deep-Dive workshop	Pay the utmost attention to the questions / hypotheses and the experiments.
Validate	Supervising the experiments and execution of tasks Working on own tasks Leading the weekly status calls Optional: Joining regular sponsor's sneak preview (every 2-3 weeks) and reflecting the feedback with the project team Optional: Supporting Validate activities (e.g. field research, prototyping) Optional: Preparing and facilitating GTD - workshops Optional: Connecting with external experts (e.g. start-ups, engineering experts) Optional: Briefing the engineers and designers for prototyping Preparing and facilitating the Review workshop Preparing the final presentation / management proposal to the sponsor on the Decide workshop / D - Day Preparing the Decide workshop / D - Day
Decide	Delivering the final presentation at the Decide workshop / D - Day to the sponsor Recapping the feedback from the Decide workshop and planning of next steps (e.g. next iteration) Supervising the documentation of the workshop and the entire iteration / project

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Innovation Manager

Overview

Education

Activities