Should your organisation consider a formalised approach for innovation? And should it commit to an Innovation Lab approach? Originally presented at the Chartered Institute of Housing Annual Conference in Manchester, England.

1. Do Housing
Associations need
Innovation Labs?
Paul Taylor
@paulbromford
Innovation Coach

11. Don’t get involved in delivery
Keep It Simple Stupid
Create prototypes that are safe to fail
Embed a culture of innovation
Our learning - The best
innovation functions:

13. The Innovation Lab is a creative space that tests
concepts and ideas before they become projects.
The Lab uses the principles of Open Innovation.
the practice of merging your internal assets and
resources with those outside your organisation
`The Lab is hosted by Bromford and will contain
Bromford colleagues and customers – it will also
work with Universities, Think Tanks, and
Entrepreneurs

14. It’s a network not a team
We want our innovation work out in the open. Anyone can pop in and see
what we are working on.
It’ll have a lot of visuals – from drawings on walls to actual models people
can have a look at and play with. .
.
We want to be able to help colleagues “green-house“ ideas and turn them
into practical models and business solutions. We also want to be able to host
visitors who could help Bromford solve big problems that need fixing.

25. Incremental
These are small easily achieved, but often
significant “new and improved” ways of
doing things
This work would account for about 30% of
the Labs time.

26. Colleague Check In – Claiming
expenses/Lone Worker Safety eliminated
through development of mobile app

27. Breakthrough
This is a truly meaningful change in the way we
do business
This work will be approximately 50% of Lab time

28. Open Source Communities:
Using software and simple applications such as the
Wikihouse model and WikiCommunity to allow
customers to start
developing and creating

29. Transformational
We are inventing something completely new
The Lab would never spend more than 20% of
time on these due to the low conversion rate.

30. The £500 Primark home
Disposable living

31. Do Housing
Associations need
Innovation Labs?
Paul Taylor
@paulbromford
Innovation Coach