More than occasionally people ask me what the Innovation Learning Network ( @HealthcareILN ) is, either because I am tweeting from one of the in person meetings, or the person desires (or we could say “aches”) to find their innovation tribe.
2011 Insights is the recently released annual report of the ILN and it has a great overview of what the Innovation Learning Network is, who’s in it, what they do, and descriptions of several exercises that I’ve posted about here that you can use in your own innovation work.
Specifically:
- The 3 x 5 exercise , an easy and fun way to recap a meeting and pick the most important follow-ups. This one has taken off like wildfire – see below
- Concentric circles (also called “Mad Tea Party”) , another that has really taken off , which I doubted and was then proven wrong (I like that!) – this is my blog post on that as well, that includes a link to a sample slide deck you can use
It’s PDF’d and ready to go, publicly available, and has that signature design style that we’ve come to expect from Tim Rawson and colleagues.
This is also prep for the next series of tweets / blog posts, which will come from Detroit, Michigan, where we’ll be hosted by The Henry Ford Innovation Institute. The theme will be Innovation & PLAY. Hashtag will be #iln12 .
The 3 x 5 exercise
I looked and looked and realize I hadn’t posted the detailed instructions to that one, here they are:
- On index cards, each participant writes:
- A powerful insight from the conference or meeting
- A related action you are considering
- No names needed and please write legibly.
- Stand up, mill around, and pass your card to someone new. Keep milling…
- Then stop in front of another person. Read the card you were given, and rate the card on a scale of 1-5. “5” is fabulously inspiring to you, 1 is OK without inspiring YOU. Talk over your ratings adjust as needed. Write your final rating on the back of the card.
- Mill again. Pass “your” card to someone else. Keep milling.
- Stop in front of another person. Rate the cards in the same way.
- Repeat five times, in five rounds. By round 5, each index card should have five ratings. Add them up. What is the score?
- Invite each person holding the top 5 to 10 highest scoring cards to read them out loud to the whole group. “Who has a card with 25 points?… 24 points?…. Voila! This creates a shared sense of what “the crowd” thinks are the most compelling ideas/actions.
Here’s what it looks like in action, even grown ups enjoy it!