What do pirates,
explorers, castaways and an innkeeper have to
do with an innovation conference for public officers?
Well, all these were unveiled at the Innovation
Expedition 2004 (IE 04) held on 15 and 16 September.
The conference, which was organised by the Civil
Service College and the National Library Board
(NLB), was based on the travel concept. This was
aptly chosen to emphasise the need for public
officers to rediscover the qualities and values
of great explorers like Marco Polo and Admiral
Cheng Ho.
The organisers hoped the conference activities
would encourage officers to venture forth, be
inventive and investigate wonders, and be open
yet empathetic and practical when analysing and
implementing innovations. They also hoped officers
would tap on the power of teams to innovate and
fulfil their dreams.
Mr Clarence Chia from the Innovation Unit, Public
Service Centre for Organisational Excellence,
Civil Service College, presented the Hand of Innovation™
(HOI) training framework.
The framework is based on the metaphor of an open
hand that is ready and able to act on ideas. The
five fingers represent the five competencies needed
for innovation at an individual level: Generating
Ideas, Harvesting Ideas, Evaluating Ideas, Proposing
and Marketing Ideas and Implementing Ideas. Each
competency is unique yet interdependent.
The sixth competency, Team Learning, represents
the palm of the hand that holds the other five
competencies together and creates an environment
for synergy to take place.
Whether as a team (the full crew of Master and
Commander), or as lone travellers (Pirates who
formed spontaneous learning groups or Castaways
who drift from team to team), each of the 200
participants traversed six “continents”
to experience six innovation workshops, one from
each phase of the HOI.
A total of 22 workshops were conducted to cover
the full cycle of innovation. The workshop segments
were extracted from full courses such as NLB’s
“Aspiration Pathfinder Teams”.
Another highlight was a session conducted by the
“Innkeeper”, Mr Gene Tan from NLB,
who introduced CREED™ profiling and Travellers’
Inns.
CREED™ profiling is a self-assessment tool
developed by NLB’s Innovation Ventures (INVENT)
department to help officers identify their natural
role in the innovation cycle. The four main roles
are: Creator (idea generation), Deliverer (idea
implementation), Evangelist (idea promotion),
and Explorer (idea development). Each role is
essential to innovation and complements the other
roles.
In keeping with the spirit of travel and adventure,
the conference was punctuated with Travellers’
Inn sessions. More than just tea breaks to rejuvenate
the body and mind, these were half-hour networking
sessions for participants to exchange travellers’
tales (learning points gained from each workshop)
with fellow sojourners.
The two-day expedition ended with the Travellers’
Reunion, a finale hosted by the Innkeeper who
presented the highlights of the travellers’
tales, explained the CREED™ profiles and
helped teams to plot their team composites by
relating their profiles to corresponding competencies
under the HOI framework.
Feedback on the expedition was good. Comments
ranged from “completely mindblowing!”
to “engaging and interesting”. Many
liked the concept of the conference and found
the coverage of the workshops comprehensive. |
