• The Innovation Foundation is a new specialist innovation agency in Dublin. It was set up, in Q4 2009, to accelerate innovation in Irish organisations.

    Already, we are working with leading Irish commercial semi-states and multi-national businesses to drive innovation in everything from culture - to metrics and processes right down to individual projects.
    Most companies will have innovation as one of their top three priorities but making innovation a priority is not the same as making it happen.

    Government reports repeatedly confirm that ‘innovation and creativity are key determinants of success for Ireland.’ The Innovation Foundation can help you discover, develop and deliver new products and services in a way that is predictable, repeatable and scaleable. The Innovation Foundation can enhance Irish companies’ capacity to innovate successfully and to convert promising raw ideas into tangible innovation assets.
    We work with organisations on their structures and processes for innovation as well as taking individual projects where we can take an idea from heartbeat to high-street on behalf of clients.
    		      
    We would be delighted to come into your organisation and discuss your current and future innovation initiatives. Just drop us a mail
  • We believe that all innovation starts with an idea and all ideas start with an insight.
    But in the branded, fmcg world, it is often necessary to access needs, drivers and wants that lurk well below the surface - that are latent, unarticulated and very often unconscious.

    The Innovation Foundation has vast experience in tapping into these unconscious needs using advanced impressionistic, qualitative techniques such as brain scanning, facial coding – but especially ethnographic research.

    We believe that in order to finesse out the latent consumer drivers, you have to really understand your consumer at least as well as they understand themselves.

    But, we also believe in broad perspectives: that there’s no single way of answering research questions, so we deploy an appropriate range of methodologies - qualitative and quantitative, online and offline - depending on what would best meet your brief.
    Peter Robbins of the Innovation Foundation is one of Ireland’s members of the Market Research Society and has vast experience of national and global qual and quant research.
  • What if every single one of your employees was trained, motivated and equipped to spot and exploit insights? What if they were trained in the tools, processes and models of innovation and were all individual champions of innovation who could turn their raw ideas into market success-stories for your organization?

    The Innovation Foundation provides training, models and assistance to create a culture of innovation in your organization. Most companies evolve their capability to innovate through predictable stages:

    It’s worth mapping where your organization is on the chart. Have you had one big innovation on which the company is founded? Or have you developed a managed process to bring innovation to life with your company?
    More advanced practitioners have created an innovation network extending beyond their immediate supply chain to include experts, industry partners, universities and other trusted partners to bring innovation to market.
  • 90% of firms approach innovation through the creation of Innovation Teams. Academic literature has been curiously silent on the role of the leader in Innovation Teams – below is a summary table of the factors that have been found to be essential in creating a climate for innovation within teams and organizations:

    Authors Anderson &West Hornsby et al Amabile et al Caldwell And O’Reilly
    Model Team climate for Innovation Factors that Promote CE Work Influence On Creativity Managing Creativity
    Date 1996 2002 1996 2003
    Components Support for Innovation Management Support Encouragement For creativity Support for Creativity
      Objectives / Vision Time Availability Autonomy Or freedom Risk taking, Failure -tolerance
      Task Orientation Organisational Boundaries Resources Teamwork
      Participative Safety Rewards Pressures Speed in action
        Work Discretion Organisational Impediments  
    Peter Robbins has been working on a PhD thesis around how Innovation teams should be structured and led. Below is an easy-reference model you might like to think about for the innovation teams in your company. It relates particularly to the role of the leader and should be given to leaders of innovation projects:



    Draft Model of Leadership of Innovation Teams
    From: Mumford et al, 2002
    Markham, Green & Basu, 1991
    Judge, Fryxell & Dooley, 1997
    Peter Robbins (DCU)
     
     
    To find out more about how your organization can add accelerate innovation through teams – contact the Innovation Foundation







  • We believe in the principles of Chip and Dan Heath in their book Made to Stick as a good blueprint for finding a way to sell your ideas internally.
    Selling Ideas Internally - Making Ideas Stick in Your Organisation!

     
    Innovation Networks in the Organisation. Making ideas stick inside a large organisation is a real challenge. The best approach is to set up a team of innovation champions within the organisation. 

    These can become a coalition of innovation practice who are trained up to take responsibility for innovation for their brand, their team, their department or their region. The Innovation Foundation has vast experience in creating and running a corporate team of innovation black-belts inside organisations.

    This way organisations leverage their own talent and create a generation of innovation experts who act as lightening rods for innovation and provide energy and know-how to projects in the company. Many companies, such as the ones below, adopt this approach.
     

  • Creativity is the start point for all innovation and yet very few business people train for creativity and even fewer companies would claim to have creativity as part of the DNA of their company.

    If you have an Innovation Team that could benfit frm a little training in creativity or an innovation- idea generation session – contact us to talk about an appropriate programme.

    Also, if you need to run innovation workshops, idea generation sessions for your team or for a specific project, the Innovation Foundation can help you run high-octane, powerful and effective innovation workshops either in your organisation or we can host them in the UCD Nova premises for you.
    The Innovation Foundation offers customised courses in creativity for organisations. The types of skills that have been shown to enhance the creativity required for commercial innovation include:

    Generating new ideas to grow your business – Using proven creative techniques to unlock new ideas to potentially grow your business
    Making Innovation Happen (Knowing how to structure a project and a team to deliver fewer, bigger projects faster than ever.
    Storytelling – how brands and companies can leverage the power of stories
    Semiotics – How to understand and put to work the power of signs and symbols
    Brainstorming and creative thinking.
  • Peter Robbins is the founder of the Innovation Foundation, a new innovation consultancy based in UCD Nova Innovation Park in Belfield. Peter has extensive experience in creating, incubating and developing innovation projects on a global basis.
    As a Global Director of Innovation Excellence for GlaxoSmithKline, until June 2009, his role involved assisting in the creation of the future NPD pipeline (products, services and claims ideas) for leading brands such as Panadol, Lucozade, Aquafresh, NiQuitin and Sensodyne.

    Peter held various global, director-level innovation roles in GlaxoSmithKline since January 2004. He has also worked on national and regional projects for many countries including UK, Scandinavia, India, US, Latina and Japan. 

    Peter trained at the renowned innovation D-School in Stanford University and is also a graduate of the What-if? Creativity programme in London. 

    He is currently completing a PhD in DCU on how teams can accelerate the development of innovation within large companies. He is one of Ireland’s few members of the Market Research Society.

    Peter is a regular speaker at Irish Innovation conferences and runs workshops for many companies.  He also advises leading Irish organisations on innovation projects, systems, networks and culture.  

    Peter lectures on Innovation, Creativity and New Product Development for Dublin City University and is also a visiting lecturer in UCD and NUIG.  

    He is a member of The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) and the Product Development Managers Association (PDMA).