An Innovation Tool Kit: To Assist Boards in Strategic Planning

Australian Non-For-Profit and community organisations now operate in a rapidly changing world, with innovation widely regarded as a valuable tool to create opportunities and overcome many of the challenges facing the sector.

While many boards are increasingly involved in the mission to be more innovative, the pursuit can often lead to uncertainty, necessitating considered approaches that inspire change and improve innovation cultivation on boards.

While traditionally executive management is often responsible for innovation, Dr Nicky Howe and Alicia Curtis suggest that innovation can also be successfully cultivated within the boardroom.

To support this view, members of the Emerging Leaders in Governance Program (ELGP) have developed this free innovation toolkit to equip boards with the necessary tools to cultivate innovation.

The toolkit consists of a number of practical approaches designed to develop innovation-leading insights including:

• An innovation toolset to help increase the reliability, efficiency and predictability of opportunity and change that deliver value to organisations
• The Idea Canvas – a working tool that assists organisations in capturing, investigating and challenging new ideas during the strategic planning process
• An Innovation Alignment Tool to assist boards with evaluating their capacity to act on ideas based on the alignment with organisational values and guiding principles
• A Progress Thermometer – a dynamic action learning evaluation and measurement tool for new ideas in the trial or implementation stage

These measures assist boards in evaluating the effectiveness of the innovation or idea while defining the scope of the principles which should govern decision-making on boards.

With numerous factors to consider, the information found within this guide provides boards with an excellent opportunity to reduce barriers to innovation and generate innovative approaches to problems.

To unlock the potential of your board, access our free innovation toolkit here.