Knitting innovation

Leadership and collaboration

For the National College for School Leaders, we created a tool that delivered a Sims-like gaming experience for schools. Users could go online and play out scenarios in a range of contexts.
Inspiration came from work the BBC shared with us on safeguarding children in their online environments. They’d used rich pictures to articulate how they would develop and implement policy across their diverse portfolio. Research around leadership and scenarios unearthed a great piece of work by the Global Business Network on using scenario planning in the public sector.

Together, these two strands became our Scenario Visioning Tool. The tool helped aspiring head teachers develop their understanding of leadership and formulate organisational visions in a diverse range of personalised contexts.

Culture and behaviour

We were asked by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to make innovation visible in their organisation. To change the way people think and behave is a challenge, especially where there is a deeply embedded culture. Our Space to Innovate campaign invited staff to create space, effectively giving them permission to think differently. It made an impact and they’ve asked us back for more.

The current campaign aims to communicate the department’s focus and activity to staff and visitors. Starting at the front door the campaign provides a visual thread that progresses through reception into the heart of the department. All the key messages are delivered in this video that plays as visitors wait in the reception area.

Opportunity and change

The recession has had an impact on our business and like many others, we knew we’d have to review our business model to survive and thrive. We invested in a new product development strategy and spoke to an old friend, Dan Raven-Ellison, who we’d worked with on a Geography project for the BBC. Dan had just set up the Geography Collective and had published Mission:Explore, a book that gets kids off the couch and inspires them to attempt unusual outdoor challenges. We worked together to bid for development money that would allow us to create a new iOS app.

In the past 12 months, we’ve developed three Mission:Explore websites, an app and a series of widgets that help deliver global campaigns for clients including National Geographic Education. We are now developing the platform to help protect a £95million investment in Sheffield by the UK’s largest social housing group. The idea is to use social gaming to engage the Shiregreen community through their own intergenerational missions.

For more information about what we do, take a look at some of our other projects. If you think that we can help you and your organisation to innovate, email markpearce@theworkshop.co.uk to get in touch.