Union Day

Following on from our blog here about unadventurous innovation conferences, we’ve started the process of co-creating an alternative. Rude not to! If there’s enough interest we hope to hold a Union Day event in the Autumn.

Thanks to everyone who added comments to the walls at Spring Union about what we could do if we spent a day together. (Union’s our corporate innovators club that meets quarterly for an evening). Essentially people were asking for an event that’s all about doing rather than listening to expert speeches.

Here are the comments that we particularly liked. If you have any other ideas about how we could innovate the innovation conference format please chip in. And then we’ll do it.

What would make it memorable? A useable idea
What would make it forgettable? No real problems or honesty/No interactions
What do you hate about innovation events? Discussion about innovation rather than innovating
What should be banned? Sage on the stage
What cliches should we avoid? Strategy. Thought leadership. Q&A.
What would you make? Prototypes
What’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to you as an event? Created a new business with strangers
What brilliant events should we be inspired by? Good for Nothing
What big risk do you really wish we’d take? No Powerpoint, No Agenda.

Please let us know if this type of event appeals and we’ll look at an October date. It would be really exciting to create an innovation conference that got large companies co-creating with smaller ones and where we can all learn by doing.

David Simoes-Brown