Leadership Creativity and Innovation Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Department Heads, Innovation Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-IC-015

Before you join: Participants should have experience managing teams, projects, services, products or improvement work, and should understand how decisions, budgets and approvals operate in their organisation.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Leadership teams are expected to produce new services, improve customer journeys, reduce operating costs and respond to disruption, often while protecting core delivery. The difficulty is not a shortage of ideas alone. It is selecting worthwhile problems, creating options without premature judgement, testing assumptions quickly, and moving approved ideas through governance, funding and adoption. Innovation can stall when teams treat it as a workshop event rather than a managed leadership responsibility.

This course develops practical creativity and innovation leadership skills for managers responsible for change, growth or service improvement. Participants learn to frame opportunity areas, gather customer and operational evidence, generate ideas using structured methods, assess options, design experiments and build credible implementation cases. The course addresses innovation strategy, team climate, portfolio choices, risk, stakeholder support and measures for tracking value after launch. Participants work with realistic cases involving public services, financial products, operational processes and customer-facing services.

Teaching combines short instructor briefings with facilitated case analysis, group exercises, idea-generation sessions, prioritisation simulations and peer review. Participants apply the methods to a live challenge or a supplied case, receiving structured feedback on problem framing, experiment design and implementation logic. Each participant leaves with an Innovation Action Pack containing a defined opportunity statement, evidence plan, prioritised idea portfolio, experiment canvas, stakeholder map and 90-day action plan.

The course is suited to managers and specialists who must turn strategic priorities into practical improvements. It is particularly relevant where teams need more disciplined ways to generate ideas, make innovation decisions and deliver changes that users, employees and senior sponsors will support.

What you will be able to do

  • Frame innovation opportunities using problem statements, stakeholder evidence and strategic constraints
  • Apply Design Thinking methods to investigate user needs and define priority problems
  • Generate diverse solution options using SCAMPER, divergent thinking and structured ideation
  • Evaluate ideas using weighted criteria, feasibility analysis and innovation portfolio logic
  • Design low-risk experiments that test assumptions, desirability and operational viability
  • Build innovation cases linking customer value, costs, risks, benefits and delivery requirements
  • Lead creative teams using psychological safety, constructive challenge and decision rules
  • Produce a 90-day innovation action plan with milestones, owners and review measures

Benefits of attending

For you

  • A repeatable method for turning ambiguous challenges into defined innovation opportunities
  • Greater confidence facilitating idea generation without losing decision discipline
  • Practical evidence for presenting innovation proposals to senior sponsors
  • A tested approach for reducing risk before major delivery commitments
  • A 90-day plan for progressing a current improvement or growth initiative

For your organisation

  • Better-quality innovation proposals supported by customer, operational and financial evidence
  • Earlier identification of weak assumptions before expensive implementation decisions
  • More consistent criteria for selecting, funding and stopping innovation initiatives
  • Stronger cross-functional collaboration between service, operations, finance and technology teams
  • Faster conversion of strategic priorities into measurable improvement actions

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can distinguish innovation types and align innovation activity with strategic priorities.

  • Innovation types: incremental, adjacent and transformational change within strategic boundaries
  • Strategic intent translated into opportunity areas, design principles and investment themes
  • ISO 56000 innovation management vocabulary applied to leadership decision-making
  • Core operations, customer experience and business models as innovation sources
  • Ambition levels balanced against risk appetite, capacity and organisational readiness
  • Innovation roles, governance forums and escalation routes clarified for delivery

Participants can define evidence-based opportunity statements before pursuing solutions.

  • Problem statements distinguish symptoms, root causes, constraints and desired outcomes
  • Stakeholder mapping identifies users, buyers, sponsors, blockers and delivery partners
  • Customer journey mapping exposes friction points, unmet needs and moments of truth
  • Five Whys analysis traces recurring service failures to underlying causes
  • Opportunity statements specify target users, circumstances, needs and measurable value
  • Assumption logs separate known facts, beliefs, risks and evidence gaps

Participants can collect and interpret evidence to identify meaningful user needs.

  • Interview guides elicit behaviours, workarounds, motivations and unmet needs
  • Observation plans capture service interactions, handoffs, delays and error points
  • Jobs-to-be-Done identifies functional, social and emotional progress sought
  • Voice-of-customer data triangulated with complaints, usage data and frontline insight
  • Insight statements connect observed evidence to a specific opportunity hypothesis
  • Research ethics protect confidentiality, informed consent and appropriate data handling

Participants can lead structured ideation sessions that produce varied solution options.

  • Divergent and convergent thinking separated to prevent premature idea rejection
  • SCAMPER prompts generate alternatives through substitution, combination and adaptation
  • Forced connections combine unrelated concepts to challenge established assumptions
  • How Might We questions open practical routes toward defined outcomes
  • Brainwriting captures individual ideas before group discussion shapes collective thinking
  • Idea quotas encourage breadth before feasibility screening and refinement
  • Creative constraints convert budget, policy and time limits into design prompts

Participants can select promising concepts using transparent evidence-based criteria.

  • Concept cards describe target users, value proposition, assumptions and delivery logic
  • Weighted decision matrices compare impact, feasibility, risk and strategic fit
  • Desirability, feasibility and viability tests reveal concept strengths and weaknesses
  • Innovation horizons balance near-term improvements with longer-term strategic options
  • Portfolio maps expose concentration, dependency, uncertainty and resource conflicts
  • Kill criteria define when weak ideas should stop or return

Participants can design proportionate experiments that reduce critical uncertainty.

  • Hypothesis statements link assumed user behaviour to measurable expected outcomes
  • Experiment canvases define assumptions, methods, measures, thresholds and decisions
  • Low-fidelity prototypes test service concepts before technical development begins
  • Pilot designs specify target groups, duration, safeguards and operational conditions
  • A/B testing compares alternative messages, journeys or service features
  • Learning reviews interpret results, anomalies and implications for next decisions
  • Experiment backlogs sequence tests according to uncertainty, cost and urgency

Participants can build a credible case for investment, approval and implementation.

  • Value propositions connect user benefits with organisational outcomes and differentiation
  • Benefits maps link activities, outputs, outcomes and measurable value drivers
  • Cost estimates distinguish discovery, build, transition and ongoing operating costs
  • Risk registers address regulatory, operational, financial, reputational and adoption risks
  • Business cases present options, recommendations, dependencies and approval decisions
  • Success measures combine adoption, service quality, financial and mission indicators

Participants can create team conditions that support constructive creativity and accountability.

  • Psychological safety enables challenge, dissent, questions and early risk reporting
  • Team norms separate idea generation from evaluation and commitment decisions
  • Diverse perspectives reduce blind spots in problem definition and concept selection
  • Constructive challenge tests assumptions without discouraging contribution or experimentation
  • Facilitation roles manage participation, timeboxes, evidence and decision records
  • Decision rights clarify who recommends, approves, consults and executes actions

Participants can build support for innovation and address adoption barriers.

  • Stakeholder influence maps identify sponsorship needs, resistance sources and engagement priorities
  • Change impact assessments examine process, role, capability and technology consequences
  • Narratives explain the problem, evidence, proposed change and expected benefits
  • Sponsor briefings request specific decisions, resources and visible leadership actions
  • Adoption plans combine communication, training, support and feedback channels
  • Resistance diagnosis distinguishes legitimate concerns from uncertainty, incentives and habit

Participants can establish practical governance and a time-bound plan for innovation delivery.

  • Innovation funnels track opportunities from discovery through testing, approval and scaling
  • Stage-gate reviews assess evidence, investment needs, risks and decision options
  • ISO 56002 guidance informs innovation management system responsibilities and review cycles
  • Innovation dashboards report pipeline health, experiment results, benefits and blockers
  • Resource plans assign accountable owners, specialist support, budgets and decision dates
  • Ninety-day action plans sequence immediate tests, stakeholder actions and review points

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Innovation opportunity statement template
  2. Stakeholder and customer evidence map
  3. SCAMPER ideation prompt sheet
  4. Weighted idea evaluation matrix
  5. Experiment canvas and hypothesis log
  6. Ninety-day innovation action plan

Who should attend

  • Department Heads — need to convert strategic priorities into funded improvement initiatives
  • Innovation Managers — need repeatable methods for managing idea pipelines and experiments
  • Programme and Project Managers — need stronger approaches for uncertain, early-stage initiatives
  • Product Managers — need to validate customer needs before committing delivery resources
  • Operations Managers — need practical methods for redesigning processes and service delivery
  • Policy and Service Managers — need to develop workable responses to complex public needs

Skills and tools covered

Creative problem framingStructured ideationInnovation portfolio managementExperiment designStakeholder mobilisationInnovation implementation

Tools and standards

ISO 56000, ISO 56002, Design Thinking, SCAMPER

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short briefings to introduce methods, followed by facilitated case work, group exercises and decision simulations. Participants analyse customer and operational evidence, frame problems, create solution options and assess trade-offs using realistic organisational scenarios. Structured peer review helps participants test the clarity of their assumptions, experiment designs and implementation cases. Individual application planning connects the methods to a current workplace priority. Trainers adapt cases and discussion emphasis for public sector, financial services, corporate and NGO cohorts.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience managing teams, projects, services, products or improvement work, and should understand how decisions, budgets and approvals operate in their organisation. Familiarity with a current business challenge is useful because it provides material for application planning. No previous innovation qualification, design background, technical prototyping skill or formal strategy training is required. The course does not assume responsibility for a dedicated innovation function; managers leading operational, customer, policy or organisational change will find the methods relevant.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

You should have experience of managing work, projects, services, products or teams. No formal innovation, design or technical prototyping background is required.

Bring a current improvement, growth, customer or operational challenge if you have one. You will be able to use it when preparing your opportunity statement and action plan.

It suits managers, innovation leads, product managers, project managers and service leaders responsible for change or improvement. It also fits specialists asked to contribute ideas and evidence to innovation decisions.

Design Thinking is one method used in the course, but the course extends into leadership, portfolio choices, business cases, governance and adoption. Unlike project management training, it focuses on uncertainty before a solution and delivery plan are fixed.

Participants can use the templates to frame a live issue, collect evidence, generate options and propose a low-risk experiment. The final action plan identifies owners, decisions, milestones and measures for the first 90 days.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides about 6.5 contact hours. The five days progress from strategy and problem framing through ideation, testing, leadership, adoption and action planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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