Leading Innovation and Change Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Transformation Managers, 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-024

Before you join: Participants should have experience leading a team, workstream, project, service improvement effort or business initiative.

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

Innovation programmes often fail not because ideas are scarce, but because leaders cannot connect opportunity discovery, investment choices, experimentation, operating adoption and measurable value. Teams may generate attractive concepts yet lack a clear problem statement, evidence from users, decision rights, funding criteria or a plan for changing established routines. Leaders need to make progress under uncertainty while protecting service quality, regulatory obligations and operational performance.

This course equips participants to lead innovation initiatives from strategic challenge to scaled adoption. Participants use Design Thinking, Jobs to Be Done, portfolio management, experiment design, agile delivery practices and change leadership methods to frame opportunities, select priorities and move concepts into tested solutions. The course addresses stakeholder alignment, resistance, governance, risk management, benefits measurement and the leadership behaviours required when teams are working beyond familiar processes.

Teaching combines focused briefings with realistic cases, facilitated group work, decision simulations and structured application planning. Cases can be adapted to public services, banking, NGOs, infrastructure, healthcare, manufacturing or corporate transformation. Participants build a practical innovation and change initiative pack for a current organisational priority, including a problem statement, stakeholder analysis, experiment plan, change approach and benefits measures. A certificate of completion is awarded to participants who complete the five-day instructor-led course, available in classrooms in 50+ cities or live online.

The course is suited to managers responsible for service improvement, transformation, product development, process redesign or strategic change. It is particularly useful for leaders who must turn promising ideas into adopted working practices across functions, locations or customer groups.

What you will be able to do

  • Frame innovation opportunities using strategic challenge statements, customer evidence and Jobs to Be Done
  • Prioritise innovation initiatives using portfolio criteria, strategic fit and risk-return assessment
  • Generate and develop solution concepts using Design Thinking and structured ideation techniques
  • Design testable assumptions, prototypes and experiments using hypothesis-driven innovation methods
  • Build change strategies using stakeholder mapping, ADKAR and resistance-management actions
  • Establish innovation governance through decision rights, stage gates and funding criteria
  • Measure innovation outcomes using leading indicators, benefits realisation measures and learning metrics
  • Produce an innovation and change initiative plan for a current business challenge

Benefits of attending

For you

  • A repeatable method for turning ambiguous challenges into investable innovation proposals
  • Greater confidence leading teams through uncertainty, testing and resistance
  • Stronger evidence-based recommendations for sponsors, investment committees and senior leaders
  • Practical techniques for balancing experimentation with operational and regulatory controls
  • A documented initiative plan applicable to an immediate work priority

For your organisation

  • Better selection of innovation initiatives against strategy, customer need and delivery capacity
  • Reduced spend on untested concepts through early experiments and explicit assumptions
  • Faster movement from ideas to validated services, products or process improvements
  • Higher adoption of change through stakeholder-specific communication and reinforcement actions
  • Clearer reporting of innovation progress, learning, benefits and investment decisions

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can define an innovation challenge linked to strategy, value and operational constraints.

  • Innovation types: incremental, adjacent and transformational change within a portfolio
  • Strategic challenge statements connecting organisational goals, users and measurable outcomes
  • Three Horizons framework for balancing core improvement and future growth
  • Value pools, pain points and unmet needs as opportunity sources
  • Innovation ambition levels matched to funding, capability and risk appetite
  • Leadership roles: sponsor, product owner, delivery lead and change champion

Participants can prioritise innovation investments and establish proportionate governance controls.

  • Portfolio segmentation by strategic fit, uncertainty, value and delivery complexity
  • Scoring criteria weighted against customer impact, feasibility and organisational readiness
  • Stage-gate decisions using evidence thresholds, funding tranches and escalation routes
  • Innovation accounting separates learning progress from conventional delivery performance
  • Decision rights mapped through RACI for sponsors, teams and governance boards
  • Risk appetite statements applied to experiments, pilots and scaled implementation

Participants can convert stakeholder evidence into focused problems worth solving.

  • Jobs to Be Done identifies functional, social and emotional customer needs
  • Stakeholder interviews distinguish stated preferences from observed behaviours and constraints
  • Customer journey maps reveal failure points, delays and moments that matter
  • Problem statements specify users, needs, barriers and desired measurable outcomes
  • Root cause analysis uses Five Whys and fishbone diagrams appropriately
  • Assumption mapping separates known facts from critical uncertainties requiring evidence

Participants can generate, assess and strengthen solution concepts for defined problems.

  • Divergent thinking produces alternatives before evaluation narrows the solution set
  • How Might We questions convert constraints into productive ideation prompts
  • SCAMPER generates variations through substitution, combination and purposeful modification
  • Brainwriting reduces anchoring and gives quieter contributors equal idea generation time
  • Concept posters communicate target users, proposition, assumptions and expected benefits
  • Impact-effort matrices identify concepts suitable for testing, development or rejection

Participants can design low-cost tests that reduce uncertainty before major investment.

  • Test cards define hypotheses, methods, success criteria and decision consequences
  • Minimum viable products test critical value assumptions without full-scale development
  • Service prototypes model customer interactions, handovers and operational requirements
  • A/B tests compare alternatives using predefined measures and controlled conditions
  • Pilot design specifies scope, participant selection, safeguards and exit criteria
  • Learning reviews document evidence, decisions, adaptations and unresolved assumptions

Participants can create change actions that build readiness, commitment and sustained use.

  • ADKAR diagnoses awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement gaps
  • Kotter's eight steps organise urgency, coalition building and sustained momentum
  • Change impact assessments identify affected roles, processes, systems and controls
  • Resistance analysis distinguishes practical objections, loss concerns and trust issues
  • Sponsor roadmaps specify visible actions, key messages and decision interventions
  • Reinforcement mechanisms align performance measures, recognition and management routines

Participants can plan stakeholder engagement that secures support and addresses concerns early.

  • Power-interest grids determine engagement intensity, sequencing and communication ownership
  • Stakeholder personas capture motivations, concerns, influence and preferred communication channels
  • Message maps link change rationale, local impact and required actions
  • Coalition mapping identifies credible advocates, blockers and informal network connectors
  • Listening sessions surface operational concerns before commitments become difficult to alter
  • Feedback loops convert frontline insight into design changes and communication updates

Participants can organise innovation work through short cycles, clear priorities and shared accountability.

  • Product backlogs organise hypotheses, features, risks and improvement work visibly
  • Sprint planning selects achievable work based on capacity and learning priorities
  • Kanban boards expose work-in-progress limits, bottlenecks and blocked decisions
  • Daily stand-ups coordinate dependencies without replacing substantive problem-solving discussions
  • Retrospectives identify process improvements, team agreements and unresolved delivery constraints
  • Cross-functional team charters establish purpose, roles, behaviours and escalation paths

Participants can define measures that support investment decisions and benefits realisation.

  • Theory of Change links activities, outputs, outcomes and intended long-term impact
  • Balanced scorecards combine customer, operational, financial and capability measures
  • Leading indicators track adoption, experiment progress and emerging delivery risks
  • Benefits maps connect innovation outputs to quantified operational and strategic outcomes
  • Baseline measures establish credible comparisons before pilots or wider implementation
  • Benefits realisation reviews assign owners, evidence sources and reporting cadence

Participants can apply course methods to a prioritised initiative and lead its next steps.

  • Leadership styles matched to ambiguity, team maturity and change intensity
  • Psychological safety encourages challenge, dissent and early reporting of failure
  • Innovation narratives translate evidence into a credible case for action
  • Personal influence plans identify stakeholders, asks, commitments and follow-up actions
  • Ninety-day roadmaps sequence discovery, testing, governance and adoption milestones
  • Application plans define immediate actions, measures, sponsors and review dates

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

What you take back to work

  1. Strategic innovation challenge statement template
  2. Innovation portfolio prioritisation scorecard
  3. Customer insight and Jobs to Be Done canvas
  4. Experiment and pilot design template
  5. Stakeholder engagement and ADKAR change plan
  6. Ninety-day innovation application roadmap

Who should attend

  • Transformation Managers — responsible for converting strategic change into adopted operating practices
  • Innovation Managers — need disciplined methods for selecting, testing and scaling initiatives
  • Department Heads — must sponsor improvement while maintaining operational performance
  • Product Managers — need to connect customer insight, experimentation and organisational adoption
  • Programme Managers — coordinate innovation work across functions, governance forums and delivery teams
  • Policy and Service Leaders — redesign services while managing public value, risk and stakeholder expectations

Skills and tools covered

Innovation portfolio managementCustomer problem framingExperiment designChange leadershipStakeholder alignmentBenefits realisation

Tools and standards

Design Thinking, Jobs to Be Done, ADKAR, Kotter's 8-Step Process

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce methods, followed by cases, facilitated group exercises, decision simulations and individual application planning. Participants assess innovation opportunities, interpret customer evidence, define testable assumptions and make portfolio decisions with incomplete information. Change scenarios examine sponsor alignment, stakeholder resistance and adoption risks. Facilitators use peer critique and structured templates to help participants strengthen their own initiative plans. Classroom and live online delivery both include discussion, team-based analysis and guided reflection.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience leading a team, workstream, project, service improvement effort or business initiative. They should be familiar with their organisation's objectives, decision-making structure and a current challenge that could benefit from innovation or change. Basic project management knowledge is useful but not essential. No prior qualification in innovation, design, agile methods, behavioural science or change management is required. The course does not assume technical product development expertise, statistical modelling skills or responsibility for an enterprise-wide transformation programme.

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

Participants should have experience contributing to or leading projects, teams, services or improvement initiatives. Prior study of innovation, agile delivery or change management is not required.

Participants should bring a current innovation, service improvement, transformation or change challenge from their work. Available background information, such as strategy documents, customer feedback or performance measures, will help them develop a more useful application plan.

The course suits managers and leaders responsible for improving services, introducing products, redesigning processes or implementing strategic change. It is relevant to private, public and nonprofit organisations.

Design thinking courses usually focus on customer insight and concept creation, while change management courses focus on adoption. This course connects opportunity selection, experimentation, governance, delivery and adoption in one leadership process.

Participants leave with templates and an initiative plan built around a current organisational priority. They can use the plan to structure sponsor discussions, test assumptions, engage stakeholders and set early measures.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides about 6.5 contact hours. The five days progress from innovation strategy and insight through experimentation, change leadership, delivery, measurement and application planning.

Questions about this course?

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