Leading Innovative Teams Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Team Leaders, 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 7 Nov 2026 Course code SD-IC-008

Before you join: Participants should have experience supervising a team, coordinating projects or contributing to change, product, service or process-improvement work.

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 teams often fail for reasons unrelated to the quality of their ideas. Leaders may protect short-term delivery at the expense of experimentation, approve projects without clear customer evidence, or create decision processes that slow promising work. Teams also need permission to surface risks, challenge assumptions and stop weak initiatives before resources are wasted. Effective innovation leadership means setting direction while creating enough autonomy for disciplined discovery.

This course prepares managers to lead teams that generate, test, select and scale valuable ideas. Participants learn to balance core operations with innovation work using the Three Horizons model, define customer problems through Jobs to Be Done, and run evidence-based experiments using Design Thinking and Lean Startup methods. They build skills in psychological safety, divergent and convergent thinking, innovation portfolio management, decision rights, stakeholder sponsorship and resistance management.

Teaching combines concise instructor briefings with cases from banking, public services, technology, manufacturing and NGOs. Participants analyse innovation failures, work through team decision scenarios, practise experiment reviews and apply tools to a live business challenge. Each participant leaves with an innovation team charter, a prioritised opportunity portfolio, an experiment plan and a 90-day leadership action plan that can be used with their own team.

The course suits managers who lead specialists, project teams, product teams or cross-functional improvement groups. It is particularly relevant where organisations need new services, process improvements, digital products or operating-model changes while maintaining reliable day-to-day performance.

What you will be able to do

  • Define an innovation team charter with purpose, decision rights and operating principles
  • Apply the Three Horizons model to balance core, adjacent and transformational initiatives
  • Frame customer opportunities using Jobs to Be Done interviews and problem statements
  • Facilitate divergent and convergent idea generation using SCAMPER and selection criteria
  • Design evidence-based experiments using Lean Startup hypotheses, metrics and learning reviews
  • Create psychological safety practices that improve challenge, candour and constructive dissent
  • Prioritise innovation initiatives using portfolio criteria, risk assumptions and resource capacity
  • Produce a 90-day innovation leadership action plan for a current team challenge

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Lead innovation discussions with clearer purpose, boundaries and decision rules
  • Handle uncertainty without forcing premature solutions or endless debate
  • Gain practical language for challenging assumptions and stopping weak ideas
  • Build credibility with sponsors through evidence-based experiment reporting
  • Create a realistic plan for improving innovation habits within an existing team

For your organisation

  • Improves the quality of opportunities entering innovation pipelines
  • Reduces spending on initiatives lacking customer evidence or testable assumptions
  • Creates clearer accountability between sponsors, team leaders and delivery teams
  • Increases early identification of risks, constraints and weak proposals
  • Builds repeatable practices for service, product and process innovation

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can establish the leadership conditions, roles and operating principles required for productive innovation work.

  • Ambidextrous leadership balances core delivery, adjacent improvements and new ventures
  • Three Horizons portfolio distinguishes incremental, adjacent and transformational innovation
  • Psychological safety behaviours invite dissent, questions and early bad news
  • Team innovation charter defines purpose, boundaries, decision rights and measures
  • RACI mapping clarifies sponsor, product owner, contributors and escalation routes
  • Leadership stance shifts between directing, coaching, sponsoring and protecting experiments

Participants can identify customer and operational opportunities worth investigating before generating solutions.

  • Jobs to Be Done interviews reveal functional, emotional and social needs
  • Customer journey mapping exposes friction, workarounds, delays and unmet expectations
  • Problem statements separate observed evidence from proposed solutions and assumptions
  • Five Whys traces recurring service failures to underlying process causes
  • Opportunity sizing estimates affected users, frequency, cost and strategic relevance
  • Assumption mapping identifies beliefs with high uncertainty and high consequence

Participants can guide teams from broad idea generation to clearly framed concepts.

  • Divergent thinking produces options before evaluation narrows the solution space
  • SCAMPER prompts substitution, combination, adaptation, modification, elimination and reversal
  • Crazy Eights generates rapid concept variations from a defined problem
  • Analogous industries provide transferable patterns for service and process redesign
  • How Might We questions convert research insights into creative prompts
  • Concept posters communicate target users, value proposition, assumptions and constraints

Participants can select innovation concepts transparently using evidence, criteria and appropriate decision methods.

  • Selection criteria combine desirability, feasibility, viability, risk and strategic fit
  • Weighted decision matrix compares concepts against agreed scoring criteria
  • Impact-effort mapping separates quick improvements from major investment propositions
  • Pre-mortem analysis identifies likely failure modes before resource commitments
  • Decider roles prevent consensus drift and unresolved ownership in innovation meetings
  • Kill criteria define when evidence requires a concept to stop

Participants can design small, ethical experiments that produce decision-ready learning.

  • Lean Startup hypotheses state customer, behaviour, outcome and measurable threshold
  • Assumption tests match evidence needs with prototypes, interviews, pilots or simulations
  • Minimum viable products test value propositions without full-scale development
  • Experiment canvases specify participants, method, metric, timeframe and decision rule
  • Leading indicators measure learning before revenue, adoption or efficiency outcomes
  • Learning reviews distinguish validated, invalidated and unresolved assumptions

Participants can create team behaviours that support candour, learning and productive disagreement.

  • Edmondson's psychological safety model distinguishes learning behaviour from personal comfort
  • Leader fallibility statements make uncertainty discussable without lowering accountability
  • Red-team reviews challenge assumptions, evidence quality and unintended consequences
  • After-action reviews examine expectations, results, causes and next actions
  • Conflict protocols separate task disagreement from relationship-based tension
  • Inclusive facilitation gives quieter specialists structured routes into decisions

Participants can organise innovation work alongside operational commitments without obscuring priorities.

  • Kanban visualises discovery tasks, work limits, blockers and flow
  • Innovation backlogs rank opportunities, experiments, decisions and enabling work
  • Protected capacity allocates time for discovery without hiding delivery trade-offs
  • Sprint reviews expose evidence, unfinished assumptions and stakeholder decisions
  • Dependency mapping identifies approvals, data, suppliers and technical constraints
  • Team norms define response times, meeting purpose and documentation expectations

Participants can review innovation initiatives as a balanced portfolio rather than isolated projects.

  • Portfolio buckets allocate attention across core, adjacent and transformational initiatives
  • Horizon mapping shows maturity, uncertainty, investment needs and expected returns
  • Stage-gate decisions match funding levels to evidence and uncertainty
  • Innovation accounting tracks learning milestones, adoption signals and validated demand
  • Resource scenarios reveal trade-offs among skills, budget, time and sponsorship
  • Portfolio reviews stop duplication and identify gaps in strategic opportunity areas

Participants can secure support for innovation initiatives and respond constructively to resistance.

  • Stakeholder mapping identifies influence, interest, concerns and required involvement
  • Sponsor contracts clarify decisions, resources, visibility and escalation commitments
  • ADKAR diagnoses awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement gaps
  • Resistance conversations surface legitimate operational, technical and political concerns
  • Narrative framing links proposed change to customer outcomes and organisational priorities
  • Pilot communication plans specify audiences, messages, channels and feedback routes

Participants can establish routines and a 90-day plan for sustaining innovation performance in their teams.

  • Innovation metrics track opportunity quality, experiment pace and implementation outcomes
  • Team retrospectives convert completed work into process and leadership improvements
  • Recognition practices reward evidence, learning and collaboration rather than ideas alone
  • Communities of practice spread methods, case learning and specialist support
  • 90-day action plans sequence leadership habits, experiments, sponsors and review points
  • Personal commitments identify behaviours to start, stop, continue and measure

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

What you take back to work

  1. Innovation team charter template
  2. Jobs to Be Done opportunity brief
  3. Weighted idea-selection matrix
  4. Lean Startup experiment canvas
  5. Innovation portfolio review model
  6. 90-day innovation leadership action plan

Who should attend

  • Team Leaders — need to create conditions for ideas, challenge and disciplined experimentation
  • Innovation Managers — need repeatable methods for selecting and advancing innovation initiatives
  • Product Managers — need to align customer discovery, team delivery and investment decisions
  • Project Managers — need to lead cross-functional teams through uncertain change work
  • Operational Managers — need to improve services and processes without disrupting core delivery
  • Senior Managers — need to sponsor innovation portfolios and remove organisational barriers

Skills and tools covered

Innovation team leadershipOpportunity framingExperiment designPortfolio prioritisationPsychological safetyStakeholder sponsorship

Tools and standards

Three Horizons, Jobs to Be Done, SCAMPER, Lean Startup

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce methods, followed by cases, group analysis, facilitated exercises and decision simulations. Participants examine realistic innovation choices: whether to fund an idea, how to respond to failed evidence, and how to protect experimentation while meeting operational commitments. Small-group work applies customer framing, idea selection, experiment design and portfolio review tools. Individual application planning connects each method to a current team, service, product or improvement challenge.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience supervising a team, coordinating projects or contributing to change, product, service or process-improvement work. They should understand their organisation's customers, services and basic performance measures well enough to bring a current challenge to the course. Familiarity with project management, agile delivery or innovation methods is useful but not assumed. No prior study of Design Thinking, Lean Startup, finance, data analysis or formal creativity techniques is required. The course is not intended for people seeking entry-level people-management training.

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 leading, coordinating or contributing to a team-based business initiative. Prior knowledge of Design Thinking, Lean Startup or agile methods is not required.

Bring a current innovation, service improvement, product, process or change challenge that involves a team. A short description of the customer problem, stakeholders and current constraints will help you apply the tools.

It is designed for managers and leaders responsible for teams that must improve services, develop products, solve operational problems or test new approaches. It also suits project and product leaders working across functions.

Creativity courses concentrate mainly on generating ideas, while Design Thinking courses focus on customer-centred problem solving. This course focuses on the leadership system around innovation: team conditions, decisions, experiments, portfolios, sponsorship and implementation.

Participants leave with practical templates and a 90-day action plan linked to a live work challenge. The methods can be used in team meetings, innovation reviews, pilot planning and sponsor discussions.

The programme runs from 08:30 to 16:30 each day, with about 6.5 contact hours daily. Time is divided between instructor input, case analysis, group exercises, decision simulations and individual application 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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