Innovation Practice for business

InnovationRCA’s Innovation Practice programme offers a wide range of innovation workshops, training events and other activities tailored to your business needs.

Access to the Royal College of Art’s global knowledge network can bring significant creative and commercial benefits to your business.

InnovationRCA is the bridge to this unique resource, enabling private, public and voluntary sector organisations to more effectively initiate and manage innovation in products, services and communications.

Are you ready to innovate?

InnovationRCA’s input works best when partners have:

• A genuine reason and commitment to innovate
• Strengths to build on, in markets, technologies and especially people
• A realistic understanding of constraints and gaps in capability
• Appropriate resources and budgets
• Champions at the top and, potentially, throughout the organisation.

How we enable partners to innovate

The RCA network extends across business sectors from healthcare and telecommunications to transport, FMCG and the built environment. It includes international experts in social, technological, creative and cultural trends, as well as the RCA Helen Hamlyn Centre for people-centred design, and the Materials and Design Exchange (MADE) network for innovation in materials and processes.

In 2007/8 the College extended its network with the launch of Design London, a national centre of excellence in design-led innovation, in collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering and the Imperial College Business School at Imperial College London.

Partnership with InnovationRCA can:

• Help you identify opportunities to innovate, and create design briefs
• Give insights into user needs and aspirations, from a new product or service development perspective
• Facilitate idea generation, fast prototyping and evaluation
• Train and mentor internal teams or individuals
• Provide long-term access to the RCA knowledge network
• Enhance internal team-building.

Our processes

Every innovation challenge is different and we don't offer a ready-made formula. We do have a proven track record of innovation in product, furniture and vehicle design, architecture, communications, fashion and textiles and, more recently, design interaction - and considerable experience of helping organisations refocus their efforts.

Our processes include:

• Innovation days, conferences and seminars to motivate, develop vision and build partnerships
• Workshops and other idea generation events
• Opportunities for peer-learning and continued professional development
• Training activities at the RCA or on-site
• Launch events
• Or whatever works for you, including access to a wide range of high profile design practitioners in the RCA’s knowledge network.

What’s it like at the RCA?

Just being in the atmosphere of the Royal College of Art will stimulate and challenge your people, and make them feel special.

Enjoy privileged access to the Senior Common Room, a private members club housing the RCA’s collection of original art work by Hockney, Freud and other graduates and tutors. Meet RCA graduates who create products for just about every household brand.

Our business-facing events are run to a very high professional standard, but with the creative edge, enjoyment and unexpected insights that are daily generated within the world’s only wholly post-graduate university of art and design.

About our track record

InnovationRCA builds on many years’ experience of enabling business, government and third sector partners to innovate. Examples include:

• Acco Brands Europe. A six-week ‘live’ training programme for Acco's design team, including market mapping and concept generation processes
• B&Q Innovation Day. Eighty senior buyers and marketers from Europe’s leading DIY chain gathered at the RCA to be inspired and explore their future new product development strategy with key members of the RCA network
• HM Prison Service. A pilot workshop to improve innovation in public sector procurement, held in association with the Materials and Design Exchange (MADE) group of the Materials KTN
• Johnson & Johnson. A two-day rapid prototyping and brainstorming workshop, followed by on-site mentoring for a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary
• Omron Moving On symposium. Two hundred designers, planners and government agents convened to consider the future of urban transport, giving Japanese manufacturer Omron Europe-specific insights into future commercial opportunities
• National Health Service 'design for patient safety' initiative. InnovationRCA facilitated idea-generation workshops with primary and secondary healthcare providers, influencing government strategy to reduce accidents and improve staff morale
• Steelcase Office-Age seminar. One hundred architects and designers attended an evening event to discuss commercial implications for office design of a rapidly ageing workforce in Europe, US and Japan.

Next steps

If you are ready to innovate, contact us for a scoping meeting. If it’s a project we can help with, we will then prepare an initial proposal, costing and timetable for action by InnovationRCA and within your organisation. From then, we aim to work with you in a spirit of partnership and focused exploration.

Contact: John Bound, Head of Innovation Development, InnovationRCA, on +44 (0)207 590 4249 or contact InnovationRCA