Who we worked with
Plunket
What we did together
T7 Masterclass in Innovation
Recognising their need to innovate, Whānau Āwhina Plunket had two objectives: to grow their internal innovation capability by developing innovative skill sets and to explore different funding models to diversify their reliance on government funding.
Our T7 Masterclass in Innovation programme was the perfect fit to answer these challenges. The programme equips people with the tools and techniques of innovation necessary to solve complex problems in a structured, confident and efficient manner, applicable across multiple contexts. Plunket chose to work with the first 4 tiers of the programme to develop their skills to a level that would enable them to facilitate internal innovation design processes.
“I recommend this program to all people no matter their age, background or field of work. This program has given me the confidence to harness my skills and focus them into a project or direction that gets the best outcome. This programme also has connected me to people out of my normal day to day life so I really love that.”
Participant, Plunket
How we did it
The Creative HQ approach to learning is to learn while doing and the challenge of diversifying funding streams was a perfect opportunity to solve a critical problem while learning skills.
A small group of 6, representing organisational diversity, was chosen to participate in the programme. All participants also had demanding day jobs so the programme was designed to span 4 months with one tier completed each month. The monthly programme was a combination of 2-4 day sprints to top and tail the Tier with meetings in between times to progress tasks, check-in and learn from each other.
The programme provided a well-tested structure on which to explore the problem and test a solution with potential users. The generous time allowed for discussion throughout the programme meant that the team had the opportunity to build strong and supportive relationships with each other as well as test what they were learning in their everyday jobs.
Creative HQ’s ability to bring in entrepreneurs and additional subject matter expertise and connect them with the Whānau Āwhina Plunket team was extraordinarily useful as the concept and business case developed.
The pacing of the programme allowed the team to present regular progress reports to their senior leaders resulting in strong high-level support for the work to continue once the T7 Masterclass programme was completed.
The result
The solution developed during the T7 Masterclass Programme has resulted in strong Board support to build a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) for an online marketplace to support parents of under 5s. This led to the launch of Bellybutton, an online platform that combines Plunket’s offerings with an external marketplace to connect the parental community with products and services.
Within 6 weeks of launching, Bellybutton reached 400 accounts and 150 listings!
