Innovation Lab Design
Build sustained innovation capacity through carefully designed labs, hubs, and accelerators.
KS INSIGHT
LeadingInnovation
Create the conditions where breakthrough innovation emerges from collective genius.
Innovation isn’t about a lone genius - it’s about designing the conditions where diverse perspectives collide productively to generate breakthrough solutions.
Create Safety
Build psychological safety so people can take intelligent risks, surface hard truths, and learn from failure without fear.
Harness Tension
Orchestrate creative conflict so that different perspectives clash constructively - generating heat and light, not friction and fatigue.
Enable Agility
Design rapid experimentation cycles that test multiple pathways in parallel, generate real data, and accelerate learning.
Integrate Ideas
Move beyond either/or debates to combine opposing ideas into elegant, integrated solutions that can scale.
Innovation in Practice
Where structured experimentation meets collective insight.
In innovation labs and design sprints, we help teams move from abstract intention to concrete experiments - turning complexity into a series of thoughtful tests instead of high-stakes bets.
The Innovation Journey
- 01Set the stage
- 02Generate options
- 03Test & learn
- 04Integrate & scale
We’re brought in when organizations need to…
- Build innovation capacity across teams and disciplines
- Break through strategic and creative gridlock
- Design innovation hubs, labs, or accelerators that actually deliver
- Shift culture from risk-averse to experiment-ready
- Navigate the paradoxes of leading innovation in complex systems
- Move beyond incremental improvements toward step-change solutions
What makes our approach different
We combine Linda Hill’s Collective Genius framework with design thinking, psychological safety research, and complexity science to build innovation ecosystems that are disciplined as well as creative.
Our approach is grounded in:
- Two decades of leading innovation in high-stakes contexts - from budget crises to the AI transition
- Deep engagement with Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety
- Stanford d.school-inspired human-centered design methodology
- Complexity and systems thinking applied to real organizational constraints
- Hands-on experience building innovation labs and pilots across sectors
We don’t just talk about innovation - we help you design for it. That means working on governance, incentives, culture, and leadership behaviors, not just tools and workshops.
Innovation ultimately lives in how people interact: how they frame problems, challenge assumptions, respond to pushback, and translate learning into decisions.
Programs
Example Innovation Leadership Engagements
Innovation labs are designed to:
- Create safe-to-fail environments for bold experimentation
- Connect diverse stakeholders around shared strategic questions
- Develop portfolios of experiments rather than single big bets
We help you design the governance, processes, metrics, and culture that turn labs into engines of meaningful innovation.
Executive Design Sprints
Compress months of debate into five focused days of decision-making using structured design methods.
Our 5-day sprint arc:
- Map the challenge and choose the right focal question
- Generate multiple competing solutions
- Decide and storyboard the strongest option
- Build a realistic prototype
- Test with real users and extract decision-grade insight
Based on Google Ventures and Stanford d.school methods, tailored for senior teams and complex systems.
Collective Genius Workshop
Learn to lead innovation by unlocking the creative potential of your system, not by having all the ideas yourself.
We work with the core paradoxes:
- Support and challenge - at the same time
- Freedom to experiment within clear constraints
- Open conflict in service of shared purpose
- Improvisation anchored by disciplined learning
Drawing on Linda Hill's research at Pixar, Google, and other innovation leaders, this workshop helps leaders create communities that are willing and able to innovate.
Tools & Methods
Our Innovation Toolkit
01
Psychological Safety
Team Assessment
Psychological Safety
Using Amy Edmondson's framework, we assess the conditions that allow people to raise concerns and learn from missteps without penalty.
Assessment focuses on:
- Comfort with risk and experimentation
- Ability to ask for help and offer feedback
- Response patterns to failure and bad news
02
Design Thinking
Rapid Prototyping
Design Thinking
We guide teams through a condensed design thinking cycle that balances creativity with clear decision points.
Core stages:
- Empathize: Understand stakeholders
- Define: Frame the real problem
- Ideate: Generate bold options
- Prototype & Test: Learn quickly
03
Ideation Laboratory
Creative Tools
Ideation Laboratory
Combining elements from improv, SCAMPER, and brainstorming, this lab helps teams move beyond default thinking patterns.
Toolkit includes:
- High-energy prompts for unexpected options
- SCAMPER techniques to re-imagine solutions
- Fast sketching to make ideas concrete
04
Failure Design
Resilience Planning
Failure Design
Use failure as a design tool - anticipating what could go wrong in order to build more resilient strategies.
Techniques include:
- Pre-mortem: imagining failure, then working backwards
- “How to make this fail” scenario design
- Failure cascade mapping
05
Creative Abrasion
Structured Debate
Creative Abrasion
Based on Linda Hill's research, we design conversations where strongly held views can collide constructively.
Session elements:
- Clear purpose and guardrails for debate
- Rotating roles that invite different voices in
- Synthesis into shared next steps
06
SystemSight
Structured Diagnostic Consultation
SystemSight
A rigorous 90-minute architecture that transforms complex challenges into testable interventions using peer consultation.
The five movements:
- See beyond symptoms to systemic patterns
- Map stakeholders and power dynamics
- Design safe-to-fail experiments
Innovation in Action
We use carefully designed exercises - from tower-build challenges to rapid prototyping labs - to reveal how teams handle ambiguity, pressure, and competing ideas.
These experiences are live case studies: they expose default habits, make culture visible, and create a shared language for leading innovation.
What teams learn:
- Why prototypes beat abstract plans when the future is uncertain
- How psychological safety shapes creativity and accountability
- How conflict can be channelled into sharper thinking rather than avoidance
- What it takes to move from individual ideas to collective commitment
Related thinking