Innovation Fundamentals

Innovation Fundamentals

Built to help business leaders, decision makers and professionals leverage innovation as a practical tool to spot the right opportunities, solve problems, grow and respond to change through taking small steps.



Overview

Innovation starts with a problem, not a big idea.

It’s not just for tech startups, big businesses or breakthrough inventions. Every business innovates, often without realising.

Innovation is about finding better ways to solve problems, create value and respond to change and it can start with a small improvement in any business or team. It is a skill and capability that can be learned, practised, and built into a business.

Led and delivered by world-class local and international experts with examples and insights from real businesses, this practical program helps you spot opportunities, challenge the status quo and turn ideas into action.

Explore the mindsets and conditions that support innovation, identify what may be holding it back in your business, and use practical tools such as our AI-powered innovation companion to move from opportunity to experimentation.

You’ll gain a clearer view of where innovation can happen in your business, find one opportunity worth exploring, and a practical next step to get started.

We welcome early expressions of interest ahead of the program launch.

Program Structure

Innovation is often misunderstood, and seen as something reserved for startups, big budgets, or a certain kind of person. This module challenges that assumption.

Lessons
  • What is Innovation? An SME Perspective
  • Where Does Innovation Begin?
  • How Are You Wrong About Innovation?
  • Why Does Innovation Matter for Your Business?
  • What Does it Take to Innovate?
  • Audit: Where Are You Now?

Before investing time or money in a solution, you need to be confident you’re solving a problem that truly matters.

Lessons
  • Are You Solving the Right Problem?
  • Where Does Good Innovation Begin?
  • The Costs of Solving the Wrong Problem
  • Seeing Problems Differently
  • Solving What Really Matters
  • Test Before You Invest

Move beyond assumptions to learn directly from the people you serve, your customers.

Lessons
  • Do I Understand What My Customers Need?
  • What Are Assumptions and Why Do They Matter?
  • Challenging Your Own Assumptions
  • What Customers Really Value
  • The Customer Discovery Loop
  • Learn by Watching What Customers Do
  • Learn by Asking Better Questions

Spotting problems, constraints and early ideas worth pursuing. Developing a practical way to frame challenges and explore them from different angles.

Lessons
  • How Do I Find the Right Opportunity?
  • Why Businesses Miss Opportunities
  • Where Do Opportunities Come From?
  • Reframing Constraints with “How Might We”
  • Focus on the Outcome, Not the Solution
  • Looking Through Different Lenses

Testing ideas cheaply before committing significant resources. Building the confidence to try new things through structured, low-risk experiments.

Lessons
  • Try New Ideas Safely
  • Why Testing Ideas Matters
  • Creating the Foundations for Experimentation

Finding new ways to create and capture value. Exploring new offers, customer groups and partnerships without overextending the business.

Lessons
  • Grow in a Smarter Way
  • What is Smart Growth and Why is it Important?
  • The Business Model Canvas
  • Growth Opportunities from Constraints
  • Stress-test the Growth Opportunity

Creating a business that works better for its owner. Reducing key-person dependency, building systems, and protecting capacity for strategic work.

Lessons
  • Innovation needs Capacity
  • The Hidden Constraint on Innovation
  • Demands and Resources in your Business
  • Organizational Innovation: Redesigning Roles
  • Help People Adopt Change

Bring people along in your vision to innovate. Unlock the team’s potential. Reduce barriers to innovation.

Lessons
  • Innovation is a team sport
  • What does a team bring to innovation?
  • Bring people along with your vision

Build innovation into everyday routine. Create an innovation agenda for your business. Build an innovation habit that lasts.

Lessons
  • What shapes an innovation habit?
  • How does innovation become repeatable?
  • Enabling innovation through reinforcement and supportive conditions
  • Innovation agenda to overcome barriers to innovation

Who is it for?

Built for people who make things happen. Whether you’re leading a business, shaping a team or solving problems, this program gives you a practical understanding of how innovation works.

  • Business owners and leaders
  • Managers and team members looking to bring more structure to how their business innovates
  • Individuals curious about how innovation actually works in practice, beyond the buzzwords, regardless of current role

Benefits

  • A practical, repeatable way of thinking about innovation in your business, instead of waiting for a lightbulb moment.
  • The ability to spot problems and opportunities actually worth your time.
  • Have an AI-powered innovation companion that helps you learn, experiment, and solve challenges.
  • A way to get your team behind new ideas and involving the right people early.
  • A low-risk way to try new ideas. Small, intentional tests let you find out what works and what doesn’t before committing real time or money to it.
  • A method for making innovation part of how your business runs, not a one-off project. Build a habit into everyday routines, reinforcement, and the direction the business is already heading.

Facilitator

Katelyn Sharratt (PhD)

Innovation Expert & Wade Institute Fellow

Katelyn brings extensive experience in research, education, and program design, having developed and delivered learning experiences across a range of cultural and institutional contexts. Originally from California, she has built an international career spanning startup, university, and corporate environments in the United States, France, Italy, Denmark, and Australia. She has taught management, marketing, and entrepreneurship at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, driven by a deep conviction that education can create meaningful change within and across communities.

Katelyn holds a PhD in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Behavioural Strategy from Copenhagen Business School, a Master of International Business from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Science in Marketing Management from Bocconi University, and a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and International Politics.
A highly regarded learning designer, Katelyn has developed a range of innovation and entrepreneurship programs for Wade Institute and other organisations, most recently leading the design of Wade’s Innovation Fundamentals program. She previously served as Director and Head of Learning Products and Innovation at Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship.
Katelyn is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Engineering Technology at the Technical University of Denmark.


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