Creativity by Design : Case Studies

The Wellcome Trust funds the brightest minds and best ideas in biomedical research. It requires scientists to engage with the public and my challenge was to find an innovative way to help scientists feel confident communicating their science to non-specialist audiences.

A programme of two-day narrative skills workshops bringing together cohorts of Wellcome Trust researchers and media professionals.

Alumni are more confident, excited and effective in public engagement.

‘Unexpected, challenging and exciting’

‘I thought and talked of little else for days afterwards’.

‘Caroline did an excellent job. She is clearly a master in working with groups of people and her ability to deal with the diverse personalities in the room was very skillful - she made it look effort-less. Her feedback was insightful, well thought out and constructive. What came across was she was there to help us develop.’

Wellcome Trust Fellows.

The world looks to the Engineering faculty at Imperial College to help solve some of the planet’s long term critical engineering challenges. The faculty wanted to engage more of its researchers in collaborating to develop new approaches to some intractable problems.

An adaptation of a “World Café” event, led by senior staff and attended by 60 engineers from across the faculty.

Identification and agreement of some important goals. Strong faculty wide support for more collaboration in tackling the challenges and the generation of some first stage promising ideas.

"Caroline helped us design a half-day session aimed to engage and focus people across the faculty on critical engineering problems. The Grand Challenge was a very successful event. The sessions sparked many ideas and potential collaborations. She has also given us the confidence to run follow up activities ourselves that will help us elaborate on this approach."

Chris Hankin, Professor of Computing Science, Deputy Principal: Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London.

To find ways to maximise the value to its audiences of BBC content and services.

A blockbuster innovation process for assessing the potential value of ideas, focused around audiences, and to train people to use it. To improve the day to day creativity of all staff across the BBC by training 400 people to run simple problem solving sessions.

An internal capability for managing the innovation process and the formation of a creative network of trained individuals who, alongside their day jobs can support leaders, with workshops designed to meet specific challenges.

“We have totally revolutionised the creative processes at Radio 1. It is clear that ideas we have generated such as Star Pupil and our approach to Glastonbury and the Big Weekend, have been step changes in our level of creativity and innovation. We simply could not have done this without the support of the creative network”

Andy Parfitt, Controller Radio 1, BBC

Caroline can be contacted at caroline@creativitybydesign.co.uk