INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
Innovation today is no longer confined within the walls of an organization. To stay competitive in a VUCA world—one defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—leaders must go beyond traditional frameworks and embrace open innovation. This means leveraging not only internal talent but also tapping into external ecosystems, including partners, suppliers, startups, and research institutions.
This Open Innovation for Leaders training course is designed for forward-thinking executives tasked with shaping the future of their business while managing present-day operations. Participants will explore open innovation frameworks, assess strategic and tactical approaches, and develop the skills needed to lead innovation initiatives that harness both internal and external capabilities.
This Open Innovation for Leaders training course will highlight:
- Align innovation with strategic organizational needs and market positioning
- Explore innovation horizons, value networks, and the open innovation lifecycle
- Master engagement strategies with external collaborators, from ideation to partnership
- Learn how to manage risk and failure while fostering a culture of creativity
- Build actionable innovation roadmaps that lead to measurable impact
COURSE DETAILS
Objectives
By the end of this Open Innovation for Leaders training course, participants will be able to:
- Apply strategic analysis tools to identify innovation opportunities
- Engage confidently in high-level discussions on open innovation strategy
- Cultivate a workplace culture that supports creativity, experimentation, and collaboration
- Build and manage external partnerships for innovation success
- Design and lead open innovative initiatives within their organization
Training Methodology
This training course is designed for active and motivated senior executives, who are willing to contribute to business debate, and bring their own thoughts to discussions on challenges and opportunities of modern organisational change and innovation. This is a collegiate environment, mixing a relaxed atmosphere with challenging intellectual content. The training course will blend workshop formats that will stimulate and stretch participants, including (but not limited to); formal training course style presentations, structured discussions, informal debates, along with solo work and group exercises. Workshops will use a mix of printed material, slides, activities and videos.
Organisational Impact
Organizations sending delegates to this training course will benefit through:
- Increased leadership capacity to drive innovation strategy and transformation
- Enhanced ability to identify and manage external innovation sources
- Stronger alignment between business objectives and innovation initiatives
- Broader organizational culture of agility, collaboration, and calculated risk-taking
- Higher returns from partnerships, co-creation models, and idea networks
- Accelerated development of innovative products, services, and business models
Personal Impact
Participants will gain:
- A strong foundation in open innovation frameworks and leadership techniques
- Confidence to lead innovative discussions at executive and strategic levels
- New skills in stakeholder engagement and managing innovative ecosystems
- Insights from global best practices and multi-industry case studies
- A professional network of peers facing similar innovation challenges
- Greater value in their current leadership role and future career trajectory
Who should Attend?
This training course is relevant for any manager or executive who is tasked now or is expected to be involved in the future with projects that require innovation, business and service development and organisational change. Participants could attend from across the organisation, as innovation impacts not just strategic planning, marketing and business development, but units such as operations, human resources, finance and legal.
This KC Academy Open Innovation for Leaders training course is suitable to a wide range of professionals but will greatly benefit:
- General Managers and Executives responsible for leading innovation & change
- Project Managers
- Business Development Managers
- Business Unit Leaders and Commercial Managers
- Marketing Managers (Product and Service Managers)
- Relationship, Partnership and Contract Managers
DAILY AGENDA
Day 1: Marketing Strategy
- Introduction
- VUCA challenge 2020’s: Volatile, Uncertain, Chaotic and Ambiguous
- Organisational changes, cultural challenges & technology rules
- Strategic awareness: Sensing and responding
- Environmental scanning: The classic tools of strategic conversation
- Context and perspective: Tuning in your radar.
Day 2: Innovation Management
- The need for innovation and change – global, local, personal
- Innovation theories and plans
- Understanding innovation horizons
- Understanding the red and blue oceans
- Business canvas part 1: Challenging the business model
Day 3: Partnership Management
- Principles of adaptive leadership – Managing internal and external relations
- Open innovation – Industries & loose connections to networks & alliances
- Relationship objectives: From scanning to prospecting
- Relationship development: From cold contact to simple steps
- Relationship management: Measuring valuable relationships
- Relationship map part one: Identifying value and opportunity
Day 4: Creativity and Risk
- Creative culture – Connecting and collaboration
- Creative culture – Conflict and change
- Design thinking – Discovery, testing, learning and agile methods
- Risk and creativity – Failing quickly and encouraging experiments
- Open innovation – Your organisational thinking
Day 5: Practical Steps
- Open innovation – Your opportunities and challenges
- Business canvas part two: Changing the business model
- Relationship map part two: SWOT and TOWS
- Leading positive change – Stop, start and keep
- Final discussion
Certificate
- On successful completion of this training course, KC Academy Certificate will be awarded to the delegates.