Less than a week to go

I spent some considerable time teasing out the problem I am going to take to my Innovator Academy. I thought I had really mulled it over and was delighted with the final statement. I am not going to share it with you now and here is why.

We have been challenged with falling in love with our statement. They are now called an HMW or How Might We statements. This is a really great way to phrase your problem. However, all the tasks we have done have encouraged us to consider our HMW from a whole range of angles and approaches. Teasing out all the atomic elements of the statement so we fully understand what it is we are focusing on. I am anticipating that over the three days of the academy in London next week, I will look again and again at this same statement and I am not certain that the HMW at the end of Friday will look anything like the HMW I started with on the Wednesday morning. That is why I am not sharing it now.

Then there are the thinking processes. I have memorised my HMW so I can play around with it in my head wherever I am. This permanent pondering is becoming obsessive but really makes you think about each of the elements that go to make my HMW. We have been taken through a design thinking process to seat our work firmly within a critical framework and that has been helpful. It is like making bread. You add all your ingredients and leave it to rise so it grows and forms into that recognisable shape that will become a loaf once the final stage is complete but you are then asked to knock it back and let it rise again. The result is often a larger better loaf but it sometimes feels like that one extra step you don't want to take.  We are being asked to knock back our HMW several times.

"Knowledge is created through the transformation of experience" (Kolb)

We are being taken through this model expertly by the lightest of touches from the mentors and leaders. Cleverly managing their interventions so we rely on other cohort members as much as the tutors. The other cohort members have been so generous and supportive throughout the process.  We have grown into the class of LON19 really easily and I already feel I know many of them really well even though I have met only a tiny number of them. A great big thank you to the whole team who lead us through this process.

Finally, it has not started yet! Blimey! I expect next week will be a whirlwind. The days are long and full and there will be many challenges but I can't wait. I will try and write my next instalment on the train on the way home on Friday evening, although I might just sleep!