Innovation Labs

After having a proper night sleep not thinking about new ideas and pitches I have had time to reflect on the whole experience.

I (and the other team members) found the labs to be a very valuable experience even though our idea was not taken forward. Most of the people on our team are technical developers and although we do get to talk to clients we never do any pitching or developing of our own ideas. To be given the chance to get away from the office to develop and pitch our ideas was a great learning experience.

Personally I feel I have grown more confidence when speaking publicly and have learnt some useful principles to use if I ever need to pitch again.

In terms of advice to other teams I think ShareView below has summed up very nicely. If I were to add to the advice I would say that you should take full advantage of the mentors whenever you can. The most useful question I kept asking to them was “what are the main weaknesses of our project/ideas”. If you ask this after you explain your idea or do a pitch you can strengthen your projects. Often you will find that you did not articulate your project well enough to the mentors and you need to amend your pitch.

many thanks to Frank and the BBC, Ben Aldred