For the last five years I’ve been responsible for delivering our innovation week, B-Innovative, at Burges Salmon (independent UK law firm). A firmwide event, it shines a spotlight on innovation, and aims to encourage everyone to explore and be inspired by the latest technology and novel approaches to innovative service delivery.
Organising an innovation event can be an exciting way to showcase your team’s work, generate new ideas and engage people across the business, but where to start if you are looking to do something similar – having run the event for a while I have learnt a lot along the way, so thought I would share 10 top tips:
Think about your objectives: it’s important to consider what you hope to achieve from the event. Are you looking to increase awareness generally, or about a particular initiative or technology? Generate new ideas? Raise the profile of your team? Is it more of a hackathon focussed on a particular problem or technology? Defining your objective will help to shape the event.
Collaboration: running an event can be lot of work even if you try to keep it “slim”, so collaboration is key. Consider partnering with another team (our event is run in collaboration with our Learning Technology team), or drawing on skills within your business. Can you find some (hopefully!) willing volunteers to help, perhaps there is an internal group whose resources you can pull on? We have a Technology Ambassadors Group who help to champion the week and are core part of our communication channels.
Budget: have you got one?! If you are fortunate to have a decent budget then there are some great keynote speakers and organisations who can run some hands on workshops etc. If you don’t have much of a budget then think about what you can do yourself, with your team and leveraging the skills of others in your business. Can you collaborate with a supplier, or reach out internally to those who are passionate about innovation/tech to see if their networks can help.
Communicate, communicate, communicate: people are busy and with so much distraction and noise these days, unless the event is compulsory, key to success will be a communications plan to ensure you get engagement. Think creatively about what channels and avenues you can use, what suits your organisation best – you can never do enough!
Branding: creating a brand or theme can help to generate excitement and engagement. Consider a name or theme that aligns with your objectives and resonates with your audience.
Planning: planning and preparation can never start too early! The earlier you have fixed your objective and theme, then you can start to shape and plan the event. Whilst you should plan for eventualities (covid was certainly an interesting one), and test any technology or event platforms you intend to use, inevitably there will be some curve balls – I still vividly remember crawling under desks helping to set up multiple laptops with 1 minute to go for one session!
Ensure inclusivity: We work hard to ensure everyone has an opportunity to engage in the event, wherever located (at home or working from any of our offices). Look to offer sessions on a variety of days, times and with differing durations, and identify topics which appeal to both lawyers and other professionals. Think about delivering content which suits a variety of learning styles e.g. on demand recorded material, inter-active learning material, live talks and hands-on workshops.
Feedback/lessons learned: each year we ask for feedback from attendees and use that feedback, together with a lessons learned log, to identify what worked well and what could be improved, ultimately so we can continuously improve future events.
Appreciation: a successful event is rarely the result of one person’s effort, so it’s important to acknowledge the contributions of everyone involved. Take the time to thank all those who contributed, however big or small.
Enjoy the event: Remember, have fun and enjoy the output of your hard work!
I hope these tips have been useful and if you are organising your own event, then I wish you the best of luck for success.
Emma Sorrell
Innovation Manager at UK law firm Burges Salmon
