This is a brief overview of the lessons learned in the first year of Bromford Lab. It includes our successes, our costs and our improvement targets for next year.

1. 12 months of failure
Our lessons from year one of Bromford Lab

2. Bromford Lab was one year old on
28th May
We’ve been working pretty much in public and sharing
openly
But we wanted to take stock at this important milestone
What’s worked?
What’s not?
And how much does this all cost?

3. The Lab is founded on four principles
Failure as well as success
Impact - not just creativity
More testing better piloting
Transparency and open innovation

4. “Our number one objective
was to create an environment
where failure was not just
accepted , but encouraged”
Innovation Coach
Paul Taylor

5. Impact this year: We believe we’ve begun
to build a culture that promotes failure
67% of concepts failed to complete the Lab
Pipeline
The main reasons were feasibility, new
direction being identified or loss of
enthusiasm

6. We received 77 unique ideas in our first 10 months
20 ideas have been successful
14 ideas have been matched to other pieces of work

7. We’ve learned that it’s not
possible to process all ideas
immediately
We’ve had to create the
organisational capacity to
explore certain ideas and we’ve
founded squad working
7 ideas are shelved until we can
explore them
19 are ongoing

8. Example: Our work around an “older persons service offer” was sent to the
Innovation Graveyard
We realised we were in danger of grouping older people [a segment we couldn't
even define] into one homogenous group.

9. Impact: In total we’ve stopped 31 things that could
have transformed into ‘zombie projects’
We believe this is our true value. Preventing
pointless or ill-defined projects infecting the
organisation.
It’s not all about creativity..

10. “Innovation and creativity are not the same thing.
Innovation is about discovering a problem, seizing an
opportunity and making an impact.
No impact = no innovation.”
Lab Manager
Vicky Green

11. Our biggest single impact this year is that
we have created a process for the
nurturing of creativity within Bromford.
Working with our Project and Insight teams
we have articulated a clear path – from
problem definition – to testing – to piloting –
to evaluation.
Every idea has to travel through this to
prove its impact.

12. Not that we can’t have fun
We believe we’ve created the right mix of excitability, evaluation, sexiness
and science. All our ideas face rigorous testing

13. Our number one
objective was to create
an environment where
failure was not just
accepted , but
encouraged.
Innovation Coach
Paul Taylor
“Prove it”
Tom Hartland , Lab Designer, on testing

14. Our tests have
dedicated measures
are typically small
scale and low risk
ventures…
they seek to either
prove the concept,
test assumptions or
evaluate
how successful a
solution is
If something was
going to fail, tests are
our way of finding out
quickly and cheaply

15. Improvement Point: We need to get
much faster at testing. We need to test
more , pilot less
We’ve identified problems in the time
spent in the Lab pipeline and a difficulty
in getting to test stage
The creation of Bromford Squads
means this should be resolved

16. Once a test is passed it might
progress into a pilot.
They typically last longer and
require more resources
A pilot needs internal approval
and bespoke measures
designed by the Insight team
A pilot always has an end date
for evaluation. You can see the
current pilots on the Lab Trello
board

17. “Everything we work on is open to the
public. We don’t differentiate between
internal and external. We know the power
that lies in the network. Increasingly, we
must harness that.”
Lab Connector
Amy Morgan

18. Success: We launched a new website. We gained 1500 Twitter followers.
We’ve been praised for our openness
Failure: We’ve received criticism about our internal communication. We’ve
not made enough use of Lab Testers

19. Transparent
on Costs
We spent
£187,954
£184,725 of this
was on salaries
The rest was running expenses with the most significant spend being £2,448 on
tech such as XBOX, 3D printer, Google Glass

20. Our Targets for Next Year
We need to get better at failing so 75%
of our concepts won’t make it through
the pipeline
We need to keep a better audit of our
impact so we’ll produce a twice a year
summary of the products/services that
wouldn’t have existed without a Lab
We need better evidence of the
impact of our network so we’ll
produce a twice a year summary of the
innovation sourced from outside
Bromford

21. Our Targets for Next Year
We need to get faster at progressing
concepts through our pipeline so 70%
will be completed within 12 weeks
We need to improve internal and
external communication – so outcomes
of 100% of Lab sessions will be shared.
A separate comms plan will be
produced in June
We want to test a Lab Partnership for
likeminded organisations. We are
aiming for five partners by March 2016

22. We’ve had an imperfect start
Here’s to an imperfect future
@bromfordlab
www.bromfordlab.com