Will Woodward founded Deliberate Innovation in 2006 with the mission of engaging people and organisations to have more ideas, better ideas and take action to deliver value from their thinking, by working together.
“With a background in project outcome management, customer experience and business analysis I realise how necessary it is for people to have tools to apply when dealing with problems which just can’t be solved from thinking within the conventional wisdom. The risks of missing golden opportunities because of the false constraints based on ‘how we’ve always done it’ are too great!
While at Egg, the UK’s first Internet bank which I joined at launch in 1998 I had the opportunity to take on an investigation into what was needed to ensure that the organisations capability for innovative thinking was optimised. The project that resulted quickly became a full time role facilitating, coaching, creating and delivering workshops for people across the organisation and applied to everything from strategy with the exec to complex processing and technology issues.
Now I have the privilege of contributing to the goals of a huge variety of organisations in wildly differing sectors from financial services, manufacturing and logistics to education and charities. They all have one thing in common – they have realised a need to support and develop creativity in their people to get innovative solutions.” Will Woodward
Based in the East Midlands city of Derby, and working throughout the UK, Deliberate Innovation has a network of trusted colleagues and partners in fields as diverse as education, multimedia production, events management, software development, theatre and hospitality to name a few.
Deliberate Innovation is UK company number 06135352 VAT 923 6852 09
OTHERS SAY
“Will has an in-built passion for innovation. He specialises in getting lightbulbs to go off with people from many different backgrounds, who would usually claim ‘they’re not very good at this innovation stuff’. You not only get a great professional with Will, but you get someone who has a genuine passion for the subject and so will take a personal interest in you, as the customer, getting the great results you want.” - – Jenni Rodgers nee McMillan
“We hired Will to help our e-commerce team break out of the mould that you get as a life and pensions company – we needed innovation to come bottom up and hired Will to help us with that. In short great job and we are now seeing the results in our people and their ideas.” - - Gary Price
“Brilliant to work with – his group and creative facilitation helped make difficult, dull and disengaged projects into fun, new and exciting ones, leading to much better results and an engaged and interested team.” Su Ling Peck
“Provided a valuable service for myself and colleagues by unlocking and developing our ‘creative’ strengths. Will has done this on more than one occasion and in many different ways.” - - Ben Egglestone
“Will has great presence and a variety of fantastic ways of connecting people with their ‘creative’ spirit. Everyone can benefit from Will’s approach to innovation.” - - Paul Wilde
“Will has an almost magical ability to bring out the creative side of anyone he meets. His agile approach to solving problems resulted in precisely the right amount of innovation for our team, which was hosting a client event. Will applied a blend of innovation, personal coaching and management of group dynamics, gave the event precisely the right mood and delivered the extra dimension of know-how that could only result in success.” - - Roger Williams
“I had the great good fortune to attract Will’s services for a day – training a cross-functional team in the benefits of directed thinking. To say that the day produced tangible results would not do it justice; we gained so much more in terms of thought processes, bonding and self-confidence that I have no reservations whatever in recommending Will. Anyone taking his services will reap benefits that they do not originally envisage due to his personal style, his meticulous preparation and his flawless execution.” - - David Boyle
“I learnt tools and techniques to change my thinking, to look at things different, to question why we hadn’t done this or that before and to remove barriers that had at times hindered the delivery and success of the project and objectives I was working towards. I went on to facilitate two workshops with a new found way to think and most of all a way to encourage other people to change their way of thinking and challenge themselves. My new role within Citi as the Cards Product Development Manager is now made a hundred times more interesting because of what have learnt from Will.” - - Sarah Shephard
“Will brings life to everything he does and is able to encourage others to share his vision and passion. Great guy” - - Charlie Hampson
The creative sessions have enabled me to explore options that would otherwise have been discounted on one person’s view, and enabled new ideas and thoughts to be explored from those attendees who are not close to the problem in hand and are not bogged down in the detail of the problem. They have also enabled more active involvement by team members in their contributions toward ideas where previously they would have been stifled by a dominating decision maker. - - Lynne (Senior Business Project Manager)
To quote a famous bank’s ad campaign ‘there is another way’ when faced with an issue. I now have some sure fire ways of knowing that I and whoever I’m working with will be able to come up with some new and innovative ways of solving problems and have dispelled the myth that to be creative you have to dress in a wacky way, sit in a swanky building and work for an ad agency! - – Andrea (Organisational Capability Manager)
Rather than fall back on a rather jaded approach to “brainstorming”, collecting a myriad of ideas with no development as little more than a “justification” for progressing the original idea, techniques learned on the creative problem solving course have allowed me to produce a number of better developed ideas. The training session has equipped me with an easily used “set-up” dialogue, which I can get through in 2 or 3 minutes, even with people who have never experienced this before, and a means of capturing in easily-remembered pictorial form ideas which can move us forward. - - Iain (Technology Infrastructure Manager)
A great way of getting a group of people into the same place in terms of the way they are thinking. Many meetings prove unproductive and time consuming because people are in different mind sets and have their own agendas when listening to a conversation, especially an idea e.g. “that will never work”, “we don’t have the right processes” I hate that idea”.
I continually use this in all of my interactions and I believe it has dramatically improved the way I relate to meetings and conversations. I would encourage anyone to experience the workshop and to use it’s principals. – - Patrick (Head of Customer Marketing)
To open doors (opportunities, idea’s etc)… having groups thinking about thinking just aren’t enough! Unless you find a way to make your minds work together….. Now I know the key! - - Joseph (Solutions Design Analyst)
Apart from the obvious benefits of creative idea generation etc, some additional benefits to me are: Seeing a different/fun/non confrontational way of getting people onboard/managing people in difficult meetings and bringing some energy into the day to day meetings. I know in the future it will also be useful when looking at designing qualitative research. – - Su Ling (Head of Customer Insight)
The creative tool kit I now have has helped immensely with real issues we are facing in the business now. The [project name] is a great example of how they are helping to shape the future based not on one persons input as would have happened before, but from 20 or 30 people who have been engaged in the process so far. The initial feedback is that not only are we getting some great ideas that I would assert would not have been arrived at without this creative tool to help create the right environment. We also have some great feedback around how engaged people are in the process due to their involvement and input. One other great news story is [project name], the process directly drove out the creative solutions that are in place or being worked on. - - Sam (Head of Operational Training)
I am now an advocate of creative sessions. Not only do they deliver what is expected in provision of mental space, thinking time and generation of ideas. They are also expertly facilitated to accommodate team building, problem sharing and energy focused on idea implementation and realization of the end goal. - - Pete (Head of Locations and Infrastructure)
