Innovation: it's never too late (or too early)

What happens if you ask a group of 12-year-olds to design a children’s toothbrush? Micha Verhagen, an alumnus of London Business School’s Executive MBA programme, knows the answer. That’s because he has firsthand experience of asking youngsters to do just that.

Keen to put his 25+ years of experience helping corporations innovate to broader use, Micha has come up with the novel idea of running lean start-up workshops for schoolchildren in Switzerland. And the results have been “surprising”, he says.

“The idea came to me in 2016 when I was visiting the high school that my wife attended. I wondered how children would respond to the kind of coaching and teaching that I have been doing with businesses for the majority of my career. It was a kind of experiment.”

Armed with an adapted version of his lean start-up and business model canvas coaching materials, and a resolutely open mind, Micha organised a four-week innovation and design thinking boot camp for the youngsters. Driven largely by curiosity, he was keen to see if the innovation skills and mindsets would “stick” in this young demographic, and what the results might be.

“I used the same approach as I do with my corporate clients. So the kids had to grapple with a business case study and come up with product development and marketing strategies, as well as real-life social campaigns to get their product out there.”

The experience, he says, was “easily as enlightening” for him as it was for the schoolchildren. Most significantly there was a tolerance for risk and for failure that marked a stark contrast to his corporate clients.

Taking failure on the chin

“With innovation, ideas get killed off usually from within when you’re working with large corporations. People who have been working at a senior level within an organisation tend to become risk averse over time, so when you’re trying to start-up inside the business or try something totally new, you usually encounter plenty of obstacles. With the kids this didn’t happen.”

“Not only were the schoolchildren more willing to accept failure and take on risks, they were pleased with themselves in trying something different. Where adults are hesitant and take longer to reach decisions, the kids were happy just trying things and were much faster in getting their ideas out there.”

Micha’s experiment has had repercussions for his professional life. Beyond the pleasure of contributing something of his expertise to his local community, the experience has given him greater insight into how to embed learning and help develop habits that endure beyond a period of teaching or coaching.