Activating Innovation Champions

Activating Innovation Champions is a six-week extension program focused on equipping city staff with the skills in adaptation, facilitation, and coaching to bring the Path to Innovation process to new challenges in City Hall. Through this ‘Train the Trainer’ model, cities receive coach mentorship and a cross-cohort peer community to scope and launch two new innovation projects in the city.

AIC recognizes that senior leadership, middle management, and front-line municipal staff may coalesce around a shared vision for innovation, but that their “task” in building and sustaining this vision is distinct. Oftentimes, front-line staff are responsible for the “bottom-up” design work (speaking with residents, sharing skills with peers, or executing new ideas) while senior leadership is positioned to create the structural conditions for innovation teams and projects to thrive at all levels of City Hall. As such, AIC additionally provides one-to-one coaching for select senior leaders and inspirational Master Classes on ‘Leading Public Innovation’ for a broader swath of leadership.