innovative action

The innovate change and Curative innovative action model leads to creative and effective action and truly inspirational social change. The seven stage process is illustrated in the diagram above and described below.

1. Questioning

What is the challenge we'll be solving together? Whatever it is, we'll help you to define it. Getting clear on the challenge and clearly defining it is a critical initial step that will provide the necessary focus for the stages that follow.

2. Understanding

This stage is all about exploring what we know about the challenge:

• Who is affected?
• Who are the stakeholders?
• What information do we have and what does it tell us?

This stage requires careful analysis of information and conversations with people affected by the challenge (including service users and service providers), to help define what the key outcomes of the service, programme, communication or policy should be. Once this stage is completed we should be able to identify the social change that we are trying to create – when we are done what will the situation be like, and for who?

3. Design

This stage is all about creative thinking to generate ideas (methods, service models, ideas, activities, tactics, et cetera) that could be used to achieve the desired outcome(s). This stage includes our innovation injection session; a critical step for new and more effective solutions to social problems. We'll involve the best-in-field from your organisation or sector combined with creative provocatNZDs, from outside of the sector to help broaden and diversify our thinking. You bring the expertise; they bring a fresh perspective. This is where innovation is born.

4. Refining

We facilitate a process to discuss, assess and analyze the ideas. We use tools that will help to prioritize and choose the best ideas that have the highest likelihood of having impact on our agreed outcomes. The best ideas are then turned into a plan that includes ways to evaluate impact. Our plans are designed to ensure everyone is really clear what the challenge is, what outcome(s) we're trying to achieve, what we're doing about it, and what success will look like.

5. Trying

Once our plan is outlined, it's then time to get going – often starting with a pilot of the programme, policy or service. This can be challenging and may involve change for staff, external stakeholders and service users. This can require some careful communication to manage the process of change as smoothly as possible.

6. Reviewing

Throughout our pilot period we should be regularly reviewing the progress against the outcome(s) we set out to make an impact against.

• Have we achieved what we said we would?
• Are we on the way to reaching our outcomes?
• Are we seeing signs of change with the people we work with?

At these points, we may refine or make changes to our programme, policy or service and try again. We can repeat the trying and reviewing stages a number of times, until we are achieving the desired results.

7. Sustaining

When we feel confident we have developed an effective service, policy or programme, tried it and understood its impact, it's important to make sure it is sustainable. This stage is not just about ensuring there is enough funding - more importantly it is about making sure systems are in place for the service or programme to be effectively managed. This includes making sure regular review opportunities are used to further develop and iterate the programme, policy or service. This stage is also about sharing the story. How do we communicate success? And if we think our idea is having great social impact, this stage should also be about sharing or growing the service or programme.