The 2019 Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival is taking the traditional sprint approach to problem-solving to a whole new level.
For the first time this year the water company is offering festival-goers the opportunity to take part in a series of ‘daily dash’ events that are running across the week.
The dashes are one day mini-sprints that will give festival-goers the experience of a fast-paced design sprint but in a day.
They’ll follow the same process and steps as the other 11 sprints but instead of being ran over the course of the week, they’ll be ran over the course of eight hours.
Eight daily dashes will be taking place across the week between Monday to Thursday and they are:
– Myndr Over Matter – The Challenge of Mental Wellness
– Sensor Futures with ADD Strategy
– Brilliant plans for brilliant parks and amazing allotments with Newcastle Parks and Allotments Trust
– Security Dash with Northern Gas Network
– Wiping out Sewer Flooding by tackling customer behaviour
– Customer Delights with CKDelta
– Water Well Being with Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals
– Delivering the promise of IOT with ENZEN
Described as being fast, furious and lots of fun, the eight mini sprints will explore eight different issues and look for outputs and solutions to eight real world problems and issues.
The man responsible for keeping these all on track and marshalling these unique sprints is Northumbrian Water’s Innovation guru and facilitator, Eddie Wrigley. He said:
“This is first time we’ve ever done these dash style sprints, so it’s really exciting and another first for the 2019 event.
“We’re working with a brilliant and diverse range of partners which includes small companies and community organisations as well as some big names such as the NHS and Northern Gas Networks.
“We’ll be tackling some really big issues here and the key will be keeping the sprints focused on the problems they’re looking to solve and sticking to the sprint format to produce results in a short period of time.
“I’m expecting them to be intense, hard work and exhausting but I think this exciting and new approach we’re adopting here will lead to some amazing results. I’m really looking forward to it”.
The daily dashes will run Monday 8 July to Thursday 11 July of festival week and will then feedback outcomes on the Friday at the showcase event.
For more information on the dashes, visit the Innovation Festival website https://innovationfestival.org/dailydash