Welcome to the West of England Academy’s facilitator’s guide to the innovation journey.
Our facilitator’s guide is essentially a pack of resources to help you facilitate improvement and innovation sessions with your teams.
They include:
- a slide deck for you to use with your team,
- a session plan with a guide on timings, online platforms and the technical support needed to facilitate the activities virtually (or face to face), as well
- a video talking you through each suggested innovation or improvement tool and how to facilitate its use with your teams.
We’re using our innovation spiral (pictured below) to take you on this journey. Read more about the innovation journey here.
Let’s begin…
Invention:

Step one: Opportunities and challenges: Understanding the challenge
Process mapping
Process Mapping is a tool used to develop a ‘map’ of a process within a system. It will help you to map the whole patient journey or related processes with a range of people who represent the different roles involved.
You can find out more about process mapping here.
To aid your facilitation of process mapping in a team meeting, download our:
- 60-minute process mapping session plan which includes timings and suggested tech and resources to aid collaboration
- fully customisable PowerPoint process mapping slide deck: you can use the slides to share your screen during a virtual call or present face to face.
Step two: Generating ideas: Creating change ideas
SUN and RAIN
Greenhousing is a well known concept to support idea generation. The SUN and RAIN model, developed by the authors of Sticky Wisdom, is a helpful guide to conversations inside the ‘greenhouse’ to nurture and grow ideas. Greenhousing ideas will help you to explore ideas for testing and further development.
Click here to find out more about greenhousing.
Watch our video where Kate Phillips, Senior Project Manager, explains how to facilitate a SUN and RAIN session with your team:
To aid your facilitation of SUN and RAIN in a team meeting, download our:
- 60-minute SUN and RAIN session plan which includes timings and suggested tech and resources to aid collaboration
- fully customisable SUN and RAIN PowerPoint slide deck: you can use the slides to share your screen during a virtual call or present face to face.
We’ll be adding further steps in the innovation journey soon, so be sure to check back.
In the meantime, please explore the other resources, events and training our Academy has to offer: