Building an Innovative Culture through training

Building a more innovative and creative business culture used to be about table tennis tables and free beer. Now it starts with capability. Team training in human-centred innovation and design thinking builds the shared skills and confidence that turn creativity from a buzzword into everyday practice.

For years, corporate culture has rewarded efficiency, predictability and control which is fine in stable markets. It doesn’t work so well in fast-moving, tech-enabled environments where customer expectations shift quickly and new competitors appear overnight. Businesses have realised they need more creativity, but most were never structured to support it. Telling people to “be innovative” without giving them a method rarely changes behaviour.

That’s where team training makes a difference. It creates a shared language around customer insight, problem framing and experimentation. When teams learn how to properly explore needs, challenge assumptions and test ideas early, innovation becomes structured rather than chaotic. Creativity moves from being personality-driven to skill-driven, which makes it scalable.

Design thinking also improves the quality of decision-making. Instead of rushing to implement solutions, teams learn to define problems more clearly and consider the broader system. Better framing leads to better outcomes. Small prototypes and low-risk experiments reduce the fear of getting it wrong, helping to build psychological safety over time.

Perhaps most importantly, capability stays inside the organisation. Non-design teams gain the tools to run discovery, generate ideas and evaluate opportunities themselves. Innovation stops being an external intervention and becomes part of how work gets done.

A culture of innovation needs to start top down from the executive leadership team encouraging teams to experiment and explore big ideas. It means collaboration where employees can bounce ideas off one another and share what they’ve been working on.

The result isn’t just more ideas. It’s momentum. Conversations become sharper, collaboration improves and strategy feels tangible. Over time, that builds something far more valuable than a one-off initiative: a culture that knows how to adapt and evolve.

EXP’s team-based courses in Human-Centred Innovation and Design Thinking are practical, applied and grounded in real business challenges. They are designed to bring teams together working on real problems in an engaging and hands on way. By default they often break down silo’s, raise morale and improve the employee experience by giving people space to think, contribute and shape the future of the organisation.

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