2016 has been very kind. We played around with the design of our Innovation Forums and saw tremendous results!  We have pieced the entire year together in this infographic below.

BRAC Social Innovation Lab organises Innovation Forums every month that provides a space for innovation discourse, idea brainstorming and knowledge sharing.

Back in 2011 when we started, the challenge was to bring people out of their cubicles to sit together for learning new concepts that often don’t seem relevant at the first sight.

One forum after another, we tried new things, we jotted down what our audience needed, we spied on their behavior to see what convinced them more, we sent emails that were hard to ignore, we created evidences that the idea of having such forums is necessary and placed them in front of our fellow colleagues.

It worked.

People now arrive early in our forums, because we have committed to start on time and we did. Of course initially we had to offer bonus presentations for those who would come on time.

People now look for those colourful sticky notes and  white board markers, because they no longer want to sit back and listen but be an active part.

This year we tested new formats, we hosted forums that were not open for all, at times designed for specific audience, we shared resources before and after the sessions, we asked for feedbacks, we engaged our audience to brainstorm specific issues and shared the recommendations with relevant programmes. Thanks to BRAC Facebook, we could reach even more people than we  actually thought of.

Soon we had phone calls and emails from people asking how they can attend the next forum, or host one with us.

We partnered up with external organisations, programmes and support units for most of the forums. Finally we have reached a point where we can see a clear demand from programmes to talk about their success and failures in a platform from which everyone can learn from.

We are planning some more mischievous designs for our upcoming forums.

You can ofcourse co-host Innovation Forums with us. If you have an exciting pilot going on, or a failure that is worth glorifying, or something new and fresh that you think is relevant for the BRAC audience, you can simply write to us at innovation@brac.net.

Stay tuned.

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Masrura Oishi

Masrura Oishi is an over-thinker and procaffeinator. In her free time, she pretends to be a philosopher and does some development work for BRAC Social Innovation Lab. She invests her insulin pumped energy into reading, writing, traveling and living!