Some weeks settle into a rhythm, but not this one. When I look back over the last few days, I count four things I would struggle to fit under a single heading. I was one of the judges on our inaugural BNU Launchpad pitches, I presented an award at the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Business Awards, I sat with colleagues through our OFSTED inspection framework training, and I finished at a graduation ceremony, watching a cohort of students collect their certificates. It was certainly varied!
These might seem like four unrelated activities; a judging panel here, a black-tie evening there, a training session, a celebration. But two things connect them all: innovation, and celebration. Not innovation as it features in strategy documents, but the working kind I can watch happening in a room. And alongside it simply stopping to notice the good things. I don’t do that often enough. I suspect none of us do.
The Launchpad pitches gave me the clearest example of the first. I watched people stand up and put an idea forward, knowing it might not land, and I remembered how nerve wracking that is. What impressed me was not the polish of the strongest pitches, it was that everyone was willing to try. That is where innovation actually starts, not with the finished product but with the decision to risk a half-formed one. And there was also something celebratory in the fact that we had built an occasion to take their ideas seriously.
