It isn't a catchphrase; innovation truly reigns at the University of Cincinnati's 1819 Innovation Hub.
Kao, one of the country's top providers of beauty and personal care products, recently discovered how the thought leaders in the building drive novel ideas at a pioneering Learning Lab session.
This summer, one of Kao's teams traveled to 1819 to reimagine the company's relationship with third-party manufacturers. The team came with plenty of questions and left with increased confidence, a firm grasp on how to move forward and actionable steps to achieve better outcomes.
As with nearly all companies in the health, wellness and beauty space, Kao turns to outside businesses to produce certain aspects of its goods. The company boasts healthy relationships with its external partners but has also identified potential sources of improvement.
Kao came to the Learning Lab in search of actionable steps for boosting these communication channels. Tucked inside the 1819 Innovation Hub at the heart of the Cincinnati Innovation District, the Learning Lab helps entrepreneurs and established businesses identify potential challenges and brainstorm strategies and solutions to them.
"At the Learning Lab, we design experiences that help teams see their work in new ways," says Nicholas Partridge, who serves as the Learning Lab's director. "What stood out about Kao was how quickly they embraced the process - mapping, stress testing and reimagining their approach with energy and honesty. That spirit of experimentation is exactly what drives lasting innovation."
The Learning Lab team designed an innovative and interactive workshop to clarify and improve Kao's typical communication strategy for external relationships. The session began with poster boards where Kao employees wrote out the team's current business flow and labeled the spots where they're involved.
Next, each coworker mentioned what role they play in the spots they marked on the poster boards, with people speaking in order of the current process. Whenever there was confusion about a step, the team paused and pursued clarity regarding the situation.
Kao's workshop showed this mindset in action: by mapping processes, spotting gaps together and testing disruptions, the team built stronger communication flows and practical tools to handle uncertainty in daily work.
Kao could've called it a day after plotting out these improvements, but Partridge and fellow Learning Lab guide Kurt Myers had more planned. The session's second half moved past Kao's current processes to start envisioning an overhauled and improved future for the team.
How did Kao and the Learning Lab make this happen? The exercise consisted of five steps:
- Role-playing: Kao's team members took positions along the poster boards, with each person heading to a spot they identified earlier as one of their current roles.
- Baton passing: Partridge handed a baton to the Kao employee who currently launches external partner communications. They were told to describe their role in the process before handing the baton off to the next person in line, and the exercise would continue until the hypothetical business process was over.
- Curveballs: At certain points, Partridge and Myers threw out curveballs - moments when something in the business flow would go awry. At those points, team members had to discuss who the baton should be handed off to and how to continue moving forward.
- Talking it out: Curveballs weren't the only moments when employees paused the scenario to chat with each other. Throughout the exercise, Kao teammates would stop, strategize and ask clarifying questions about why specific processes ran how they did.
- Future-planning: An extraordinarily valuable part of the session came last as employees spoke of key takeaways and why specific communication breakdowns occurred.
For many on Kao's team, the future-planning stage was critical. Based on in-session feedback, individuals called out potential business risks, added formerly missing steps to the process, spoke through shifting timelines and drafted plans to resolve current communication barriers.
After a lively final discussion the team left, energized by its discussions and ready to improve an essential team function. With that, the Learning Lab finished up bringing additional innovation, business efficiency and Bearcat expertise to a valuable and forward-thinking 1819 partner.
Featured image at top: Kao team kicking off its Learning Lab session. Photo/Rebecca Rudolph
