DISCOVER YOUR INNOVATION STRENGTHS
Discover your innovation strengths and build
agile teams and organisations.
The Six ‘I’s® is a comprehensive, integrated methodology that combines design thinking with organisational and team development.
Owned by The Entheo Network, and created by innovation specialist Natalie Turner, The Six ‘I’s® offers a human-centred approach to innovation, blending design thinking with organisational development, and a unique proprietary innovation strengths profile for individuals and teams. Its purpose is to give individuals and organisations a consistent framework for measuring innovation skills and capabilities, and an actionable process for developing an innovative and productive working culture.
Statistically reliable, The Six ‘I’s® Profiling Tools were developed in partnership with industry experts and leading thinkers from the areas of innovation and organisational development and have been used in a variety of organisations across the world including the Singapore Government, Cisco Systems, LEO Pharma Asia, GSK and Danone.
The Six ‘I’s®, a People and Purpose centred approach to creating impact from new ideas.
Break through ideas that help achieve commercial objectives
Innovation processes and culture that embed innovation as a core competence
New skills, mindsets, and capabilities to create lasting value for the organisation
PURPOSEFUL work that has a sustainable impact
Using a blend of approaches including creative and strategic facilitation, skills development, innovation assessments and consultancy, our approach is to make innovation core to the way an organisation thinks and works, not just something that is technologically driven by R&D.
Innovation efforts sometimes fail because the right skills, knowledge, culture, or processes needed to make an idea happen are not harnessed to create sustainable impact. The 6 ‘I’s® helps people and teams to understand their innovation strengths, contribute their skills and provide a clear road map to navigate and create value within times of uncertainty and change.
Discover Our Services
Need to develop stronger teams that can innovate together?
The Six 'I's® AWARENESS SESSION is a 2-hour interactive workshop/speech that provides a top-level view of the Six 'I's® of Innovation Model and strengths profile. For large groups who want to learn how they can contribute their skills to generating ideas and making ideas work.
The Six 'I's® INSIGHT to ACTION for LEADERS and TEAMS is a 4-hour facilitated workshop for teams who want to innovate more effectively together by leveraging individual and collective strengths as well as build innovation processes and culture.
The Six 'I's® in ACTION is a modularised programme for teams who want to practically solve problems and address opportunities through learning how to apply the Six 'I's® on a live innovation challenge.
The Six 'I's® Certification Programme is designed for people who want to be professionally skilled at interpreting and apply the Six 'I's® Individual and Team profiles within their organisations or with their clients.
Six 'I's® Certification & Membership Community
Learn how to apply The Six 'I's® of Innovation Tools and Methodologies to help others to innovate
Natalie Turner
Inventor of The Six ‘I’s® and Author of Yes, You Can Innovate
Natalie is the Co-Founder of The Entheo Network, the owners of The Six 'I's® brand, and inventor of The Six 'I's® of Innovation. She is the author of the Award Winning book, Yes, You Can Innovate, selected as Business Book of the month in the UK and Singapore.
As an international Keynote speaker, she has inspired audiences on the human side of innovation – the mindsets and skills we need to harness diversity - and has spoken on leadership, change, and PURPOSE at some of the top speaking engagements in the world, including TEDx Singapore, Singapore Women’s Congress, Harvard University's HPAIR, BLINK live (Mediacom), Innov8rs Bangkok, ISPIM – The International Society for Professional Innovation Management - and numerous corporate and governmental organisations.
The knowledge we gained, the tools we got introduced to and the innovation framework of the 6 ‘I’s have helped us to innovate better not only on process, organisation, or deliverables but also around change management. The team has a common language and use new tools to break through their thinking. I can highly recommend the 6 ‘I’s framework and the related workshops and trainings to enable this.
Through designing and facilitating idea generation workshops and on-going coaching and innovation consulting, The Six 'I's helped our organisation develop innovative patient-centred propositions. These have become central pillars of our corporate strategy, helping to drive a 15% uplift in sales across the region.
by creating new products and services whilst building innovation skills, processes, and capabilities.
WATCH THE VIDEOS BELOW AND DISCOVER THE Six ‘I’s®
#1 AGILE (Non-Linear) Journey
Innovation journeys are commonly represented by an assumption that innovation starts at the same place, ‘the beginning’. The Six ‘I’s® provides a trailblazing perspective on this, by representing the journey as an inter-connected whole. In reality, innovation efforts can start at any stage, cycle back into PURPOSE, cycle back out, moving backwards and forwards at any time; to eventual value creation.
#2 PURPOSE at the Centre
Many processes and models suggest jumping into a challenge (the ‘WHAT’). The Six ‘I’s® breaks the mould by starting at the heart of a challenge …with an exploration of the WHY? The Six ‘I’s® is an innovation MODEL for the 4th Industrial Revolution that encourages sustainability and PURPOSE at its core.
#3 More than just a robust PROCESS
Many innovation models focus only on the process and miss out the equally important component of building systems and policies to support innovation efforts. The two triangles that link PURPOSE to the six stages, symbolise this connection, as innovation efforts often fall apart if they don’t take into consideration culture and ways of working.
#4 PROFILING TOOLS - Leveraging
Strengths, Building Capabilities
Most innovation efforts are focused on addressing a challenge or seizing an opportunity. Sometimes, innovation efforts fail because the individual or team does not possess the requisite skillset to make an idea work. The Six ‘I’s® profiling tools allow organisations to discover individual and team collective strengths, which enable targeted interventions to leverage strengths and provide support where needed.
#5 MINDSETS for Innovation
The Six ‘I’s ® is the world’s only Model which incorporates the various mindsets required to innovate. This is a radical breakaway from the idea that a separate, singular mindset is required.
#6 FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE
Adopting The Six ‘I’s® does not require a rejection of other systems and approaches. It is a flexible architecture that seamlessly incorporates other tools, methodologies, and ways of working e.g., lean, agile, sprints, design thinking, stage gates, business model canvas, lateral thinking, pitching, and so on….
As an IDENTIFIER, my team and I questioned our own mindset towards what we were doing and uncovered an opportunity to try something new. Through applying the 6 'I's®, we grew our market share from 1% to 15%.
Visualising and imagining the future
Making sense of trends and patterns and thinking about what they might mean for opening fresh opportunities
Being forward thinking, strategic and noticing and seeing things that other people don’t
Being curious and having lots of different interests and a huge appetite for learning
Having a positive outlook on life and seeing opportunities where others see problems
Outward looking and interested in the world around them
They often seek to add new people, whom they believe will bring new thinking, to their networks.
The swirling image illustrates the mindset of Curiosity. It is open-ended, dynamic, explorative and able to generate momentum.
As with all strengths, particularly if they are overdone, there can be challenges.
As IDENTIFIERS are usually big-picture thinkers, they can often miss the detail
Future-orientated, they can lose focus on the present day
They can get easily bored if not stimulated by new things, new ideas and new ways of thinking
If intellectually driven, they can sometimes be too abstract or conceptual in how they explain things to other people.
As an IGNITER, I generate new ideas… create a team environment for others and... manage the tension between delivering what the business need today, and what it will need tomorrow.
Innovation Role – Providing novelty, freshness and energy for new ideas and a sense of new possibilities
Mindset – Creativity
The first to come up with new ideas
Good at seeking new knowledge outside their current areas of interest
Not afraid of challenging their own thinking as well as that of other people
Original thinkers
Can see connections between different and unrelated ideas
Good at creating a culture where people feel free to contribute their ideas
Skilled at motivating and inspiring others.
The swirling image illustrates the mindset of Creativity. The swirl moves backwards and forwards. It is open ended and explorative.
IGNITERS love to come up with new ideas. Lots of them. But, as with all strengths, there can be challenges:
They can become distracted with too many ideas that take them into multiple directions. This can dilute their energy and effectiveness
They can get attached to their own ideas and not think through whether they are feasible
They can enjoy jumping into action and implementation too quickly
They can generate lots of ideas and not see them through into fruition.
As an INVESTIGATOR, I listen and take the time to hear the needs of different people. The more you can do this, the more you learn to put aside your own assumptions so you can understand whether an idea will work.
Innovation Role – Providing analytical thinking and objectivity
Mindset – Critical
Systematically researching, analysing and assessing ideas
Making sure ideas are useful, not just novel
Understanding the importance of testing and validating ideas before moving into implementation
Being willing to test their thinking with customers and stakeholders
Creating a culture where exploration and questioning is encouraged
Encouraging other people to think things through carefully and systematically.
The image illustrates the mindset of Investigate, Critical. The swirls, whilst still exploratory, start to converge and be more analytical in approach.
Being analytical is one of the strengths of an INVESTIGATOR, but sometimes their strengths can backfire.
They may continually search for more validation before they are willing to make a commitment. This can lead to a new initiative getting immobilized or stuck
They can get lost in the detail and lose sight of the bigger picture; why they are innovating and the overall PURPOSE
They can be dismissive of ideas if they don’t think they are feasible, being too quick to judge something that is untried or tested.
As an INVESTOR, I am always evaluating the potential return (RoI) against the risk involved. I look critically at the key assumptions that support a given business-case, take off 50% and evaluate if it still makes sense.
Innovation Role – Providing pragmatism, decision making and influence
Mindset – Courage
Being good at taking into account complex information and being able to make decisions
Understanding whether a business model might work
Being able to keep cool and make decisions despite difficulties
Can sense where and when resources should be provided
Influencing other organisations and people to create partnerships
Having the courage to take a risk.
The image represents the mindset of Courage. Swirling inwards to make a decision to act, to move forward, to go ahead.
INVESTORS need a good combination of logical and pragmatic thinking, with a willingness to follow their hunches and take a risk. These are often difficult skills to combine. Some barriers can include:
The need to ask for information that might be hard to quantify, which can slow down decision making
Not allocating separate funds outside normal day-to-day business requirements
Having too many conflicting demands on limited resources
Failing to help others grow in their ability to influence and becoming a ‘bottle neck’ in making things happen.
As an IMPLEMENTER, I am able to break a vision down into sizeable chunks and prioritise what needs to be done, so that we can build something that will be sustainable.
Innovation Role – Providing management, focus and discipline
Mindset – Commitment
Being good at planning and organising
Making things happen
Managing risks
Motivating others to achieve results
Building alliances and partnerships
Allocating and managing resources
Building and managing strong teams.
The image represents the mindset of Commitment. The swirls start to form a shape, they converge in on themselves to direct energy into focused activity.
IMPLEMENTERS like to get things done, and tend to be practical and focused, and action orientated but they can:
Sometimes jump into action too quickly
Not allow time for investigating the feasibility of an idea
Lose sight of the innovative aspect of what they are trying to achieve
Get caught up in operational issues and lose sight of the bigger picture.
I am an IMPROVER. I work well with what already exists rather than coming up with new ideas. Improving on what exists can create more value quickly.
Innovation Role – Providing fresh perspectives, the ability to optimise and learn
Mindset – Clever
Being good at generating many ways to make an idea better
Being open to gathering feedback from customers, people, or stakeholders
Reviewing and assessing what has worked and why or why not?
Capturing learning
Learning from failure
Scaling an idea into other areas of opportunity.
The image represents the mindset of being Clever. The swirl starts to open up on itself again to start seeking and exploring how it can do something better.
As IMPROVERS largely work with what is, rather than what could exist, they may:
Find it difficult to imagine completely new possibilities, and may need the support of an IGNITER
Rely on continuous improvement
Miss opportunities for more radical ideas
Be fearful of moving too far away from the knowledge of what they think will work
Discover your innovation strengths and build
agile teams and organisations.
The Entheo Network was founded by Natalie Turner and Carl Hinds in 2006. It is the owner of a number of brands including The Six ‘I’s® Innovation (2009), Women who Lead (2013), Yes, You Can Innovate (2018), Music for the Soul (2020) and Natalie and Carl's respective personal brands.
© Copyright . All rights reserved The Six 'I's® From 2009-
The 6 'I's® is a brand of The Entheo Network. Registered Address 75, High Street, Singapore, 179435. Company No: 201016398E