The core of any innovation team is the team. How the team works together, which knowledge and motivation are represented, determines the success and direction of the team.

Work with clear roles and responsibilities

Why is this important

In a team that is in an environment that changes a lot, different things are regularly asked of the team members. Growth and experience increase the need for certain roles and roles disappear again. 

By clearly defining these roles, it is clear who is responsible for what. In addition, it has the advantage that you can also hold each other accountable for the role instead of the individual.

How do we do that?

• Define the roles by result and not by actions to be performed. In this way, the freedom remains with the individual to determine the way to the result
• The person responsible for the role is not necessarily the person who performs all tasks, but the person who monitors the overview and is accountable.
• A person can have multiple roles within a team
• Roles can be exchanged between people as needed.

Work in multidisciplinary team (s)

Why is this important

It ensures that the responsibilities for the result are assigned to the team. In addition, innovation in government involves a diversity of challenges and opportunities. Different perspectives and personalities help to make better decisions. 

How do we do that?

• A mix of knowledge, skills and backgrounds is available within the core team. Including IT, Design Thinking, communication.
• In an experiment, missing disciplines are brought in from outside the team (government or external)

Mix internally and externally to keep challenging yourself

Why is this important

Routines and assumptions are also created within an innovation team. By always making external parties part of the team, the team continues to be confronted with the question 'why are you doing this like this'?

How do we do that?

• The Novum team consists of a fixed number of internal and external people
• Rotate external parties (max 1 to 1.5 years)
• External parties are a fully-fledged part of the team with just as much space to take initiative
• Outside this core, professionals are deployed based on need

Work with objectives on the portfolio and the system

Why is this important

As an innovation team within the government you have to deal with innovations in various areas. The results of actual innovations are important as well as influencing the environment to share knowledge and methodologies. By setting goals at both levels, you ensure that you can include your environment, but can always continue to achieve concrete results.

How do we do that?

• We have a portfolio that lists all the ongoing experiments and crazy ideas
• We work with Objectives and Key Results (OKR) to achieve different objectives per quarter. These are, for example, objectives to make our own working method more effective, to start up partnerships or to provide (un) requested advice.

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