The KFAS Innovation Challenge is designed to do two things at the same time: build the capability of people to lead innovation, and create something of genuine value for the organisations they come from. For the 10th anniversary edition, MJA worked with KFAS and Imperial Executive Education to shape a four-month, team-based journey around live business challenges drawn from Kuwait’s private sector.
Each company team brought a real organisational issue rather than a classroom case. The challenge had to matter beyond one individual or department, have no obvious answer, require collaboration across boundaries, and create enough uncertainty and stretch for participants to learn by working on it. The aim was not simply to generate ideas. It was to help participants move from creativity, through invention, to innovation: creating measurable commercial, organisational or societal value.
The programme was built around a simple action-learning logic. Formal teaching provided tools and perspective, peer interaction and coaching created social learning, but the largest part of the development happened in the work itself. Participants had to investigate customers and users, challenge assumptions, work through disagreement, influence stakeholders, test propositions and keep their projects moving while dealing with the realities of their organisations.
Module One in Kuwait established the foundations. Teams first worked on trust, self-awareness, collaboration and the conditions for high performance. They then moved into Design Thinking: conducting fieldwork with real users, identifying latent needs, reframing the problem, generating ideas and surfacing the assumptions most in need of testing. By the end of the module, the goal was not a polished solution but a sharper, evidence-based innovation challenge and an aligned team ready to keep working.
Between modules, dedicated project coaches stayed with the same teams. Coaching was deliberately positioned as a thinking space rather than a project checkpoint: a place to pause, question assumptions, surface team dynamics, explore obstacles and decide what to test next. Across the journey, teams received a mix of virtual and in-person coaching so that reflection and challenge continued between the formal modules rather than stopping when people returned to work.
Module Two in Kuwait shifted the emphasis from defining the challenge to shaping a viable solution. Teams strengthened their concepts using Lean Innovation and business-model thinking, deepened stakeholder insight, tested the commercial and organisational logic of their ideas, and began building the business case. Storytelling and pitching were introduced early because a good idea only creates value if others can understand it, believe in it and choose to support it.
The final module in London deliberately widened the environment again. Participants stepped into Imperial’s innovation ecosystem through experiences such as the Data Science Observatory, the Chemical Kitchen, White City and external innovation communities. These were not visits for their own sake. They were designed to expose teams to different ways of experimenting, using data, working across disciplines, scaling ideas and leading change.
At the same time, the projects moved towards decision. Teams learned to translate evidence into a compelling narrative, make assumptions and risks visible, clarify the path to value and sharpen the ask they would make of senior stakeholders. The Imperial panel was used as a serious test and feedback point before teams returned to make their final presentations to their own executive sponsors.
What made the journey developmental was the connection between the innovation project and the people doing it. Teams were not only asked whether the idea was getting stronger, but whether they were becoming better at curiosity, collaboration, experimentation, influencing and leading through uncertainty. The challenge was the vehicle through which those capabilities were practised.
Innovation capability was built by doing innovation. Real organisational challenges, structured methods, coaching, peer learning and external perspective turned each project into both a business proposition and a development environment for the people creating it.