We’ve learned that a 5-day event is, in most cases, the ideal amount of time for getting to breakthrough thinking. But what if you can’t get people to come away for five days? We wanted to be responsive to Universities with budget and time constraints, so we created an event that is compressed into a shorter period of time, called a Jumpstart.

It is literally that – a jumpstart to enable the right people to come together and to at least start the creative process. If a Sandpit or an Ideas Lab could be considered a marathon, then the Jumpstart is a sprint, the 100-metre dash that allows people to get their creative juices flowing, which hopefully results in solutions to challenges or problems.

Jumpstarts follow the same process as a Sandpit or an Ideas Lab, except they run for only 2 or 3 days. The process of developing ideas for research continues after the event with groups working together to refine and add substance to their proposals. When time and resources are limited, the shorter program can ignite new thinking and spur conversations that wouldn’t otherwise occur in typical day-to-day interaction. It’s a smaller spark for innovation, but a vibrant spark nonetheless.