The educator toolkit
Innovation doesn't stick from slides. Over the years I've built a growing set of free, evidence-based tools that put learners inside real innovation decisions — simulations, AI mentors, foresight modules, myth-vs-evidence games and a graded creativity resource. Take them, run them, adapt them for your own teaching.
Simulations & AI mentors
Role-play environments and interactive mentors where students and professionals make the call, apply the framework, and live with the consequences.
Puts you in the role of an innovation leader making strategic calls across an ecosystem — learning open innovation principles through play, not lectures. Earn a certificate on completion.
Play the game AI mentor · UndergraduateA custom GPT that coaches undergraduates through open innovation, collaboration and ecosystems — asking questions and setting scenarios rather than handing over answers.
Open the mentor AI mentor · ExecutivesThe executive-level companion — placing experienced professionals inside complex technology and innovation strategy decisions, and pushing them to defend their reasoning.
Open the mentorForesight & ecosystems
Workshop-ready modules and an interactive map for anticipating change and understanding who innovates with whom.
Two linked canvases for building innovation capability under uncertainty: one maps where your organisation is heading, the other plans a single partnership in enough detail to survive contact with reality. Every field carries a worked example; exports as an A3 pack you keep.
Open the canvas Workshop modulesFour playable modules — Signal or Noise, The Grid, The Four Worlds, Wind Tunnel — taking strategy teams from weak signals to real options across several futures.
Run the workshop Research labAn open research lab making open innovation navigable: a live map of Australia's ecosystem, an organisation directory, a research-based OI maturity assessment benchmarked against national data, and interactive learning tools.
Open the NavigatorMyth vs evidence
A format I adapt across domains: hold the assumptions people repeat up against what the research actually shows. Fast, opinionated, and a strong warm-up for any workshop.
The innovation beliefs everyone repeats, tested against the evidence — a fast, opinionated warm-up for workshops and lectures.
Bust some myths AI in higher educationThe claims and fears circulating about AI in teaching and research, held up against the evidence. Built for academic AI uplift sessions.
Start the session Circular economyA circular-economy edition: common assumptions about regenerative and sustainable business models, tested against the evidence.
Explore the mythsEvidence-graded resource
Not a game — a full teaching resource. Every activity carries its effect size, its facilitator script, and the boundary condition that makes it fail.
Explore what's possible
I facilitate these tools in classrooms and workshops, and design new ones for specific programs. If a format here fits a challenge you're facing, let's talk — it might become a workshop, an executive-education session, a research collaboration or a student project.
Start a conversationAll tools are free for educational and non-commercial use under CC BY-NC-SA. Where a tool draws on published research, cite the original researchers rather than this site.