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Portfolio of experiments (purpose) icon

Portfolio of experiments, Purpose

This is a tool to help you capture ideas or actions that emerge as you are working through your systems change project or piece of work.

You should think of it as a live document that can grow over time and include ideas from a range of people, not just the immediate team. It should help you think about the size, scale and length of an experiment or idea as well as the degree of collaboration that you need to make it happen.

It will include a range of ideas and experiments, some bigger and more complex, and some simpler that can be taken forward quickly.

Portfolio of experiments Purpose Template

Portfolio of experiments purpose template
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How to use this tool

Step 1

Capture stand alone projects, programmes or innovations related to your purpose -then consider if the collaboration required is individual (e.g within Start Network) or cross-sector

Step 2

Move on to medium term experiments or interventions related to you purpose that might require more testing and adapting to see the impact on the system, and again map these according to level of collaboration required

Step 3

Lastly, capture long term system changes related to your purpose that would likely only come to fruition in 5, 10 or 20 years time but would really shift the system.

Step 4

Look at the spread of interventions and ideas you’ve captured. As a group discuss the portfolio of experiments you’ve mapped. What’s missing?  

As you work through each of the stages capture the mix of ideas and experiments for each, perhaps by using different colour posits or on different print outs of the template. 

After completing all of them - pull them together into one combined portfolio of experiments to prioritise which to start with across the full portfolio.

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