Inspiration

Inspiration can come from anywhere

By reading, listening and observing we find inspiration everywhere and integrate those insights into our work. Occasionally we write an article or a blog: below are links to some of them.

  • Inclusive Practice Glossary for Facilitators Inclusive Practice Glossary for Facilitators 
    Facilitation is about allowing every voice in the room to be heard, and we bring this into our work at every step of a project, from initial design to delivery to reporting at the end. Along the way, we have recognised the need for clarity and consistency around some of the terms people use in ...
  • “If you need to cough or sneeze, please do it into your sleeve.” "If you need to cough or sneeze, please do it into your sleeve." 
    October 2022, Sawsan Khuri. It’s a ground rule for any in person gathering, equal to respectful listening and avoiding distractions. If it’s not covid19, do people still cover their mouth when they cough? Clearly they should. Do you? The pandemic taught us many lessons and the informed reader now knows more about respiratory infections that we ever wished ...
  • Collaboration starts with how you say their name. Collaboration starts with how you say their name. 
    September 2022, Sawsan Khuri. How often have you been unsure about the correct way to pronounce someone’s name? What have you done about it?  What’s in a name?A history, a heritage, a family connection, the world, an identity a personality the beginning and the present. I’ve got used to being the last to be passed the baton ...
  • The candle, the box and innovation The candle, the box and innovation 
    August 2022, Sawsan Khuri. How often have you heard the old cliché, think outside the box? No one ever asks you to think about how to light a candle without making a mess…  I’ve searched for the origin of the phrase, to think outside the box. The best references I could find point towards its use ...
  • ExeBiblio – a writing interventionExeBiblio - a writing intervention
    August 2022, Sawsan Khuri and Tamsin Kilner. Think you might/should/could maybe one day write a book?  Intimidated by the publishing process?Feel you could write the book on writer’s block? We did, and here is what we did about it. We launched this initiative at the ExeBiblio Symposium, where we invited academic authors and publishers to share their perspectives. ...
  • An Interview with …An Interview with ...
    June 2022: The Exeter Chamber recognises the importance of STEMM and of related businesses in the Exeter area through Exist (Exeter Initiative for Science and Technology). The Exist Insights magazine spotlights key players in the area and this month it’s Sawsan Khuri.  In the interview, Sawsan outlines the inspiration behind her two businesses, Collaborative Capacities and Volt Entrepreneurs, and how ...
  • GovICT 2022GovICT 2022
    April 2022, Sawsan Khuri. The annual GovICT conference returned this year with a focus on the publication of the cyber security strategy.  The GovICT conference returned in March for the 18th annual event. The conference champions technical innovations within the public sector, that brought together over 500 IT leaders, suppliers and influential policymakers. Delegates gain insight ...
  • Embedding Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the WorkplaceEmbedding Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
    Apr 2022, Sawsan Khuri. EDI is at the heart of innovation. We worked with a large organisation to establish a strategy for embedding equality, diversity and inclusion in their culture. Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) should be at the core of any and every workplace setting. People drive innovation, and research has shown time and ...
  • Why we use the term interventionWhy we use the term intervention
    March 2022, Sawsan Khuri. Innovation defines the process of creating something new. Workshops are often used to describe facilitating the process of innovation. However, here at Collaborative Capacities, we prefer to use the term intervention. A workshop is used with many different meanings and can imply a passive exchange of information between people ...
  • Take your shoes off and slide into innovation interventions for lasting changeTake your shoes off and slide into innovation interventions for lasting change
    Jan 2022., Sawsan Khuri. ‘Take Your Shoes Off First’ is a term used by Julia Freeland in the book and podcast of the same name. The powerful idea is to identify our own beliefs and put them aside before trying to understand another person’s perspective. In her fifth podcast, Julia discusses this concept with Sawsan ...
  • How Important are Facts in Conflict Resolution?How Important are Facts in Conflict Resolution?
    Nov 2021, Daniel Maxwell. Dan’s expertise is in working with groups of people to map and compare their beliefs, revealing where they agree and disagree, and helping them understand each other better and reach reconciliation. I run discussions to help people explore and resolve conflict in a process I refer to as Belief Mapping. What I’ve ...
  • What Happens At an Innovation Intervention?What Happens At an Innovation Intervention?
    Nov 2021, Sawsan Khuri. Our team designs each intervention from scratch with clients using tried and tested tools and methods, and ensuring the context and outcomes are aligned with client needs. An innovation intervention starts with a lot of listening, then analysing the information received and synthesising from it a process for the client that ...
  • What Is Innovation and Why You Need an Innovation StrategyWhat Is Innovation and Why You Need an Innovation Strategy
    Oct 2021, Sawsan Khuri, based on several months discussing the topic with network colleagues on LinkedIn and tinkering with a definition. Ask this question to ten people and you’ll get fifteen different answers. Here is an attempt to distill it into a couple of paragraphs, based on responses to a LinkedIn challenge I posted a few ...
  • An Innovation Training Session with SETsquaredAn Innovation Training Session with SETsquared
    Sept 2021, Nasara Al-Hassan. Nasara summarises Sawsan’s approach to innovation training Sawsan Khuri the founder of Collaborative Capacities is active on LinkedIn, and one of her blog posts on the five reasons to keep innovation alive and well in business caught the attention of the team at SETsquared. SETsquared is an enterprise partnership and collaboration between five ...
  • The Three Ingredients of an Entrepreneurial MindsetThe Three Ingredients of an Entrepreneurial Mindset
    Sept 2021, Sawsan Khuri. This blog is a summary of an interactive webinar Sawsan gave on the Entrepreneurial Mindset to the Lucidity Network in September 2021. Quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions”. An entrepreneurial mindset is stretched by the ...
  • The Future of Work – a Panel DiscussionThe Future of Work – a Panel Discussion
    August 2021, Nasara Al-Hassan. With pandemic conditions getting better, employees are now being asked to return to the physical office. What will this new working environment look like for many, and how will this impact the future of work? Work and professional life in the year 2020 and 2021 looks nothing like what it has ever ...
  • Discussions of the Panel: International Women’s Day 2021 Reset and Recovery – Women, Business and the PandemicDiscussions of the Panel: International Women’s Day 2021 Reset and Recovery – Women, Business and the Pandemic
    July 2021, Nasara Al-Hassan. A young person’s reflection of a panel discussion around the impact that the pandemic has had on women, and how they can rise once again to help with reset and recovery. The Coronavirus pandemic has impacted millions of people in ways they could never imagine, and fully disrupted everyone’s work and ...

Clarify not Simplify: is COVID-19 more complex than the 35 year span of EastEnders?
June 2021, Sawsan Khuri and Nasara Al-Hassan in Communicator, Summer 2021, by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators.

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Understanding data visualisation.
Dec 2020. Sawsan Khuri, in Communicator, Winter 2020, by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators.

Who works alone these days?
Reflections on entrepreneurship by Sawsan Khuri, in Inspiring Thinkers, We Are Like Minds, October 2020.

20 tools scored

Tips and tools for making your online meetings and workshops more interactive.
Oct 2020. Sawsan Khuri and Mark Reed, published on Fast Track Impact.

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Look at the Whole Glass.
Sept 2020. Sawsan Khuri on LinkedIn.

Blogs about Innovation

  • Our case studies page is full of examples where we have used innovation techniques to make good things happen.
Get The Message ebook

Get The Message, a formula for effective communication, an ebook by Sawsan Khuri, 2019.
Available via email.

Lighthouse

Articles about Sawsan’s journey

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Communications in Transdisciplinary Teams.
Lotrecchiano and Misri (Eds). 2020, Informing Science Press.
Sawsan has a chapter here about science communication education and training.

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Articles about Facilitation

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Team Science Glossary.
Sawsan Khuri and Stefan Wuchty, 2017