2026 Strategic Innovation Program

2026 Strategic Innovation Program

2026-SIP-Program-Image

Workshop overview

This program will be held at Novotel Sydney Darling Harbour, from  September Wednesday 16 to Thursday 17 September 2026. The program runs over 2 days with two, from 9am to 5pm (AEST).

Unleash your creative genius! The strategic innovation program is more than a training event, it’s an investment in your organisation’s future. We invite you to bring along your most important organisational challenge and solve it during this virtual program. Working with a small group of thought leaders, you will acquire world-leading innovation skills, realise new opportunities, collaborate with like-minded peers, whilst solving intractable challenges.

The outcomes are:

As part of Ageing Australia’s InnovAGEING initiative, this program has been designed to equip and future proof senior leaders with world leading strategic innovation skills.

At the same time, it will connect you with a network of like-minded leaders who are as ambitious and committed to change as you are.

You will meet other sector thought leaders and have the opportunity to work together in small groups on an area of shared strategic interest.

With periodic check-ins and presentations to and from the group, you will have access to live feedback from your peers and our innovation experts, with the opportunity to pitch a pilot concept on the final day.

You will take the amended pilot canvas back to your leadership team in implementation-ready form and be able make immediate progress on an aspect of your current strategy.

The program is grounded in the absolute latest cognitive and social neuroscience and covers the strategic innovation essentials of:

  • Framing: Thinking from first principles and identifying potent strategic levers for systemic change.
  • Reflexion: Strengths-led discovery, combined with an exploration of creative alpha brain-states.
  • Analogy: Mining metaphors for insight, including the 3.8 billion years of nature’s genius.
  • Modelling: Mental modelling with the hand-brain connection; ‘building to think’.
  • Emagination: Advanced ideation techniques incorporating empathy in artificial intelligence.
  • Socialisation: Establishing credibility and emotional connection with neuroscientific narratives.
  • Experimentation: Reducing cost and risk with skillful pilot design and experimentation.
  • Transformation: Embedding change through collective habit formation and new ways of working.

Date: 16-17 September 2026

Time: 9am - 5pm

Cost details:

Ageing Australia member
$1,999 incl. GST

Non member
$2,199 incl. GST

Location:
Novotel Sydney Darling Harbour


Who is facilitating?

Paul Hawkins

Paul Hawkins

Paul founded Crazy Might Work (the first leadership academy to be launched in Antarctica) in 2015, with a mission to bring leadership lessons from frontiers like space to the workplace. Today Crazy Might Work is ACCPA’s strategic innovation partner and the leading provider of the Four Dimensional Leadership program used by NASA. Prior to launching Crazy Might Work, Paul worked in over 20 countries, on everything from mergers and acquisitions to setting up global shared services. He chairs the Board of a Community Services organisation, as well as annual symposia like World Forum Disrupt and the Humans in Space Summit. He is a sought-after keynote speaker on the subjects of innovation and leadership, and a skilled master of ceremonies and moderator. With formal qualifications in education, business and innovation, and accreditations in neuroscience and appreciative inquiry, as well as a pending PhD in breakthrough innovation.