How to Build a Better Duck
Redesigning Ducks. Rethinking Innovation.
An interactive keynote that uses a ridiculous challenge to unlock surprisingly serious insights about creativity, innovation and change.
Classified Report · British Duck Board
The Problem
Following an eighteen-month review, the British Duck Board has concluded that the duck has failed to evolve for the modern age. Whilst the penguin has secured documentaries, advertising campaigns and widespread public affection, the duck has stood still, in shallow water.
+347%
Penguin Popularity
Documentaries, adverts, plush toys
-42%
Duck Innovation Index
Lowest since records began
CRITICAL
Public Excitement Levels
Pond engagement in freefall
URGENT
Immediate Intervention
Recommended by the Board
Recommendation: launch a nationwide innovation programme. Immediately.
The Session
What Happens During The Keynote?
Challenge
Can we build a better duck? The room is handed a genuinely ridiculous brief, and takes it seriously.
Collaborate
Audience members contribute ideas live, building on each other, sketching, voting and refining in real time.
Discover
The duck becomes the mirror: powerful, transferable lessons about innovation, creativity and change.
Live Design Blueprint
The Duck Evolves In The Room
Every audience redesigns the bird differently. Watch the brief move from stock creature to something worth talking about, the same journey your products, services and teams need to make.
Unchanged since 1683. Floats. That's it.
Revision 1 / 4 · Sheet BD-101
Take-Aways
The Innovation Lessons
Creativity
Why absurd constraints produce braver ideas than sensible ones ever will.
Crowdsourcing
How to unlock the intelligence already sitting in your room, unused.
Design Thinking
Empathy, prototyping and iteration, demonstrated at speed on a live brief.
AI & Innovation
Using AI as an ideation partner without outsourcing your imagination.
Problem Solving
Reframing the problem so the answer stops hiding behind the obvious.
Organisational Change
Why ducks, and organisations, stop evolving, and how to restart them.
Why Audiences Love It
Serious Praise. Ridiculous Bird.
Delegates were still arguing about duck aerodynamics at dinner. Three months later they were still using the framework.
The most disarming way I've seen a leadership team admit that they had stopped taking creative risks.
Funny, sharp and genuinely useful. Our innovation group left with methods, not just a good time.
Better Duck Gallery
Ducks Built By Audiences
Every session adds to the national archive. A selection of prototypes designed live by delegates.
Solar Mallard Mk II
Built by a room of 400 engineers
Duck / Jet Hybrid
Half-day sprint, financial services
The Penguin Response
Leadership offsite, Manchester
Ready To Build A Better Duck?
Available for conferences, leadership events and innovation programmes, delivered in person.