Resource Hub Launch
Updated: Sep 2
I’ve been building something at incub8ideas.
The Resource Hub brings together practical tools and insights developed from real client workshops and innovation projects.
This article explains why I built it, what sits behind it, and why so much of successful innovation happens in the thinking you don’t always see. Now I’d like people to get their hands on it.
The Resource Hub brings together 12 different ways to explore an idea, challenge your thinking and support better conversations around innovation, right through to how we work together, fund the journey, shape the outcome and ultimately close it out.
WHY 12 RESOURCES?
Believe me, if you take an idea all the way, you’ll need many of these at different points in the journey.
But the Resource Hub hasn’t been created simply by sitting down and emptying years of experience into a website.
Many of these resources started life in a much more traditional form: workshop exercises, discussion frameworks, prompts and tools that I developed and used with clients.
The Resource Hub is their digital evolution, making that same thinking easier to access, interact with and return to throughout a project.
A lot of it has come from interacting with people developing real ideas, listening to what they value and learning where they need the most help.
And that has highlighted something important.
When funds are limited, people naturally want to spend their money on the things that feel tangible.
The design. The CAD. The prototype. The testing.
I understand that.
But those things are only part of the journey.
In my experience, the questions, discussions, insights, decisions and constant reflection can make up 80% of a project from start to finish.
What are we actually trying to solve?
Is this still the right direction?
What did we just learn?
Does that change the design?
Is the commercial case still stacking up?
What needs protecting?
What should we test next?
Do we keep going, change direction or stop?
That thinking never really disappears. It shapes the brief, changes the design, determines what gets prototyped, makes sense of the testing, influences the commercial decisions and ultimately helps shape the outcome.
The point is not that the physical work disappears; those tangible elements still need to happen. But when the thinking crystallises early and continues throughout the project, that visible 20% is more likely to be completed without repeated reworking, backtracking or revisiting decisions that could have been resolved earlier.
That matters because every unnecessary change adds time and cost.
So while the physical outputs may be the things people most readily value paying for, those outputs are far more likely to succeed when the thinking continually happening around them helps get them right first time, or at least reduces avoidable rework.
That is a big part of why I created the Resource Hub: to make more of that thinking visible, give people access to the questions and insights behind the practical work, and provide something useful for us to interact around together.
THE BOOK!
SKIING UPHILL: The Innovation Black Run can be read in a few hours or less, tackled as three distinct peaks, or broken right down into 27 individual insight bites.
All distilled from years of experience developing products, solving problems, learning from what works and what doesn’t, and interacting with other people trying to turn ideas into reality.
That focus on insight has also been independently recognised: incub8ideas was named Most Insightful Start-Up Consultant 2026 in the SME News UK Enterprise Awards.
You don’t even have to read the whole book to start exploring it. I’m publishing The Innovation Black Run through the blog as a series, opening up those insights one at a time. That series is still growing, so there is more to come.
A MIX OF PRACTICAL TOOLS AND RESOURCES
The Resource Hub brings together a mix of short interactive exercises, practical tools and resources designed to help you stop, think and look at your idea from different angles.
Some can be explored in just a few minutes or over a break. Others go a little deeper, helping you protect an idea, test the numbers, consider funding, plan the pathway, shape collaboration and decide what needs to happen next.
The idea is not to disappear into them for hours. Put the kettle on, pick a resource and see what starts to emerge.
Some of the deeper interactive tools are access-code enabled. That is deliberate. They are most useful when there has already been a conversation around the idea, and even these are designed to be explored in something closer to a lunchtime than a working day.
If you reach one and want to explore it, simply connect with me.
Before anyone invests time, money or expertise in an idea, they need to understand why both the person behind it and the idea itself are worth backing.
In other words, what would you say if you were standing in front of the Dragons’ Den panel and they asked:
“Why should we buy into you and your idea?”
The resources help you work through the thinking behind that answer, from protecting the idea and understanding where you are in the journey to assessing the commercial picture, knowing your numbers, planning what happens next, exploring how we might work together, understanding how the journey might be funded and turning that thinking into an agreement and an outcome.
THE IMPORTANT PART ISN’T SIMPLY THE TOOLS
It’s the interaction they create.
You bring your idea, experience and perspective. I bring mine. Together, we question things, exchange opinions, challenge assumptions, reflect on what we have learned and join a few dots.
Sometimes that confirms the direction. Sometimes it tells us something needs to change. And sometimes one conversation sparks an entirely different solution.
That is the process I want the Resource Hub to support.
SO, WHO WANTS TO TEST IT?
I’m looking for beta testers: people developing ideas, products, businesses or better ways of doing things, and anyone who enjoys asking:
“Could this be better?”
Explore the Resource Hub, try the tools and challenge the questions. Tell me what helps, what doesn’t and what’s missing. Most importantly, talk to me about what they make you think about.
Because innovation isn’t just the things you can see.
It’s the thinking, questioning, discussing and reflecting that makes the visible work more likely to succeed.
And that thinking continues from the first spark of an idea right through to the design, the prototype, the testing, the commercial decisions and the eventual outcome.
Practical tools. Shared insight. Better conversations. Stronger ideas.
WHO’S UP FOR THE CHALLENGE?
EXPLORE THE RESOURCE HUB
