Innovation Lab at AI UK 2025

[sofiapires24]

Overview
Plan and deliver the Innovation Lab at AI UK 2025, following the same structure as 2024 but repurposed to align with BridgeAI.

Resources
Miro board
Open Prototyping methodology
Marketing form for Innovate UK

[sofiapires24]

21/01/2025 Meeting with Sofia and Ale (summary):

Logistics

• The workshop will last approximately 2h (+ contingency).
• We can expect up to 40 attendees, depending on room capacity.
• Ideally, we would have about 6-7 teams of 5-6 people with one facilitator per team, exploring six innovation spaces using the canvas during the workshop.
• We will need one facilitator for each table.

Registration

• We should clearly state that this workshop is for entrepreneurs, SMEs, and startup funders.

• To register for the Innovation Lab, participants must hold a valid AI UK ticket (the Events team needs to confirm the process here)

• As part of the registration process, we will ask participants to fill out a Microsoft Form with the following optional but recommended questions:

  • Please describe a specific challenge or research problem you want to tackle, emphasising potential application areas or innovation opportunities you envision [free text, up to 300 words]
  • What are some of the resources and skills that you anticipate requiring in order to tackle the research problem you stated above? [free text, up to 200 words]
  • Please list up to 5 keywords relating to your challenge and innovation ideas. [free text]
  • Who are the stakeholders you anticipate getting involved in the project? [free text]

• We will close the form 10 days before the event (Friday, March 7). If the event hasn’t reached capacity, we could still accept registrations, but participants would not be able to submit their challenge proposals. (TBC)

One week before AIUK - March 10

• Group interested participants according to innovation spaces, considering research/applications complementarity.
• Create groups of up to 6 people with a set challenge (overlaps between individual interests or converge to one of them).
• Assign one facilitator for each group based on interest and expertise.
• Send an email to inform participants of their set challenge and provide prompts for preparation.
• Innovation spaces
• The 'Innovation spaces', or challenges, should be broad enough to allow exploration and multiple viewpoints but focused on a timely need/problem requiring investigation. They should be formulated as research questions.
• The ISAs’ support in crafting these statements based on participants’ forms would be extremely valuable here.

Audience

• As this is being promoted as a BridgeAI activity, we will target the four key BridgeAI sectors in our comms (Agriculture, Construction, Creative, and Transport) while still allowing individuals from other sectors to register.
• This means ensuring there are four innovation spaces related to the four sectors with 2-3 additional spaces covering cross-sector challenges, such as skills, policy and regulations, or relevant topics tied to Turing’s Grand Challenges (e.g., healthcare and environment).

TBD

• Facilitators: Ale, Sofia, Vera, Denise, Arielle (TBC). Ideally, we’d need 1–2 more people. Denise to confirm with Katy how many facilitation tickets we can get.
• ISAs involvement: insights on innovation challenges and/or facilitation/support during the workshop?
• Registration timeline: Should we allow additional registrations after the MS Form closes?
• Registration process: While reviewing sign-ups to select participants based on interests may help engagement, I'm slightly worried about time constraints and potential no-shows jeopardising the activity.

[sofiapires24]

Questions to address/ think about all together:

Given AI UK will probably have a "bias" towards academia, i wonder how we guarantee we have SMEs in the room. Denise Bianco would it be possible to have 10 or so tickets reserved just for SMEs? Or any other suggestions to guarantee we include/ serve this audience?

Establish process and timings for how to manage challenges : ideas from participants, forced into sectors, or we pre-define?

Role of the ISAs

Role of each of us three, assign tasks, etc

[AlexandraAAJ]

About this: "The ISAs’ support in crafting these statements based on participants" forms would be extremely valuable here." I can start contacting 4 sector experts to provide this and then we adapt depending on the statements we receive? Let me know what you think.

Other action is to verify with Dominica if 2 ISAs could be invited to facilitate this session (tickets and probably travel expenses required)

[denisebianco]

Updates Jan 29

Denise:

1. Workshop pages: workshops will be made live at the same time for registration, which is via the Eventforce session/agenda function so they don't necessarily have separate pages in this way >>> Confirmed title and blurb already sent over to Events
2. From Katy: workshops will go live like mid Feb (didn't get an exact date)
3. We can still have people submitting their challenges, we can include the link to the MS form in the registration confirmation email (I'm doing the same for PhD Connect)

Ale:

1. From Sara El-Hanfy: Good news - we absolutely can promote AI UK. We discussed promoting to BridgeAI audience as well as to our wider networks. We even discussed opportunity to do some PR (possibly tying together with other announcements such as Skills Hub)

[sofiapires24]

Notes from meeting 29.01.25 (please feel free to edit, correct or add anything i missed) - Vera, Denise, Ale

• The Innovation Lab will run from 10 am to 12pm on Day 1 (March 17)
• Allow flexibility for walk-ins, we have max capacity of 52 including facilitators and staff (10 people approx - 7 facilitators +2/3 speakers, all will have a ticket). Let's organise around 40 attendees.
• Ideally, we would have about 6-7 teams of 5-6 people with one facilitator per team, exploring six innovation spaces using the canvas during the workshop. Facilitators: Ale, Sofia, Vera, Denise + 3 more + 1 or 2 "speakers"
• @denisebianco to ask Events if we can get 50 people to register and/or having a waiting list > minimum per table 4, max 8 maybe (10 is too much, I think the tables are for 7 people)

Considerations for registrations:

• We must be clear in the form that even if they chose one specific challenge, they might be allocated to a different one.

Considerations for confirmation email

• Be on time (check in 10 min before the start) because we will be allocating remaining seats
• Highlight that even if they chose one specific challenge, they might be allocated to a different one.

ISAs involvement

• We ask ISAs to craft 10 statements (half sector-specific, half across) and we will select 6 or 7 max.
• 1-2 ISAs present on the day as floating facilitators/speakers (we, Skills and BridgeAI team, will be the process facilitator, at the tables walking people through the canvas. ISA will be sector/innovation experts providing their input and feedback on ideas)

Actions:

• Brief ISAs on what is required and invite @AlexandraAAJ
• Ask ISAs to develop 10 statements: at least 4 statements in the core sectors and other cross sectors,
• @denisebianco to put together a short "how to create a statement" guide to share with the ISA, including link to innov canva and send it to @AlexandraAAJ by Monday so she can start sending invites
• Invite Arielle, Malvika, Shakir potentially @AlexandraAAJ
• @denisebianco to schedule prep session for facilitators 1 week before the event
• @denisebianco to ask BridgeAI logo to be added to the event page (supported by BridgeAI)
• @AlexandraAAJ to send ISA profiles to DB and @denisebianco to confirm who to invite (also considering the ECR Connect panel)

Comms:

• We need to be in for the 30th of Feb newsletter
• We will then have
• We need the comms form to be out asap
• Sofia to discuss in comms check-in Thursday 30th
• Sofia to agree with Dominica

[AlexandraAAJ]

Statement from Tom Jackson
Challenge: Developing a Sustainable, Cost-effective AI Model

Objective: Create an AI model that is not only affordable to develop and maintain but also minimises its environmental impact over its lifecycle. The goal is to integrate principles of sustainability in AI design, deployment, and operation, ensuring that the model remains economically viable and ecologically responsible.

Key Problem Statements:

1. Cost-Effectiveness: How can we develop AI technology that is financially accessible, reducing upfront and ongoing expenses without compromising quality?
2. Carbon Footprint: How can we ensure the AI model minimises energy consumption and maybe even reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout its operational life?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the AI Intervention:

• Development Cost: Total expenditure incurred from conception to deployment, keeping it within a predefined budget.
• Operational Efficiency: Energy consumption metrics during active operations, aiming for optimal performance with minimal energy use.
• Maintenance Cost: Long-term costs associated with updates, management, and necessary improvements, ensuring they remain low.
• Carbon Emissions: Quantitative measure of the total carbon footprint generated by the AI system, with goals set for reduction over time.
• Data Carbon Score: Utilisation of the Data Carbon Scorecard
  to quantify and manage the carbon emissions specifically associated with the data used by the AI model.
• Scalability: Ability of the AI model to scale without significant increases in cost or carbon footprint.
• Performance Accuracy: Effectiveness of the AI model in delivering intended outcomes, maintaining high accuracy and reliability.
• User Adoption Rate: Speed and extent of adoption among intended users, indicating the model’s practical utility and acceptance.

[AlexandraAAJ]

Statements from Yufeng Zhang:

Human-AI Interaction
AI adoption changes learning processes and new product development processes for innovation. Particularly, AI algorithms can learn from vast amounts of complex data far beyond human capacity, and trained AI models can be reproduced with almost zero marginal cost. Organisations around the world are required to revisit their value creation mechanisms to survive and thrive in future competition. A key challenge is to understand the difference, dependence and interaction between Human and AI decisions. What are the critical trade-offs between Human and AI decision frames? How can organisations cope with such trade-offs along the Human-AI decision spectrum?

AI-enabled Engineering Value Chain in Construction
AI applications transform the traditional human centred practices along the whole engineering value chain from idea generation and design to implementation and support. Understanding human based creativity in the progression of AI adoption is a critical issue in the construction sectors. UK has prestigious engineering reputations and pioneering AI capabilities. A key challenge is to reform the once successful value creation pathways towards AI-enabled value creation from idea to reality. How to incorporate embedded engineering knowledge in AI applications? How to transform the skillsets of the current workforce?