Talking Mats: Clinical practice to research to knowledge transfer to social enterprise

Thanks to everyone who came to my presentation at the 2012 RCSLT conference ‘Driving Transformation’ I was fortunate to have the new chair of RCSLT Bryony Simpson chairing my workshop and the room was full with over 50 delegates attending.  I told the story of our spin out from the university using a Talking Mat reflecting on the skills we had developed in various  areas e.g. financial planning, intellectual property, marketing , leadership – using the Talking Mat worked well and was a visual and interesting way to discuss business planning! The participants reflected on their own business skills in groups using Talking Mats and this generated discussion about e.g. the value of the mats as a thinking and planning  tool, the challenges of intellectual property, how much risk you take in planning a new venture and what are the most helpful stepping stones – great buzz all around the room and lots of lovely comments