1. CREATING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION
When, Where, Who, Why and How

All business leaders want the same thing -- and that is an organizational culture that is agile, adaptive, and conducive to sustainable innovation.

Easier said than done, however.

When you think of how difficult it is for just one person to lose five pounds or stop smoking, imagine how difficult it is to engage an entire workforce in the effort to innovate.

But just because it's difficult, doesn't mean it's impossible. You've got to start somewhere. And Creating a Culture of Innovation is the best way to start -- a highly engaging wake up call that demystifies innovation, sparks original thinking, and provides an easy-to-adapt model that each participant can immediately apply on the job.

Includes:
- Best innovation practices of leading organizations
- A robust business case for why innovation matters
- Three culture building tools and techniques
- Small group brainstorming sessions
- A free, 1-month license of Free the Genie

2. THE SEED OF INNOVATION
It's Not About the Process. It's About the People.

Let's cut to the chase: Innovation doesn't begin with processes, structures, and protocols. It begins with people -- inspired, committed, and collaborative people.

When people are in the right mindset, your company has thousands of daily, spontaneously occurring opportunities for innovation to take root.

All too often, however, these opportunities are missed.

Why? Because they are usually invisible to people. Like the rarely seen white arrow in the FedEx logo, people have a hard time seeing what's right in front of them -- the opportunity to identify, spark, and co-develop promising new ideas.

The Seed of Innovation teaches people how to create the conditions that radically increase the odds of bold, new ideas being identified and developed on the fly.

It does so not by requiring people to add another initiative to their already maxed out schedule, but by leveraging the countless interactions they are already having on the job -- in hallways, elevators, parking lots, lunchrooms, bathrooms, conference rooms, and cubicles.

Includes:
- The art of listening
- Best innovation practices from leading organizations
- Teaching and practice of LCS (idea feedback tool)
- Seven ways to maximize the seed of innovation moment
- Free annual license of Free the Genie (online brainstorming tool)

3. FREE THE GENIE
Unleashing the Creativity of Your Workforce, 24/7

In today's financially challenged marketplace, most organizations can no longer afford to throw money at problems or hire more "head count." Those days are over.

What's needed now is a far more intelligent, collective response -- a way to access the existing brainpower of your workforce. You've got the horses. You've got the horsepower. What you don't have is a simple, cost-effective way to unleash it.

That's what Free the Genie is all about -- a highly engaging ideation event that makes it profoundly easy for participants to generate compelling new ideas for growing the business

What's unique about a Free the Genie session is that the newly unleashed creativity of your workforce doesn't end when the meeting is over. Our service includes an annual license of our Free the Genie brainstorming tool -- providing everyone with a simple, time-efficient way to continue developing new ideas, post-session.

Includes:
- Pre-session, online "Qualities of an Innovator" poll
- Tutorial on the art and science of creative thinking
- Best innovation practices from leading organizations
- Teaching and practice of LCS (idea feedback tool)
- Free annual license of Free the Genie


4. BLUE SKY THINKING
When Incremental Improvements are Not Enough

Some organizations are afraid of disruptive innovation. It spooks them. And understandably so.

Disruptive innovation can be extremely challenging -- replete with the unknown, the unknowable, and a seemingly endless series of meetings no one has the time to attend.

Innovation, in these organizations, takes place on the incremental side of the equation -- tweaks, cost cutting, and process improvements.

That's all well and good.

But there are other organizations who know their future depends on a purposeful effort to challenge the status quo and generate breakthrough ideas -- ideas for new products, new services, and new ways of doing business.

If this describes your organization, then Blue Sky Thinking is for you.

This highly energizing, two-hour kick ass not only gets the creative juices flowing, but provides senior leadership with an extraordinary variety of newly generated business-growth ideas they can evaluate, post-session.

Includes:
- Pre-session "innovation opportunities" poll
- Teaching and practice of the Blue Sky Thinking technique
- Small group brainstorming
- 16-page Blue Sky Thinking guidebook
- Sorting of newly generated ideas into TBD categories


5. ASSUMPTION BUSTING 101
It's Not About the Bottom Line. It's About the Line You've Drawn in the Sand

Of all the obstacles to innovation, the most destructive is the tendency individuals and organizations have to be ruled by limiting assumptions.

Better known as "blind spots" or "lines in the sand," limiting assumptions prevent people from trying anything new. Stopped before they've had a chance to start, people bound by limiting assumptions bail out at the status quo.

Ask them to explore new possibilities and they will give you countless reasons why nothing new can happen. They have "proof," based on past experience.

Probe a bit, however, and you'll discover their inabilty to consider the new, isn't because they don't want to innovate, but because their limiting assumptions prevent them from seeing opportunities to innovate.

Assumption Busting 101 is a way to turn this phenomenon around, helping even the most curmudgeonly "no can do" person to open their mind to extraordinary possibilities.

The takeaway from this interactive kick ass is not just the generation of new ideas, but a palpable change in mindset. From "no" to "possible." From "can't do" to "will do," From the "cup's half empty" to "who said we have to drink out of that ridiculously small cup, anyway?"

Includes:
- Pre-session, online limiting assumptions poll
- Review and discussion of famous innovation-averse assumptions
- Action learning (hands on experiential challenge and debrief)
- Small group brainstorming
- 16-page Lead Into Gold assumption busting guidebook


6. AWAKE AT THE WHEEL
What You Can Learn About Innovation from a Neanderthal

These days you've probably had your fill of stories about Google, Apple, Southwest Airlines, and Dell -- the so-called golden boys of innovation. Stories about them are everywhere. Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Inc, Fast Company, Forbes, and every blogger looking for more fans are waxing poetic about the wisdom of these innovation-savvy organizations.

I'd like to put a stop to this madness.

Not because the stories are untrue. And not because the stories are uninspiring. But because the stories don't always translate to your business, your industry, and your workforce.

It's time for a new story that everyone can relate to -- and that new story is the story told by Mitch Ditkoff in Awake at the Wheel, his award winning business parable about the invention of the wheel by the world's first innovator, Og the Neanderthal.

What Og had to go through to get his idea out of his head and into the world is the same journey all of us have to go through -- the journey from idea to execution.

Includes:
- A copy of Awake at the Wheel for each participant
- Best innovation practices
- Teaching and practice of three creative thinking techniques
- Launching of your company's "Best New Idea" campaign
- Free annual license of Free the Genie (online brainstorming tool)

Interested?

Illustration
illustration
Photo
Illustration