Gregg Fraley

Why Don’t B2B Companies Use Qualitative Research? Qualitative Studies Lead to Insights, and Innovative Results Open-ended Questions Are Powerful Qualitative research is an effective way to understand your market better. Consumer product companies spend a great deal of time and money doing qualitative, essentially, talking to consumers. They often use the focus group method, but also do one-on-one interviews, and observational research or ethnographic studies. It’s an integral part of their innovation process. The findings, the derived insights, can be profound. It’s the perfect start to an innovation process. B2B companies do qualitative much less frequently. They’re missing the boat — qualitative is arguably more effective in B2B markets. Qualitative research is often misunderstood, that might explain why B2B hasn’t embraced it widely. Weirdly,

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Innovation is Learning For many years I kept the concepts of innovation and learning in separate boxes. I thought innovation was creating new things of value, and, learning was understanding new things. I always suspected there was a closer connection. I now believe that learning and innovation are joined at the hip. You can’t innovate without an exploratory learning process. It’s a two circle Venn diagram with a large intersection set. Deliberately embracing learning — as part of the innovation process — can lead to better ideas and improved innovation results. It may seem like an obvious connection, but when I made the “innovation is learning” statement at a recent presentation — thinking everyone would agree — I got a

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Off-Site Innovation can indeed spur creativity I like what Cardinal Health and Crimson Cup are doing in Columbus, OH with offsite innovation spaces. I like the attention they’ve paid to team diversity and on a customer-centered process. P&G’s Innovation Gym is another great dedicated off-site innovation space. I think these organizations are doing the right thing — for their contexts and purposes. Yes… AND,  Not every organization can afford separate innovation lab facilities, or, can innovate away from their business location. Or, can even have a dedicated innovation team. Smaller organizations have to innovate Where They Are (and with who they have). There are a lot of benefits to an outside innovation space, but if that’s not in the cards financially

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Innovation Intensive  Thursday, September 13, 2018, The Keith House, Chicago Master Innovation Trainer: Gregg Fraley Register Now: gregg@greggfraley.com Course Description: Innovation Intensive is a one day, deep dive, into fundamental and advanced concepts in innovation. It immerses participants in the relevant theory and systematic practices critical to organizational growth. It examines culture assessment, strategy, and on-going project management. It includes an overview of key frameworks (Design Thinking, Agile, Lean, TRIZ, Synectics, Stage-Gate, CPS) and their essential tools. Participants learn classic pitfalls and how to avoid them using best practices and emerging advanced practices. In addition, it covers management mandates, project cycles, resourcing, idea management systems, idea generation, concept development, prototyping, and pitch presentations. Innovation team leaders and project managers learn what it

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New Service Offering for Digital Technology Innovation Discover Ideas for Long Term and Tactical Innovation Projects Chicago, IL, August 1, 2018 — The MoshPit Innovation Service is an innovation project discovery service marketed by GFi (Gregg Fraley Innovation). It’s designed to uncover unlikely, but useful, combinations of technologies, products, services, trends, and insights that lead to breakthrough innovation. GFi is now offering a new version of MoshPit to discover ideas that exploit new digital technologies. The new service is called Digital Technology MoshPit. The primary benefit of Digital Technology MoshPit: Faster and more creative integration of new digital technology, leading to efficiencies and growth. The MoshPit system finds combinations of concepts that lead to innovation. From the printing press to the iPhone, “concept blending” creates value.

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Innovation Fundamentals for Leaders First of Seven Blogs Invest in Frameworks, But First, Establish a Culture Where Innovation Thrives Leaders — How Are You Doing With These Basics? Success is built on doing the basics well. For results, leaders need to foster innovation fundamentals and integrate them into organizational culture. More structure is needed as fundamentals take hold, and that means an innovation process framework. This series of posts on innovation fundamentals is not about frameworks. It’s about the cultural basics underlying them, and all innovation. Innovation has a lot of frameworks (and theories, methods, tools) that leaders can choose from, and you’ll want to choose. However, frameworks have built-in assumptions, such as, there’s motivation to innovate, and that the culture is aligned with an

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The Innovation Imperative… growing innovation culture and capacity If you want an organization to survive, you must innovate. But innovation is more than survival, it’s the heart beat of an organization. What you make, what you do, and how you do it — is the lifeblood of who you are. Staying in business means reinventing as markets shift. In this inspirational speech Gregg Fraley answers the Why Innovation question, and informs as to what innovation means to you and your group. It advocates that innovation is an exciting part of everyone’s job, not “extra work.” The stories of great innovation moments, overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles, and inventive breakthroughs will leave audiences empowered to innovate. The content is about how the

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Do You Wish To Accelerate Innovation? Get Training! When I step into a room to facilitate an innovation, strategy, or idea generation session I always find a great deal of energy. What I also often find is inexperience. Inexperience in: the kind of divergent thinking necessary to innovate, in specific meeting behaviors and facilitation skills, and in innovation process, approaches and frameworks Here are details regarding a half day Innovation Intensive course I’m conducting at Workspring in Chicago on October 27th, 2017. Energy, motivation, and inspiration are important factors in getting innovation rolling. But none of them, or all of them together, are enough to overcome untrained thinking, poor session facilitation, and an un-anchored or non-existent innovation approach. Your innovation

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Does Any CEO Have the Luxury to Ignore Digital Transformation and Innovation? Gregg Fraley and Karen Kirby, copyright 2017 Innovation + Business + Technology = Digital Leadership Turnover of CEOs is already high, about 14.9 % a year as of 2016*. The demands of digital leadership and the enterprises of the future could dramatically accelerate that rate in the next few years. The conversation CEOs need to be having, to remain in the shrinking 85.1%, is about how to integrate digital technology and seize new pathways to industry leadership. In HBO’s Game of Thrones there has been that recurring foreboding phrase, “winter is coming.” For years, the phrase has been whispered in the ears of CEOs “digital is coming”. They

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A Culture of Incivility Harms USA Innovation Five Ways Incivility “Decapitates” Innovation The recent flap around Kathy Griffin’s posting a picture of a fake severed head, of our President, was a sad attempt at humor, but incredibly successful at provocation. It has brought up the discussion, once again, of the civility of our discourse in America. I think Tiffany Quay Tyson does a nice job of summing up how many people are reacting to the Griffin incident, and the subsequent howls of reaction. No matter your political persuasion, civil discourse, and it’s close cousins, politeness, gentility, tolerance, compassion, and good manners have slipped far from where we once were. Those who keep track of civility are in agreement about the

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