Guerilla Innovation

    Tune-In To Taster Tools On Thursday

    Free Weekly Webinar of Facilitation Tools with Gregg Fraley

    Every Thursday at 2 pm EST, Master Facilitator Gregg Fraley demonstrates a facilitation tool online.

    The weekly sessions are FREE. Sessions begin on Thursday March 18th.

    The 30 minute weekly webinar features demonstrations of various facilitation tools for: strategy, challenge clarification, idea generation (aka brainstorming), problem framing, idea selection, innovation projects, and idea development, etc.

    Thinking Differently Takes Tools

    At some point everybody needs to think differently. It might be a really thorny, hairy, awful, complex problem. It might be a juicy opportunity you don’t know how to seize.

    When you ask your mind to think differently, what happens? Does it come easily? Do new thoughts and ideas spring forth? Or, is it like pulling teeth?

    Register Now

    If you’re responsible for getting to the fresh snow of new ideas, in order to solve problems, you’d be well advised to tune in to Taster Tools on Thursday. Register on EventBrite.

    Gregg Fraley, Master Facilitator

    Gregg Fraley, master creativity and innovation facilitator takes you through a creative thinking/facilitation tool, just one per session. Time for Q&A and a discussion on how to adapt the tool to your needs.

    Gregg Fraley is a highly experienced facilitator who’s been learning, developing, and inventing group facilitation tools for many years. He trains other facilitators on his methods. Gregg is recognized as a Distinguished Leader at the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) and is a Visiting Innovation Scholar at Notre Dame. As a successful technology entrepreneur he has a broad perspective on business and always has ideas about how to solve thorny problems. Gregg knows several innovation frameworks, including Design Thinking and Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving (aka “CPS). He’s familiar with tools in Lean, Agile, and DeBono’s Thinking Hats.

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    How to Be Brilliant at Innovation

    Kick Start Ideas That Lead to Growth Accelerate Your Career Dodge the Pitfalls & Establish an Innovation Cycle Three Hour Virtual Training, February 5th, led by Innovation Master Trainer Gregg Fraley Being Brilliant at Innovation is within your grasp, but, it’s a minefield out there. There are more pitfalls in an innovation initiative than the moon has craters. Getting started is challenging because there is a great deal of conflicting advice in the form of books, consultancies, methods, and anecdotal stories. Does one need to take a Stanford course or read 35 books about innovation to get started? No, but, you do need good training in the fundamentals. In fact, you (and your organization) can be brilliant and effective at

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    Eleven Innovation Bullets to Dodge

    What You Should Be Learning in Innovation Training But you probably are not! Eleven Innovation Bullets to Dodge, in no particular order. Lack of Managment support will effectively kill any innovation program no matter how well conceived. If you don’t have Talent, superior talent, you’ll fail. Design Thinking alone will not guarantee success (or any other framework, Agile, Lean, etc.). Very few organization’s are any good at all at Brainstorming/Idea Generation. If you don’t take calculated risks, and continue to take them, you will fail. Most organization’s don’t have the guts to actually reinvent. Innovation team leaders who avoid conflict are doomed to fail. B to B organization’s need to learn what qualitative research is all about. B to C

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    Innovation Intensive April 5th, 2019

    Innovation Training “Innovation Intensive, beyond Design Thinking” Public Course* With Master Trainer Gregg Fraley Comprehensive Immersion Course for: Innovation Project Managers, Teams, Executives, Facilitators Keith House* — Chicago, Friday April 5, 2019 This one day course consistently receives high marks from innovation executives and training professionals. Innovation Intensive, beyond Design Thinking is comprehensive in its approach and provides compelling methods, insights, tools, and stories from master trainer, Gregg Fraley. If you are seeking to enhance innovation culture and jump-start or improve innovation efforts, this is the course to attend. Send new project leaders, managers, facilitators, and essential innovation team members. This public* course is at a significant discount to on-site courses delivered directly to organizations by Gregg Fraley Innovation (GFi). The emphasis of this training

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    Purpose Driven Innovation

    Do Purpose First, Select a Framework, Then Do Projects Without a Clear Purpose, Innovation Drifts Off Course It may seem obvious but unless you know who you are, and what your purpose is, as an organization you will flounder. Innovation Leaders sometimes get it backwards. This wastes Time and Money. In the innovation space there is endless discussion about frameworks. Which is best? Can I blend frameworks? If everyone else is jumping off the Design Thinking bridge shouldn’t we? Just kidding, Design Thinking can be a good choice, as can Agile, or Lean, or your own blended system. Using a structured innovation framework is a project success factor. There is also a lot of yakking about culture. Nothing wrong with

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    Emergent See Innovation

    Innovation Emergencies Happen Emergent See Innovation from GFi Available February, 2019 I advise pro-active, and continuous, innovation. It’s always easier to work with a challenge when you have time and the leisure to incubate, think, and in general work the clay of research insights, trends, prototypes, paper-based concepts, or a business model canvas. When you are always doing innovation, you have time to fail, time to create small wins, time to learn. Time is what you don’t have in an emergency. And Innovation Emergencies Happen. You’re caught off guard by a market shift, a new competitor, or a technical advancement. Unfortunately, many organizations don’t have a formal innovation program, and so, they wait until the proverbial poop hits the fan. It’s

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    Innovation is a Brutal DIY Project

    Innovation Learning Points From the Great Faucet DIY Fiasco DIY is a Form of Innovation I’m the Abraham Lincoln of home fix-it DIY projects. Like Lincoln, I ultimately win, but painfully fail many, many times before I “git-er done”. (FYI: DIY = Do It Yourself.) As an innovation consultant who is a facilitator, team builder, idea person, and strategist, my need for hands-on engineering skills are minimal. I’m not bad at prototyping and am excellent in concept development, but I’m horrible when it comes to hands-on maker skills. As a home owner, this is really Not Good. But I try. And I learn. So after I finished the bleeding on my latest DIY effort, it strikes me that, on a larger

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    Innovate Where You Are — and With Who You Have

    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 Training Under Utilized

    Training Accelerates Innovation 94% of managers are unsatisfied with their companies innovation performance. 70% of CEO’s see innovation as a key driver of growth. That’s what McKinsey says in this article. Why then is corporate America so woefully undertrained in innovation fundamentals? Energy is Not Enough, Get Training in Innovation  When I step into a room to facilitate a strategy, innovation, or idea generation session I usually find a great deal of energy. Almost always. People really want to do good work. What I also often find is inexperience that cripples their desires. Specifically: No fluidity in free-associative divergent thinking necessary to innovate — people do not know how to think like innovators! And yes, this can be trained. Inappropriate

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    How You Ask for Innovation Matters

    Six Considerations for Inclusive Innovation The Wall Street Journal published an article this week, Why Innovation is a Team Sport.  It reveals a broad based study on innovation done by the research firm Great Place to Work. You can download the entire white paper at Great Places website. Nicely done survey GP2W! Essentially, the survey says that companies that are more broad-based and inclusive in innovation have better growth prospects. Across industry sectors and sizes of companies, those who include more of their people in innovation efforts tend to do better. Where people feel included, notice the word “feel” — they also worker harder and longer. Who doesn’t want more growth potential and harder working, more involved, people? YES! AND… This

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