Brown Bag Innovation

“Innovation is everybody’s job.” Gregg Fraley, keynote speech, circa 2006

“Innovation is everybody’s job, but you have to provide smart ways to contribute.” Gregg Fraley, keynote speech, 2019. 

I’m excited to talk to you about a new offering, Brown Bag Innovation Training. It’s a lunch & learn workshop for those who are typically not involved in focused innovation efforts. It’s designed to help change cultures. But first, some background…

Innovation is everybody’s job, but many employees think the opposite is true. When they hear a message like the first quote above they write it off as a meaningless slogan and ignore it. Why? Because we’ve trained people to ignore things outside their job description. Unless you’re actively involved in an on-going innovation initiative, your day-to-day job is operational. That’s why you were hired, what you’re paid for, and how you’re evaluated — that’s where you live. To many operational employees, innovation projects are the job of R&D or a dedicated team. Messages like the one above are viewed cynically as propaganda or happy talk.

Changing your culture to be more innovative starts with being honest about how and why operational folks can meaningfully contribute. It’s time to change how operational people see innovation. It’s time to take active steps to integrate innovation into your operational culture. That’s what GFi’s new service, Brown Bag Innovation, is all about.

Brown Bag Innovation is designed to: 

• Push the reset button on beliefs that stop meaningful innovation, and dispel cynicism
• Communicate exactly how to contribute to innovation without disrupting operational duties
• Educate as to the meaning of innovation; that it’s essential to survival, and it’s not always a new product
• Provide tools and techniques to contribute in a time efficient manner to a focused challenge or project
• Help people understand that even “small i” improvements can make a big difference

Brown Bag Innovation Training is fun, high energy, and powerful. This training delivers immediate results.

Gregg Fraley, a seasoned innovation practitioner, entrepreneur, speaker, and author delivers the workshops.

Essentially this is a re-orientation to a part of their job that is neglected or pushed aside — innovation. It provides specific, highly useful strategies and tools to make their contributions to innovation efficiently, and in any organizational context. And all without disrupting what employees believe they are paid to do.

Brown Bag’s are customized to work with an organization’s existing innovation process and goals.

Brown Bag Factors & Options:

• They’re priced to be affordable and can be a one-shot session
• Or, a series of up to three sessions where more tools are introduced
• It includes a pre-consult to allow for customization, included in the fee
• It can, and should, work with a specific innovation challenge or project happening now at your organization
  • This could be part of an idea campaign (or challenge identification campaign) you’ve already planned, or, it could kick one off
  • Optionally could include usage of a virtual idea management system for idea submission
• Brown Bag Innovation sessions are as short as one hour, or as long as three
• Available anywhere in the USA or Canada, but if that travel is too much, talk to me about doing it via Skype

For more information, get in touch with Gregg Fraley. gregg@greggfraley.com