Gregg Fraley

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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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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Want an Innovation Breakthrough? Prepare, Then Brainstorm Most brainstorming doesn’t work. The literature bashing brainstorming is extensive. Sessions often fail, and there are many reasons. Ideas are still needed to fill pipelines! I’m going to focus on one problem with brainstorming in this post: lack of preparation. The Boy Scouts have it right. Be Prepared. There is not enough mental preparation done with participants before brainstorming/idea generation sessions. Nor is there enough attention paid to planning and facilitating the exercises and stimulus in the session itself. Start thinking of idea generation as a project that takes a few weeks, not a one day session. Use Diverse Springboards to Scaffold Thinking. Fresh combinations of concepts are what creates breakthrough ideas. This

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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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Notice: Gregg Fraley Speaking at Workspring Chicago Wednesday August 2, 2017 — 8 am to 10 am The free workshop at Workspring Chicago will focus on creative behaviors that enhance creative effectiveness. The habits/behaviors and associated tools and techniques apply to both personal and business roles. As the graphic says, you’ll learn approaches you can immediately use. Highly useful for innovation teams, team leaders, and anyone who wants to enhance their creative effectiveness. This will be presented by Gregg Fraley, author of Jack’s Notebook, co-inventor of IdeaKeg, and originator of MoshPit Innovation. RSVP with Workspring: rsvp@workspring.com Cheers.

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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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Book Review of: Organizational Creativity, A Practical Guide for Innovators & Entrepreneurs I read the literature associated with creativity and innovation. Can you hear me snoring? I don’t review most of them because I’d have to pan them. They are consistently boring, dry, and wonky. At the end of the day many books in the genre are, weirdly, not very creative. I’m happy to report that I’ve read a new creativity book that is quite dynamic. Organizational Creativity, A Practical Guide for Innovators & Entrepreneurs, by Gerard Puccio, John F. Cabra and Nathan Schwagler* is a breath of fresh air. It’s dense with fascinating and fresh information about innovation. As claimed in the title, it really is practical, and indeed,

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What’s Really Needed is an Innovation MoshPit Reinventing Combinations, Concept Blends, and Mash-Ups I’ve been touting concept blends in innovation for some time. My reason is simple, it’s a fast path to new and different ideas. From the Printing Press to the iPhone, big new market-creating innovation happens when concepts from two different domains are combined. These Mash-Ups are not intuitive for most people to do and maybe that’s why some people try it and fail. Take heart, smart people can do concept blends with careful mental scaffolding. The key benefit to concept blends for organizations is finding breakthrough innovation. It’s my contention that a lot of breakthrough innovation is left on the table because not enough thinking work is

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