Gregg Fraley

Facilitation of Innovation Meetings Requires a Highly Specific Set of Skills, Frameworks, Tools — and Experience Professional Facilitation and/or Training Makes a Difference* Seven Facilitation Fails Innovation projects are about a lot of meetings. Meetings about getting a project mandate, visioning, what to innovate, how to innovate, challenges to take on, jobs to do, experiences to create, research exploration, insights development, problem framing and problem reframing, project road-mapping, concept development, prototyping, pitches, strategy, check-ins, and all the variations. And not necessarily in that order. Meetings take up precious time, and, are dead essential to moving the ball downfield. It’s sad, and, a missed opportunity, that many meetings are outright fails when it comes to measurable results. Do any of the following Seven

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Economic Development and the “Home Run” Complex Amazon has finally made a decision about it’s new HQ. I have to say I’m a bit awestruck at how much time and energy was wasted by so many cities and regions around the country, only to have Amazon do the obvious thing and go with the world capitals for corporate HQ’s — New York and Washington. I do understand why those losing regions made the effort, thousands of jobs can transform a community. But in the spirit of an Economic Development “What If…” What If all those other Amazon bidders had put that same energy, and money, into doing innovation projects that are smaller in scale, but, new, different, and clever in

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It’s fall and it’s time to go back to school. If you’re in the Chicago or Denver areas, check out these innovation training course offerings. Gregg Fraley Innovation (GFi) is offering three public courses in late October and early November. Click on the course title to register. Don’t wait to register, these are popular offerings.  Chicago Innovation Intensive, Beyond Design Thinking Friday October 26 at Catalyst Ranch, 8:30 to 4:00 pm CST REGISTER NOW This deep-dive immersive course in innovation could change the direction of your organization – or career. Do you seek sustained growth? A truly innovative culture? How do you get there? This essential training for leaders and project managers provides answers, and from an industry thought leader.

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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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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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Recent Projects at GFi GFi is the consultancy of Gregg Fraley and specialist associates he brings in to execute projects. This is a periodic update. Qualitative Research, Innovation Events, Training, Facilitation, and Writing: Facilitation: Marquette University is working with the Milwaukee community and Johnson Controls to innovate. Their vehicle is The President’s Challenge. GFi recently helped conduct a workshop for local non-profits seeking to team up with Marquette faculty.  The idea is to combine faculty expertise with social innovation organizations to positively impact problems in urban Milwaukee. The session included: matching faculty expertise to teams in need of assistance at a recruiting poster session, training in creative problem solving basics, clarifying and amplifying ideas, doing paper prototypes, and making pitch presentations of

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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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Ben Tarnoff’s recent article for the Guardian hits hard. America has become so anti-innovation – it’s economic suicide This article is worth a careful reading. If you care about American Innovation, or UK Innovation for that matter, you’d better realize something; our governments are currently committing economic suicide. They are doing this by not investing in deep theoretical science and in infrastructure. Small “i” innovation is something we do well in the USA, but we can’t live on that kind of innovation forever. We need to create new markets and build new jobs based on new science and technology, new materials, and new infrastructure. This means countries like China, who are investing, are paving the way for their future success.

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