Innovation

  • 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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  • Digital Technology MoshPit

    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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  • GFi Working With Universities, Manufacturers & Big Pharma

    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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  • Seven Innovation Fundamentals for Leaders

    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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  • 4 Ways to Amplify Digital Innovation in 2018

    Learn 4 Ways to Amplify Digital Innovation in 2018 Alignment, Team Diversity, Knowledge & MoshPits The challenges facing innovation leaders, as we confront the reality of 2018 is — how do you integrate new digital capability? This is not innovation as we once knew it. This is not your Dad’s innovation. It’s not even Your Innovation of five years ago. How do you innovate across your entire value chain? If you’re just focused on products you’re going to miss the boat. How do you integrate all this new fancy stuff into strategy and ideation to create actual projects? Why is this challenge so different from previous innovation challenges? Has there ever been a moment in time when so many new

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  • Innovation Intensive — Workspring Oct. 27

    Innovation Intensive How to Create Continuous Innovation at Your Organization Join Gregg Fraley at Workspring in Chicago — on October 27th for this high value workshop. Register: gregg@greggfraley.com Workshop Overview Is your organization innovating? How would you assess your innovation culture? Are you happy with your results? Are they sufficient to sustain and grow your organization? This half-day intensive course in innovation theory and practice provides a roadmap. It’s a hands-on workshop for project managers who are heading up innovation projects. Blending theory and practice, the content provides deep background, and the tools, techniques, and frameworks that will accelerate your progress. Learn how to avoid common pitfalls and increase your chances of growth-oriented results. This course enables leaders to start-up

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  • Seven Ways to Prepare for Effective Brainstorming

    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 Billion Dollar Breakthrough You Missed

    Why and How are Billions in Potential Innovation Left On The Table? Innovation is Fresh Combinations  What’s Needed: Sophisticated Tools to Deliberately Make Fresh Connections Across Domains (see MoshPit, a new offering from GFi). Fresh combinations of technologies, processes, materials, people, trends, concepts, and other factors are what creates innovation. From the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (chocolate plus peanut butter) to the iPod (MP3 player combined with a buying system, iTunes) nearly any innovation combines existing things or concepts. It’s interesting that large organizations with lots of intellectual property don’t systematically examine what they can combine to innovate. Maybe it’s because concept blends across very different domains are not intuitive. Deliberate concept blends, combinations, are not a defined part of

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  • The Innovation Imperative, growing culture and capacity (GFi Keynote)

    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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