Gregg Fraley

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

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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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80% Of Brainstorming Sessions Don’t Work Seven Idea Generation Fails Redefine Brainstorming and Get Better Results I might be getting to old to hold back on saying this about ideation, aka idea generation, aka brainstorming. My inner skeptic and snarky soul wants to scream it. Based on my experience, about 80% of idea generation doesn’t work. It might be worse than that. In spite of the efforts of many people to train others in how it ought to be done, it’s getting worse, not better. The Failure Rate is partly because the game’s changed, again. Also partly because the lessons of how it ought to be done have simply never been learned. As the drawing suggests, please, let’s redefine brainstorming.

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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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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 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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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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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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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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