Accelerating Innovation With a Rigorous Creative Process

Objective: Innovation benefits from a clear organization-wide approach — a deliberate process everyone knows and understands. Once this fundamental process in place, teams can accelerate their efforts in developing new products, services, and process improvements.  This keynote shows a straight-forward, powerful, time-tested approach to innovation, the Osborn-Parnes model of  Creative Problem Solving – “CPS”. It’s remarkable that in many organizations innovation process is either non-existent, or restrictively complex. CPS strikes a powerful balance, allowing for divergence and imagination while focusing efforts on implementing solutions to complex challenges. 

Key Learnings:

1. Learn why a defined deliberate innovation process is necessary for continuous innovation, and learn some of the amazing results adopters of the CPS method have achieved.

2. Learn what needs to be put in place for the CPS process to succeed:

• Management support and participation – without it innovation efforts are viewed as ancillary to the companies mission, and the effort will fail. CPS is part of the solution to making innovation culture part of “business as usual.”
• A real desire for innovation and a willingness to explore risky ideas – many organizations don’t take innovation seriously until there is an emergency. To stay ahead of the pack you will need to look at big, risky, business-changing ideas and give them careful consideration.
• Clear organizational objectives – CPS can help you sort this out if your objectives are shifting, and, once clarified, a deliberate innovation process can really move into high gear. 

3. Learn and practice the CPS process and learn how to use these steps: 

1. Identify the Challenge – what’s the dream? The Vision.
2. Facts and Feelings Exploration – what do we know about it?
3. Problem Framing and Reframing – getting the challenge right
4. Idea Generation – brainstorming in a better context
5. Solution Development – improving good ideas for market acceptance
6. Action Planning – moving forward with passion, for results  

Gregg learned CPS at the annual Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) conference in the late 80’s. He’s used it in his own entreprenurial ventures and with consulting clients. It applies to all industries and job categories — everybody has complex problems. Training in CPS is infrequent and expensive. That’s why Gregg offers this talk (or workshop) and why he wrote the business novel Jack’s Notebook, he hopes to broaden adoption of CPS in organizations and by individuals.