Tag Archives: Innovation Workshop

Innovation and Transformation Advisory and Connection Opportunity

Innovation and Transformation Advisory and Connection Opportunity

Braden Kelley has been focusing on human-centered change and innovation for more than twenty years, bringing in elements of design thinking, customer experience, employee experience and digital transformation as needed.

On November 18, 2022 our founder will be in New York City (Midtown Manhattan) and available to connect for any of the following purposes:

  • Private keynote or workshop for your organization
  • Certification session on the Change Planning Toolkit™ and/or FutureHacking™ sets of tools for your team
  • Featured keynote speaker or workshop for a sales event or conference
  • Advisory session to provide input on a specific innovation project or your overall innovation or transformation program
  • Audio or video podcast appearance
  • Grab a coffee or a meal — to connect or reconnect
  • Or, if you think Braden should interview you on camera to join the video interviews he’s done with luminaries like Dean Kamen, Seth Godin, Dan Pink, Roger Martin, Kevin Roberts, and most recently – PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer Mauro Porcini – Braden will bring his video camera!

If you work in Manhattan or are willing to travel in from elsewhere in the greater New York City metropolitan area (or the world) and are looking to increase the innovation or transformation capabilities of your organization or to de-risk an innovation project by getting an outside perspective, or just to connect, contact Braden to book time on November 18, 2022.

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Every Company Needs an Innovation Coach

Retained InnovationInnovation is not a solo activity. While the rare lone genius may be able to invent something on their own (although still always inspired by others), nobody can innovate by themselves. Innovation, by its very nature, requires collaboration.

Companies are like brains. The brain is composed of two hemispheres. The left brain is typically described as the home to math and logic skills, while the right brain is described as the domain of creativity. Of course people need to develop both hemispheres to be successful, and companies are the same. Achieving operational excellence is the goal of the left brain side of the organization and innovation excellence should be the goal of the right side of the organization. Unfortunately, most organizations over-invest in operational excellence to the point that the organization fights off innovation excellence efforts like a virus.

So, what’s the cure?

Not to get sick in the first place of course!

To achieve that, consider putting an innovation wellness program in place. And what does that look like?

An innovation wellness program has at its center, an organization that is willing to reach outside its four walls for a constant stream of new inspiration. Because it is inspiration in combination with curiosity that will give the organization a fighting chance of identifying ongoing sources of unique and differentiated insights that will allow the organization to continuously reinvent itself and stay in resonance with its customers.

A couple tangible examples of innovation wellness program components include:

  1. Embedding elements of so-called Open Innovation into the core of the organization’s innovation approach rather than existing as a periodic guest
  2. Continuous reinforcement of a curiosity culture
  3. Employment of a part-time innovation coach on an ongoing basis

Robert F BrandsWhat does an innovation coach look like?

Well, one good example was the late Robert F. Brands, who was lost to the global innovation community far too soon. He was a friend, a colleague, a mentor, a partner on work we did for the United States Navy, and he helped me get the book deal for my first five-star book – Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

A good innovation coach helps you avoid the ten signs of innovation sickness:

  1. Nobody can articulate your definition of innovation (or you don’t have one)
  2. Nobody can articulate your innovation vision/strategy/goals (or you don’t have them)
  3. People struggle to tell the story of one or more innovations launched to wide adoption by the organization
  4. Most of what passes as innovation inside the organization would actually be classified as improvements (not innovation) by people outside the organization
  5. The organization no longer makes external innovation perspectives available to a wide audience
  6. Nobody takes the time to participate in our innovation efforts anymore
  7. Your organization is unable to accept insights and ideas from outside the organization and develop them into concepts that can be scaled to wide adoption
  8. Innovation program leadership has difficulty getting time on the CEO’s calendar any more
  9. Your innovation team is trying to do all of the innovating instead of helping to accelerate the innovation efforts of others
  10. Your pace of innovation is slower than the organizations you compete with for market share, donations, votes, etc.

A good innovation coach can help you:

1. Perform an innovation assessment

I developed a 50 question innovation audit and made it available in support of my first book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, so that people can do a self-evaluation of their innovation maturity here on my web site. Or if you would like to dig a little deeper into the dynamics of innovation in your organization, I can work with you to do an innovation diagnostic across your organization and/or help you establish a baseline so you can track your innovation maturity progress over time.

2. Establish a Continuous Innovation Infrastructure

Many companies confuse having a New Product Development (NPD) program or a Research & Development (R&D) program with having an innovation program, or are stuck in an ‘innovation as a project’ approach to innovation. A good innovation coach can help you define what innovation can and should mean to your organization, build a common language of innovation, create an innovation vision, establish an innovation strategy that dovetails with your organization’s overall strategy, and develop innovation goals that will help focus the organization’s efforts to realize its innovation vision and strategy.

3. Teach You Some New Innovation Tools, Methods, and Frameworks

A good innovation coach is also a skilled facilitator and can help facilitate innovation off-sites, an effective trainer who can develop the custom courses you need to teach people in the organization new tools, methods, or frameworks to improve or accelerate your innovation capabilities, and is capable of delivering inspirational keynotes to large groups inside your organization to help shift mindsets and help people feel empowered to participate in the innovation efforts of the organization. The best innovation coaches are capable not just of bringing in the tools, methods and frameworks of others, but are also capable of understanding your innovation gaps and creating new innovation tools, methods and frameworks to help you.

4. Help You Identify Insights and Opportunities

Innovation begins with inspiration, and your curiosity and exploration should lead you to identify some good insights to build on and opportunities to pursue. But, because most ideas are really idea fragments, sometimes an innovation coach or other external perspectives can help you identify the gaps in your idea fragment or opportunity identification that might make them more compelling, especially if you aren’t making a conscious use of The Nine Innovation Roles as part of your innovation process to help you avoid innovation blind spots. A good innovation coach can also help you go beyond ideas and help you focus on not just one, but all three keys to innovation success:

  • Value Creation
  • Value Access
  • Value Translation

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire will help you learn more about each, or you can check out my previous article ‘Innovation is All About Value‘.

5. Tell You Honestly When You’re Going Off Course

A good innovation coach will have the courage to be honest with you and tell you when you’ve lost your way. Over time, many innovation teams tend to come down with shiny object syndrome or its equally evil cousin, launch fever. A competent innovation coach will be able to recognize the change and help you course correct before you pass the point of no return, and put the very existence of your innovation program at risk. A good innovation coach is able to provide a consistent external perspective, a sanity check, and may be able to also help you build external connections to invite in other external perspectives as well.

Wrapping it Up

It is easy to fall in love with the innovation process and program you’ve created. It is equally simple to form attachments to your innovation projects and artifacts and think that you’ve cracked the code, and maybe you have, but wouldn’t you like to keep one toe in the pond outside your organization just to make sure?

Book Innovation Speaker Braden Kelley for Your EventCreating and maintaining a part-time relationship with an innovation coach you trust is a great way to do that. Smart organizations keep a pulse on their level of innovation maturity over time. They’re continuously evolving their innovation infrastructure, building new capabilities, and seeking out external perspectives as a sanity check on their program evolutions over time. So what are you waiting for?

Who’s going to coach your winning innovation team?

Contact me now to set up a free introductory consultation


Accelerate your change and transformation success

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Amazing Innovation Keynote and Nine Innovation Roles Workshop Deal

In support of my crowdfunding project over on IndieGoGo I am offering an incredible deal to the first FIVE (5) organizations to grab this perk:

Grab the Nine Innovation Roles Workshop and Innovation Keynote Perk

For $2,000 + expenses I will:

  1. Deliver a SIXTY (60) minute innovation keynote and Q&A session
  2. Deliver a SIXTY (60) minute Nine Innovation Roles diagnostic workshop for up to 60 participants
  3. Bring TEN (10) Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tools to use with the workshop participants

Normally I charge anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 + expenses for innovation workshops and keynotes depending on the length and amount of custom content, so this is a crazy deal.

You can click to read more about The Nine Innovation Roles.

Or, click to find out more about me as an innovation speaker.

Grab the Nine Innovation Roles Workshop and Innovation Keynote Perk

The Nine Innovation Roles diagnostic workshop will create a fun, interactive experience for innovation teams or organizations to use to help people better understand what roles they fill on innovation projects, why the team’s or organization’s innovation efforts are failing, and how they can together improve the innovation performance of their teams or organization.

Design for Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool

So, grab this Amazing Innovation Keynote and Nine Innovation Roles Workshop Deal and help your innovation teams be more successful in the future. Don’t wait. Be one of only FIVE (5) organizations to get this perk, or pre-order the group diagnostic tool or seminar kit and run a team building exercise of your own.

Grab the Nine Innovation Roles Workshop and Innovation Keynote Perk

Build a Common Language of Innovation

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Announcing the Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool

I am proud to announce the availability of the Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool for pre-order as part of my crowdfunding project over on IndieGoGo. There you will find lots of great perks available including discounts on the Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool and even FIVE (5) two-hour innovation keynote and workshop combos at an incredibly discounted price.

The Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool will come with a series of simple exercises and a deck of roles cards to help create a fun, interactive experience for innovation teams or organizations to use to help people better understand what roles they fill on innovation projects, why the team’s or organization’s innovation efforts are failing, and how they can together improve the innovation performance of their teams or organization.

Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool Coming Soon

Design for Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool

You can click to read more about The Nine Innovation Roles, but here is the ethos behind it:

“Too often we treat people as commodities that are interchangeable and maintain the same characteristics and aptitudes. Of course, we know that people are not interchangeable, yet we continually pretend that they are anyway — to make life simpler for our reptile brain to comprehend. Deep down we know that people have different passions, skills, and potential, but even when it comes to innovation, we expect everybody to have good ideas.

I’m of the opinion that all people are creative, in their own way. That is not to say that all people are creative in the sense that every single person is good at creating lots of really great ideas, nor do they have to be. I believe instead that everyone has a dominant innovation role at which they excel, and that when properly identified and channeled, the organization stands to maximize its innovation capacity. I believe that all people excel at one of nine innovation roles, and that when organizations put the right people in the right innovation roles, that your innovation speed and capacity will increase.”

The Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool and Workshop can help you identify why your innovation efforts are failing or how your innovation teams could be more successful in the future. Don’t wait. Book a workshop, or pre-order the group diagnostic tool and run a team building exercise of your own.

Book a Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Workshop

Build a Common Language of Innovation

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.