If you're frustrated with the pace of innovation in your group, you need to read Dale's provocative new booklet on innovation. He explains his radical solution to stalled ideas and experiments and lays out a process that can change the culture in your group in 100 days, and in those 100 days start the flow of cost-saving and revenue-enhancing new initiatives.
The Culture of Innovation
What does it mean to create a Culture of Innovation?
- Ideas come from everywhere - every department is energized to improve the organization (for instance, the customer service reps are sending sales ideas to the sales team, and the training team is offering ideas to R&D and vice versa);
- You're creating "circles of helping" where the best customers and best suppliers want to involve your company in their innovations and be involved in yours.
- You have practical, hardworking, profitable innovations you can measure and manage with a set of innovation metrics we co-create with you.
- You have an "innovation infrastructure" - we help your team members build your own idea generation tools and train internal coaches. This is a structure that your employees are committed to because they built it and you own it.
There are two traditional approaches to innovation -
1. Do idea generation. This usually results in lists of possibilities but little actual change. As Jim Evans, a veteran CEO, put it, "Brainstorming? Six white boards full of ideas and nothing gets done."
2. Hire a major consulting firm. You can pay a seven figure amount to get one of the big consulting firms to come in and tell you what you're doing wrong and replace your systems with theirs. Naturally, this is often disruptive and can encounter strong resistance from employees who against the change.
Now there's a third approach...
The Innovators' Lab® presents...
The Culture Of Innovation
"The conversation IS the culture!" -Dale Dauten
Developed for The Blue Moon Project at NASA's fabled Johnson Space Center in Houston, The Innovators' Lab® team will help you create a vibrant innovation-oriented culture.
Our goal is to create a self-sustaining environment that gets employees from across disciplines sharing ideas, working together, excited about experiments.
We do innovation programs for one or more groups of your employees, then visit several times to...
- Recruit people who want to be on innovation teams,
- Provide the recruits with an Innovation Kit (that includes our Idea LaunchPad™ and Flying Brain Tours™ idea generation tools) and with several coaching sessions,
- Work with them to develop an "innovation infrastructure" (they help design it, so they "own it"),
- and finally, coach them on implementation.
In a parallel, we will consult with your leadership to...
- Create innovation metrics to allow comparison across projects and departments,
- Develop internal innovation coaches who will be available to assist any team/department that needs innovation mentoring (adding internal creativity talent without adding new hires or bureaucracy),
- Design a reward and recognition program that reinforces innovative thinking and an innovation leadership program that makes new thinking a requirement for group leaders.
The INNOVATION CULTURE package includes a license so that you can use The Innovators' Lab® name and artwork, including our beloved "flying brain®"
The process takes 4-6 months.
There is also a train-the-trainer option, with significant cost savings.
The Innovation Infrastructure will also encourage creativity around cost-savings and improvements in efficiency - the Culture of Innovation should be self-funding in the short-run and highly profitable in the long-run.
Your revolution will be led by your own people, assisted by
Dale Dauten
President, Lumina Corporation and founder of The Innovators' Lab™.
Author of "The Gifted Boss" & "The Max Strategy."
Newspaper columnist syndicated by King Features.
Dale Dauten is Founder of The Innovators' Lab®, an organization devoted to developing and testing new ideas in management and marketing, whose member organizations include Caterpillar, Avnet, General Dynamics and NASA.
Dale authors two newspaper columns, both nationally syndicated by King Features: "The Corporate Curmudgeon" and "JT & Dale Talk Jobs". They appear in over a hundred newspapers around the country, including The Denver Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Arizona Republic and Houston Chronicle. In addition, Dale has authored five books. The two most recent are:
- The Max Strategy, about which Harvey Mackay said, "It will challenge every preconceived notion you have about making your career take off"; and
- The Gifted Boss, which prompted Ken Elkins, former CEO of Pulitzer Broadcasting, to say "Dauten makes you rediscover the joy missing your career."
Both books have been published around the world, with special interest given to them in Asia. (The Max Strategy became a bestseller in Japan in 2003.)
Dale's background as a manager with two major corporations, an executive with two consulting companies, and head of his own nationally-known marketing research firm, has allowed him the opportunity to work with leading organizations, including McDonalds, Procter & Gamble and 3M. He has also done innovation work with Georgia-Pacific, United Auto Group, Kraft Foods, Caterpillar and NASA.
In addition to his consulting work Dale's writing has given him the opportunity to interview top business leaders, innovative management thinkers, as well as coaches and political figures.
This unique combination prompted author Steve Chandler to write, "Dauten's work clearly soars ahead of his time. He is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of business consultants."
Your Cultural Revolution project also includes another ally --
Paula Wigboldy,
who Dale always refers to as "The Delightful Paula Wigboldy".
For over a decade, Paula Wigboldy and Dale have worked together; she was a key part of founding The Innovators' Lab.
Paula has made "What Else Can We Try?" her motto in accomplishing tasks that seem otherwise impossible. She's turned clients into partners in changing the workplace thinking. She's developed alliances with companies and organizations that look to her as a resource for connections and expertise.
She will join Dale in leading the innovation project and therefore, you will have two distinct views and voices - Dale's professorial style and Paula's outspoken energy. Together, they will make sure participants have extraordinary new experiences and new allies.
Click here for a pdf of this page.
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