Benefits from Our Team Training

Here are just some of the associated skills and approaches your team will experience and develop by participating in our workshops:

Enhance cross-functional team effectiveness   

Create the cultural climate that taps into the range of skills and expertise found in multi-disciplinary teams. This leads to improved problem identification and solving and better organizational alignment.
 

Develop the capability to develop discovery insights to inform innovation direction  

Explore customer needs, emerging technology and capabilities, and market drivers to create a body of knowledge that will drive innovation strategy and increase the effectiveness of your innovation system.   

Learn the art of the interview and let the customer tell their story using open-ended, projective and other best practice techniques  

Allow the team to go deeper in their "mind of the customer"  and the customer's environment to understand not just what they say they do but what their values, perceptions, and true behaviors are.  Get beyond their existing filters and viewpoints and truly hear customer needs from a perspective that enables breakthrough thinking.
 

Take a data-driven approach to reveal the patterns in the broader innovation  environment rather than shooting from the hip or working off of gut feel 

Let the data shape team thinking and develop the story about the customer, technology, and the marketplace. Set aside existing, and often internally derived mental models that limit innovation.  Open the organization up to discovering new insights. We call this a bottom up or grounded approach.
 

Use highly effective team and organizational learning processing to create shared understandings enhancing innovation

Enable the team to tap into their underlying creativity and expertise while creating a shared mental model that aligns the organization and focuses solution development and implementation.
 

Separate problem identification from solution development  

First define the full range of problems (customer needs, limiting capabilities, barriers to market success).  Then selectively work on the most important to develop solutions.  This leads to increased innovation success rates and more efficiently uses limited resources.

Use divergent and convergent processes during concept development, select ideas for newness and excitement, then Work to build in feasibility. 

Allow the team to create and develop exciting solutions that are new to the company and new to the market.  This increases the strength and value of the opportunities.

Use developmental thinking vs. decision making early in the innovation process  

Ensure the team has a safe environment from which they can think out of the box, take risks, and offer new ideas that may not be well developed yet.  Then shape and refine those ideas to a level of development where they can be fairly judged on their own merits and enter the innovation pipeline process.
 

Establish clear roles and responsibilities with appropriate charters and resources

Allow the cross-functional team to focus on their innovation goals rather than side agendas, or slowed down by silo thinking.  Create a core team with leadership responsibilities and true innovation decision making authority. 

Establish extended team resources internal and external to the organization to add to the collective skills and knowledge of the team when needed. 

Leverage key leaders and stakeholders to do the blocking and tackling protecting the team from being diverted.  Then provide the resources such as incubation time and seed funding when needed. 

Please contact us to discuss your innovation training needs.