Innovation in Action Series

Innovation In Action

Innovation has become necessary to gain or maintain a leadership position in today's marketplace. Innovation enables improvements and breakthroughs that delight customers and incorporate new products and services. Yet most organizations lack the tools, processes, and alignment that enables innovation.

The Innovation In Action Series (IAS) is a series of modules that explores the dimensions of innovation—Innovation Styles, Innovation Tools and Practices, The Creative Journey^®, Taking Initiative, and Strategic Innovation Management—to help organizations improve how they advance their market position.

The Innovation Styles model, part of a half-day module, shows that everyone innovates, but differently, and that there is tremendous synergy available from recognizing and using different styles.

As a modular program, IAS offers quick, useful, innovation-boosting techniques in half-day modules, and also offers in-depth full-day programs that address challenging cultural and process issues.

Program Outcomes

Innovation In Action Series can increase your organization's ability to innovate. It can be introduced at the level of individual intact teams or at the department or business unit level. The proven, effective approaches, when implemented as part of an overall Human Performance Improvement solution, will work to enhance the ability to innovate and bring innovative ideas fully to market.

Approach

Innovation In Action Series is a series of instructor-led modules which can be configured to meet different organizational needs. A minimum configuration might include only The Case for Innovation and Innovation Styles, for a total of one half-day. A maximum configuration, to address needs at individual, process, and cultural levels, may be a four-day program with some research, consulting, and coaching added to optimize the impact.

By using the option of implementing as a series of discrete modules, an organization can:

Target teams and work units to receive only what they most need
Focus on strategies of culture change at all the right levels
Implement gradually to watch for effect, or implement with pilot groups to compare results

Enabling Improved Performance

Innovation In Action Series provides a variety of tools to promote successful innovation that is easily implemented. These tools are meant to be used continually on the job to remind and reinforce. When these tools and ideas are shared among participants in (optional) follow-up sessions, their use improves over time.

Involving management early is an important success factor, and training managers to support and coach to these processes can maintain and improve performance over time.

Measurement

The SIMAP instrument, from the Strategic Innovation Management module, captures information about the organizational climate and potential barriers to innovation. Some companies choose to repeat the SIMAP instrument 6—12 months after Innovation In Action Series, to survey changes to the organizational climate that helps or impedes innovation.

Evaluation

Wilson Learning can partner with you to measure initial behavioral changes and business results. One approach to evaluate Innovation In Action Series is to baseline creative ideas, number and quality of innovations, successful implementations, or other measures in a quasi-experimental design with a pilot group.

To learn more about measuring the impact of learning, visit Measurement and Evaluation Services.

This offering, like all others from Wilson Learning, can be customized to reflect your environment and business priorities and can be integrated with your processes.