Becoming: Continuous Innovation Management

Becoming is the third and ongoing stage in Growth Engine's Innovation Process. It is one thing to create ideas at an annual ideation session, but it is a real challenge to turn them into viable business propositions and to make innovation part of the fabric of the company. Growth Engine, as an agency of record, provides the stamina and continuity to ensure the longer term integration of innovation.

Objectives of the Becoming Stage

Improve and implement best-in-class innovation processes and practices based on empirically proven successes
Train and empower employees in focused ideation and creative problem solving
Continually develop, leverage and exploit new insights and learnings, changing market /trends and ideas for increasingly profitable growth
Reinforce an environment that fosters innovation

Services Provided During the Becoming Stage

Innovation Process Design and Implementation: Growth Engine can ensure a long-term innovation process integrated into a company's operations by helping to implement an ongoing innovation process. In many instances this requires not only development of a process but some culture-changing activities as well. Growth Engine will guide your company through this change process to transform it into a Total Innovation Enterprise™, where innovation is encouraged in all areas of the business (from leadership, marketing and sales to process reengineering, cost-cutting, new product development and supply chain).
Growth Engine, as an agency of record, can also act as the "outsourced" innovation arm of your company, providing the arms and legs required to move innovation projects through the company and out into the marketplace.
Creativity and Innovation Training: Our philosophy on ideation, in general, is for it to be expanding, yet focused on the business issue at hand. Our method teaches participants ideation techniques as well as how to design ideation sessions to address their most pressing and "hardest-to-crack" creative challenges and successfully "think to the side." Paradoxically, the best ideation requires divergent, creative thinking that also delivers strategically-aligned results. We concentrate on four key areas of ideation: questioning, wishing, metaphors and visuals.
Growth Engine practices "action learning" in all the creativity and innovation training we do. The advantages to this approach are that participants: 1) learn best by doing, 2) see specifically how to apply the ideation techniques being taught/experienced to their immediate business challenges and 3) have fun while they learn.
Every participant in these sessions receives "how-to" sheets for the ideation techniques covered in the workshop. These how-to sheets will enable session participants, at a later date, to quickly remember how to facilitate a specific technique with their team. Facilitation training is also included so participants can facilitate ideation sessions on their own.
The majority of our training is conducted in a two-day informal and casual workshop format. Other formats can be designed.
Meeting Design, Facilitation & Keynotes: Growth Engine is called on to develop unique meeting approaches to help make large meetings more effective, creative and fun. Many of these requests are for marketing and/or sales meetings where the goal is to creatively solve issues that are company-wide or is to inspire changes or new directions for the group. Growth Engine can design and facilitate these meetings. The principals are also experienced speakers and are frequently asked to deliver keynote speeches on innovation and creativity within companies.