Typical Engagements

Working closely with clients every step of the way to achieve innovation effectiveness and market leadership.

For clients who want an independent assessment about their systems of innovation

The innovation diagnostic is a hands-on experience to examine root causes of suboptimal innovation performance and applies a set of both quantitative and evidence-based tools. The innovation diagnostic will reveal: how well aligned is the innovation strategy with the corporate strategy; what are the "hidden" organizational and cultural issues; what is the competitive strength of the pipelines; and to what degree your company is leveraging existing capabilities and processes. The diagnostic allows for an overall assessment of barriers to innovation effectiveness and is comprised of four levels, as follows: (1) industry assessment, (2) enterprise assessment, (3) network assessment and (4) performance assessment.

For clients ready to either start a new or improve an existing Innovation Program

Organizations starting out on the innovation journey, and those that have already taken the first steps alike, often wish to have strong innovation capabilities. In my practice I use a holistic approach which helps clients institutionalize innovation and attain innovation effectiveness by building capabilities and transforming the culture of their organization. Leveraging on the outcomes of an innovation diagnostic (described above) I help clients increase their overall innovation capability, which includes: leadership, processes, protocols, organizational structure, reward and recognition, metrics, partners and networks.

For clients who want to generate and manage ideas which will deliver growth

Organizations often fail to capitalize on the ideas that they, their suppliers and their customers can generate. They miss out on significant opportunities through inadequate methods for engaging the whole organization, inefficient process to manage both internal and external ideas, a lack of clear ownership for idea progression and an inefficient criteria for idea prioritization. My expertise in facilitating meetings, workshops and offsite events produces optimum results for clients and participants. Each idea generation workshop is designed to deliver implementable outcomes and generate new knowledge through a free flow of thinking.

For clients who need to optimize their innovation process – i.e., from idea generation to commercialization

Many organizations I work with aren't short on creativity, insights or ideas. What they need is to refine or re-invent their innovation process - i.e., the process they use for involving others, prioritizing, fleshing out and testing their ideas, and bringing ideas to life. Using lean thinking and six sigma methods, I can help your  company to optimize its innovation process and manage effectively the transition from idea generation through to commercialization.

For clients who want to improve (kaizen), re-design (kaikaku) or innovate (kakushin) business processes

Using both Lean Six Sigma and Japanese methods for business process improvement (i.e., kaizen, kaikaku and kakushin), I work with organizations to design, launch and implement business process improvement projects. I can help define project goals as well as staff and lead project teams composed of appropriate client executives and other critical stakeholders.

For clients and conference audiences who want to understand more about innovation, feel inspired and motivated to innovate

As a speaker on the topic of innovation, I deliver presentations about the emerging disciplines of innovation, including the latest insights on innovation methods, innovation challenges for industries and real business cases on how innovation is driving new value creation and sustainable business growth. Many organizations I work with also request this type of engagement when they need to conduct a discussion on what is innovation and why it’s important, or when they want to expand the cognitive space of their management team about innovation.