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When NASA was working on sending a man to the moon they created an “Office of Impossible Projects” to handle challenges that no one knew how to overcome. One by one “impossible” became merely difficult. Unfortunately most workplaces don’t encourage this kind of bold approach! And almost no teams think to celebrate mistakes or embrace failure as a path to new possibilities. And yet many organizations claim they want their people to be creative and innovative. Really?!!

Why didn’t record companies invent iTunes? Why didn’t telephone companies invent the smart phones? Nokia, the innovative company that emerged from nowhere to beat Motorola in the digital cell phone market, saw their 60% market share fall to zero within 6 years! In fact, many companies that were wildly successful no longer exist, including Kodak, Compaq, Pan Am, Enron, Radio Shack, Blockbuster and Sun Microsystems. Trapped by their own success, market leaders become complacent – even arrogant, learn to reduce risk and avoid mistakes and failures. As a consequence they squelch or kill innovation and creativity, and ignore disruptions in their industry that should cause them great concern. This makes them vulnerable to global competition from new or more aggressive companies with less to lose as well as disruptive innovation that they could not imagine.

This presentation will explore the biggest barriers to breakthroughs in ourselves, our teams, and our organizations, and practical ways to promote risk-taking, thinking differently, and sparking innovative thinking in our organizations.

Highlights

• Research on the Real-world Barriers to Creativity and Innovation
• Relationship of Creativity to Innovation
• Examples of Successful and Failed Companies as well as Accidental Innovation
• Practical ways to Increase innovation, including:

• Stop Killing It!
• Generous Listening & Possibility Speaking
• Celebrate Risk-taking & Learn from Mistake-making
• Re-interpret Failure – Fail Forward
• Re-invent Yourself Starting with Your Socks!

 

Kimberly Wiefling is the President of Wiefling Consulting, co-founder of Silicon Valley Alliances, and author of Scrappy Project Management, a global business leadership consultant, and a force of nature – the good kind! She specializes in global team effectiveness – helping teams achieve what seems impossible, but is merely difficult. A scientist by education, Kimberly has an M.S. in physics and a B.S. in chemistry and physics. She earned her certificate in program and project management through UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley, where she then taught program and project management for 6 years. Kimberly’s expertise is to make the “impossible” merely difficult, and then inevitable. She has worked with people form over 50 different countries, and she’s determined to transform Planet Earth one inspired and engaged team at a time!

Speaking experience: Hundreds of talks in the US, Japan, Europe and Asia, including professional associations like PMI Poland, PMI SV, PMI Australia, and Fortune 500/Global 1000 companies.

Note: If just knowing "how" to do something were enough we'd all be rich and thin, so Kimberly’s workshops are highly interactive, engaging experiences designed to change behavior and deliver results.