Systematic innovation as a key leadership skill: Learning innovation activities through online workshops

I began by research interest focused on leadership programs, which is a large focus because there is so much to a leadership program and so many different kinds of things a person can learn from such a program. About four years ago I narrowed my focus within leadership programs to look at those kinds of things we can teach in programs that people can actually not only learn but also do within the program. The key thing I became interested in was innovation, specifically the thinking part of innovation, namely idea generation. I saw this as a critical leadership skill that should be learned and practiced. People can generate ideas within programs so I set out to discover different methods and activities that people could learn and do to innovate and brainstorm more systematically. I’ve done a number of webinars on this topic and in 2009 integrated it all together and did a 4 part webinar series on systematic idea generation and innovation. The webinar series turned out to exceed my expectations and we had a number of organizations from across the globe join us for the live course we did each week. Now the recordings, handouts, and accompanying materials from this webinar series are available online at InnovationTraining.org. This is more of an “online workshop” since the purpose is for the learners to do a series of activities for their own innovation project rather than passively just sitting back and watching. I would like to do more innovation workshops like this where we customize the projects to a specific challenge or organization.

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