Dr. Darin Eich · Innovation Learning

Innovation Programs,
Built for Your People.

A keynote, a workshop, a multi-week bootcamp, a certificate, an online course, or an ongoing program for your teams. Dr. Darin Eich designs and leads innovation programs for organizations worldwide, and can point you to a trusted facilitator in his network when that is the better fit.

See Program Formats ↓ Talk Through Your Program

100+

Organizations served worldwide

20+

Years designing innovation programs

100K+

Learners reached worldwide

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What is an innovation program?

An innovation program is a structured way for a group of people to build innovation skills and apply them to real challenges, rather than hearing about innovation once and returning to business as usual. It can run for ninety minutes or a full year. What makes it a program is that it has a purpose, a real challenge to work on, activities people actually do, and something concrete at the end.

Programs go by many names inside organizations: innovation training, an ideation workshop series, a design thinking program, an innovation lab, a bootcamp, an employee innovation initiative. The right shape depends on who is in the room, how much time you have, and what has to be different when it ends.

Program Formats

Every format, one methodology.

The same underlying process runs through all of these. The format changes with your time, budget, and how deep the skills need to go.

🎤

Keynote or Conference Session

A talk that gives a whole room a shared language for innovation, often the opening move before deeper work.

Keynote speaking →

🛠️

Half-Day or Full-Day Workshop

A working session where a team tackles a real challenge and leaves with ideas, a decision, or a prototype.

Design thinking workshops →

🏃

Design Sprint

A focused multi-day format for moving one challenge from problem to tested concept quickly.

Design sprint training →

📅

Multi-Week Program or Cohort

A series of sessions with work in between, so skills get practiced on live projects instead of forgotten.

Creativity and innovation training →

🎓

Certificate Program

A structured path with a credential at the end, for organizations that want proof their people can facilitate innovation.

Innovation certification →

👥

Train the Trainer

Build internal facilitators who can run innovation sessions long after the engagement ends.

Train the Trainer program →

💻

Online and Self-Paced

Courses your team can take on their own schedule, including the original ten-workshop Program Innovation course.

Program Innovation course →

🏔️

Offsite or Retreat

A program designed around a place and a moment, for leadership teams and annual gatherings.

Offsites and retreats →

Examples

What innovation programs look like in practice.

A few common shapes, drawn from programs run with universities, companies, associations, and nonprofits.

A university student success challenge

Staff across advising, housing, and student life spend a day mapping where first-year students struggle, then leave with two ideas they own and test the following month.

A corporate innovation capability build

A company trains a group of internal facilitators over several weeks so every department can run its own ideation sessions, instead of booking an outside consultant each time.

A conference pre-event program

Attendees arrive a day early, work through a real challenge together, and leave with a plan they can act on rather than a notebook full of notes.

An AI adoption program

Teams learn to experiment with AI tools on their own work, building confidence and shared practices rather than waiting for a policy.

Innovation in the AI Era

Learn the process yourself first.
Then let AI amplify every step.

The 10-module system works with or without AI — but the order matters. The real innovation skill comes from doing the work yourself: sitting with a challenge, forming questions, generating ideas, making decisions. That's what builds the mindset. Once you have it, AI becomes a powerful partner at every stage.

🧠

The human foundation first

Innovation is a skill, not a tool. Working through each module yourself — clarifying a real challenge, generating ideas you didn't see before, developing and testing a concept — is what creates genuine capability. You can't shortcut this with AI and still come out the other side knowing how to innovate.

This is the learning Darin has designed into organizations for 20+ years. The process builds the mindset. The mindset makes everything else possible.

⚡

AI as your thought partner at every stage

Once you've internalized the process, AI becomes a genuine accelerator. Stuck on challenge framing? Think it through with an AI thought partner. Need to push beyond your first 20 ideas? Generate 100 more together. Testing a concept? Use AI to stress-test assumptions before you invest.

Darin's online courses demonstrate this in practice — and an AI agent can guide you through the step-by-step innovation process when you're ready to work at that level.

Dr. Darin Eich, innovation facilitator and trainer

The Person Behind the Program

Dr. Darin Eich — Innovation Facilitator, Trainer & Author

For over 20 years, Darin has designed and led innovation programs for organizations across the Fortune 500, Silicon Valley, higher education, and beyond. His work starts with a simple belief: innovation is a skill, and skills can be taught step by step.

Program Innovation is the origin of that work — the system Darin built and refined through hundreds of workshops, a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, and his book Innovation Step-by-Step. The methodology behind it lives inside every workshop, program, and training he designs today.

The Book

Innovation Step-by-Step by Darin Eich

100+

Organizations worldwide

20+

Years in the field

Published books

What clients say

Going through Darin's training process was like learning to ride a bike... instead of generating 20–30 ideas in each 3-hour brainstorm, I was coming up with almost 150 ideas. I was amazed at this newfound skill that previously seemed unattainable.

CEO & Co-Founder, Firebase (acquired by Google)

Darin's approach takes the mystery out of how to think like an innovator. The results were breakthrough in nature. Solid innovative product and process concepts were developed by each team, which will now lead to formal funding and project assignments.

Senior VP, Quality & Engineering, Sparton Corporation

People who did not think they had the capacity to innovate left with ideas, solutions and renewed energy for the project. The training was very team focused which led to a more creative approach to problem solving and 'break-through thinking.'

Program Director, University of Wisconsin

Questions

Common questions about innovation programs.

What is an innovation program?

A structured way for a group to build innovation skills and apply them to real challenges. It has a clear purpose, a challenge worth working on, activities people actually do, and a concrete outcome. That is what separates a program from a one-off talk.

How long should an innovation program be?

Anywhere from a ninety-minute session to a year-long cohort. A single workshop can shift how one team approaches a problem. Building lasting capability across an organization usually takes several sessions with real work in between.

What is an employee innovation program?

A program that gives employees across departments a shared process for generating and advancing ideas, often paired with a way to submit and develop those ideas. It works best when people practice on real organizational challenges rather than hypothetical ones.

Can you train our own people to run it?

Yes. Train the trainer and facilitator certificate formats exist specifically so internal staff can lead sessions after the engagement ends. Many organizations start with a facilitated program and move to internal delivery in the second year.

Do you run programs virtually?

Yes, in person, virtual, and hybrid. Virtual programs use breakout rooms and digital whiteboards so participants still do the work rather than watch slides.

What does an innovation program cost?

It depends on format, audience size, travel, and how much custom design is involved. A single workshop and a year-long capability build are different orders of magnitude. The fastest way to get a real number is to describe your situation.

Innovation Programs,
Built for Your People.

What is an innovation program?