Included with your Innovation Engineering certification is complimentary access to this year’s 9th annual conference.

Fitting with Innovation Engineering, the theme and format for each year is fresh and different.  What remains constant is the focus on giving you the latest and greatest information and insights to help you successfully use your Innovation Engineering skills to make an impact today and tomorrow.

Reflecting on this past year and what is forecast to come we’ve decided this year’s conference needed to contain help and hope but also fit into a world where there just isn’t enough time and we’re forced to figure out how to do more with less.

This year’s theme:
Pep Talks, Fresh Exercises & Realistic Strategies for Big Innovation & Everyday Problem Solving

Conference content will be delivered right to your inbox each day, across the first couple weeks of December and January.  Each will be a little something different, from new exercises and tips to interviews and inspiration.  It’s our hope that each day you’ll get something fresh and valuable to add to your Innovation Engineering mindset and skillset.

How you can connect:  Just because the conference is coming through an email drip doesn’t mean it’s a one-way flow!

• We’ll be hosting one or two online open forum chats for anyone that would like to connect and compare notes.  Details to follow.
• And we hope you’ll join the Innovation Engineering LinkedIn Group to stay connected with the Innovation Engineering Institute and your fellow Green, Blue, and Black Belts during and after the conference.

Now, with no further adieu, check out this year’s opening address.

Leading and doing innovation is about choices.  The big choice to do innovation could almost be considered the easy one.  Innovation is shown to make a meaningful impact on the bottom line, on a company’s return, on employee pocketbooks, and on morale.  Doing the new thing isn’t necessarily hard, it’s NOT doing other things that force you to make choices that is the hard part.

When innovation is at stake when you have people clamoring, “We can’t work anymore!  Our plates are full!  Innovation is nice, but we have no time!  We’re too busy!”  It would be easy at that point to walk away and just put off the innovation decision until later.  When your employees came back from working from home these last few years did they start asking, “What else can we do for you?  We’ve finished all of our tasks early and we’d like to do more. We noticed that earnings aren’t what they once were so we’d like to give back a bit of our pay.” (And if you’re saying to yourself, absolutely not – you are not alone.)

The responsibility you have as the leader isn’t about beating them down to do more.  Right now many workers are truly drowning with work and can’t find a place to catch a breath.  Your job as the leader of a company, team or project is to set priorities…and the biggest way to do that is to start saying no.

Today we are going to talk about ways to fuel your brain for maximum creativity.

We all know that stimulus fuels the brain, setting off a chain reaction of idea associations and creations that will bring new thoughts and ideas to life.

​Sometimes when looking at a challenge we need a reminder about ways we can help ourselves think differently about a business or personal challenge:

Over the last year, we have spent a lot of time speaking and educating folks on how they can innovate in their sphere of influence. Changing the trajectory of their lives and careers through learning and applying an innovation mindset at work and home. 

We hope you will join Maggie Nichols for Driving Your Eureka!

Full disclosure, the data on these 3 ideas isn’t necessarily scientific, but the team at the Innovation Engineering Institute believes in them and none of it will harm you so, we encourage you to try each of them or all of them as you are working to problem-solve a challenge that has you stuck.

What we do know is that everyone can use some help breaking the slump at home or work sometimes. Today we bring you 3 Ideas to Break the Slump:

We are finding that these days understanding Innovation ROI isn’t about convincing more people to innovate. People agree that innovation is important and their companies should be accelerating unique ideas. However, few know just how much financial investment innovation requires to generate enough new revenue or savings to continually grow sales and profitability. 

Learn the importance of defining innovation along with the biggest financial investments companies make in innovation. We will also compare different innovation strategies and how they affect growth, culture, and ROI.

Innovating in systems, services & processes isn’t sexy or popular when it comes to talking about innovation, but they are arguably more important than product innovation.  Without new systems, services & processes there wouldn’t be product innovation.

Join Eureka!, V.P. of Education, Maggie Pfeifer as she talks about how to innovate when you aren’t in the business of products.

Before I start, if you’re just looking for the recipes you can find them here. If you give them a try this holiday season I’d love to know how they turn out. I’m also always looking for new recipes, so if you have a killer recipe please share! You can use the Certified Practitioners group on LinkedIn to share your experiences.

Now, on to how I use IE for baking.

Beloved Economies uncovers “a way to generate innovation that audaciously prioritizes well-being, meaning, connection and resilience alongside traditional metrics like quality and financial success.”

This book gives you piles of evidenced-based recommendations based on 7 years of research exploring how businesses, communities, non-profits, and even government teams have refuted traditional ways of working in favor of one that’s not just more equitable, but also one that delivers unreasonably good results.

During this webinar, you will not only find hope but proof that the way you work can not only transform your business or team but can also transform your life and the world at large.

It’s easy to apply IE principles to product-related solutions, but as our IE Blue Belts show, time and time again, you can use IE for anything. In an audit of recent online Blue Belt graduates, we found 55% used their application for improving or inventing a new process, 20% worked on a marketing initiative, and 25% applied their assignments to a growth opportunity (typically a new product). Here are three examples of how IE Blue Belts are using their skills to improve their sphere of influence.

Much of this daily content has likely inspired fresh conversations about innovation.  But how do you navigate them?  Check out this simple template and talk track from Eureka! Europe to help you open the dialogue. 

What are the ISO Innovation Management standards?
ISO Innovation Management standards (ISO 56000) are a set of internationally recognized guidelines and recommendations for organizations to follow in order to manage innovation effectively. These standards provide a framework for organizations to identify and prioritize innovation opportunities, establish processes and systems for innovation, and measure and evaluate the results of their innovation efforts. 

The principles at the foundation of Innovation Management Systems are

Today the Innovation Engineering Institute’s education team is excited to introduce our newest training offering, Proactive Problem Solving. 

Proactive Problem Solving uses the science of Innovation Engineering to enable all employees from the front lines to the boardroom to contribute meaningful ideas for working smarter and finding pride in their work.

Proactive Problem Solving includes three components:

• A Proactive Problem Solving Workshop that is delivered in a one-day, high energy, non-graded experience for all employees. It’s a team-building and confidence-boosting experience showing employees the what, why, and how of Proactive Problem Solving. It shows them how when they see something – they can do something about it.
• A next generation IE Blue Belt course and certification that is focused on how to Manage & Inspire Proactive Employees.
• A Book – UNLEASHING Proactive Problem Solving.

Learn more from Innovation Engineering Founder Doug Hall about Proactive Problem solving and the inspiration behind the program. 

If you’re reading this, you’ve been through Innovation Engineering training. Now what? Hopefully, you and others at your organization want to use what you learned and expand the philosophy to others. Here are a few ideas and advice for how to reduce the fear and friction on your journey.

The team at the Innovation Engineering Institute took the time to answer questions about the conference content and frequently asked innovation questions. All their answers can be found in the 2022 IE Conference Q&A booklet.