MANAGING INNOVATION is a Workshop created by Andrew A. Moyer, owner of Moyer & Associates and a partner in The SOLiance Group. 

             If you are interested in a dynamic Innovation Workshop for your Team,  please call us to learn the details.  705-743-2422 (Canada) or 716-622-6467 (USA)

                                                                                                 www.soliancegroup.com

Below are excerpts from the overview of Managing Innovation Workshop:

Innovating is something you do in the context of your workplace. The importance of the manager's role in innovating is hard to overestimate. Innovation needs to be understood, welcomed, led and managed. When innovation is managed badly, the results are chaos and resentment. When it is done well, your workplace becomes filled with creativity and the energy that everyone wants.

As managers, we must understand at a gut level that innovation and creation produce something really new. The very actions that produce stability and normal productivity can kill innovation if we let it. That does not mean that creative people are hot house flowers that must be protected from the real world. It does mean that there must be a certain receptivity to new ideas and that really creative people may not share all of our worldview. They may in fact, be very difficult employees sometimes.

One of the main things that managers must do is see how their own behavior can be a significant barrier to their own staff. If we, for instance, tell our staff to focus

only on their current work they will not innovate. What else are we personally doing that is a barrier to innovation?

Those who are very good at managing innovation know:

• who are the early adopters of any change;
• who are the people that can "sell" the idea to the organization to develop the critical mass [that can be called the latent leaders];

• how will communication occur so that the evolution of the change is understood, and
• how will feedback be handled, including the feedback from managers and other staff alike.
• how will systems that support the former way of doing something be addressed so that the new idea is not undermined?

[Workshop content includes:  What is Innovation?  Creativity or the Creative Problem Solving Approach? The Business Process Approach; Managing and Leading Innovation.]