Design Thinking & Creativity for Business Innovation

OVERVIEW

Nowadays, creativity and design thinking are highly needed to make product improvements, meet your customer’s needs, or solve problems that are holding your company back.

Do you want to use creativity and design thinking to create innovative new products, services, or systems that will expand and evolve your business to the next level? If so, you need to create an innovative corporate culture and a creative friendly workplace environment. In this course, you’ll explore why creativity and innovation are more important for businesses today than ever before. You’ll examine why and how leading-edge companies have turned conventional business culture models on their heads by embracing creativity and how to protect your organization from being disrupted or left behind in a rapidly evolving business climate.

You’ll learn how to create a cultural environment that fosters creativity, including creativity blocks to avoid, like micromanaging and an over-emphasis on efficiency, and how to establish an idea-response system for your managers, to encourage the open sharing of ideas. Plus, you’ll find out why a creative corporate culture is key to attracting and retaining great talent, increasing morale and productivity, and ultimately you’re company’s bottom line.

You’ll learn best practices for unleashing your creative team’s potential by bringing together diverse perspectives and creating an environment that embraces risk-taking and removes the fear of failure.

You’ll learn what “thinking outside of the box” really means and how to overcome the mental traps that hold back individuals and organizations. You’ll master your creative thinking so that you can bring your full potential to the team and accelerate your career. 

And, you’ll be able to teach creative thinking skills to your team, allowing them to reframe challenges into possibilities.

You’ll learn how to apply a powerful creative problem-solving technique called DESIGN THINKING to your business which will provide a blueprint for creating innovative creative products and services.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this training course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the needs and problems faced by your customers and clarify the true problems holding back your business
• Question assumptions and explore alternative solutions that are beyond any preconceived limitations
• Identify requirements for a satisfactory solution and criteria for testing and identifying when goals have been met
• Generate out-of-the-box ideas and a broad range of possibilities by using proven strategies like story mapping and powerful brainstorming processes
• Use hands-on approaches and tangible prototypes to experiment and test your ideas, helping you identify the best solutions that will make the biggest impact on your users and your organization.

TARGET PARTICIPANTS

• Business owners, managers, or team leaders
• Leaders who want to create a creative corporate culture
• Leaders who want to encourage innovation in the workplace
• Leaders of creative teams

COURSE CONTENTS

1. Introduction

Benefits of an Innovation-friendly Environment

2. Creative Thinking

• Creative Thinking: Reframing and Mind Mapping
• Creative Thinking: Insights and Flow
• The Importance of Happiness, Play, and Idle Time
• The Importance of Rewarding Creativity
• Rewarding Creativity and Risk-Taking
• The Power of Questions

3. Developing a Creative Work Environment & Team

• Developing Creativity in Individuals
• Exercise: Developing Creativity for Individuals
• Creating a Creative Physical Environment
• Exercise: Creating a Creative Physical Environment
• Empowering Creative Teams
• Exercise: Empowering a Creative Team
• The Importance of Diversity
• Exercise: The Power of Diversity
• Develop an Idea-Response Process
• Exercise: Develop an Idea-Response Process

4. Overcoming Creativity Blocks

• Overcoming Creativity Blocks
• Overcoming Problem-Solving Blocks

5. Design Thinking Methodology and Process

• Why Design Thinking?
• Design Thinking
• Empathize with the End User
• Define the problem
• Ideate and Brainstorm
• Brainstorming Process
• Prototyping Solutions
• Test, Implement, and Assess

6. Looking to the Future

• Disruptive Innovation
• Conclusion and Next Steps
• Blue Ocean Thinking and Opportunities for Growth
• Bonus: Additional Resources You Don't Want to Miss