Innovation Support

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Which of these describe your situation? 

• Are innovation efforts siloed or inconsistent across the organization? 
• Do your teams struggle to move from idea generation to real-world execution? 
• Are you missing opportunities because of outdated innovation frameworks or processes? 
• Do you lack a reliable way to capture, vet, and scale new ideas? 
• Would your teams benefit from real-time coaching and expert feedback as they innovate? 

Innovation is the disciplined creation and adoption of new value — ideas, products, or processes that solve real problems in novel, useful, and sustainable ways.

Practical 7-Step Innovation Cycle

Frame the Opportunity
Translate strategic goals or market gaps into a clear “How might we…?” challenge that aligns teams and metrics.

Discover Insights
Gather evidence—customer interviews, data analytics, tech scouting—to uncover unmet needs and enabling trends.

Generate Options
Run focused ideation sessions (e.g., brainwriting, TRIZ, CPS) to produce many diverse concepts without premature judgment.

Select & Shape Concepts
Apply objective criteria—desirability, feasibility, viability—to shortlist ideas, then refine value propositions, business models, and risk assumptions.

Prototype & Experiment
Build the smallest testable artifacts (MVPs, mock‑ups, simulations) and run rapid experiments to validate key hypotheses with real users.

Iterate & Validate
Use data from experiments to pivot, improve, or drop concepts, tightening the build‑measure‑learn loop until the solution meets success thresholds.

Scale & Embed
Secure resources for full development, launch to market or internal rollout, measure impact, and codify learnings so the process itself improves over time.
 

Following these seven steps turns innovation from a sporadic creative burst into a disciplined, repeatable business capability.

We can bring our innovation process expertise to bear on your teams, nurturing their innate abilities in a perfectly neutral manner. In this mode, we manage and facilitate process, mitigating typical team dysfunction which limits the effectiveness of the team and the process while maximizing the your team's productivity in the typical cycles divergent and convergent activities. We do not contribute materially to the content of the process.

In addition to bringing our process and facilitation expertise to the team, we can also contribute materially to the content generated by the process. We take extra time to understand the challenge domain and the specific characteristics desired in solutions so we can meaningfully contribute. In some cases, we can carefully and transparently move between managing and facilitating the process and contributing content. In this mode, we are a thought partner with the team.

Of course, we can use our process expertise and our brain-based instructional design along with our deep knowledge of experiential adult learning to teach innovation processes and tools. If desired, the experiential activities can be supplemented or replaced by real work.

We'll help you identify the right process and tools to either use, learn, or both! We can coach your team through the process. We can directly participate in the process with your team. We can teach processes to your team.

Creative Problem Solving

CPS is a structured, four‑stage cycle (Clarify, Ideate, Develop, Implement) that blends divergent thinking (generating many possibilities) with convergent thinking (narrowing to the best). Managers like it because it replaces ad‑hoc brainstorming with clear process gates, stakeholder‑relevant questions (“How might we…?”), and criteria‑based selection, so teams move from fuzzy challenge to tested solution without losing creative energy.

TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving)

TRIZ distills millions of patents into 40 principles and contradiction matrices that show how the world’s best inventors resolved technical trade‑offs. For leaders, it is an “idea accelerator”: instead of reinventing the wheel, teams map their problem to a known contradiction (e.g., “strong and light”) and scan proven patterns (segmentation, inversion, dynamization) to leapfrog incremental tweaks and reach high‑level innovations quickly.

Human Centered Design (IDEO)

HCD reframes innovation around deep empathy with end‑users. Through ethnographic shadowing, rapid prototyping, and iterative feedback loops, teams surface latent needs and co‑create solutions that fit real contexts. Managers appreciate HCD because it de‑risks launches: by testing low‑fidelity models early with actual users, investment decisions are grounded in evidence, not gut feel.

Lean Startup

Popularized by Eric Ries, Lean Startup applies “build‑measure‑learn” loops and minimum viable products (MVPs) to any new offering. Instead of long, stealth projects, teams ship the smallest testable slice, measure real‑world traction, and pivot or persevere based on data. The method helps executives allocate capital like venture investors—funding experiments that prove (or disprove) assumptions before scaling.

Our Processes Are Enhanced by AI

Generative AI is emerging as a full‑cycle innovation copilot: 

In Creative Problem Solving (Clarify–Ideate–Develop–Implement) it instantly synthesizes market data into crisp “How might we…?” statements, then produces hundreds of idea variants, drafts concept sketches, and even auto‑generates test plans—shrinking each gate from days to minutes. 

For TRIZ,AI models trained on patent libraries can detect contradictions in your specs, surface the most relevant of TRIZ’s 40 principles, and generate novel adaptations (e.g., dynamic segmentation concepts) so teams leap directly to high‑level solutions. 

In Human‑Centered Design, AI transcribes and clusters interview insights, creates empathetic personas and journey maps on demand, and turns verbal feedback into rapid visual prototypes, tightening user feedback loops without extra headcount. 

Finally, within Lean Startup cycles, generative AI drafts MVP code or no‑code app shells, designs experiment dashboards, and runs predictive analyses on early metrics to recommend pivot‑or‑persevere decisions in real time. 

The net effect is faster evidence, richer option sets, and more disciplined learning—with managers retaining control over priorities while AI accelerates every underlying task.

Self-Reflection Strategies and Self-Regulation Training

These techniques teach individuals to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own thinking—setting explicit goals, tracing how they reasoned, and adjusting tactics mid‑stream. For managers, embedding metacognition in project rituals (e.g., “pre‑mortems,” reflection checklists) boosts creative output and reduces blind‑spots, because teams become aware of cognitive biases and course‑correct proactively.

Mental Flexibility

Cognitive flexibility exercises (e.g., perspective‑taking swaps, scenario reframing, “what‑if” drills) strengthen the brain’s ability to switch mental sets and combine concepts in novel ways. Organizationally, this means faster adaptation when market conditions shift: employees trained in flexibility reconfigure resources, roles, or strategies without getting stuck in legacy assumptions.

Specific Recall

Recent studies show that briefly coaching people to recall vivid, specific past experiences primes the brain’s hippocampal‑prefrontal network, leading to more original ideas and future‑oriented insights. Pairing such priming with tasks like analogy mapping or divergent thinking boosts ideation quality. Managers can weave these micro‑interventions—five‑minute guided memory or imagery sessions—into workshops to measurably elevate creative performance without major time or budget costs.

Systematic Methods and Brain Function Integration

Pair self-reflection techniques and mental‑flexibility training with disciplined tools like TRIZ‑brainwriting hybrids, and you move far beyond loose brainstorming. These methods deliberately engage the front part of the brain (to curb habitual thinking) and the memory center of the brain (to recombine memories), breaking fixation and fusing diverse ideas. The result: creativity becomes a repeatable, scalable process rather than a lucky flash. Samsung’s use of TRIZ plus brainwriting, reinforced by cognitive drills, cut fixation time and sped up breakthrough concepts—proof that a neuro‑informed, systematic approach delivers sharper, faster innovation.

Our Methods Are Enhanced by AI

Generative AI acts as a personal thinking coach that amplifies each neuro‑innovation lever: it prompts teams to set explicit goals, surface their reasoning steps, and conduct real‑time “pre‑mortem” reflections—automating the self-reflection checklists that keep projects bias‑free and on course. It fuels mental flexibility by instantly offering perspective‑shifting “what‑if” scenarios, analogies from distant domains, and role‑play dialogues, letting employees rehearse rapid mental set‑switching before market conditions demand it. 

Through guided imagery scripts, AI can trigger specific recall hints—steering people to retrieve vivid past successes or failures and then mapping those memories onto new challenges to spark original combinations. 

Finally, when blended with systematic techniques like TRIZ‑brainwriting hybrids, the same models diagnose fixed focus points, suggest relevant TRIZ principles, and generate diverse idea clusters, directly engaging the parts of the brain that play a crucial role in thinking and emotional regulation, particularly in memory processes and emotional control that these methods target. 

The result is a repeatable pipeline in which AI scaffolds disciplined reflection, mental agility, and deep memory integration—turning breakthrough creativity into an everyday, scalable capability.