Innovative Training Programs for a Culture of Innovation

In-Person Workshops, Programs, & Courses

We offer on-site interactive live events to facilitate your team through step-by-step best innovation practices. These events are designed to build a more innovative and collaborative culture within your organization, along with filling your pipeline with new ideas and strategies to pursue.

Virtual Keynotes and Interactive Workshops

Our live programs are also available in virtual formats: live in unison or asynchronously. Your group may work together on Zoom or Teams with live real time facilitation, using an online collaborative whiteboard like Mural or Miro. Or, your group can go at their own pace through an online course.

Collaborative Innovation

Our most popular Collaborative Innovation Workshops include sessions you can pick and choose from or combine into a daylong event. The full day agenda is designed to teach your group how to collaborate, generate and develop innovative ideas, and contribute to a “culture of innovation” and is typically taught in the four parts listed below.

• Workshop 1- Designing & Facilitating Idea Generation & Collaborative Development with Groups
• Workshop 2 – Collaborate, Communicate, & Create: The 3Cs of an Innovation Culture
• Workshop 3 – How to Innovate Swiftly & Systematically: Innovation Step-by-Step
• Workshop 4 – Team “Hackathon” Shark Tank Style Challenge

Design Thinking Training

Design Thinking is a powerful (and fun) approach for innovation that focuses on designing for and with the people we create our products, services, and program for – the customers and users! Through our programs, we will help you generate and develop ideas using insight from the people you are designing for to select a project you are interested in working on and tackle it using some of the most popular and effective tools and techniques for Design Thinking. Our programs feature:

• Online companion modules and toolkit of resources
• Idea generating activities in a workbook
• Team and partner activities

Train the Trainer: Innovation & Design Thinking Facilitator Program

Learn tools, techniques, and methods to facilitate innovation and design thinking and train others. Through this comprehensive hybrid online and mentor-led course, learn to design and facilitate your own innovation and design thinking workshops, sessions, programs or courses – offer your programs to clients as an entrepreneur or within your organization as an innovation facilitator, coach, mentor, or leader.

• Access to our proven design thinking and innovation process and activities to teach and facilitate in your own work
• Specialized online workshops on facilitating innovation AND an online course that is the equivalent of a 3 credit university course
• Two live meetings to discuss the program you would like to design and facilitate
• Access to our network for future innovation facilitator training modules, updates, and special opportunities

Business and Leadership Storytelling

Stories can be your “superpower” that can help you to have a more positive effect in your work with others. Develop or strengthen your superpower with our customized Storytelling for Business Training or Storytelling Leadership Workshops. Whether you prefer on-site or live remote training, we can design a workshop tailored to your business or organization and to your unique audience and needs. We understand the importance of effective communication in leadership and innovation and offer activities that will help you communicate your ideas and innovations through storytelling.

Mindset for Innovation

The ability to innovate begins with a change in mindset – this program will walk you through how to build the self-efficacy and confidence to try new and different things in your work and life, and that you can learn how to do them even if you don’t know now. Just remember, “Don’t believe everything you think!” Through reflective activities, this workshop will help you to cultivate a mindset for innovation through awareness of your thinking (which is both an asset and a liability). Equipped with awareness, we will then teach you techniques to change your behavior to take action faster.

Starting YOUR Innovation Project

Learn how to move forward on your innovation challenge with a project! Use design thinking to forge a path ahead! This workshop is the first step to beginning and making progress on your own innovation project, showing you where to start and processes to use. While not every innovation project will result in a new product, service or business, you will develop valuable experiences and tools for tackling future challenges through this introductory program to practical innovation.

Agile Innovative Culture

This workshop is focused on helping individuals and organizations advance towards an Agile culture. This course is designed specifically to give you the basics to begin applying Agile principles influenced by a Scrum framework to your work. Ultimately, the takeaways will support you in building a culture of innovation within your organization that is not only agile, but also embraces design thinking and lean methods.

Expert Brainstorming and Idea Generation

Innovate your organization with this deep training on brainstorming! This program is the first step to making idea generation both a core competency and a competitive advantage within your organization. Cultivate strength in brainstorming for any purpose, create new products, services, and marketing campaigns and learn how to develop and facilitate brainstorming sessions and events that will generate not only innovations, but enthusiasm amongst your colleagues.

The Innovative Facilitator

As a facilitator, you cannot always anticipate the exact needs of your participants. Through this workshop, you will develop the tools and techniques to grow your personal flexibility and openness to be an effective facilitator, no matter what changes in the moment.

• Design for the people you are facilitating in the moment
• Learn tools, techniques, and activities you can do on the fly
• Create your own toolkit of strategies, techniques, & activities

Design Thinking: Customer Focused Front End of Innovation

Customer insights are not only a great basis for innovation, they can also help you communicate and build support for your new product or ideas. Customer knowledge and empathy are the essence of the design thinking and lean startup models, and this course will give you practical tools and activities to use WITH your customers to ensure you develop products that meet real needs.

• Learn how to use customer insights to identify opportunities for innovation and new product development
• Discover online tools and techniques useful for the innovation process
• Experience examples you can draw from for your own new product development process

Learn to Innovate at Higher Levels

Innovation skills are important tools to cultivate as a professional in an organization or as an entrepreneur. But how do you learn or continue developing your innovation skills? Our program on innovating at higher levels will show you how to stay on the cutting edge of innovation, allowing you to not only innovate, but help others learn how to innovate and respond to change as well. This program shares key insights from Dr. Darin Eich’s interviews with over 100 innovator leaders at organizations working toward a culture of innovation – their stories and the accompanying facilitated activities are sure to engage.

“Darin is undoubtedly one of the most energetic people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. He brings this excitement to everything he does, including his brainstorming training and facilitation.

Going through Darin’s training process was like learning to ride a bike. It took several sessions to start seeing results as I was literally re-wiring my brain to pedal at speeds it had never gone before. I fell off a few times along the way, often becoming intimidated by the fast paced environment, but was always reassured by falling back on his tried-and-true methodologies. I clearly remember one session it just ‘clicked’ — instead of generating 20-30 ideas in each 3 hour brainstorm, I was coming up with almost 150 ideas. I was amazed at this new found skill that previously seemed unattainable.

My newly developed ability to generate creative solutions to problems not only is applied to day-to-day activities but it also helped me differentiate myself during interview tests from a large field of Ivy League candidates to secure a job at a top Silicon Valley tech company. I’m forever thankful for the opportunity to learn this unique skill and wish I could sit around that table with Darin more often.”

-James Tamplin, CEO of Firebase (acquired by Google)

“Our world is changing faster than ever before. Don’t let your skills stagnate! This book is like a self-study workshop that will enable you to learn systems to solve problems creatively and figure out how to lead in any life situation. I strongly recommended it.

Darin has taken the process of creativity to the level of simplicity that can be adopted by the masses. I like the focus on showing examples and using metaphors to explain things. Plus, the space and instructions provided make it feel like more than just a book. Also, the book using itself as an example and demonstration of the techniques it teaches is pure genius!”

–Anand Chhatpar, Serial entrepreneur with 8 US Patents, apps with over 20 million users, named “Top 5 Young Entrepreneurs” by BusinessWeek

“Darin once spoke at a leadership conference I organized in Madison. He talked about leadership in a way I’d never heard before.

It wasn’t only what he said. It was also how he said it… with naked intensity and emotion and belief.

That was when I internalized that you could be passionate in a big, bold way about leading and inspiring others. It wasn’t just me and my crazy friends thinking about this. “Out there in the Real World,” they desperately needed more of it. Now that I’m here, I know we still need more, too.

I bought a copy. I can think of several friends who might do well to get one as well.”

–Michael Williams, Founder of Mementum Marketing

“Typically, being innovative in our industry can be difficult. In order to foster a culture of innovation, we want to equip our staff, at all levels, with the tools and techniques to be innovative on a daily basis. When we began the search to find someone or an entity that could do that for us, we recognized from early on that Darin was the right fit.”

“My company realized that it needed an innovation wake-up call in order to stay competitive and to keep up with a number of potentially disruptive technologies that are quickly advancing inside and outside our industry. To help jump-start a more creative culture and get us moving in the right direction, we organized three teams and challenged them to “innovate in 90 days.” We asked them to propose a new program, project, or pilot that could help our company learn about new technologies and help us meet our customers changing expectations. We hoped we may get a few good ideas from this new initiative, but really wanted to see how innovative our employees could be if given a chance.”

“Darin’s approach takes the mystery out of how to think like an innovator.  Whether you are wanting to become a first-time author, or focused on creating the next Internet-of-Things sensation, Darin’s approaches to innovative thinking can work to address your business challenge.”