09 Mar Case Study: Developing Innovation Leaders at a Global Tech Company

At A Glance:

I will recommend the program to any of my peers who are looking for more in their positions. The level of self-reflection that I underwent during this program is unmatched by any previous experience that I have had. The leadership took us all seriously and really invested their energy into broadening our horizons and showing the varied opportunities for leadership at [the company]. I am very happy to have been presented with this opportunity and feel like this has been a fulfilling year because of it. The outcome was definitely worth the effort.”

Program Participant

The Challenge:

Translating ah-ha moments and learnings into new innovations is challenging, especially for a global company where leaders and teams are widely dispersed. So, our client brought us in to redesign their Leadership Development Program to build top talents’ leadership skills and grow their innovation competencies, tools, and mindsets within their day-to-day work as customer-facing leaders. 

The Solution:

Discovery

We began the project by evaluating the existing leadership development program and aligning around a common goal of ensuring participants would not only learn innovation tools, but would have plenty of opportunities to apply their new skills on problems related to identifying new sales growth opportunities. We also defined the constraints, including a six month time frame, a global audience working remotely, and high expectations from leadership.

Design

We designed a six-month learn-by-doing innovation course, consisting of monthly virtual workshops. Each month’s workshop gave participants the chance to learn and practice tools related to a different step in the innovation process: Creative Collaboration, Customer Discovery, Opportunity Definition, Concept Development, Prototyping, and Storytelling. To help guide participants through each phase, we designed scalable virtual whiteboards with custom tool templates, demos, pro tips, and accompanying principles. In between each workshop, teams would have time to apply the tools they’d learned to a real issue facing the company’s customers. 

Delivery

Over the course of the leadership development program, we guided teams to interview stakeholders, identify opportunities, prototype concepts, and perfect their pitches. In addition to designing and facilitating the workshop experiences, we also managed the end-to-end program arc, including onboarding team coaches, developing monthly project plans and debrief structures for the teams, and providing feedback leading into the final pitches to senior executives. To support the program roll-out, we devised and led a regular communication plan to engage coaches and participants asynchronously in-between workshops. After the first year of the program, we sought out feedback from participants and coaches that has informed our future iterations on the program.

The Results: 

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