Having worked for the Walt Disney Company for 25+ years, most recently as Head of Innovation & Creativity, I have just created a startup, iD8 & innov8, to help organizations embed innovation into everyone’s DNA, by making creativity tangible, innovation easy, and the process fun.
The next decade will be the most disruptive of our lives. Artificial Intelligence estimated to think thousands of times faster than a human—in under a decade. 3D printing that will disrupt every single industry. Legacy brands trying to move from a product-centric, we-build-it-they-will-come culture, to a consumer-centric one, and Generation Z, who believe more in purpose than profit who will re-write all the rules of doing business.
So how will we survive if we just keep iterating in order to make quarterly results, versus actually innovating to not only survive but to thrive in this brave new world?
Option 1. Invite a leading innovation consultant to come in and run an innovation project for you.
Option 2. Establish an Innovation department, which while it acts as a catalyst for change, also subliminally sends the message to everyone else in an organization that they don’t have to innovate.
Option 3. Create a series of accelerator programs that can indeed help drive products and services to market much quicker than established processes.
From experience, however, I have learned that the challenge with all of these approaches is that they don’t really help organizations truly change their culture to be more innovative and creative. And that is where I believe there is a huge gap in the market.
The traditional ways of doing business are getting completely upended, and no one is giving businesses a tangible toolkit that they can utilize throughout their organization to embed innovation into everyone’s DNA. So I decided to create my own startup, iD8 & innov8, and create a very unique Innovation toolkit that is both simple and straightforward for absolutely everyone in every industry to use.
It includes both a set of Creative Behaviors to drive motivation and inspiration to innovate, and a series of tangible, actionable Design Thinking, Innovation Tools, that people can use to Think Different, and disrupt their established business practices and truly innovate.
I am very excited to leverage all my experience as Head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney, to now support other organizations around the globe to harness the inspiration that their own teams have, and to give them the practical tools they so desperately need to compete in a time of unprecedented disruption.
