Andrew Grant

ON INNOVATION

1. The Innovation Race: Who wins, who loses and who gets eliminated? Why innovation doesn’t always work.When it comes to the ‘innovation race’, are you more of a traveler or a tourist? Or are you simply an armchair observer? Most of us marvel at the pace of innovation, but few understand how to engage with the topic. Yet your approach to innovation may be critical for future survival. Although we are all keen to hear current market leaders share their predictions, hoping to pick up the latest trends in innovation and stay ahead of the curve, we are not always shown how to practically prepare for the innovation race. Perhaps it’s time to identify just how innovation ready you and your organisation are, and what you might need to do about it. This session considers what it really means to compete in the innovation race, and what the implications are for those who win, lose and are eliminated. Unique global and historical research from a broad range of cultures and contexts provides a sobering understanding of what it will take to stay in the innovation race for the long run. Practical tools for becoming an effective ‘ambidextrous’ innovation leader, able to both draw from and build on the past but also see into the future, are then introduced. This is a ‘futurist keynote’ with a difference, providing real strategies that will allow the much talked about ‘Forth Industrial Revolution’ to be a growth opportunity, rather than a dangerously disruptive and potentially eliminating threat. (Presented at the APEC CEO Summit Danang)
2. The Paradox of Leading Sustainable Innovation: Ambidextrous LeadershipCompanies like Google may appear to be leading in the ‘innovation race’, but do they have all the solutions and can they be simply copied? Our research has revealed that most companies today only have half the story right, and that a new perspective and model is needed to overcome the challenges. This presentation identifies core sustainable innovation strategies for surviving and thriving in ‘the innovation race’. It reveals that by simply changing perspective, new ideas can be better supported through to implementation. Discover how to lead and manage innovation through successfully navigating the 4 key innovation paradoxes. Practical strategies and the ‘polar positioning’ tool are introduced to show how to navigate these paradoxical tensions successfully. The fast-paced global adventure reveals how different cultures and companies around the world have effectively managed the key Exploration / Preservation innovation paradox, along with the 4 contributing sub-paradoxes.
3. The Collaboration Deception: Leading Collaborative InnovationThis is a unique keynote that includes a powerful game-theory style interactive session. In this session the participants become involved in a social experiment and discover firsthand what happens when trust is removed from the equation. Leaders and teams can benefit from this program through learning how to build long lasting trust with fellow team members, vendors, partners and associates. They will understand what to look for in a healthy teams and business relationship, and how to collaborate to avoid those that are in it for themselves.

ON CREATIVITY, CREATIVE THINKING, DESIGN THINKING

1. The Magic of Creative Thinking… And How To Really Think Outside The BoxA fast-paced active session that is packed full of magic tricks, which quickly segues to challenging people about their mindset and mental models, peppered with some interesting information from neuroscience. Through a powerful metaphor, this session shows the strong connection between what magicians and creative thinking have in common: why people are so easily fooled by magic, and so readily blocked from solutions based creative thinking.
   At the end of this keynote participants will develop the ability to look for solutions outside their standard boundaries and habitual ways of thinking. (Can also be presented with specialist magician mentalist including pre/ post lobby magic)
2. The Creativity Crisis: Is creative thinking dying just when companies need it the most? And What Can We Do About It?We need to be creative to be innovative. We have heard of the importance of ‘design thinking’ as a tool to be more effective. But the relentless push to innovate faster is producing a toxic culture that may undermine the whole creative process. In our rush for end results fast, we could ironically be killing the very thing that will lead us to innovation: creativity. An IBM survey of over 1500 CEOs has revealed that creative thinking skills are the greatest attribute needed for leaders in the coming years. And yet research has shown that while IQ has been on the rise, since 1990 creative thinking (CQ) has been rapidly declining. Whilst 98 % of children are ranked as “geniuses” in divergent thinking, by adulthood this number has dropped to a mere 2%. This session takes the participants on a journey from the classroom to the boardroom, helping them understand the current creative thinking crisis. It looks at the implications in the workplace of a number of dramatic statistics, and shows how it is possible to rise above these stats and develop a creative and innovative culture. (Alternative titles: “Who Killed Creativity, and How To Get It Back?” & “Why Design Thinking too often Fails” )
3. Harnessing Creative Intelligence (CQ) skills for a competitive business advantageFrom the classroom to the boardroom –why adults seem to have lost their creative ability right when they need it the most. Recent research has revealed that creative thinking will be the most important leadership attribute in the next 10 years. Yet it has been identified that even though IQ has been on the rise, creative thinking (CQ) has been declining since the 1990s. People with higher CQ are more inquisitive and open to new experiences. Mapping the CQ skills into applicable business attributes and design thinking to show how they are crucial for anyone expecting creative solutions.