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Align Your Message

To help your organization more effectively communicate its innovation goals and strategies, it's important to begin by establishing a consistent vocabulary. By giving your team a clear lexicon to use to discuss innovation goals, you will not only enable more effective communication, but also more action around innovation initiatives.

There are many different approaches to innovation. We advise clients to break innovation down into manageable, understandable pieces that tie into their own business processes. You can gain some insight on a simple and proven innovation framework you can adopt from us (STRATEGY - IDEAS - PROCESS - CLIMATE) here.

Once you've established a basis for conversing on innovation topics, it's important to set an understanding for your organizations innovation "vision." In just a few sentences, try to encapsulate what innovation means for your organization. Pass your "Innovision Statement" around to colleagues and encourage them to help refine it. Once you’ve arrived at a clear, concise statement, communicate your vision in multiple forums so that everyone is on the same page and the ideas that you and your team generate are aligned with your goals.

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Client Quotes

  • “The futurethink team did an outstanding job in designing and facilitating an innovation event for our senior leaders, many of who regarded this as the best innovation workshop that they had ever been a part of. I would recommend futurethink to any organization that is looking for clear and actionable pathways to Innovation.”
    Wayne Pethrick, Director, Marketing and Consumer Insights, Pitney Bowes Pitney Bowes
  • “futurethink is the innovation expert. They fine-tune their training to our clients' needs. I'm constantly looking for new opportunities to engage them in our work.”
    Brian Weberg, Director, National Conference of State Legislatures
  • “We need to look beyond our organization's walls to innovate.”
    Mehmoon Khan, Global Leader, Innovation Process Development, Unilever Unilever
  • “If you don't make innovation a strategic part of your business plan and you don't drive that into the culture, I don't think you'll have a strong innovation pipeline.”
    Mark Hausfeld, Innovation Manager, Global Business Services, Procter & Gamble Procter & Gamble
  • “Innovation is deliberate, if done well. There is a science and process to it. futurethink has done their homework to provide a wealth of practical knowledge to their customers.”
    Senior Vice President of Innovation, Wells Fargo Wells Fargo
  • “futurethink's research and 'how-to' tools have been essential to building our innovation program.”
    Cindy Morgan, Innovation Manager, New England Federal Credit Union New England Federal Credit Union
  • “futurethink is enabling us to build critical innovation skills and share best practices across our global organization.”
    Jeff Honious, Vice President of Innovation, Reed Elsevier Reed Elsevier
  • “Any innovative company must develop processes for understanding and responding to consumer needs in a very focused way. Otherwise, they're just inventors, they're not necessarily innovators.”
    Tony Tomazic, Director of Consumer Innovations, Humana Humana
  • “The futurethink workshop not only provided an incredible jolt of energy to our collective innovation efforts and established the common understanding of innovation concepts, but it was also a wonderful team-building event. I don’t think it could have been organized and conducted any better.”
    Michael Ripa, Manager, FRI Infomatics
  • “Working with futurethink was a very rewarding experience for our team. They brought a great combination of provocative outside ideas, market perspective and a program design that challenged us to think of our own business in more innovative ways.”
    Jim Daly, Vice President of Human Resources, Standard & Poor's Standard & Poor's
  • “futurethink is always thinking ahead about learning and 'innovate' it before we ask! Their programs have been a huge success with our teams.”
    Director of Learning & Development, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Sonovian Pharmaceuticals
  • “futurethink made my leadership team think in new ways and helped us develop winning business ideas right in the room. My team now embraces innovation rather than fearing it.”
    Mary Fennoglio, Managing Director, Citigroup Corporate Investment Bank Citigroup
  • “If you don't innovate, be creative and look to the future and the possibilities of what will evolve over time, you will cease to be relevant.”
    Randy Voss, Senior Manager, Global Strategy & Business Development, Whirlpool Whirlpool
  • “futurethink made the topic of innovation, which means different things to different people, real, meaningful, and actionable.”
    Steven Rubinow, Chief Information Officer, NYSE Euronext NYSE Euronext Logo
  • “futurethink's sessions included excellent examples and energizing exercises that brought innovation to life. They got us to look at our business with new eyes.”
    Joan P. Lawrence-Ross, Chief Learning Officer, AXA
  • “futurethink's proven methodology, research, and tools help ensure we're always ready to meet the evolving public service challenges of tomorrow.”
    Sandy Stosz, Rear Admiral, United States Coast Guard United States Coast Guard