Melissa Dinwiddie

Most teams don't have an innovation problem. They have a permission problem. They've been handed an innovation mandate without being given the conditions — or the tools — to actually do anything with it. So they optimize. Polish. Wait for the perfect idea. And meanwhile, the mandate gathers dust. This keynote changes that. Drawing on her Create the Impossible™ framework — Play Hard, Make Crap, Learn Fast — Melissa Dinwiddie shows analytical and skeptical teams how to stop treating innovation as an event and start building it as a daily practice. No fluffy creativity exercises. No "let's all think outside the box." Just a proven, systematic approach that works especially well for the teams who are most convinced it won't work for them. Audiences leave with a shared language, a handful of micro-experiments they can run the next morning, and — most importantly — permission to start before they're ready. This talk is ideal for: Tech companies, SaaS organizations, and analytical teams navigating an innovation mandate; HR, L&D, and People leaders responsible for building innovation culture; conference audiences at SHRM, PMI, ATD, and product-focused associations

AI can generate code, synthesize research, and optimize processes faster than any human team. So here's the question your leaders are actually asking: what's left for us? The answer isn't "be more creative." That's not a strategy. The answer is learning to work with AI in a way that amplifies what humans do best — generating options fast, building on each other's ideas, making bold moves before everything is certain — while staying firmly in the driver's seat. This is exactly what innovation as a practice makes possible. And it's what most AI adoption conversations leave out entirely. In this energizing, interactive keynote, Melissa Dinwiddie draws on her Create the Impossible™ framework to show analytical teams how to approach AI not as a threat to manage or a tool to master, but as a creative collaborator in their innovation practice. The result: less AI anxiety, faster experimentation, and a team that gets better at getting better — with or without the algorithm. Real data from a recent session with HR professionals: 80% shifted their perspective on AI as a creative partner. 83% committed to experimenting with a new human + AI approach within seven days. 100% found the session valuable. This talk is ideal for: Tech and SaaS organizations navigating AI integration; HR, People, and L&D leaders building AI-ready cultures; conference audiences grappling with the human side of AI adoption

Here's an innovation problem most leaders don't see coming: your team's best insights aren't landing. The research is brilliant. The ideas are solid. But somewhere between the analysis and the stakeholder meeting, something gets lost — buried in jargon, delivered in a tone that puts people on the defensive, or pitched to an audience that doesn't share the same mental model. When that happens, innovation dies quietly. Not because the ideas were bad. Because the communication wasn't built for influence. This talk grew directly out of Melissa's work with a research team at Meta — a group of brilliant analysts who were struggling to get their insights heard across the organization. They weren't bad communicators. They'd just never been given a toolkit designed for the specific challenge of making complex, data-driven work land with people who think differently. Within weeks of working together, engagement with their communications skyrocketed. Within six months, five other Meta managers had requested the same program. The shift wasn't cosmetic — it was behavioral. And it unlocked the cross-functional collaboration that their innovation work had been missing. Drawing on play-based methods rooted in the Create the Impossible™ framework, Melissa teaches practical techniques for moving ideas across functional boundaries — so that the analytical rigor your team is known for becomes an asset rather than a barrier. This talk is ideal for: Research, data science, and product teams whose insights aren't getting traction; cross-functional teams navigating silos; organizations where communication breakdowns are quietly stalling innovation