Steven Palmer

For quite some time now, the terms “Agile” and “Innovation” have been the “talk of the town.” Companies are asking “how can we get ahead and stay ahead of our competitors?” Government is asking how can we better serve our communities with reduced budgets? These questions all too often lead to Agile transformations and innovation contests. But ensuring innovation success is more than just doing things faster or randomly trying new stuff. To really ensure innovation success, an organization must make innovation and proper project management a part of their very being. This presentation will walk through the methods and techniques required to marry Agile and innovation to the fabric of an organization using some new and some seasoned project management practices. And we will highlight how management can stay engaged and set their organization’s direction, without stifling the creativity of their employees.

Corporate graveyards are littered with dead businesses with the best of intentions. Companies that were looking to push the envelope, but their execution didn’t work out. Instances where corporate executives were so enthralled with what their company was trying to do, they chose to zig when they should have zagged. These false steps are easy enough to see in hindsight. Ford with the Edsel. Microsoft with Vista. But how do you identify these mistakes early? That’s where great analysts make their money! Through small-scale experimentations, and tracking standard metrics across projects, Business Analysts can determine how likely an effort is to succeed with the public, how implementation is coming along, and how successful the roll out is going. This presentation will focus on the development of those metrics, and how they can be tracked. We will provide considerations that should be given when developing the metrics, and provide some ideas about how to use those metrics to compare

Success in life and in business all starts with a plan. Innovation is no different. Yet too many businesses don’t properly plan for innovation, instead viewing it as a serendipitous act delivered straight from the business gods into the unsuspecting laps of corporate executives. This lack of planning is a scary proposition in a world where companies are now earning billion-dollar valuations in 16 months and the average corporate lifespan is one-third of what it once was. This presentation talks through the major muscle movements involved in successful innovation planning, while identifying the necessary tools, tips, tricks, and techniques to implement it. We walk attendees through how an organization can identify areas ripe for innovation. And audience members receive a free copy of Ever Evolving’s proprietary Innovation ranking recipe designed to help executives identify what innovations to invest in.