I have 40+ years experience leading innovation programs. I have led, participated in, and researched employee ideation/innovation programs at Fortune 500 and smaller CPG companies. I am also an active Currnt participant and facilitator.

I have 10 years experience in the field of ideation and innovation. In TCS I am responsible for driving ideation and innovation within organization and also for several clients. I have experience on open innovation, employee driven innovation. This also includes closed and open innovation leveraging crowd sourcing practices. I am also responsible for managing TCS co innovation network which consists of startups, academic alliances, accelerators, innovation labs and expert community. Please refer my LinkedIn profile for more details

Seasoned Innovator that set-up many ideation campaigns (companies like AB Inbev, Huntsman, NXP, Philips, ...) and was responsible for designing a corporate Open Innovation program when I was working at Philips Consumer Lifestyle so have tons of experience with both topics and also the combination

During the 27 years that I worked in retail, I was frequently moved to locations in need of significant change management as the stores had become dysfunctional. A large part of the change that I brought in was to develop a culture where the team was actively involved in how we as a store team were going to achieve our goals. It was necessary to get ideas for all levels of employees, work together to select the most feasible plans and execute them as a team. Sometimes there was dissension and disagreement on how to do this and my job as the leader was to unite the team of up to 200 or more. In my current role as a consultant, I work with numerous startups and stagnate businesses that are looking for ways to propel their companies. One of the aspects that I always coach and strategize on is moving the team as a unit laser focused on common goals.

As a leader in innovation and strategy for a $500mm company, we constantly have to look for new ideas to expand our revenue prospects in an industry where we are the heavy leader. Engaging employees in contests, workshops and focus groups helps the staff feel their involvement in change and growth. We then synthesize the ideas and present them to our executive leadership team. While not all ideas can be acted upon, they are force ranked so we can focus on the most attractive growth opportunities without disrupting our core mission. I also introduced change management to our company which did not exist previously. Communication was broken and staff didn’t understand their importance to the overall mission. Most importantly was to share why decisions are made and what it means to all teams. It’s not an easy program to introduce and adopt in a company with a long history of doing things one way. In order to grow it had to be done. It takes time so don’t expect a rapid change in behavior, and introduce in pieces as to not overwhelm the staff and belittle their knowledge of the strategy. I feel I bring a great deal of knowledge and hands-on experience to the topics you are seeking. I look forward to learning from colleagues as well to hear other plans that have worked, and possibly failed and why.