Mitchell Lewis Ditkoff specializes in leading highly engaging creative thinking and teambuilding sessions that enable individuals, teams and entire organizations to develop new products, services, and breakthrough ways of doing business. Educated at Lafayette College and Brown University, Mr. Ditkoff has worked with a wide variety of Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies who have realized the need to do something different in order to succeed in today's rapidly changing marketplace. These clients include: GE, Merck, Allianz, Lucent Technologies, NBC Universal, AT&T, Goodyear, Pfizer, A&E Television Networks, General Mills, MTV Networks, Duke Corporate Education, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Systemic Innovation: 7 Areas

 

9 Signs of a Losing Organization While it is overly simplistic to claim that all organizations are dealing with the same obstacles to innovation, the fact is: there are repeating themes and patterns that we have noticed during the past two decades — obstacles that will need to be addressed if you expect to establish a sustainable culture of innovation, i.e. Lack of a shared vision, purpose and/or strategy Innovation not articulated as a company-wide commitment Lack of ownership by Senior Leaders Humorous Tips: How To Prevent Innovation Constantly shifting priorities Short-term thinking Internal process focus rather than external customer focus Yin-Yang of Value Innovation Focus on successes of the past rather than the challenges of the future Unwillingness to change in the absence of a burning platform Politics — efforts to sustain the status quo to support entrenched interests Rewarding crisis management rather than crisis prevention Hierarchy — over-management and review of new ideas Inspiring Culture: 5 Pillars   Free Micro-course 10 slides Inspiring Culture Under-funding of new ideas in the name of sustaining current efforts Reluctance to kill initiatives that are not succeeding, but have been funded and staffed Fear that criticizing current practices and commitments is a high-risk activity Workforce workloads (i.e. too much to do, not enough time) Risk aversion (i.e. punishment for "failure")   Free Micro-course 10 slides The Jazz of Innovation   Micromanagement Inelegant systems and processes Addiction to left-brained, analytical thinking ("data is God") Absence of user-friendly idea management processes Unwillingness to acknowledge and learn from past "failures" Inadequate understanding of customers Innovation not part of the performance review process Lack of skillful brainstorm facilitation Lack of "spec time" to develop new ideas and opportunities Innovation-friendly Organization Inadequate "innovation coaching" No creative thinking training No reward and recognition programs "Innovation" relegated to R&D Why Organizational Change Fails: 8 Common Errors Leaders Make Defining Our Terms Culture: "The sum total of values, norms, assumptions, beliefs and ways of living built up by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to another." Innovation: "The adoption of a new practice, process, or paradigm by a community — not just a new product or service. "Adapting, adjusting, or altering that which already exists for the purpose of adding value." Creativity: "To cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or would not exist via ordinary processes. Resulting from originality of thought." Organizational Roadblocks: "Barriers, obstacles or hindrances that limit or compromise the full expression of a company's ability to originate, develop and/or implement new, value-added ideas."