Course: Taking the Risk on Innovation

Description:

The inevitable consequence of doing something new is that it takes some effort to figure out how to do it. Innovation is all about new, and by its nature challenges status quo, creates change and tests our tolerance for risk. And while we can understand and rationalize the need for risk taking to fuel innovation, as individuals engaging in the process of innovation we grapple with a different risk: the risk of moving out of our comfort zone and overcoming one of our greatest fears – failure.

Failure has a bad rap. Viewed as a final and, unfortunately, fatal frontier, failure needs a makeover. Here, we’re not talking about epic, stupid failure where you’ve thrown caution to the wind and purposely turned a blind-eye to important signposts. We’re talking about the fumbles, foils, falls and “miss-takes” that come from making the choice to engage in our best work in a spirit of adventure and challenge – work that has good purpose where in the process we find ourselves saying “Oops!!! That’s not what I hoped for.” When this happens, if we choose to learn from it and share what we’ve learned, it’s called wisdom, resilience and growth.

This highly interactive workshop examines our relationship to risk taking in innovation and proposes that if we envision risk taking as an opportunity for concrete experimentation, learning from failure becomes our bridge to success. Through gamification, visual media, dialogue and creative problem solving, participants explore what stimulates and discourages risk taking in the workplace to develop ideas and insights into how they can develop safe practices that encourage risk taking and learning from failure.

½ day

Benefits:

• Develop key insights into how tolerance for difference and risk informs your work
• Shift your paradigm on the nature of risk
• Examine what stimulates or discourages risk taking in your organization
• Personal growth in tolerance for risk
• Contribute and develop ideas for engaging in safe practices for risk taking and learning from failure
• Develop key insights into the challenge “How do we experience risk and what’s the opportunity to take more in our innovation efforts?”

You Will Learn:

• The hidden benefits of moving out of your comfort zone
• Failure is a necessary and acceptable outcome of risk taking
• How to increase your return on risk taking and failure