At a Glance
Generate innovations that outpace the competition. In
Leading Innovation: Transform Yourself, Your Team and Your Organization, you'll cultivate the habits and mindsets of innovators throughout history to open the floodgates of creativity among your teams and generate ideas you can take to market with confidence.
The Program
Practice thinking more creatively and develop a culture of innovation. You'll study leaders like Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Bob Johnson at Honeywell Aerospace and Thomas Edison to identify the behaviors and ideologies that propelled their successes. You'll identify actionable methods to overcome the challenges inherent in innovation, including organizational inertia, managerial resistance to risk and failed communication between departmental silos. Under the guidance of
Jim Clawson, one of Darden's distinguished leadership and organizational behavior experts, and Michael Gelb, an internationally renowned speaker, best-selling author and executive consultant, you'll identify your vision, mission statement and values as an innovator and build a strategic plan to reform your organization's approach to change.
Where You'll Excel
- Discover the step-by-step process that generated Thomas Edison's ideas for the electric light bulb, phonograph and motion picture camera
- and brought them to market.
- Increase awareness of your own strengths and values when you receive personalized feedback on your leadership style.
- Learn how to talk about innovation in terms stakeholders and shareholders can understand.
- Practice integrating the innovation process into daily business routines.
- Identify the best techniques for breaking you and your direct reports out of habitual patterns that stunt growth .
Schedule & Topics
- Challenges to
Innovation
- Collaborating for
Innovation
- Creating Super
Value
- Developing a
Solution-Centered Mindset
- Full-Spectrum Engagement
- Innovation
and World-Class Performance
- Innovative Action Planning
An intriguing perspective on improving communication and idea generation. Our underlying values, assumptions, beliefs and expectations are crucial, and understanding them in our team and ourselves drives our success.
Ed Salek, Partner, Dixon Hughs Goodman LLP
Outcomes
You'll walk away from
Leading Innovation with:
- A plan to overhaul your organization's innovation process
- in just 90 days
- Expert feedback on your own innovative thinking skills and ways to strengthen your creative capacity
- Techniques to accelerate learning and promote cross-disciplinary generation of new ideas
- Preemptive solutions to potential barriers to innovation, including low-resource procedures to test new ideas before taking them to market
- The ability to anticipate market need, expand your product and service lines, and position your company as an industry leader
Participants
This program is designed for executives, managers and directors from all industries and organizations, particularly those who want to increase opportunities for growth, overcome corporate inertia and realize the latent growth potentials that already exist in their businesses.
Faculty
Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business Administration
A teacher of leadership and organizational behavior for more than three decades, Clawson is frequently cited by former students for delivering some of the most influential courses of their Darden careers - and one Darden alumnus named a classroom in his honor. Clawson formerly worked as a trainer for Mobil Oil Company in Japan and as an international banking officer for Wells Fargo Bank. He remains an active consultant for public and private organizations from a broad range of industries around the world. His numerous publications include the books
Level Three Leadership,Balancing Your Life: Executive Lessons for Work, Family and Self and
Powered by Feel: How Individuals, Teams and Companies Excel(co-authored with Doug Newburg). Clawson holds a D.B.A. from Harvard Business School, an MBA from Brigham Young University and a B.A. from Stanford University.

Internationally Renowned Author, Speaker and Consultant
A professional speaker since 1978, Gelb is the world's leading authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development. He is a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, innovative leadership and accelerated learning. Besides
Innovate Like Edison(used in this course), he is author of 13 other books, including the bestselling
How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day. A corporate coach and consultant for a diverse array of organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, his clients have included British Petroleum, DuPont, Merck, Microsoft, IBM, Nike and The Young Presidents Organization. Through his unique and creative approach, he has helped countless top executives, including many CEOs, solve some of their most important business challenges. Gelb is a fifth degree black belt in the Japanese martial art of Aikido, as well as a former professional juggler who once performed with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan.
Location & Accommodations
Darden
School of Business
Charlottesville,
Virginia
As
a participant, you'll stay in a private room at the Inn
at Darden, our highly rated hotel adjacent to the classroom buildings and
dining center. Accommodations are included in your tuition.