Sparking Innovation

Prepare professionals and teams to tackle ambitious, nuanced challenges.

Building innovation as a core competency

By reframing innovation as a set of daily habits and mindsets rather than strokes of genius, individuals and teams can adopt a unified approach that fosters faster, higher-quality outcomes.

Ei's Sparking Innovation programs are designed to help your teams build deliberate habits for innovative work. Teams can pinpoint the root causes of complex challenges, devise solutions driven by user feedback, and rigorously test those solutions to ensure meaningful impact and effective change.

Specifically, helping teams with things like…

+ Recognizing and fostering the mindsets and behaviors that lead to innovation

+ Navigating ambiguity and understanding your appetite towards risk

+ Assessing the viability of potential solutions

+ Adopting a bias towards rapid experimentation

+ Designing with stakeholders in mind

+ Taking advantage of industry-disrupting trends

Leaders pursuing a new strategic direction

Organizations in the midst of a leadership transition or culture change

Teams anticipating a market shift

Managers driving results by investing in high-performing talent

We spend a lot of time early in a professional’s career teaching them the how, not the why. Having that inquisitive point of view worked into their fabric now will make them better leaders in the organization.

Innovation Board Member at Top Ten Advisory Tax and Assurance Firm Ignite Innovation 2023

1. Challenge

A top ten advisory tax and assurance firm knew that if they stuck with business as usual, they would not be able to match and outlast their competitors and was looking for ways to "spread the wings of innovation" across the firm. They needed every team member, from associate to partner, to look at any business process and think: “We can get better at this.”

2. Our Approach

They partnered with Ei to create a custom cohort-program in which young associates tackled current challenges facing the firm, developing innovation tools & mindsets along the way. The program intentionally offered opportunities for young associates to deepen their ties to each other and to senior leaders, resulting in an increased connection to mission and sense of belonging.

3. Impact

Each cohort of the program generated 8 winning ideas. Several of these ideas have entered the firm’s innovation lifecycle and are already creating value for the firm through some of the following:

+ Redirecting unleveraged hours of front-line staff to billable work.

+ Easing and incentivizing cross-selling between different functionalities at the firm.

+ Automating processes in order to free up more time for client work.

4. Results

92% of participating professionals felt the firm was invested in their growth & development.

91% believe the program improved their core innovation skills.

9 new ideas being explored or tied in with existing team projects

2x: Participating professionals ranked their workplace 2x higher than non-participating professionals as a great place to work.

Ready to ignite innovation on your teams?

Schedule a demo with one of our learning design experts.