Sparking Innovation

Learning programs to 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

Our programs are designed around taking Leaps.

In every Ei program, learners integrate knowledge from interactive workshops into self-directed projects, fostering growth at the intersection of personal curiosity and organizational needs. We call these projects Leaps.

Here's how it works:

Laying the Foundation

Employees develop key skills and mindsets aligned with your company’s learning goals through interactive workshops.

Leaping

To apply their new learning, employees design and conduct a self-directed project that addresses real challenges at work. Coaching offers space to reflect as they leap.

Landing

Learners (now Leapers!) celebrate and solidify their learning journey by sharing their experiences and discussing how to apply their new knowledge in their day-to-day work.

Humans learn by doing, through experience.

That’s why we’re called Experience Institute.

Ei programs are rooted in community and focused on direct application. Learners break from their routines and are given space to experiment, make mistakes, and reach breakthroughs. Each workshop addresses specific personal or organizational challenges and cycles through core elements of experiential learning.

By the end of each Ei program, your team members have real-world experience applying new skills and a repeatable process for driving growth.

We tailor our Sparking Innovation programs to fit your company’s unique needs.

Here's what it could look like:

Phase 1: Laying the Foundation

Week 1 - Innovation Mindsets Workshop

The program begins by building the foundation for a collaborative learning environment and an exploration of four core mindsets that foster innovation.

Week 2 - Future(s)-Casting Workshop

Working in small groups, learners practice each of the four steps to the Future(s)-Casting process experientially.

Week 3 - Small Group Coaching Session

Learners debrief how they’ve applied workshop content in their day-to-day and troubleshoot with peers and coaches.

Phase 2: Leaping

Week 5 - Leaps Launch Workshop

Through an Innovation Hacking process, Leapers focus on a challenge, envision potential solutions, and prepare an innovation intervention for real-world testing in their work.

Week 7 - Small Group Coaching Session

Now that Leaps are in full swing, coaching involves time for troubleshooting and support from the group as well as time to prepare for upcoming Leap Talks.

Phase 3: Landing

Week 9 - Leap Talks

Leapers present their innovation stories to peers and company leaders, sharing professional and personal lessons from the Sparking Innovation program.

Week 10 - Skills Transfer & Celebration Workshop

Innovators celebrate their achievements, solidify new mindsets and skills, and identify concrete growth through discussions and breakout sessions. They leave with clear next steps for future challenges.

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.