In a time of tremendous change and economic turbulence, there is no greater or more important need than to help our organizations become more innovative, to develop the capacity to come up with new solutions to today’s challenges.

Join us for a provocative panel discussion on applied creativity – a k a innovation -- from three diverse Puget Sound-based organizations: a major business unit of one company in the top 50 of the Fortune 500, an award-winning small company with under 200 employees, and a local government agency recently recognized nationally for innovation:

• Pierce Transit, Project Innovation- National Transit Institute Model Program Award Winner, 2009, represented by Manager of Organizational Learning, Kelly Johnston,
• General Plastics Manufacturing Co., Winner of the World Trade Center Globe Award for Export Excellence, and Co-winner, Governor's Award for Workforce Development: represented by Vice President Eric Hahn.
• Microsoft Security Business Unit, whose innovation projects have been featured on CNBC, in the London Business School’s prestigious Management Lab journal, and at the Google Zurich Test Automation Conference, among other places, represented by Ross Smith, Director, Windows Security Test Team

The panel members will tell their stories about how their organizations successfully innovated, and offer their candid views on what practices have worked -- and what has not worked. From these divergent experiences, the panel, with help from the audience, will try to identify similarities and differences in the approaches.

WHY THIS MATTERS: There is a nearly universal consensus among management experts and futurists that applied creativity is increasingly becoming the dominant driver of economic activity and wealth creation around the world. The successful organization of the future will be one that is able to tap the creativity of their employees and apply this invaluable resource to produce practical innovations. In the process, the organization will constantly invent and reinvent its products and services and how it produces and delivers them.

Yet getting to this new future will be a challenge. Even here in the Puget Sound area, widely acknowledged to be one of the most innovative regions in the world, there is no consensus on what the best practices are for making an organization more innovative. Most current organizational structures, processes, and cultures are still predicated on outdated industrial-era beliefs and norms antagonistic to the idea-generation and information-sharing fundamentals underlying high rates of innovation.

Still, innovation is happening. What is working now, and how can this knowledge be used to begin to develop a more workable model of the creative organization to guide future practice is the subject of this fascinating discussion. You’ll want to be there. Register today!

Great thanks to Pierce Transit and Kelly Johnston for sponsoring this event!