keynotes

 

Fostering A Culture Of Innovation

Changing a corporate culture is about as easy as getting a teenage girl to clean up her room. Translation? Good luck. OK, so it’s not easy, but it is simple. If you want to establish a culture of innovation in your organization, you will need to go beyond theory, roll up your sleeves, and be willing to get dirty – like gardeners do. You see, the very same process a gardener goes through to get a harvest is the exact same process your organization will need to go through. And I will show you how. But more than that, I will make sure that every person in the audience, newly inspired and owning the effort, will create their own game plan for fostering a culture of innovation on the job. It’s fertilizer they need, not bullshit. I’ve got the fertilizer and just enough tools to help your people break new ground within their sphere of influence. Plus I promise never to use the words “leverage”, “monetize”, or “incentivize.”

 

Catalyzing the Creative Mind

Psychologists, for the past 50 years, have disagreed about a lot of things. One thing they haven’t disagreed about is what age a human being is most creative.  The answer? Five.  That’s right, five. After that, it’s a slow and steady decline into conformity, convention, and addiction to data – not exactly a formula for breakthrough innovating on the job.  My Catalyzing the Creative Mind keynote changes the game. Or at least begins to change the game by making it easy for audiences to understand what they need to do to reconnect with their own buried brilliance AND how to awaken brilliance in others.  My keynote includes copies of my award-winning book, Awake at the Wheel and Free the Genie, a deck of cards that sparks creative thinking.

 

Storytelling at Work

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This just in:  There is a very good chance that the dominant story being told in your organization these days is an old one – a narrative that binds your enterprise to the past. Not a good idea. As Steve Jobs once said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, value, and agenda for an entire generation to come.” Clearly, Jobs walked his talk. The stories he told ended up shaping the lives of millions of people around the world. Well, then, what stories are your people telling?  And if the stories they’re telling are not setting the vision, values, and agenda for an entire generation to come (or at least your business or industry), then something needs to shift. And I can catalyze that shift in 90 minutes or less. Storytelling at Work is the simplest, most compelling way I know to open minds, build community, spark innovation, and accelerate the sharing of tacit knowledge – the hard to communicate brilliance that is the DNA of your organization’s success.  My keynote includes copies of my award-winning book Storytelling at Work and at least a few “off the record” stories I will tell at the bar later that night.

Click here for 6 videos of me on the topic.

 
 

 

WHAT MY CLIENTS SAY

"Mitch Ditkoff's keynote was both entertaining and informative. Over 1,030 Merck employees rated the session a 4.8 out of 5.0. In just two hours, Mitch not only got participants generating a wide range of powerful ideas, he also helped us understand what it takes to establish a sustainable culture of innovation.” – Jim Aubele, Associate Director of Organizational Learning, Merck

 

"Mitch Ditkoff's innovation keynote at our 2014 Developer's Conference was an energetic and engaging opening to our event. His themes were perfectly synchronized with the objectives of the conference. After Mitch, it was Game On!” – Andy Billings, VP, Profitable Creativity, Electronic Arts

"Your culture of innovation keynote at our annual conference was informative, inspiring, and entertaining. I know that keeping 128 executives, managers, engineers, and manufacturing people engaged for five hours is a challenging task, but you pulled it off extremely well. – Gordon Thomas, VP, Hydrosystems

 

“Your keynote was very engaging and helped participants derive significant understanding about how to solve the innovation conundrum and how game changing practices need to be adopted in order to grow." – Krishna Nacha, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, EXL