Girl Geek Dinners

TGGD#9: Roundtable on Innovation was a Hit!

This is a guest post by Connie Crosby, who facilitated the round table discussion on Innovation at the last TGGD on November 20th.

There is no better time to create a community of friends who can come together and execute on your brilliant idea. – Passion is recession proof, 12Seconds blog (Oct. 9, 2008)

We had a fantastic turn-out for the first ever Girl Geek Dinner round table, with excellent participation by everyone. And the feedback has been very positive. I was invited to summarize the session for us–if I missed your idea, or if you have additional thoughts, please do add to the comments.

The Warm-Up

We started out the discussion after dinner with a warm-up exercise. I asked everyone to write words or phrases that describe “innovation” onto sticky notes. We then posted them to a wall, and we had three fine volunteers sort them by theme. This is what we came up with:

The energy just jumps off the page as you read through that list, doesn’t it? And I love that cartoon that someone added in! What struck us is that there were very few mentions of technology. It was more about ways of thinking.

Two Questions

Our second exercise was to answer these two questions:

1. How do you get new ideas?
2. How are you already innovating?

We went around the whole room on the first question, and it was amazing the number of ways that people use to either focus themselves down or broaden their thinking. There were some who tap into the subconscious by going for a walk, taking a shower, exercising or sleeping. Others changed something as a stimulus, such as learning something new or even moving some place new. Others had more practical suggestions, such as looking to areas outside their own for ideas, copying others, or walking backwards through a problem to find a solution. There were some who found playing with children opened them up to seeing things with fresh eyes. For the second question, people described their various projects and ways of working. It was good to be a little introspective.

Your Questions

We then opened the questions up to the room. Here is a summary:

1. Q: Are bad economic times an opportunity or a challenge?

   A:

   • it depends upon your organization
   • being on a smaller budget helps you stay focussed and come up with creative solutions; it is easier to watch what you are spending with $20 than it is with $100,000.
   • look for people already in your organization for hidden interests and skills and leverage those
   • it forces you to listen to your customer, become more customer-focussed.
2. Q: How do you get a conservative company to innovate?

   A:

   • persistence
   • patience
   • find someone who will listen
   • celebrate and build on small victories
   • you have to show the company that it will hurt the organization not to innovate
   • if the guy at the top cannot see the benefit, it may be too difficult in the end

My Suggestions (& Questions) for the Next Step

The number of deep thinkers in the room was impressive, and I was amazed as to how engaged in the topic everyone was. This is indeed building into a real community!

We didn’t have enough time to talk about it, but I believe the next step in making this group valuable is to find ways for us to further support each other in our projects and career aspirations. We already do that on a one-to-one basis as we meet each other and get to know what we all do. But how can we take that to a more organized level? How can we promote one another so that we all succeed?

Ideas for Another Round Table?

I believe our illustrious organizers Jenny Bullough, Leona Hobbs and Maggie Fox would like to try another round table discussion in the future. If you have a topic you would like to discuss, or if you would like to volunteer to lead a discussion, let them know.

Thank you to Leona for inviting me to facilitate this discussion. And a big thank you to PriceWaterhouseCoopers who sponsored the dinner!

Cheers,
Connie