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Braden Kelley

Customer Experience and Innovation Solution Director at HCLTech

Seattle, United States

Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter) is a popular keynote speaker and workshop leader focusing on human-centered design, innovation, change and digital transformation, and has been advising companies on how to increase their revenue and cut their costs since 1996. He has maximized profits for companies while living and working in the UK, Germany, and the United States. Braden earned his MBA from London Business School.

Braden works with global clients to create more success in their innovation, change and digital transformation programs through the appropriate mix of training, inspiration, and tools. Braden specializes in the creation of a strong, sustainable organizational capability for continuous change, innovation, and digital reinvention.

His new book 'Charting Change' for Palgrave Macmillan focuses on the best practices and next practices of organizational change, and introduces his new collaborative, visual Change Planning Toolkit™ that is designed to get everyone literally all on the same page for change.

Braden has worked with a variety of industries including: financial services, healthcare, marketing, technology, retail, insurance, online services, mobile telecommunications, and more.

Braden is also a co-founder of the popular InnovationExcellence.com. He is passionate about innovation and social business, and has been commissioned by companies (including Innocentive, Planview and Imaginatik) to write white papers and case studies, but has also written 650+ articles for publications including The Washington Post, Wired, The Atlantic, European Business Review, Texas Enterprise, ProjectManagement.com, and more.

His international clients include Microsoft, Expedia, AB Inbev, BASF, Misys, HomeAway.com, Roche, Bank of Montreal, OSF Healthcare, Wunderman, the U.S. Navy and more.

Available For: Advising, Authoring, Consulting, Influencing, Speaking
Travels From: Seattle, WA
Speaking Topics: innovation, change, design thinking, transformation

Braden Kelley Points
Academic 0
Author 207
Influencer 216
Speaker 0
Entrepreneur 0
Total 423

Points based upon Thinkers360 patent-pending algorithm.

Thought Leader Profile

Portfolio Mix

Company Information

Company Type: Company
Theatre: North America

Areas of Expertise

Agile 30.11
AI 30.04
Business Strategy
Change Management 32.65
Cloud 30.08
COVID19 30.58
CRM 30.20
Culture 30.34
Customer Experience 30.09
Customer Loyalty 30.08
Design Thinking 42.00
Digital Disruption 30.33
Digital Transformation 30.96
Emerging Technology
Entrepreneurship
Future of Work 30.03
HealthTech 30.18
HR 30.04
Innovation 38.10
IoT 30.07
Leadership 30.63
Management 30.61
Marketing 30.17
Open Innovation 37.78
Project Management 30.15
Public Relations 30.24
Retail 30.13
Social 30.12
Startups 30.09
Ecosystems 30.07

Industry Experience

Aerospace & Defense
Federal & Public Sector
Financial Services & Banking
Healthcare
High Tech & Electronics
Insurance
Media
Other
Professional Services
Retail
Travel & Transportation

Publications

77 Article/Blogs
Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly #22
LinkedIn
April 10, 2022

This week we bring you articles from Pete Foley, Douglas Ferguson, Arlen Meyers and Greg Satell on staying innovative, managing remotely, humility, AI and digital transformation.

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Tags: Innovation, Change Management

Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly #15
LinkedIn
February 20, 2022
This week we bring you articles from John Bessant, Arlen Meyers, Greg Satell and Braden Kelley on psychology, innovation, history, and quote posters.

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Tags: Innovation

Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly #14
LinkedIn
February 13, 2022
This week we bring you articles from Robert B. Tucker, Arlen Meyers, Greg Satell and Braden Kelley on sustainability, innovation, the economy, and problem solving.

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Tags: Innovation

Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly #13
LinkedIn
February 06, 2022
This week we bring you articles from Braden Kelley, Arlen Meyers, Greg Satell and John Bessant on women, innovation, the economy, bureaucracy, politics, and education.

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Tags: Innovation

Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly #12
LinkedIn
January 30, 2022
This week we bring you articles from Braden Kelley, Greg Satell and Alain Thys on challenging orthodoxies, innovation, ecosystems, and going digital.

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Ecosystems

Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly #11
LinkedIn
January 23, 2022
This week we bring you articles from @Janet Sernack, Braden Kelley, Greg Satell and Arlen Meyers on leadership, innovation, inflation, and common ground.

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Marketing

Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly #10
LinkedIn
January 16, 2022
This week we bring you articles from Braden Kelley, Greg Satell and Arlen Meyers on Innovation, Sickcare Digital Transformation, and the Reality of the 21st Century.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation, HealthTech

Teaming Up to Drive Teaming Up to Drive Customer Experience, Innovation and Transformation SuccessExperience, Innovation and Transformation Success
LinkedIn
June 17, 2021
HCL’s Digital Consulting practice brings together decades of deep technology expertise with best in class consulting services that are global, outcome based, and people-focused. Our mission is to drive both transformation and continuous improvement, and to do it all at scale. We work as a partner alongside our clients to align technology needs with business goals — from strategy to execution — to deliver solutions that are:

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Tags: Customer Experience, Innovation

500 Quote Slides on Innovation, Design, and Change
LinkedIn
May 26, 2021
Looking for a compelling quote for a workshop, keynote speech or presentation on any of these topics?

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Tags: Design Thinking, Innovation, Change Management

Should all employees be involved in innovation?
LinkedIn
May 10, 2021
Live from the Innovation Studio comes EPISODE SEVEN of a new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos. EPISODE SEVEN seeks to answer a strategic question that many innovation leaders struggle with:

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Tags: Innovation, Culture

PepsiCo's First Chief Design Officer - Mauro Porcini - on Innovation and Design
LinkedIn
April 29, 2021
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to sit down with Mauro Porcini, SVP & Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo, a multi-billion-dollar American corporation with more than 250,000 employees. It is the second largest food and beverage company in the world, and the largest in North America.

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Tags: Design Thinking, Innovation

Road Warrior or Xuperhero?
LinkedIn
April 27, 2021
WILL.I.AM and Honeywell have collaborated to bring the Xupermask to market.

What is the Xupermask?

It’s probably easiest to describe the Xupermask as equal parts: health & safety equipment, personal electronics, and fashion statement.

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Tags: Innovation, HealthTech, COVID19

Upgrading Your Employee Relationship Management (ERM) Approach
LinkedIn
April 26, 2021
From the early days when HR was referred to as workforce management or personnel management, to the emergence of scientific management and labor unions, the practice of human resources has been constantly evolving.

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Tags: CRM, Management, HR

Increase Your Innovation Reputation and Velocity with an Innovation Evangelist
LinkedIn
April 22, 2021
Layering on top of my popular article Rise of the Evangelist, I wanted to create an article for the global innovation community focused specifically on the importance of the innovation evangelist role.

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Tags: Innovation, Open Innovation, Startups

What Design Thinking Is and Isn't
LinkedIn
April 12, 2021
EPISODE FIVE of my new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos comes to you live from the innovation studio to answer a question that many people struggle to answer or accurately discuss:

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Tags: Design Thinking, Innovation

A Path to Remote Project Management Success
LinkedIn
January 20, 2021
The truth is that for most of us project managers, whether we want to admit it or not, the process of creating a project charter is one that we often dread.

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Tags: Innovation, Management, Project Management

The Interaction Field
LinkedIn
January 18, 2021
I had the opportunity recently to interview fellow author Erich Joachimsthaler, the Founder and CEO of Vivaldi, one of the largest independent global strategy and business transformation firms, to talk with him about his new book The Interaction Field: The Revolutionary New Way to Create Shared Value for Businesses, Customers, and Society, to explore the important role that connections play in both business and innovation.

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Tags: Innovation

Trump and China Plan to Kill Innovation from Outer Space
linkedin
June 20, 2019
First, let me say that this is not a political article, but instead an article about a potential innovation crisis looming just over the horizon thanks to brinkmanship between China and the United States.

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Tags: Innovation

China and Trump Plan to Kill Innovation from Outer Space
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June 10, 2019
First, let me say that this is not a political article, but instead an article about a potential innovation crisis looming just over the horizon thanks to brinkmanship between China and the United States. Second, let me say this article is not about killer satellites being launched into orbit by the

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Tags: Innovation

Are You Prepared to Run a Digital Business for the Digital Age?
linkedin
April 22, 2019
In our digital age, all companies must change how they think, how they interact with customers, partners, and suppliers, and how their business works on the inside. Customer, partner, and supplier expectations have changed, and a gap is opening between what they expect from their interaction with companies and what those companies are currently able to deliver. Companies must immediately work to close this expectation gap, or their entire business is at risk.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation

Are You Ready to Run a Digital Business for the Digital Age?
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April 18, 2019
In our digital age, all companies must change how they think, how they interact with customers, partners, and suppliers, and how their business works on the inside. Customer, partner, and supplier expectations have changed, and a gap is opening between what they expect from their interaction with co

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Tags: Innovation, Design Thinking, Digital Transformation

Innovating at Cloud Speed
linkedin
April 08, 2019
Innovation in the software industry continues unabated. No longer do we have to program computers directly in ones and zeroes, with cumbersome paper punch cards, or even to craft every line of code by hand. We have entered a new era of technology capability with modular software, code libraries, autonomous databases that maintain themselves, finance applications with artificial intelligence and machine learning that enhance experiences and outcomes, and even software that can write other software.

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Tags: AI, Digital Transformation, Innovation

What's the Cost of a Failed Innovation Project or Change Initiative?
linkedin
April 03, 2019
And when you consider that companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to provide a better experience for customers, employees, partners and suppliers while simultaneously creating a more efficient and effective business, you would think that companies would do everything possible to make sure that these projects succeed, but they don’t.

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Innovation

Brilliance of Rewarding Customers for Eating Other People’s Pizza
linkedin
April 01, 2019
Following on the heels of Dominos Hotspots and Dominos Zero Click Ordering, they now have come up with a great idea for getting people to download their app onto their phones and to ultimately order their pizza.

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Tags: Design Thinking, Innovation

What is the Cost of a Failed Innovation Project or Change Initiative?
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March 05, 2019
It seems like a simple question. One that you would expect to lead to some risk mitigation behavior, but it doesn’t. And when you consider that companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to pro

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Tags: Innovation, Management, Digital Transformation, Risk Management

Building a Smarter Workplace
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December 19, 2018
I had the opportunity recently to interview Dave Hopping, President of Siemens Building Technologies for the Americas about technology advancements in the areas of construction and building management and their impact for both employers and employees. By its very name, Dave’s group focuses on tech

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Tags: Innovation, Big Data, Cloud

Examining the Future of Work
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December 11, 2018
At Siemens ConneCTs 2018 I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Norbert Gaus, Head of R&D in Digitalization and Automation, and Barbara Humpton, Chief Executive Officer of Siemens USA and one of the topics of conversation that emerged was a collision of different insights and aspects surrou

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Tags: Innovation, Future of Work, Open Innovation

AI Will Create Many More Jobs Than It Kills
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December 07, 2018
As I was listening to Dr. Norbert Gaus, an EVP at Siemens and Head of R&D in Digitalization and Automation at Siemens ConneCTs 2018, I was struck by something that he said: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) will create many more jobs than it kills. We have to protect jobs with AI, not against AI.

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Tags: Innovation, AI, IoT

Teaching Robots to Play Before Putting Them to Work
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December 06, 2018
Recently I had the opportunity to attend Siemens ConneCTs 2018 in Princeton, New Jersey, an event billed as a science fair for adults with a theme this year of AI & the Rise of Autonomous Systems. Dr. Kurt Bettenhausen, the Senior Vice President of Corporate Technology for Siemens US, opened th

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Tags: Innovation

Harvesting Innovation from the Desert
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November 20, 2018
I had the opportunity to chair the recent Back End of Innovation 2018 conference in Phoenix, Arizona and I thought I would share some of my notes and takeaways from the event. It’s definitely an event worth attending next year if you’re an innovation professional and missed this yearR

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Tags: Innovation

Should You Fix the Problem or Design it Out?
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September 24, 2018
Let’s start with the problem. According to The Plastic Pollution Coalition (January 3, 2017) – “It’s National Drinking Straw Day! Each day, more than 500 million plastic straws are used and discarded in the U.S. alone. Plastic straws consistently make the top ten list of items fo

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Tags: Innovation, Design Thinking

Great Example of Challenging Orthodoxies
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July 10, 2018
With a new Top Gun movie coming out soon, I thought this might be an appropriate share. It used to be in the early days of military aviation that a pilot’s head only served as some level of protection during a crash or a battle. Then with the introduction of radio communications an additional

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Tags: Innovation

Changing Change
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April 23, 2018
The business world is showing an increasing interest in the people side of change, and there is a very real reason for this… Companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to provide a better exper

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Transformation

Are You Ready for Outcome-Driven Change?
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April 09, 2018
When it comes to business, many people would say it is outcomes that truly matter, especially investors on wall street. Investors don’t care what kind of software you’re running or what your stack looks like, or how you do what you do, as long as you deliver the financial outcomes they a

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Tags: Leadership, Change Management

How to Build an Innovation and Insights Group from Scratch
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March 12, 2018
Many of you reading this have created or operated innovation or insights programs for organizations of a variety of sizes, or are curious about how to go about it. Operating an innovation program or leading an insights group is definitely much different than creating one. In some ways it is easier,

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership

Do You Have a Powerful Innovation Story?
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March 06, 2018
Many, but not all, innovations involve some kind of technology, and start as an invention. Many of these technology-based inventions that may eventually become innovations are created by startups, but many are created inside large companies as well. In both cases, these technology-based potential in

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Tags: Innovation, Marketing

Revolutionize Your Business with a Change Success Manager
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December 19, 2017
“Stealing the role of customer success manager from the world of SaaS is the key to making your digital transformation efforts a success.” I was speaking with a headhunter recently about some of the roles she was recruiting for and there was one that captured my attention. It was a posti

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Tags: Digital Transformation

Innovation Should Be Spelled With Two V’s
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October 04, 2017
Should innovation be spelled with two v’s instead of one? With so many words starting with the letter v being so central to innovation and rolling up into two even more powerful v words, maybe we should spell it innovvation to help organizations remember to focus on the two keys to successful inno

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Tags: Innovation

5 Reasons Every Company Needs an Innovation Coach
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September 24, 2017
Innovation is not a solo activity (and neither is my favorite sport to coach – basketball). And while the rare lone genius may be able to invent something on their own (although still always inspired by others), nobody can innovate by themselves. Innovation, by its very nature, requires collab

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Open Innovation

Rise of the Social Business Architect
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September 21, 2017
The world is changing and needs Social Business Architects. Gone is the epoch of the passive consumer, now customers want a say. At the same time, the quest for survival and growth is causing companies to stop looking at suppliers as someone to squeeze on price and instead as partners in innovation.

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Tags: Leadership, Management

Poke the Box and Innovation Comes Out
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September 15, 2017
One of the best ways to challenge people’s thinking and get a group moving in a direction towards innovation is to get the group to define the box. Of course a million and one innovation and creativity consultants will endlessly drone on about thinking outside the box, but how can think outsid

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Tags: Innovation

Which is the Innovator? Kroger or Amazon?
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August 18, 2017
Now, first of all, Kroger is a Cincinnati-based company not a Seattle-based company, so it is only natural that I should hear more about the things Amazon is experimenting with than those of Kroger, owners of a portfolio of grocery brands, including: Ralphs, Fred Meyer, QFC, Kroger, fry’s, Foo

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Tags: Innovation, Retail

Sense and Respond: How Products Perform [Interview]
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June 21, 2017
I had the opportunity recently to interview fellow author Jeff Gothelf to talk with him about his new book Sense and Respond, which is his second book with his co-author Josh Seiden and a major publisher. Congratulations Jeff! 1. Why is it so important that companies embed the two-way conversation w

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Tags: Leadership, Agile, Design Thinking

Failing Fast Causes More Failure
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June 12, 2017
One scary statistic is that 70% of change initiatives fail. An overwhelming proportion of new product launches fail. Most new businesses fail. The sad fact is that failure is all around us. Is this why so many organizations talk about a fear of failure being one of their major innovation stumbling b

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Tags: Innovation

Go Out and Find a Problem Worth Solving
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June 11, 2017
I had the opportunity recently to interview fellow Innovation author Greg Satell to talk with him about his new book Mapping Innovation, which is his first book. Congratulations Greg!

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Tags: Innovation

What’s in the Change Planning Toolkit? – UPDATED
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June 07, 2017
On Thursday, June 8th I took all questions about the Change Planning Toolkit™ on TWITTER via hashtag #cptoolkit and my contact form. Here were the questions and the answers: 1. I bought your insightful book Charting Change – How can I get the supplementary materials (26 of 50 Change Planning

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Innovation NOT the Same as Invention or Creativity
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June 06, 2017
There is so much talk about innovation these days, it's hard to sometimes distinguish the signal from the noise. In fact, the word innovation gets thrown around so much that it leaves people wondering: What’s really innovative?

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Tags: Innovation

13 Experts Share Their Change Management Tips
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June 04, 2017
Recently my colleague Daniel Lock collected and published points-of-view (POV) from 13 change management experts on implementing fast, dramatic and powerful change. Here is mine: If your change effort or project begins in a Microsoft Word document, you’re already in a whole world of trouble. Chang

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Tags: Change Management

Ten Signs You Need an Innovation Intervention
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May 22, 2017
Do you need an innovation intervention? Unless you feel that your innovation program is a runaway success and exceeding your expectations, the answer might very well be… yes.

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership

Measuring Your Innovation Maturity
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April 27, 2017
When it comes to innovation, no two companies are likely to be pursuing innovation in the same way, and they are also likely to be at different stages of innovation maturity. Because of this, even if you found out what your competitor's innovation strategy was, it would be of no use to you. It is ne

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Tags: Culture, Innovation, Leadership

A Peek Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos
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April 21, 2017
It is not too often that the leader of a Fortune 500 gives you an insight into how their company achieves competitive advantage in the marketplace in a letter to shareholders, instead of launching into a page or two of flowery prose written by the Public Relations (PR) team that works for them. The

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Tags: Innovation, Culture, Public Relations

Help Us Support Gender Equity on May 10th
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April 18, 2017
We are excited to announce on behalf of Innovation Excellence friend Tiffany Shlain that 50/50 Day is less than a month away and we can’t wait for this global conversation about gender equality! For those of you who haven’t signed up yet to host an event at your company, school, organiza

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Tags: Leadership

Innovation is Social
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April 03, 2017
If your organization is struggling to sustain its innovation efforts, then I hope you will do the following things. Find the purpose and passion that everyone can rally around. Create the flexibility necessary to deal with the constant change that a focus on innovation requires for both customers an

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Management, Social

Top 10 Reasons to Hire an Innovation Keynote Speaker
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March 26, 2017
Innovation Keynote Speakers are often misunderstood, maligned, and underutilized. We have all been to many conferences and heard many good (and bad) keynote and session speakers with a variety of styles (all of which are perfectly acceptable), including:

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Tags: Innovation

The Eleven Change Roles
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February 21, 2017
Change can be complicated, change can be confusing, and change can be difficult to successfully implement in any organization. This is why 70% of change initiatives have been found to fail. To help make change less overwhelming, and instead more visual and more collaborative, I set out to create the

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Tags: Leadership, Management, Change Management

Planning Your Changes for 2017
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December 08, 2016
2017 promises to be a year of unprecedented change. As a result, it will be imperative for managers to empower themselves with the tools that will help effectively lead the change initiatives that will be required to cope with political and economic turmoil and threats from digital entrants intent o

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Tags: Leadership

Building the Case for Successful Change
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November 28, 2016
Recently I had the opportunity to sit down and have a chat with Will Sherlin of 3PillarGlobal about my latest book Charting Change on The Innovation Engine podcast. In this conversation we focused on how to make change efforts stick within any organization. Among the topics we discuss are how non-so

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Management, Digital Transformation

Pushing My Personal Limits with Innovation
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November 07, 2016
About two months ago I came across an article in Engadget about Physiclo, a startup company launched to provide resistance clothing for athletes. I’m assuming their name Phyisclo is a mashup of the words physical + clothing. Cute. As a basketball player for which height and youth are not advantage

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Robert Brands – You Will Be Missed
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October 25, 2016
I was saddened to learn today of the death of Robert F Brands, a frequent contributor to Innovation Excellence. He died in an ATV accident while vacationing with his sons and the innovation community (and frankly the world) has suffered a great loss. Robert F Brands is the author of two books: Rober

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Tags: Innovation

Following Four Different Paths to Innovation
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October 03, 2016
I had the opportunity recently to interview fellow Innovation author Gijs van Wulfen to talk with him about his new book The Innovation Maze, which is a follow-up to his great first book The Innovation Expedition. 1. In the book you cite a study saying companies reported a drop in breakthrough ideas

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Tags: Innovation

Artificial Intelligence and the Consulting Industry
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August 31, 2016
The same technologies that have led to the growth of consulting companies over the last couple of decades, will begin to lead to a shrinking of those same consulting firms. The increasing diversification of the large global consultancies into other specialties is the first step to what is an inevita

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership

Consulting Industry Caught in the Crossfire
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August 17, 2016
The worlds of employment and business are becoming increasingly turbulent as the stability of the enterprise grows ever shorter, the loyalty of the enterprise to its people faces extinction, and the wealthy countries of the world stand at a precipice of overhanging debt. Increasingly intelligent dig

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Tags: Innovation, Agile, Customer Loyalty

CPG: A New Way Amazon Changes Everything
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August 01, 2016
The arrival of the Internet began major disruption to decades old methods of consumer packaged goods (CPG) distribution. The tried and true method of manufactures selling to a collection of wholesalers, who then sold the product on a range of retailers began to be reexamined. We saw the arrival of o

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Tags: Marketing

Harnessing the Global Talent Pool to Accelerate Innovation [White Paper]
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July 25, 2016
The talent market relationship changes are not just happening at the individual level. Change is also happening at the organizational level, as organizations themselves are moving from a fortress mentality, where all work is secret and kept inside the organization’s four walls, to an integrated, g

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Tags: Innovation

The Seeing AI Glasses of Microsoft
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June 24, 2016
Saqib Shaikh lives is blind, lives in London, and is a core Microsoft developer. He lost the use of his eyes at age 7. Saqib found inspiration in software development and is helping build Seeing AI, a research project helping blind or visually impaired people to better understand who and what is aro

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Tags: Innovation, AI

Service Redesign – Lost T-Mobile Smartphone
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April 06, 2016
Given the health risks of carrying a smartphone (or any kind of mobile device) too close to the body for extended periods, I try to always remove electronic devices from my pockets whenever I can. For ten years this has never caused a problem until Saturday. This marked the first time in more than a

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Tags: Customer Experience

What April Fool’s Day Teaches Us About Innovation
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April 03, 2016
April Fool's Day was this week. Did anyone have a good prank played on them or come across a good corporate April Fool's? My favorite this year was from my alma mater, the University of Oregon. Go Ducks! We try to think a little differently at the University of Oregon and specialize in helping the w

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Tags: Innovation

The Eight Change Mindsets
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March 24, 2016
If your organization is seeking to create a continuous change capability, it must have a strong focus on increasing its organizational agility. As you use the Change Planning Toolkit™ to kick off your next project or your next change initiative, keep thinking about what the minimum viable progress

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Tags: Culture, Leadership, Management, Agile

The Changing Customer
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March 17, 2016
In previous articles I’ve spoken about how the pace of change is accelerating, and how for many people (and organizations) things are changing so fast that they feel overwhelmed and that things may be changing faster than some of us humans are able to absorb. I’ve spoken about how we are in the

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Tags: Digital Transformation

Let’s Start a Change Revolution
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March 09, 2016
Some people would argue that the pace of change is outstripping our ability as humans to cope with all of the changes we are being expected to absorb. I would argue that we are in the middle of a period of discontinuity thrust upon us by the rapid advances in computing and mobile connectivity that h

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership

Innovation is Change
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February 28, 2016
Can you think of a single innovation that didn’t change something? I didn’t think so. Innovation is change, or at least, innovation requires change. In my role as an innovation keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, I recently led a German-based industrial company’s North American IT leader

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Tags: Innovation

The Key to Greater Organizational Agility
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February 21, 2016
Companies seeking to cope with the pace of accelerating change are looking for ways to go faster, and managers in non-technical disciplines have become increasingly infatuated with the Agile Software Development methodology and many are finding ways to adapt parts of it to create agile change or agi

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Tags: Leadership, Management, Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation versus Digital Strategy
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February 17, 2016
In my last article, Time for Digital Transformation is Now, we looked at the accelerating pace of change, the case for digital transformation, and our evolving interactions with technology. We also asked a simple question: Are you ready to do business in a digital way for the digital age

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Tags: Digital Transformation

Time for Digital Transformation is Now
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February 12, 2016
The pace of change is accelerating. Much has changed since we all started to dial in with our modems and connect to online services like America Online or Compuserve and eventually directly onto the Internet and the World Wide Web. Elements of our digital world continue to invade our language and ou

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Tags: Innovation, Digital Transformation

Visualizing a Change Standard
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February 02, 2016
Change Management is but one of five keys to sustainable change success, but it is one of the most important. It is also the only one of the five that has its own professional association and working to establish itself as a recognized profession, complete with its own certification. To get to a pla

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Tags: Management, Change Management

Eight I’s of Infinite Innovation – Revisited
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January 22, 2016
Some authors talk about successful innovation being the sum of idea plus execution, others talk about the importance of insight and its role in driving the creation of ideas that will be meaningful to customers, and even fewer about the role of inspiration in uncovering potential insight. But innova

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Tags: Culture, Innovation, Leadership, Management

Measuring Change Readiness
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January 05, 2016
During the course of any change initiative many different challenges will appear, and the most successful change efforts will anticipate those challenges and have a plan for dealing with them. Part of that anticipation begins with identifying how ready the organization is for change. The Change Plan

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Tags: Leadership, Management, Change Management

2 Books
Charting Change
Palgrave Macmillan
March 09, 2016
Research shows that up to seventy percent of all change initiatives fail. Let's face it, change is hard, as is getting an organization on board and working through the process. One thing that has been known to be effective is onboarding teams not only to understand this change, but to see the process and the progress of institutional change. Charting Change will help teams and companies visualize this complicated process. Kelley has developed the Change Planning Toolkit and the Change Planning Canvas, which enable leadership and project teams to easily discuss the variables that will influence the change effort and organize them in a collaborative and visual way. It will help managers build a cohesive approach that can be more easily embraced by employees who are charged with the actual implementation of change. This book will teach readers how to use this visual toolkit to build a common language and vision for implementing change.

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Tags: Design Thinking, Digital Transformation, Innovation, Change Management

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire
John Wiley & Sons
October 05, 2010
Every successful organization began as a nimble, innovative start-up with the ability to course-correct and quickly adapt to the needs of its customers. But along the way, success and growth may have caused changes in the structure, the culture, and sometimes even the vision of the business.

'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire' equips your organization to identify and remove those barriers to innovation that have prevented it from achieving sustainable growth and change. Braden Kelley shares the profound insight, simplicity, and uncommon sense that have helped countless organizations get back their innovative spirit and leverage the collective wisdom and passion of their employees.

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Tags: Design Thinking, Innovation, Open Innovation

3 Whitepapers
Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell Better
Planview
June 06, 2014
Unfortunately, when it comes to fostering continuous innovation, most organizational cultures stink at it, and they are not innovating fast enough to repel the unrelenting threat posed by new market entrants with declining barriers to entry.

This is why I created my latest innovation success guide in partnership with Planview to help organizations learn how to make their organization’s innovation culture stink less. Download it now and get to work on transforming your innovation culture and infrastructure!

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Tags: Culture, Innovation, Leadership

Winning the War for Innovation
Imaginatik
June 21, 2013
There is a war for innovation brewing, and building a deep innovation capability is the only way to win it. The question is, will you lead the charge onto the innovation battlefield, or will you let your competitors bring the fight to you?

As an increasing number of industries become commoditized, innovation has become an important way to distinguish your company from the competition, and a necessary investment just to maintain your existing market position.

In this thought paper, Braden Kelley of innovationexcellence.com leads the charge against the status quo. He explores how your organization can stay relevant, grow, and thrive with an innovation framework that addresses four key areas: Leadership & Structure, Processes & Tools, People & Skills, and Culture & Values.

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Tags: Digital Disruption, Innovation, Open Innovation

Harnessing the Global Talent Pool to Accelerate Innovation
Innocentive
December 01, 2011
Authored by industry thought leader Braden Kelley and following on the heels of a recent webinar (link to recording) on the same topic, this success guide explores the intersection of talent management and open innovation strategies. The paper dives into why having an external talent strategy is becoming increasingly important and how it can help your company accelerate innovation, shows how leading organizations manage their open innovation and crowdsourcing efforts (including case study examples of companies like P&G), and provides proven strategies and steps to take for attracting talent to your organization’s innovation efforts.

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Tags: Digital Disruption, Innovation, Open Innovation

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Are Digital Transformations Obsolete?
Thinkers360
April 12, 2022

Are Digital Transformations Obsolete?

By Braden Kelley

Technology is not always the path to innovation, but it is easy to forget this.
It is easy to take shortcuts and not spend enough time finding problems worth solving and to not carefully define the right problem to solve.

Keep your eyes and ears, and all of your other senses, peeled for all potential solutions, not just the high technology ones.

Technology is seductive and marketers are skilled at making a technology-based solution seem like the easiest solution or even – the only one. But often, if we keep our minds open and our field of vision spread wide, we may notice low technology solutions that solve the problem either better or in more sustainable ways or in ways with additional benefits.

Digital Transformation Gets Disrupted

Technology providers corrupted the term ‘Digital Transformation’ to the point that the two words don’t mean anything anymore unless you spend five to ten minutes reeducating people on what a digital transformation actually is in the era of digital natives and continuous disruption.

Detractors might also say that digital transformations are obsolete because all transformations leverage one or more digital solutions to drive improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.

Just what is a digital transformation?

Wikipedia’s bad definition of Digital Transformation:

“Digital Transformation (DT or DX) is the adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses, through replacing non-digital or manual processes with digital processes or replacing older digital technology with newer digital technology. Digital solutions may enable – in addition to efficiency via automation – new types of innovation and creativity, rather than simply enhancing and supporting traditional methods.”

— Wikipedia

This Definition of Digital Transformation Gets Closer, But Still Isn’t Right:

“Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.”

— EnterprisersProject

So, let’s dig into what Digital Transformation really is …

A digital transformation is the journey between a company’s current business operations to a reimagined version of itself from the perspective of how a digital native would build the same business operations leveraging the latest technology and scientific understandings of management science, leadership, decision science, business and process architecture, design, customer experience, etc.

A digital transformation can only be successfully achieved if you put customers and employees at the center to create a human-centered data model and explore the intersection between what’s needed and what’s possible to simplify processes, reduce complexity, and to design elegant experiences.

The key thing to remember is that technology comes at the end, not the beginning, starts by making strategic choices, and focuses on identifying and building the needed capabilities to execute the new strategy.

Here is a quick review list of ten things to keep in mind for a successful digital transformation from my previous work:

1. Reimagine your business from a digital native perspective
2. A Human-Centered Data Model (customers & employees)
3. Put your customers and employees at the center
4. Identify intersection of what’s needed & what’s possible
5. Simplify processes
6. Reduce complexity
7. Design elegant experiences
8. Technology comes at the END – not the beginning
9. Start by making strategic choices
10. Build capabilities needed to achieve your transformation

Focusing on these ten things will help you overcome the fact that according to research by Michael Gale of PulsePoint Group that 84% of digital transformations fail.

True digital transformations are the largest change initiative or business transformation that you can undertake. Possibly you may want to engage in a series of smaller transformations instead, to train new muscles in your organization capable of eventually lifting the heavy weight of a true digital transformation.

While digital transformations are not obsolete, they do require careful planning and the use of tools more powerful than the traditional project charter and project plan, tools like those from the toolkit powering the Human-Centered Change methodology.

If you’re not sure what that is, grab a copy of book Charting Change and learn more here. The key to success lies in a more visual, collaborative way of working designed to get everyone literally all on the same page for change, transformation or innovation.

###

Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the Human-Centered Change™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Braden has been advising companies since 1996, while living and working in England, Germany, and the United States. Braden is a US Navy veteran and earned his MBA from top-rated London Business School. Follow him on LinkedinTwitterFacebook, or Instagram.

 

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Tags: Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Change Management

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