APEX uses a three-pronged strategy designed to maximize the human dynamics of Innovation.
- Identify and Develop: We use the Innovation Strengths Preference Indicator® (ISPI™) instrument, which characterizes a person’s mental models and their innovative preferences to develop the innovative strengths of everyone in the organization. This characterization allows practitioners and facilitators to strategically form different types of teams based on these preferences. The ISPI is a proven instrument for identifying innovation preferences and has been used in industry and government to form high performing teams for technology development and for workforce development by placing people in situations and circumstances that best fit their innovative preferences.
- Design and Build: APEX has built a suite of capabilities that can be used to educate and engage the workforce to be more innovative and collaborative with peers and customers. Our Blue Sky Workshops are designed to help customers ideate around their needs for planning and taking more risk. Our Innovative Challenge programs take concepts generated in a Blue Sky Workshop or by some other means and engage a diverse ecosystem of innovators and colleagues that may also include academia and small / large businesses to mature concepts through prototyping and experimentation.
- Strengthen: The third, very important step to cultivating a more innovative organization is to strengthen or feed the engagement made in earlier steps. A couple of ways to strengthen the innovation culture is to select and train innovation advocates (mentors) that can be a part of an *Innovation Advisory Council. As a more permanent solution, an *Office of Innovation could be established to support new processes.
*The Innovation Advisory Council is a select group of leaders who provide advice and counsel to leadership on program and process improvements that are supportive of building an innovation culture.
Establishing an *Office of Innovation is an important step to feeding the innovation culture. The main goal of the Office is to help a select a group of trained innovation advocates facilitate innovation by being conduits and connectors for idea generators. The end goal is to help people with ideas find sponsors and funding. The Office of Innovation is the primary resource for leaders and employees to find training and coaching on innovation in general or to help employees transform their own ideas into business opportunities. Setting up the office in terms of goals, measurement, and selection of innovation advocates in each directorate can be overseen by the Innovation Advisory Council.