Deep Innovation (Level 1)
A Science- and Mindfulness-based Approach to Innovation and Idea Engineering
1-day Seminar (Friday) taught by Reiner Kraft, PhD
Next Event: Q2 2020 TBD
If you are an innovator eager to tap into your full potential and change this planet with your ideas, this one-day seminar is designed to introduce you to a science- and mindfulness-based approach to Deep Innovation.
This seminar will teach you how to tap into your intuition and introduce you to the process of idea engineering, which you can apply to any personal or business context. In case studies and group breakout sessions, we’ll apply Deep Innovation to your real-world problems.
Come join us and spend the day surrounded by nature and likeminded innovators, just outside of Berlin in Spreewald.
Get Ready to Innovate!
When asked about where their creativity comes from, many scientists, engineers, and inventors said their ideas often originate from a "deeper" level or when they are in a state of flow.
My own experiences over the past two decades have indeed shown this is the case:
The most creative ideas originate from the depth of your consciousness, from stillness—not from your busy mind.
During this one-day seminar, you will learn how to systematically connect with your consciousness, the origin of all great ideas, and continuously "pull out" or discover new insights and ideas by leveraging your intuition.
Through Deep Innovation, you will jump-start your ability to innovate and produce high-quality ideas on an ongoing basis.
You will be amazed what ideas can originate from your deeper state of mind!
This introductory seminar (level 1) will begin your journey toward transforming your ability to innovate and elevating your intuition and consciousness.
This seminar outlines the process of what I refer to as “idea engineering,” to immediately generate value for you, your organization, and your workplace.
I have purposely capped the seminar at 12 participants so as to ensure a highly interactive and collaborative environment. With this small group, we will be more able to maintain focus and obtain the necessary depth to get the most out of our time together.
During the workshop, you will get to know other Mindful Innovators with whom you can exchange ideas. Together we are embarking on an exciting journey to bring new ideas to the workplace and the world!
Contact me to secure your Space now for the next upcoming Event
Experience a Day Full of Deep Connection and Learning
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Arrival & Breakfast (8:30 a.m.)
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A healthy breakfast upon arrival
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Introduction of the Mindful Innovators
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Getting Started (9:00 a.m.)
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Brief overview of the seminar, goals, and intention
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Motivation: Latest science and research on mindfulness as it relates to innovation
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Introduction: The 4 Pillars of Deep Innovation as a guiding framework for fostering your creativity and innovation
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Overview: A scientific and data-driven approach to Deep Innovation
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Pillar 1: Mindset Shift (9:45 a.m.)
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Motivation: Mindset shift—Why do we care?
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Understanding the basics of brain, mind, and consciousness
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An introduction to core teachings of the Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle) and how they relate to your effectiveness as an innovator and impact in the workplace
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Shifting your mindset:
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Moving from the limitations of your ego to experience the world as consciousness
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Striving for unity
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Exercises: Experiencing yourself as consciousness
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Ideas, suggestions, and resources to support your gradual mindset shift
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Reflect on 2 or 3 action items
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Pillar 1: Consciousness Growth (11:00 a.m.)
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Motivation: Why this should be your most important and foundational driver for personal growth
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Building up your intuition muscle
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Increasing awareness of synchronistic events
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Tap into your Deep Innovation and creativity
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Ideas to measure your level of consciousness (LOC)
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Exercise: What is your LOC?
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Tools & Techniques:
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Some practical mindfulness exercises to increase your present awareness that can be integrated into your daily routine with minimum effort
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Learning Spaciousness Meditation, a simple and effective method to train your mind and connect with your consciousness
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The Muse meditation headband, a data-driven approach for measuring your meditation progress
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Develop a systematic plan to increase your LOC
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Reflect on 2 or 3 action items
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Break for Lunch (12:15 p.m.)
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Pillar 2: Connecting with your Intuition (1 p.m.)
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Practice: Spaciousness Meditation (5 min.)
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Using Spaciousness Meditation to access your creativity and intuition
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What is intuition?
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How to recognize intuition?
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Other use cases for intuition
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How to systematically tap into your intuition
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Exercises:
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Spaciousness Meditation (1 hour)
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Reflection on ideas and outcomes
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Tips for integrating Spaciousness Meditation into your daily and weekly routine
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How to measure your status and progress
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Reflect on 2 or 3 action items
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Break for Coffee (3:00 p.m.)
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Pillar 3: Idea Engineering (3:15 p.m.)
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Motivation: Achieving impact with your ideas
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You have a great idea, so what?
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An overview of the idea engineering process
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Idea incubation and brainstorming
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Feedback and validation
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Refinements
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Promoting your ideas
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Getting buy-in
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Championing your ideas
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Watch out for limiting or false beliefs that prevent innovation
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Breakout Session:
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Common problems that hinder your ability to innovate
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Ideas for implementing idea engineering in your personal life or organization
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Sharing and Q & A
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Reflect on 2 or 3 action items
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Applying Deep Innovation (4:00 p.m.)
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Motivation: How can you apply Deep Innovation to your personal life or workplace?
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Breakout sessions, with each group identifying a major problem that needs to be solved
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Discussing the problem and then completing Spaciousness Meditation again for 1 hour.
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Team reflection and preparation for sharing
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Sharing session, where each team presents the problem and an innovative solution that was obtained during the meditation
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Reflect on 2 or 3 action items
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Putting it all together (6:00 p.m.):
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Recap: How to build a powerful system for leveraging deep innovation and becoming a Mindful Innovator
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Q & A
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Share your most valuable insight from today
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Conclusion
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Dinner (6:30 p.m.) with the Mindful Innovators
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Reiner Kraft, PhD
I have more than 15 years of experience leading high-impact technological organizations both large and small.
During my 20 years in Silicon Valley, I was one of the most prolific inventors in the area, filing more than 120 patent applications with the US Patent Office. Both IBM Research and Yahoo recognized me as a Master Inventor, and the prestigious MIT Technology Review (TR 100) in 2003 also nominated me as a top innovator under the age of 30, alongside other now-famous nominees, such as Larry Page (Google) and Jerry Yang (Yahoo).
I took this capability for granted.
Only in the past five years of studying mindfulness did I think about whether is a specific capability of mine, or whether there is a systematic approach for becoming an innovator that can be learned by everyone.
The latter is indeed the case, and I’ve developed a method that allows you to tap into a deep state of mind and connect with your consciousness.
The outcomes are high-quality and original ideas.
Learn more about my story ...
Contact me to secure your Space now for the next upcoming Event
Morning—Focusing on Mindset Shift and Consciousness Growth
As you might be new to the topic of mindfulness, you will first learn about the basics of mindfulness and what had been achieved in applying it to the business world.
While working as a technology leader in the Silicon Valley, California, companies were recognizing the benefits of mindfulness programs to reduce employee stress. Proven programs such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) had been rolled out and became widely available between 2012 and 2015, later making their way to Europe.
We will learn to understand the impact of mindfulness on organizations and how to apply it, analyzing case studies of tech giants, such as SAP and Google. Overall there is a confirmed positive ROI on mindfulness applied to the workplace, leading to an explosion in the number of mindfulness programs available. Mindfulness became a billion-dollar industry and is growing fast.
There are now myriad resources, coaching programs, books, and local meet-ups on mindfulness available, but few focus on the needs of innovators. While Mindful Leadership has received significant attention recently, the topic of Deep Innovation—applying mindfulness techniques to connect to your intuition and foster innovation—is not as widespread.
However, investing in these Deep Innovation mindfulness techniques can provide several benefits for you as an innovator, bringing your innovation capabilities to the next level.
To make it easy for you to benefit from Deep Innovation quickly, I have carefully designed and organized this one-day seminar to jump-start your knowledge on the topic and speed up the learning process.
A Science-based Approach to Mindful Innovation and Idea Engineering
The approach to Deep Innovation I’m teaching is science based. That means we want to have a solid methodology in place to evaluate your current status (baseline), introduce rapid experimentation, and measure your progress.
If we can’t measure something, it will be hard to justify that it’s a worthwhile investment.
As a scientist, I’ve spent much of my time figuring out systematic ways to measure impact of mindfulness on individual factors (e.g., overall health and stress resilience), but also on organizations (e.g., in fostering innovation and creativity).
For each of the four pillars, there are indeed good ways to measure a baseline and progress. We will go over this in more depth.
The Three Pillars of Deep Innovation
It is helpful to categorize different aspects and dimensions of Deep Innovation. For this reason I have compiled the Three Pillars of Deep Innovation.
I will introduce you to this framework, and explain how it can provide guidance on your growth towards becoming a Mindful Innovator.
Please note there are also the 7 Pillars of Mindful Leadership. Pillar One is the same, as both built upon Mindset Shift and Consciousness Growth. If you are a leader, you might be interested to go deeper into these as well. For this I offer a one-day seminar and introduction to Mindful Leadership.
Your ideas are unique. With the introduced framework and using a data-driven approach, you can easily try out new things, see how they fit into your toolbox as an innovator, and evaluate the impact. If something works well, you keep it, if not, toss it quickly.
During the seminar you will identify and write down 2-3 action items that you can focus on in the coming weeks/months, which will fuel your growth towards becoming a Mindful Innovator. In addition, the actions you take will have an immediate impact to your creativity and output, and on your teams / organization as well.
Contact me to secure your Space now for the next upcoming Event
Pillar 1: Consciousness Growth & Mindset Shift
You will learn the differences between your brain, mind, and consciousness. A solid understanding of this is crucial and serves as a foundation for your personal growth.
Many years ago, I was inspired by Eckhart Tolle’s best-selling book The Power of Now. I will provide a brief introduction to some of his core teachings and explain they impact the workplace, your effectiveness as a leader, and your consciousness growth.
Shifting your mindset away from the egoic mind to experiencing the world as consciousness is the foundation for becoming a Mindful Innovator.
Once you experience the connectedness of all beings on all levels (e.g., in your family, at your workplace, in your community and country, and in the world), you will realize the importance of collaboration and striving for unity, and worry less about competition. This alone will have a major impact on your collaboration style and interaction with others.
This sounds all good theoretically, but we will do some simple exercises for to actually experience yourself as consciousness.
Experience is always the preferred way compared to knowing.
The simple and fun exercises in this seminar will allow you not only to experience consciousness, but also to "stretch" or move it in space and time. These exercises are designed to gradually introduce a mindset shift within you, if you continue to practice them on a regular basis.
I will also provide more ideas and suggestions to support your gradual mindset shift. This typically does not happen overnight and is a lifelong, but rewarding, process. (Of course, there are exceptions, and some persons experience a radical mindset shift quickly.)
The seminar will provide you with the necessary toolset to incubate and positively influence the process of your mindset shift. You just need to be ready and open to exploring the suggested ideas.
As promised, you’ll also learn how to measure your progress. The outcomes of this pillar directly correlate with your level of consciousness, which I describe further in the next pillar. This first pillar provides us a baseline, allowing us to indirectly measuring the status and progress of your mindset shift with your approximated LOC level.
Have you ever started a diet with the goal to lose some weight, or put down an ambitious New Year’s resolution, and then after a few days or weeks given up on it? You probably attributed this to lack of will power, got frustrated, and then forgot about it. You felt like a loser and negative emotions flared, resulting in more devastating behavior (e.g., eating junk food). This is sometimes called the yo-yo effect. Instead of losing weight, you have actually gained weight. And the negative feedback cycle continues.
In truth, these kinds of setbacks are usually attributed to a lack of conscious decisions and a low level of present awareness.
For most of us, the mind is running on autopilot, and research shows that at least 95 percent of your decisions are made without you knowing about it.
Only when your level of consciousness rises, will you be able to overwrite these unconscious behaviors with conscious decisions. This should be your most important and foundational driver for personal growth.
"When your level of consciousness grows, your emotional intelligence (EI) and level of intuition also grows."
Gradually you will gain these new "superpowers":
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Increased Intuition: Great to have for complex and difficult decisions, knowing what to do and improving the quality of your decisions
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Empathy: Becoming more sensitive and aware of others’ feelings, enabling better active listening, increased trust and respect from others, stress reduction, openness, and greater teamwork
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Compassion: Enables you to better understand yourself and others, improve your health by strengthening your immune system, normalize your blood pressure, reduce stress, and even extend your life
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Gratitude: Opens the door to more relationships and improves physical and psychological health, sleep, and self-esteem
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Forgiveness: Helps remove negative energy charges in your mind, which results in improved mental health, healthier relationships, less stress and anxiety, a stronger immune system, and improved heart health
If you’ve read recent books about leadership or attended other leadership seminars, then you know that each of these new "superpowers" will elevate your effectiveness as a leader. This opens up new opportunities in your life. I will point out how to look out for synchronicities (unexpected coincidental occurrence of events that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality) and how to take advantage of them.
We can track your progress in this area by measuring your level of consciousness (LOC). Luckily, LOC can actually be approximated using intuition, and there is a plethora of literature on this topic. There are different scales of varying complexity that some people use. However, none of them have worked for me, which is why I’ve devised a simple, five-level LOC growth scale with key traits described for each level. This way you can approximate your level of consciousness. We will try this out in an exercise.
There is also no shortage of tools and techniques to grow your LOC. I’ve compiled some practical mindfulness exercises that can be integrated into your daily routine with minimum effort to increase your present awareness.
In particular, I will introduce you to a simple but profound formal meditation technique called Spaciousness Meditation. If done as a daily routine, this technique will gradually build up the "muscle of your mind" and elevate your level of consciousness. It is quite effective and can bring down your brain waves to alpha state (8–12 Hz) within a few minutes. As the mind typically needs time to settle, I recommend 20-minute meditation practices in the early morning, as well in the evening (but not before 2 hours prior to bedtime). Spaciousness Meditation can also be used in longer sessions of up to 1–2 hours to tune into your intuition and bring out deep insights. I will teach you the specifics in detail during this lesson and suggest how you can integrate it into your weekly routine.
To help explain how you can measure your progress, I’ll discuss the Muse meditation headband and share some key findings from my experience using it for more than a year.
Afterward we will go through some ideas on developing a systematic plan to increase your LOC and create a training routine to making mindfulness and consciousness growth a daily habit.
At the end of this lesson, you will reflect a few minutes and determine the two or three most relevant action items to focus on in the coming weeks and months to make progress toward your ongoing commitment to consciousness growth. Those action items will become part of your larger plan created during this seminar.
Pillar 2: Connecting with your Intuition
The first two pillars provide a solid foundation toward becoming a Mindful Innovator, but the third pillar, Connection with Your Intuition, is particularly fun to explore. Building upon pillars 1 and 2, this pillar will help you think about the benefits reaped from your investment in mindfulness practice.
When discussing this pillar, I first will clarify what intuition is and provide an overview of different situations when tapping into intuition comes in handy—from making decisions to knowing the "unknown." Intuition is boundless. The trick is how to integrate it with the decision framework of your rational mind.
Just as there are many roads that lead to Rome, there are different approaches to connect with your intuitions.
For example, I once attended a Mindvalley Intuition Training class in Munich, where they taught a very effective method based on Silva (The Silva Method is a self-help and meditation program developed by José Silva.) We were basically meditating all day long, and Vishen Lakhiani, the founder of Mindvalley, taught us how to achieve meditative states with high alpha (or even theta) brain waves in a matter of minutes. High alpha or theta brain states are a requirement for tapping deeply into your intuition.
However, since experimenting with intuition for the past several years, I’ve come up with a different way that works better for me in the context of Deep Innovation and creativity.
I call it Spaciousness Meditation, as mentioned in pillar 2, and it complements the Silva method as a practical tool to train your mind.
However, when you adapt this meditation to longer sessions (at least 1 hour), I realized that it opens up a doorway into your intuition.
In the first half of the session, it takes time for the mind to settle down. But in the last 15 minutes, new insights and ideas appear seemingly from nowhere.
We will do a hands-on exercise where I will guide you through a 1-hour Spaciousness Meditation.
After that I will share some tips for integrating the spaciousness meditation into your daily and weekly routine, suggest other helpful tools, and explain how to measure your status and progress.
At the end of this lesson, you will reflect a few minutes and determine two or three relevant action items that you can personally focus on in the coming weeks and months to make progress toward connecting with your intuition. Those action items will become part of your larger plan created during this seminar.
Pillar 3: Idea Engineering
Now it is time to apply everything you have learned to innovate at work and allow your outstanding ideas to positively contribute to this planet!
There are many ways to implement innovation in your organization. As a top innovator, inventor, and engineer who worked in the Silicon Valley for 20 years, in many different team settings and organizations, I often faced the problem of how to apply innovation in the workplace.
Every time you have an idea, even one derived from your intuition, if you're not able to refine, validate, and put the appropriate actions behind it, it will have no impact.
Countless good ideas may therefore never see the light of day.
To fix this, I came up with an idea-engineering process, which is comprised of several phases. I have refined this process over the past 20 years, and it has helped me in countless instances.
First, I will provide you with an overview of idea engineering and talk about the different phases—idea incubation, refinement, validation, and promotion—to get the necessary support and buy-in to make your ideas happen.
Furthermore, I will share best practices and behaviors for you to promote innovation and champion your ideas, the second of which will make a key difference for ideas that are already in the implementation phase.
We will then organize into a breakout session to make this hands-on.
Each group will work at:
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Identifying common problems that hinder innovation
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Generate ideas for implementing idea engineering in your organization
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Sharing results with the larger group
At the end of this lesson, you will reflect a few minutes and determine the two or three most relevant action items that you can personally focus on in the coming weeks and months to make progress toward implementing idea engineering for yourself and in your organization. Those action items will become part of your larger plan created during this seminar.
Contact me to secure your Space now for the next upcoming Event
Applying Deep Innovation
You have studied the Three Pillars of Deep Innovation and practiced Spacious Meditation. You’ve also learned about the Idea Engineering process.
Let's now make this concrete and apply what you’ve learned to a case study.
We will create breakout sessions with 3-4 groups.
Each group will decide on a major problem that needs to be solved. The problem should be something real with no obvious solution.
Each team will discuss the problem and then everyone will do Spaciousness Meditation again for one hour.
Afterwards, there will be team reflection to organize the results and prepare for sharing.
During the sharing session, each team will present the problem and an innovative solution obtained during the meditation.
As always, at the end of this lesson, you will reflect a few minutes and determine the two or three most relevant action items to focus on in the coming weeks/months to make progress toward applying Deep Innovation in your personal life or organization.
Those action items will become part of the larger plan you create during this seminar.
Conclusion
We will then put everything together to build a powerful system for leveraging deep innovation and becoming a Mindful Innovator. There will be time for questions and a chance to share valuable insights gained during the day.
Your commitment:
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Arrive curiosity and with an open mind
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Have a strong desire and commitment to personal growth and transformation
Some of the Key Takeaways from this Workshop:
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An introduction to Deep Innovation and its impact on your effectiveness as an innovator
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The ability to systematically connect to your intuition and inner wisdom
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Fresh ideas to transform your innovation capabilities and take them to the next level
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Awareness of the unexplored depth and capacity of your consciousness, self-imposed limitations, holding you back, and concrete, personalized solutions
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How to take ideas into action using the idea engineering approach
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A network of new friends and like-minded innovators, allowing you to stay in touch and mastermind going forward
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A major step toward becoming a Mindful Innovator
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Learning about other opportunities and relevant workshops to continue your journey
Where:
The Seinerzeit Spreewald Resort is located in the heart of the Spreewald and surrounded by the peace of nature.
Although only a short drive from Berlin (less than an hour), the location will give you plenty of space to disconnect from the hustle of daily stress and reconnect in nature with your thoughts and spirit.
When:
Seminars will occur once or twice a quarter starting in Q2 2020.
The first event will be in Q2 2020 on a Friday, running from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Signup is on a first come, first serve basis. There are only up to 12 seats available to keep the group small and focused.
Language:
English (or German, depending on the audience)
Cost:
Workshop attendance costs 695 Euros (including VAT/Mwst).
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Food is included. There will be a delicious and energizing breakfast, a tasty lunch, and a healthy dinner.
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There will also be a coffee and cake break in the afternoon.
Have more Questions?
Contact me directly.
Contact me to secure your Space now for the next upcoming Event