In May 2023, Women in Digital Switzerland launches our innovation series, a practical learning program designed to help you advance and excel at innovation by developing the mindset and skills necessary for success.
Why is Innovation important to us at Women in Digital Switzerland?
With an ever-changing professional landscape, and the unique challenges that the introduction of AI (artificial intelligence) will bring, our skillset is needed to evolve, and more than ever skills like analytical thinking and innovation are required. In fact, the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2020, lists these among the top 10 essential skills for the labor market of the future.
So that we can serve the WDS community and support each other in future-proofing our skillset, we will be exploring these essential skills. Our program begins by focusing on the innovator's mindset:
Introducing the First Sessions
We are delighted to kick start the series with two incredible authors to lead our learning: Heidi Gardner and Andrea Kates, followed by additional workshops in the fall concentrating on disruption and innovation tools.
Heidi Gardner's book, Smarter Collaboration, is a must-read for anyone looking to boost innovation and adoption.
Gardner shows how collaboration and psychological safety are critical starting points for innovation, particularly for today's complex problems that require smarter collaboration.
In our first webinar, Heidi will introduce the Smarter Collaboration Accelerator and provide access to this paid tool, which assesses your collaboration tendencies across seven key behavioural dimensions. This assessment enables you to turn your tendencies into strengths and work collaboratively to generate new and innovative solutions.
Andrea Kates' masterclass training program, Get To NEXT: Concrete Steps Toward Game-Changing Action, outlines tangible strategies to engage full commitment and support for new initiatives. Ideas matter, but unless we activate them, they won't reach their full potential. In our workshop, we'll explore the Get to Next Framework as it applies to the use case of applying AI to advance our business objectives.
To develop innovation skills, it's crucial to cultivate a creative mindset, a growth mindset, and behavioral tendencies toward smarter collaboration.
A creative mindset focuses on exploring new and innovative ideas, challenging assumptions, and thinking outside the box. The growth mindset emphasizes the importance of learning, growth, and development. Finally, behavioral tendencies toward smarter collaboration include active listening, constructive feedback, and building on others' ideas.
Get Prepared for our Webinars
We've compiled some excellent recent sources to help you develop these mindsets and behaviors. Here are some recent resources to boost your creative muscles:
Additionally, check out this recent, informative article on growth mindset.
Innovation Series Calendar
We look forward to your joining our innovation series events:
June 8th: In-person event in Lausanne on the Entrepreneurship journey stories and Swiss resources and Tools to help you innovate with more details to follow.
It's possible for us all to improve our abilities as innovators and leaders in the digital economy, by adopting the appropriate mindset and behavior patterns. We'd like to extend a special thank you to the team of innovators who provided expert guidance for this initiative, including Avery McGill, Director of Applied Research and Development at Electronic Arts, Brigid O'Donovan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of iOT sensing, Simone Theiss who is leading the June event and Kristiana Kabashi, who has contributed to the project.
I am really pleased to see a strong focus on innovation being demonstrated by WDS. We are all creative in our different ways, and there is not a time where is more essential.