PDMA Pittsburgh: Innovation Magic — Creativity in a Hybrid World

When:  Sep 13, 2022 from 18:00 to 19:00 (ET)
Associated with  Pittsburgh

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Event Description:

Creativity is the work of a lone genius. Creative answers appear like a flash of lightning. Creative work is reserved for artists.

WRONG!

All product managers need creativity for innovation, trouble-shooting, and supporting customers. Creative problem-solving relies on experimentation, learning, and process methods. Individuals and organizations can nurture creative work in traditional shared office spaces and in hybrid models with dispersed teams.

As the workforce slowly moves into a blended model of work-from-home and work-from-the-office, organizations must adapt their innovation processes. Creativity requires a degree of spontaneity and team members need to share nascent ideas to nurture and grow them. However, spontaneous creativity has suffered from lack of interactions among people and there is a real concern that remote team members will be disadvantaged.

Warning: This is an interactive presentation, so attendees need to be ready to learn and have fun!

Presentation Outline

  • What does creativity mean in the context of in-the-office vs. remote team members
  • Why creativity and innovation are important to project management
  • Building the climate for creativity
  • Process steps to enhance idea generation and problem-solving
  • How to select simple tools to improve collaborative thinking

Learning Objectives

  1. You will learn how to engage all team members in creative, collaborative work regardless of distance or space.
  2. You will learn how to implement a process to drive enhanced creativity and problem-solving at all levels of the organization.
  3. You will learn how to select simple tools that support collaboration and productivity to improve project management.

Speaker Bio

Teresa Jurgens-Kowal

Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is a speaker, writer, and facilitator. She helps organizations improve time-to-market for new products by streamlining the innovation ecosystem, with a focus on creativity and process. Teresa has worked with innovation teams around the world in a variety of industries, including food and beverage, medical devices, publishing, petrochemicals, non-profits, and more. She is the author of The Innovation ANSWER Book, currently in the 2nd edition and The Innovation QUESTION Book with 330 questions and answers to help candidates prepare for the NPDP certification exam.

Teresa is the co-editor of the PDMA Body of Knowledge, 2nd edition, and contributing author for the chapter on Culture, Leadership, and Teams. A chapter on Creativity will be featured in the next edition of the PDMA Handbook. Teresa has also authored a chapter on Virtual Teams in Volume 3 of the PDMA Essentials series and has written extensively on Quality Management for the American Society of Engineering Management. She teaches Operations Management in the Texas A&M MBA program.

In addition to holding NPDP certification, Teresa is a certified PMP® and CPEM. She earned PhD and BS degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington and University of Idaho, respectively. Teresa’s MBA in Decision Science was earned from West Texas A&M University.

Cost:

PDMA Members: $25
Non-Members/Guests:
$40
Students: $10