Saint Mary's

This seminar is for managers and employees responsible for developing, implementing or participating in strategic initiatives or projects within an organization. This seminar will enable you to identify and develop practical strategic and innovative thinking; you will have tools immediately applicable to the work environment.

This course is taught with a grounding in entrepreneurial actions that can be applied by managers within organizations (e.g. intrapraneurship). Applying techniques for innovation, understanding the value you create for your eco-system, and communicating that value are just as important in a large organization as in a start-up.

The focus of this seminar is to help individuals understand how to develop new initiatives by taking a user-centered design approach. It will cover understanding end users, innovative techniques for idea generation and new product/service development, communicating and securing buy-in from stakeholders, and understanding risk in complex systems. Followed by creating an understanding of how to apply the concepts of strategic thinking to your day-to-day activities, identifying tools to embed innovative and strategic thought within your organization and utilizing the tools learned to enhance your work environment.

Applying Strategic Thinking is an elective seminar for the Certificate in Skills for New Managers.

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Program Content

Understanding and Communicating Value

• Create an understanding of, and empathy for, end-users. This step is key in new strategy development. Customer personas will be used as the template for end-user profiling.
• Understand the spectrum of value that you can create that resonates with end-users, colleagues and stakeholders.

Idea Generation and Value Creation

• Work through two idea generation exercises to learn proven innovation methods that you can immediately bring back to your workplace.
• Use the Business Model Canvas to explore the full operational scope of new ideas.
• Use a three-prong evaluation tool to quickly analyze new ideas.
• Adapt a start-up pitch methodology to learn how to engage support quickly and efficiently from stakeholders.

Strategic Thinking and Innovation in an Organizational Context

• Learn how some of North America’s most innovative companies encourage strategic thinking for their employers.
• Access an organizational innovation culture self-assessment that you can bring back to your team/organization to identify strengths and weaknesses in your own innovation culture.
• Hear about a slightly different take on risk, data and modelling in complex environments.

What You Will Learn

• How to develop and apply strategic thinking concepts
• An improved understanding of how strategic thinking can be leveraged to increase successful outcomes in the workplace

Who Should Attend?

You will benefit from this seminar if you:

• want to enhance job satisfaction
• want to look at your organization’s challenges and opportunities in a different light
• want to strengthen your role within your organization
• are involved in the development or implementation of projects