Training | eLearning Programs | Ideas | Leveraging Partnerships and Customers to Innovate

Leveraging Partnerships and Customers to Innovate

You can achieve better results and take products to market faster by leveraging customers and partners. Learn how to uncover latent customer needs and tap into unrecognized opportunities with potential partners, both of which can lead to fruitful new beginnings and a healthier bottom line.

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What?

This program includes two courses, four tools, and three research reports. 

Why?

You'll be able to:

  • Take products to market more quickly through strategic partnerships
  • Effectively evaluate customers and marketplace trends to generate game-changing ideas
  • Identify and address customer pain points and unmet needs

Who?

  • Organizational Leaders, High Performers, and Individual Contributors

Included Courses

IN223: Identifying Customers' Unmet Needs

Learn from eye-opening case studies and real-life examples about techniques for gaining a deeper understanding of your customers. You'll be able to serve them better and create more value.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Format:
eLearning
Tags:
Creating Value, Customer-Focused Innovation, Ideas

IN225: Partnerships for Innovation Success

Find out which of the seven keys to approaching new partners make the most sense for your business, and get a jump start on building successful partnerships. 

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Format:
eLearning
Tags:
Collaboration, Ideas, Partnering, Strategic Solutions

Included Research & Tools

Advanced Guides

Advanced Guide: How to Develop External Partnerships

Leading innovators have realized that they cannot work in isolation anymore. They’ve adopted a new paradigm in innovation: external partnerships and collaborations. With this 37-page tool, you’ll discover ways you can build better external partnerships that lead to successful innovation.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Tags:
Breaking Silos, Creative Problem Solving, Ideas, Partnering
Case Studies

Case Study: Nike

Nike's unrivaled athletic empire began with a single, innovative pair of running shoes. Learn how continuous innovation led to the rise of this icon in the business world.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Tags:
Corporate Responsibility, Partnering, Strategy
Idea Generation Tools

Idea Generation Tool: Customer Day in the Life

See innovation through the eyes of your customer. In this exercise, you'll learn how to better understand what your customers do and think, and realize new opportunities to make their lives easier.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Tags:
Creative Problem Solving, Customer, Ideas, New Opportunities
Idea Generation Tools

Idea Generation Tool: Partnerships for Innovation

Gather your team and use this idea generation tool to spark their thinking around how your organization can better partner externally. This guide suggests 18 different types of organizations to consider for external partnerships.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Tags:
Brainstorming, Creative Problem Solving, Ideas, Strategic Partnerships
Innovator Interviews

Innovator Interview: General Mills

Jeff Bellairs, Senior Director of Connected Innovation for General Mills, shares his insights on building a successful open innovation program and turning the idea of "connecting the dots" into a profitable business model.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Tags:
Innovation Network, Open Innovation, Partners, Strategy
Resource Lists

Resource List: Cultural Trends

Be in the know. Cultural trends are indicators of the shifts that will shape tomorrow's reality. This list contains 28 of our favorite blogs, websites, podcasts, books, and other resources to help you stay ahead—whether it's underground hotspots in major cities or the not-yet-released gadget redefining work as we know it.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Tags:
Future Planning, Ideas, Trend-Watching
Skill-Building Tools

Skill-Building Tool: Interview with a Customer

If you were to have a 15-minute interview with a customer, what would you ask him/her? This five-page tool will help you focus on what you really want to learn and how to better frame your questions to gain the insight you need.

Audience:
Organizational Leaders, High Performers, Individual Contributors
Tags:
Customers, Ideas, Ideation, Unmet Needs

Client Quotes

  • “futurethink is enabling us to build critical innovation skills and share best practices across our global organization.”
    Jeff Honious, Vice President of Innovation, Reed Elsevier Reed Elsevier
  • “futurethink is the innovation expert. They fine-tune their training to our clients' needs. I'm constantly looking for new opportunities to engage them in our work.”
    Brian Weberg, Director, National Conference of State Legislatures
  • “futurethink made the topic of innovation, which means different things to different people, real, meaningful, and actionable.”
    Steven Rubinow, Chief Information Officer, NYSE Euronext NYSE Euronext Logo
  • “If you don't make innovation a strategic part of your business plan and you don't drive that into the culture, I don't think you'll have a strong innovation pipeline.”
    Mark Hausfeld, Innovation Manager, Global Business Services, Procter & Gamble Procter & Gamble
  • “The futurethink workshop not only provided an incredible jolt of energy to our collective innovation efforts and established the common understanding of innovation concepts, but it was also a wonderful team-building event. I don’t think it could have been organized and conducted any better.”
    Michael Ripa, Manager, FRI Infomatics
  • “The futurethink team did an outstanding job in designing and facilitating an innovation event for our senior leaders, many of who regarded this as the best innovation workshop that they had ever been a part of. I would recommend futurethink to any organization that is looking for clear and actionable pathways to Innovation.”
    Wayne Pethrick, Director, Marketing and Consumer Insights, Pitney Bowes Pitney Bowes
  • “futurethink made my leadership team think in new ways and helped us develop winning business ideas right in the room. My team now embraces innovation rather than fearing it.”
    Mary Fennoglio, Managing Director, Citigroup Corporate Investment Bank Citigroup
  • “Innovation is deliberate, if done well. There is a science and process to it. futurethink has done their homework to provide a wealth of practical knowledge to their customers.”
    Senior Vice President of Innovation, Wells Fargo Wells Fargo
  • “futurethink's sessions included excellent examples and energizing exercises that brought innovation to life. They got us to look at our business with new eyes.”
    Joan P. Lawrence-Ross, Chief Learning Officer, AXA
  • “Working with futurethink was a very rewarding experience for our team. They brought a great combination of provocative outside ideas, market perspective and a program design that challenged us to think of our own business in more innovative ways.”
    Jim Daly, Vice President of Human Resources, Standard & Poor's Standard & Poor's
  • “We need to look beyond our organization's walls to innovate.”
    Mehmoon Khan, Global Leader, Innovation Process Development, Unilever Unilever
  • “Any innovative company must develop processes for understanding and responding to consumer needs in a very focused way. Otherwise, they're just inventors, they're not necessarily innovators.”
    Tony Tomazic, Director of Consumer Innovations, Humana Humana
  • “futurethink's research and 'how-to' tools have been essential to building our innovation program.”
    Cindy Morgan, Innovation Manager, New England Federal Credit Union New England Federal Credit Union
  • “If you don't innovate, be creative and look to the future and the possibilities of what will evolve over time, you will cease to be relevant.”
    Randy Voss, Senior Manager, Global Strategy & Business Development, Whirlpool Whirlpool
  • “futurethink's proven methodology, research, and tools help ensure we're always ready to meet the evolving public service challenges of tomorrow.”
    Sandy Stosz, Rear Admiral, United States Coast Guard United States Coast Guard
  • “futurethink is always thinking ahead about learning and 'innovate' it before we ask! Their programs have been a huge success with our teams.”
    Director of Learning & Development, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Sonovian Pharmaceuticals