PreCon 2024
Tuesday, August 27th, 2024
The Madison Concourse Hotel
Madison, WI
Agenda:
12:30PM: Registration and Networking
1:00PM: Workshop
5:00PM: Happy Hour & Innovation Showcase
7:00PM: Adjourn
Innovate Your Culture: Mindset, Skills and Action for New Growth
Key Benefits:
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Become a more transformational leader to help others learn and start new ideas.
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Help others learn innovation through design thinking.
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Make your meetings more engaging through design thinking facilitation.
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Join a collaborative experience to design an innovation program you can use.
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Leave with a collection of resources you can use in your organization.
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Gain small and simple techniques to apply design thinking for innovation on a regular basis.
Overview:
Leading innovation with your team is new, different, meaningful, necessary across the organization, and extremely challenging. This is why we need to spend time learning it and prototyping it.
Many people in organizations have not truly learned how to innovate or help others learn new ways. This is why leading innovation can be a great challenge…since people are new to it and haven’t had a significant learning experience to help them. Many have a history as a part of a culture of execution and not a culture of innovation which is also required now. The age of acceleration we are living in requires innovation and to do new things in new ways to grow. This leadership workshop is designed to help you lead more human-centered, interactive and engaging meetings, workshops, and group sessions that help generate ideas and innovation. In this hands-on collaborative experience, you will participate in creative activities and learn how to use techniques and tools to confidently and actively facilitate others in design thinking and innovation projects. Learn, co-create, and enjoy design thinking with others in this inspiring human-centered half-day workshop. Become part of the Innovation Ecosystem.
After the Workshop:
After the event, you will receive free access to our online workshops and guides to help you use our innovation leadership and facilitation techniques and activities in your work.
Trainer
Dr. Darin Eich
Founder
InnovationTraining.org
Dr. Darin Eich is the founder of InnovationTraining.org and author of Innovation Step-by-Step: How to Create & Develop Ideas for your Challenge and Root Down & Branch Out: Best Practices for Leadership Development Programs. He is a widely sought after design thinking expert, innovation workshop leader and keynote speaker as the CEO of Innovation Learning. Darin is known for making innovation fun, simple, and contagious to pass on. Darin has helped over 100 organizations from Silicon Valley to Boston to Singapore and Berlin with their culture of innovation. Darin designs and facilitates programs used by over 1 million people that have been featured in USA TODAY and offered dozens of times by the University of Wisconsin and Dartmouth College. He started in design thinking more than 10 years ago as the president of BrainReactions where he led projects for clients like P&G and the United Nations.
Attendee Testimonials

Thank you for generously sharing your insights, expertise, and valuable resources. I especially appreciate the gift you have for creating an environment where participants can learn from one another, are challenged to try new activites in a safe space, and have fun all at the same time. The best part of the workshop is that it never really ended!

Thank you for teaching state of the art techniques on how to build a more innovative workplace culture through design thinking. I've already used several of your techniques to make our team meetings more engaging, fun, and productive. We're generating more ideas, cultivating empathy, and taking action more so than we ever did before!

During the workshop, I picked up a lot of tips and simple techniques that can be used throughout the workday. Things that will help me translate [innovation] theory into the practice. For me, the workshop was about affirmation and confidence for becoming a more transformational leader that helps others learn and start new ideas.
Innovation Showcase
Network with executives from across the country and hear short presentations from innovative companies who are developing products and services that are driving the future of work. Past presenters include...
Dr. Donte Vaughn
CEO & Managing Partner, CultureWorx
CultureWorx connects the dots between your organization’s core values and your team’s leadership behaviors—measuring, managing, and improving the actions that impact the employee experience, leadership decision-making, and business results.
Heather Wentler
Executive Director and Co-founder, Doyenne
Doyenne is a nonprofit organization that provides professional development, networking, and mentoring for women and marginalized gender/s entrepreneurs who are building scalable ventures. Our mission is to evolve the entrepreneurial ecosystem by mobilizing the entire community around economic growth for all entrepreneurs.
Rob Catalano
Chief Engagement Officer, WorkTango Inc.
WorkTango offers employees a voice and leaders actionable insight. Using data science and natural language processing, we help deliver real-time insights to HR, executives and even leaders on any initiative that requires employee feedback, and help companies measure employee engagement. The results are higher engagement and better people decisions.
MK Getler
Chief Marketing Officer, Loop & Tie
Loop & Tie is the first and only carbon regenerative corporate gifting platform designed to make an impact through gifting that gives back.
