May Meeting: Driving Innovation thru Business Agility
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 9:45AM
Agile Cincinnati in Business, Communication, Innovation, Management, Monthly Meetings

Aaron Kopel, Managing Partner at Project Brilliant, will discuss how companies are Driving Innovation through Business Agility by adopting an entrepreneurial culture that promotes continuous innovation and enables sustainable competitive advantage.  By weaving together concepts from thought leaders on the topics of business agility, lean startup, Agile product development, customer engagement, and Innovation Games, Aaron makes the case for organizations to take a big picture view of their ability to react to change and seize opportunities through the application of Agile principles across the entire enterprise.  Come for the thought provoking discussion on taking Agile beyond software, the criticality of customer engagement in the product development process, viewing IT as a strategic asset, how to kill corporate innovation through offshoring, and ways that internal corporate entrepreneurship competitions can save the day.

Aaron Kopel is a Managing Partner at Project Brilliant.  As a speaker, mentor, and consultant he is focused on enabling clients to become more responsive to change through the use of Innovation Games, and the implementation of Agile Business principles and Lean-Startup methods across their organizations. Prior to joining Project Brilliant Aaron led two tech-startups, winning several awards for innovation and entrepreneurship, and spent 10 years in IT and Business consulting.  His entrepreneurial background and wide range of consulting experience across large and mid-size organizations ranging from 50- 85,000 people has given him a unique perspective on how organizations innovate and adapt.

Mr. Kopel holds an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, a BA (double major – Business and Computer Information Systems) from Wartburg College, is a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).

 Door Prize Sponsor


Update on Sunday, June 3, 2012 at 3:53PM by Registered CommenterAgile Cincinnati

 

Thanks to Aaron Kopel for coming to Cincinnati from Indianapolis in may to talk to our group!

 

Aaron talked about business agility as a method for innovation and change within organizations.  He highlighted that efficiency is different then business agility.  Business agility allows organizations to take advantage of opportunities to grow, while efficiency is more about standardization and cost control.

 

Aaron discussed the three feedback loops that Michael Hugos emphasizes as important driving business agility. "Responsiveness is a blend of balance and agilitity with the awareness to know when to do which" 

Games play an important part in driving innovation by allowing team members to exercise both parts of their brains (the creative and logical sides) and allowing them to interact with each other in a non threatening environment while doing real work.  It's also fun!

Finally Aaron summarized his key points on driving innovation through business agility.

  1. IT is a strategic asset
  2. Have short feedback loops
  3. Automate and deal with outliers
  4. Engage your customers
  5. Create a culture of continuous innovation
  6. React on the 80%

We ended the night by drawing for a book sponsored Pearson and a Tshirt sponsored by Atlassian. Congrats to Don Miller and Tim Sullivan!

Pearson book winner Don Miller

Atlassian t-shirt winner Tim Sullivan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Article originally appeared on Agile Cincinnati (http://www.agilecincy.org/).
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