What Our Clients Say About Us
Bayer Technology
Shanghai, China
There was a marked improvement in our staff performance after the InnovationLabs workshop, particularly in the key areas of focus and attitude: Context and purpose became clearer; and individual contributions became more frequent, bolder and more valuable. It was executed flawlessly, and provided an excellent basis upon which to build momentum and measurably add value to the organisation. Thank you, Langdon.
Dr. Daniel Auriel
Bayer Shanghai, Head of Innovation Management
Gemalto
Marseilles, France
For a company that lives from its ability to imagine new technology, business models and the futures of over one billion users worldwide, Gemalto’s ambition is to build development programs that will challenge our leaders to reach further to meet our company’s goals. InnovationLabs has helped us do this. Whether through their leading of Strategic Expeditions to high performing technology companies, facilitating workshops to our R&D teams, delivering conferences on Innovation to our executive managers, or consulting with our New Business Opportunity group on innovation methodology and tools, InnovationLabs has worked as a true business partner with Gemalto. The sessions delivered by Langdon Morris are always dynamic, engaging and relevant to our company’s issues, supported with business illustrations and industry benchmarks. We’ve enjoyed our partnership with InnovationLabs and look forward to future programs.
Christie Deydier
Gemalto University
NASA Ames Research Center
California, USA
First let me just praise you until you blush. You were outstanding, each and every one of you. Feedback says that this forum was even better than the June workshop, and no less than 6 people said this was the best workshop they have ever been to in their careers.
Lynn Harper, Lead, Integrative Studies, Astrobiology and Space Research Directorate,
NASA Ames Research Center
NASDCTE
Maryland, USA
Our organization has worked with Innovation Labs to successfully execute two national meeting sessions. InnovationLabs demonstrated great flexibility, leadership, and strategic planning expertise as they guided our group through a major re-branding effort for one program; to our surprise, our members became fully immersed in the process, took ownership, and appreciated being ‘heard.’ The trust that developed from this project led us to rely on them for another session in which Langdon Morris and Michael Kaufman led our group in leading strategic change, using textbooks/workbooks in an intense interactive exchange.
We relied on InnovationLabs’ ability to deal with complex scenarios as applied to our particular situation in both cases and were pleased with the outcomes. The techniques used by Innovation Labs put our members out of their comfort zones—which was exactly what we wanted—allowing them to grow, learn, and collaborate in unexpected but fruitful ways.
Kimberly A. Green
Executive Director
Bell Canada
Toronto, Canada
The results that we produced, in just four short months, is a model of speed and simplicity in the organization. InnovationLabs’ participation and commitment to this effort have been a key component in our success.
Norm Silins
General Manager
Federation of State Medical Boards
Texas, USA
InnovationLabs performed in an extraordinary fashion when facilitating a two-day national summit of major medical organizations. The summit was the first of a series of meetings aimed at creating a vision for physician self-regulation. Bryan Coffman and Michael Kaufman used a unique approach called scenario planning, which generated maximal creativity from participants by allowing us to explore possible alternate futures as a means of invigorating the dialog. Bryan and Michael kept us on course by using artistic visual modeling that documented the work of the national leaders gathered at the summit. Within 24 hours the entire summit process and results were on a web page for everyone to review. InnovationLabs took a very complicated process with a diverse group of medical leaders and created a remarkable work product in an efficient and timely fashion. We found Michael and Bryan and their colleagues extremely creative and easy to work with; they are professional, yet approachable—and very effective in facilitating a planning effort.
James N. Thompson, M.D.
Past President and CEO, Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
Illinois, USA
I write to thank you for the spectacular work you have done for ACGME and the medical community at large. By habit I ask two questions at the end of most experiences what went well, and what cold be improved. As I reflect on my experience with InnovationLabs I find it easy to answer the first question and very hand to answer the second.
What went well?
Your ability to welcome all participants and to create an environment that is both charged and hospitable. The ACGEM Board and the Council of review Committee Chairs constitute 60 very bright and committed people who firmly hold opinions that are at first glance incompatible. Your methods made each feel welcomed and encouraged to full expression of their thinking in both small and large group settings. At the same time you didn’t let the group wallow in its differences.
Your ability to honor both arms of all paradoxes. As diverse views were expressed up created an environment that shifted participants’ thinking from advocacy to inquiry. You did this by incorporating all view into a larger construct, an overriding view that encompassed the seemingly incompatible. The group found this authentic and simulating as they sought the greater truth that encompassed all of their “little” truths.
Your use of an iterative process to get deeper and deeper into the issues engaged people in sets of conversations that exposed the strengths and weaknesses of a given proposal and both increased ownership of and refined particular plans.
As you know, I first became aware of your work through the National Alliance for Physician Competence. I have seen 45 organizations come together to create a uniform definition of physician competence, its measures, and its development over the lifetime of the physician. This is a monumental task and I think it could not have been achieved without your help.
David C. Leach MD
CEO
Johnson & Johnson
Pennsylvania, USA
The workshop was a very positive experience for us. We learned a lot about our own organization and how to evolve to be more innovative. We’ve already implemented many changes, including how we share information, the way we interact, resource allocations, and we’re engaging a much broader community of people in the innovation process.
Dr. Sicco Popma
Vice President
Tata Group
Pune, India
Let me thank you once again for your time, effort, patience, perseverance and appreciation during the Tata Innovista -2009 held on July 28, 2009. Your address in the evening was excellent, inspirational and very useful for us.
All the participating teams have given a great feedback and have highly appreciated your style of raising extremely pertinent and thought provoking questions.
Your presence this year has taken this process to a new level and I am concerned that we might struggle next year to match a jury member like you. I have a strong urge to re-invite you next year!
We hope you carried few moments that could be cherished for some time.
Ravi Arora
TQMS
L’Oréal
Paris, France
Thank you for a wonderful and inspiring seminar!
Signe Gammeltoff
Luxury Products Division
Total Oil
Paris, France
The attendees of the Group Management Seminar highly appreciated the quality of your intervention and on their behalf and that of my team we would like to thank you for the workshop you kindly delivered. Your sharing of your knowledge, expertise, and experience on the subject of “Permanent Innovation” will go a long way to helping our future leaders.
Antonin Fotso
Vice President Corporate Training
Danone
Paris, France
Thanks so much for having supporting us so well in our journey ! It was both a success, & a learning experience for me in particular on collective innovation processes! I appreciated your mix of professionalism & expertise on innovation processes design, the flexibility to adapt permanently based on our discussions together from Sunday throughout Thursday morning, & the ways of putting it all together so nicely! Bravo !
Thierry Bonetto
Group Training & Development Director
Endesa
Madrid, Spain
A wonderful learning experience. Perfectly designed to help us identify new possibilities, get insight from many sources and put it in the right context.
Arantxa Balson
Corporate Human Resources
Aspen Institute
Washington DC, USA
InnovationLabs has been an invaluable resource in the Aspen Institute’s partnership with the Federal Reserve System to hold convenings around the U.S. on the subject of scale and sustainability in the not-for-profit world. InnovationLabs facilitated the meetings in a way we ourselves at Aspen could not approximate. In addition Langdon created and presented what our audiences considered, meeting after meeting, to be one of the most stunning presentations they had ever seen on innovation.
Kirsten Moy
Director
3M
Minnesota, USA
We’re working on a course called ‘Leading Innovation.’ Your workshop was fabulous and was the catalyst to get this work going. Thanks!
Cathy Muckala
Leadership Development
point>Forward
California, USA
You guys have a unique ability (tools, know-how, experience, etc.) to facilitate productive collaboration in large groups of disparate people to get months of work done in days. You do it in a manner and with tangible deliverables that, combined, make the results “sticky.”
Bob Hall
CEO, Point Forward
California Space Grant Foundation
California, USA
I was just trying to think of an analogy… other workshops compared to yours is like the difference between individuals who climb mountains, and the US landing a man on the moon… the result of millions of people’s synergy. Yes, climbing mountains is hard work … but, walking on the moon was the result of phenomenal synergy…
Many young people today think walking on the moon is a myth/urban legend, or don’t even know it happened.
I certainly know of no one like you, who can build such synergy out of a disparate crew so quickly and confidently as you do.
Deborah Barnes
California Space Grant Foundation
Ninth House Network
California, USA
Just wanted to share feedback with you on your team’s contribution to our most successful company meeting ever. The preparation, design, and facilitation your team provided made this the most productive session we could’ve imagined. The feedback from our entire organization was unanimously positive, and the room was charged with energy. What’s more, upon leaving the meeting I was impressed that every individual understood our organizational strategy, their departmental role in achieving those objectives, and how they personally could contribute. No small feat with a group of 150 people. Thanks, and looking forward to working with you on future projects.
Tom Fischmann,
Co-Founder, Ninth House Network
Stanford Cardiac Rehabilitation Program
California, USA
My research group, the Stanford Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, worked closely with InnovationLabs to establish a planning process for a project on health promotion that we are coordinating for the American Heart Association. InnovationLabs was extremely creative in planning and directing the sessions with members of the public, the medical profession, and technical staff. The process was successful in establishing a clear vision of the project’s objectives and in setting forth a stepwise process leading to development of the project. InnovationLabs took a broad outline of the project and helped us to conceptualize the process so that we could move forward to the development phase. I would recommend this group for any project requiring a detailed strategic review.
Robert F. DeBusk, M.D.
Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
American Board of Pediatrics
North Carolina, USA
Working with Innovation Labs was both a challenge and a pleasure. The best consultants become partners and colleagues in a quest to clarify and reconfigure ideas. Innovation Labs used their experience and the perspective that comes with it to lead us into new ways of thinking and new modes of inquiry. The result was an unqualified success. There were times during a long engagement when we wondered how we were going to get to the next step and find the next level. Innovation Labs was able to draw on their talent and experience to lead us there and beyond. I have no misgivings about recommending them to any organization interested in imagining and achieving an exciting future.
M. Douglas Jones, Jr., M.D.
Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Section of Neonatology, University of Colorado School of Medicine
Cardinal Stritch University
Wisconsin, USA
So great to work with you and your talented team last week. We quickly moved forward to the next phase of our project, all made possible by the great ideas generated during our planning session. We appreciate it!
Nancy Blair, Ph.D.
Center for Leadership Development, Cardinal Stritch University
CFED
Washington DC, USA
Dear Langdon: You truly are the creative force behind the Innovation Summit, so all of the enthusiasm that we’ve been hearing about the day we want to share with you!
Never having done anything like this before, we asked for your help and guidance, which you provided in full measure. We did well to rely on your experienced and creative genius.
I also want to particularly thank you for your Plenary presentation, Innovation Yoga. I’ve heard many remarks about the value of your insights and the beautiful way in which you conveyed them.
Anne Li
Program Director, Innovation
China Steel Corporation
Taiwan
Dear Langdon: It was our privilege to have you here for the Innovation Workshop at CSC on Sept. 29th.
We have received excellent feedback from our participants. They have expressed that it was truly an exceptional experience, not only from the valuable knowledge they received but also from experiencing your practical approach in demonstrating your methods and theories.
We greatly appreciate that you shared your expertise about the knowledge of innovation with us. We have learned that other than training and learning sessions, the results from actual execution and performance are more significant. After the workshop, participants were encouraged to share what they have learned with each other and our R&D department plans to hold a book reading class featuring “Permanent Innovation” for further discussions and brain storming activities.
The participants were given the worksheets to study and utilize in CSC right after the workshop.
I wrote a short article about the workshop which will be published in our in-plant newspaper. Executives in the company have also received signed copies of the book “Permanent Innovation”.
You are always welcome to visit CSC when you are here in Taiwan.
Kathy Ma
Human Resources Department
Groupe Suez
Paris, France
The Encounters that become engraved on one’s memory or, better, become the standard for all other encounters, are generally quite rare in a man’s life. You are now one of those, to me. I would be glad to hear from you regularly. On my end, I will soon have information to share about an innovation project I am putting together in Paris.
Roger Barca
Director General
Capgemini
Illinois, USA
InnovationLabs partnered with us several times over they years to help us advance our practice. Among other things, Innovation provided us with advanced training that was extremely well received by even our most experienced staff. It is important to emphasize that our team included world class business consultants with over 30 years of experience with collaborative design and service delivery, to it was high praise indeed that they found the InnovationLabs training to be so valuable.
A second and very different example was the advanced furniture design that InnovationLabs facilitated for us, bringing Haworth Mfg. in as a partner. The level of creativity and intelligence InnovationLabs provided in this area was very significant and made a material difference to the success of our group.
I would highly recommend Langdon and his colleagues. Please let me know if there is anything else I can provide; I have great respect for their team.
Allan Mayfield
Chief Operating Officer; Accelerated Solutions Environment
Capital Impact Partners
Washington DC, USA
Even though Capital Impact is an organization with a history, culture and successful outcomes with respect to innovation, the Innovation Audit that InnovationLabs conducted opened our eyes to many new business possibilities. Further, the audit demonstrated the capacity of Innovation Labs to quickly and methodically assess our current situation, and to understand us well enough to make recommendations that were clearly grounded in best practices and not at all based on a one size fits all approach.
Terry Simonette
CEO
Thanks again for a great meeting. It really was a breakthrough. I thought I’d never see the day. You are very good at what you do.
Annie Donovan
Chief Operating Officer
Xpress Data, Inc.
California, USA
Having known Langdon Morris and Innovation Labs since before its inception, it is fair to say that their work is clear to me. Innovation Labs combines very creative and flexible thinking with a highly practical, client-centered approach to solving the problems at hand or leveraging current situations to achieve desired goals.
The specific skills that Innovation Labs brings to group change process and the challenges of learning are impressive – participatory conferences, leveraging a popularity and delight of graphic illustration, sharing but not imposing real-world experiences from the Lab practice – these are all well appreciated by clients and colleagues alike. Specific subject matter expertise – innovation in organizations – is conspicuously well developed, shedding insight and facilitating the structured thinking in an arena that can be elusive (hard to structure in minds of leaders).
InnovationLabs are effective in helping clients and their organizations as a direct result of the combination of bringing all the special insight to the table, while being confident enough to let others lead their own change process, with the appropriate amount of external nudging.
I respectfully offer my most enthusiastic reference. Please do not hesitate to ask for more specific details or elaboration if you wish. It’s my pleasure to support and recommend InnovationLabs.
Robert Gregory
Director, Strategic Projects
WDHB Consulting Group
California, USA
I have known Langdon for about 15+ years now.
First and foremost, I have always found his ethics to be impeccable, both towards my organization and myself, and towards the client.
I have been impressed all along by his depth, manifested on a variety of subjects, the most obvious being the topic of Innovation, on which he is well known in the States and also in Europe. On many occasions, he has helped me and WDHB Consulting Group, both in good times and in bad times.
Of all persons I know, he is the one I would give the highest recommendation about.
Pascal R. Baudry, Ph.D., MBA
President
Media Metrics
New York, USA
Subject: I LOVED your presentation at the Waldorf in NYC at the Conference
Langdon: Could I trouble you to please send me the PowerPoint slides from that lecture? I really want to give them to my employees. Your thoughts inspired me! Thanks so much.
Laura Martin, CFA
Soleil/Media Metrics
Delphi Group
Texas, USA
It was great to see you at Innovation Insights last week in Phoenix. You got great reviews – the best of the event from what I can tell.
Tom Koulopoulos
I attended your talk in Phoenix this week, an excellent presentation and very thought provoking. Thank you very much.
Loy Allen
American Nurses Credentialing Center
Maryland, USA
Dear Jay, Thank you so much for the great work with the Pathway to Excellence Program. The strategic planning session provided us just what we needed, and you both were excellent.
Karen Drenkard, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
Sr Director, Credentialing Operations
Novotel Global Marketing
Paris, France
Novotel is a midscale hotel chain brand created in 1967. Launched in France, the company is part of Accor Group. It now holds 400 properties in 58 countries. From the beginning of this success story, Novotel was centered around Innovation. It is a component of the brand DNA. Back in the 60s, it was the first hotel brand in France to introduce bedrooms including a bathroom and a color TV. In the 80s, it invented the concept of the breakfast buffet. In the 90s it introduced contemporary art in every bedroom. This spirit of innovation has always inspired the company and accompanied its growth.
However, when a new management team took the lead of the company, it appeared that the brand had not really innovated for 10 years. Novotel was becoming a common brand, loosing identity and differentiation.
The management team decided to launch a new project to re-energize the brand, re-innovating being the number one priority. This project is called “Nextup 2015.”
After a stage of assessment and when the strategic options for the brand were examined, the project steering committee (composed of operational, marketing, finance, and HR functions) chose an external partner specialized in Innovation and creativity: InnovationLabs.
The roadmap given to InnovationLabs was very clear:
Help Novotel understand what the future will look like in 2015
Identify the main axes on which Novotel should concentrate its innovation efforts
Produce as many ideas as possible
Synthesize the ideas in a new statement of Novotel Strategy
To launch the project, InnovationLabs prepared six Vision Papers on the world of 2015, covering the topics of Demographics, Economics, Brands, Global Society, Technology, and the Travel Industry. These papers were used as background to help the project participants understand how the world is changing, and to envision what the world of 2015 might be like.
Next, two creative workshops were organized, one in London and one in Shanghai. Each workshop lasted one day and gathered about 50 people, half of them working for Novotel (hotel employees, heads of departments, General Managers, marketing, human resources…), and half of them being “outsiders:” executives, business travelers, students, etc.
The objective of each workshop was to see the world of 2015 through the eyes of two important groups, employees and customers. Hotels are complex business operations with many different facets. What do customers believe? With significant and growing operations in Asia, it was also important to consider the differences between Asian customers and Europeans. What are the priorities? Our goal was to produce as many ideas as possible for Novotel… in 2015!
Each workshop explored a wide range of issues in a hands-on, experiential setting where participants explored the world of 2015, developed specific concepts of how hotels would change by then, and then they developed concepts of the their ideal hotel. We were impressed by the ability of InnovationLabs to design and facilitate these workshops – 50 people working all together on creativity in only one day… and with fun!
It was amazing to see how many ideas you can produce in a day when participants have the right information, and effective process, and good facilitation!
After the two workshops, InnovationLabs delivered a comprehensive Strategy Synthesis Report to the project steering committee. The Report highlighted the key learnings from the project, identified the key markets for the future, pinpointed the five most important strategies for the company, and detailed ten key initiatives for implementing it all.
The main innovation axes for Novotel were selected and taskforces are now at work to shape Novotel’s future, with the end goal clearly in mind: to have old and new clients alike say, “I choose Novotel!”
The project shows how the integration of Vision, Strategy, and Innovation is a powerful force to help re-energize a successful brand and set the stage for continued growth and success.
Pierre Lagrange
Brand Director