About ITK
Anyone with experience facing an important challenge or project understands that the job is easier when you have the right tools. The Innovation Toolkit (ITK) is a collection of methods and techniques to help you and your team be more innovative.
MITRE experts curated this collection to promote structured, systemic creative thinking and problem solving, based on best practices and guidance. The tools stimulate insightful conversations by asking important questions and providing frameworks for capturing the results.
Go beyond brainstorming—make better decisions faster, unlock your team’s creativity, uncover uncommon results, and take action.
Our Team
Jen Choi 
Rachel Gregorio
Aileen Laughlin
Stephanie Medicke
Melanie Shere
Dan Ward
Kaylee White
Niall White
Jessica Yu
Our Services｜ 
ITK@mitre.org
The Innovation Toolkit offers a variety of workshops for groups of all sizes. Contact us today to schedule your personal ITK training session on any of the topics below.
Collaborative Consulting Session
Discuss your problem and figure out what tools might work to get started.
Innovate Now!
Explore principles and practices of rapid innovation by recreating a cutting-edge aircraft experiment from 1871 using everyday household objects and learn how to talk about innovation and the professional perils of being an innovator.
What Could Go Wrong?
Define a future failure using the Premortem tool and inversely build consensus around what success looks like.
Understand Your User
Get inside the head of a user with this session that will cover tools like Persona, Journey Maps, and PAINstorming.
“I Need an Idea”
Use the System Map, Lotus Blossom, and Storm Draining toolchain to help come up with an idea.
Houston, We Have a Problem
Meant for the team that’s not sure what problem they’re trying to solve using tools like Problem Framing, System Map, and Value Proposition Canvas.
Culture Change
Dive into the Culture Change tool to define actionable steps towards changing an organization’s culture.
Opportunity Capture
Envision what an ideal future system or solution might look like and help identify opportunities to make it a reality.
The Simplicity Cycle
Discuss Dan Ward’s second book, The Simplicity Cycle, and shine a light on how to make good decisions about simplicity and complexity in the things we make, design, and use.
Acquisition Successes & Failures
Discuss a collection of acquisition & technology development programs from the DoD and NASA, highlighting both successes and failures based on the book F.I.R.E.
Success Stories
ITK & F-35
This week's guest post is by Rick Dunham, from MITRE's Air/Ground Surveillance Program, and it highlights a recent application of the Innovation Toolkit to the F-35 program. On Nov. 5-6, MITRE’s F-35 Lightning II Enterprise Focus team met in Dayton, Ohio, to build...
Team Toolkit’s Road Show!
Hot. Muggy. Humid. Like a swamp (but not really). Yep, I’m talking about DC summers. The time when tourists and summer interns descend en masse upon the District, and the locals grumble about these visitors mistakenly standing on the left side of the metro escalators....
NASA Premortem
Last year I had the opportunity to serve on a National Academy of Sciences committee. We were chartered to help NASA improve its innovation ecosystem, a truly awesome experience. One of my main contributions was to lead several Premortem sessions, where participants...
