Blog
Video Tour of The Toolkit
As part of our ongoing commitment to experimenting and communicating, we recently put together this little "video tour" of the Innovation Toolkit. In a mere 9 minutes, we present detailed introductions to the six tools listed below (with handy links to the starting...
Minimum Viable Products & Prototypes
Remember the days of building a sandcastle in a sandbox, or creating a spaceship out of an old egg carton and tinfoil? These are examples of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and/or Prototypes! Perhaps you didn’t have the money to buy the latest Millenium Falcon when you...
What Makes A Good Problem Solver?
If you ask anyone on the ITK team (or really most people I work with), they’ll tell you I am always sharing articles. I recently came across this article about one person’s progression from sweeping floors to executive leadership, and instead of just emailing it to...
INTERVIEW: Dan Ward
I had the pleasure of interviewing Dan Ward, an outstanding member of the Innovation Toolkit (ITK) team and MITRE Innovation Catalyst. (Yes, that is his actual title. Fitting, right?) Dan describes himself as a positive, energetic person and I think it is safe to say...
INTERVIEW: Kaylee White
Recently I had the honor of sitting down with a wonderful member of team Toolkit, Kaylee White! Kaylee, a Senior Agile Design Engineer in MITRE’s Agile Systems Design and Enginnering Department, is one half of Toolkit West, calling Hill Air Force Base home along with...
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...
Facilitation Tip: Managing A Dominant Voice
We’ve all been in meetings where one person talks too much, haven’t we? As facilitators, this can be a challenging situation to manage. On the one hand, we want to honor each person’s contribution and willingness to participate. Shutting someone down can have a...
Switching It Up (Part 2)
Our Story From Last Week Continues… Day Two: Brainstorming and Prioritizing Actions At the end of the first day, the facilitation team met and affinitized the feedback we’d heard, grouping it into topics for the next day. Our intent was to form the participants into...
Switching It Up: A Mix & Match Path To Success
Today's post is the first in a series by guest bloggers Alex Feinman (with Tom Seibert and Tammy Freeman) Sometimes, you have to mix and match methods to get the results you need. This story is example of how important it is to be able to modify and adapt the plan in...
Shared Leadership
I often say the best thing Team Toolkit ever built was... the team itself. Team Toolkit operates with a collaborative structure where each member has a lot of room to use their strengths, to support each other, and to have fun doing it. It's a very low-ego...