Credential Earned: P.Log.
Specialization: Applied Innovation
APPLIED INNOVATION IS A 21ST CENTURY LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVE
Peter Drucker said ‘what you do different’ is a critical element of strategy. Where uncertainty is normative and context is everything in the 21st Century, businesses must embrace all facets of complexity [personal, contextual, interpersonal].
As professionals and practitioners, we must listen to our guts and act intuitively. The market demand is to be strategic in delivering value to customers. The personal demand is to develop robust decision-making competencies to engage successfully in globally competitive business eco-systems. In other words, we must be innovative.
We can learn about innovation, as well as about global competition, business eco-systems, and even leadership. We can do different things as practitioners, professionals, and planners. However, that is simply doing different things. Innovation is “doing things differently”. At heart, innovation is disruptive.
This Program in Applied Innovation will disrupt your everyday normalcies. Through it you will transform yourself into a 21st Century Strategic Leader with the capacity to embrace the challenges of change and innovation and capture the full human potential across the entire organization.
This program aims to jump start creative thinking, collaboration, commitment, and the kind of behaviour change that closes the gap between the theory and the practice of innovation. The goal is to activate the mind-set that enables you to become a proactive innovator and catalyst for a culture of innovation. It is about strategic thinking and strategic intent, not about better operations and processes.
Ultimately, it is about capacitating you as a contextual leader in the face of complexity, ambiguity, and risk. It calls for flexibility, agility and non-rational decision making.
Program Content
The program consists of three progressive stages: Imagine, Innovate and Build.
The Program Competency Development Plan is marked by successive degrees of engagement and development that introduce you to new ways of thinking. By progressing through each stage, you will build your capacity to lead contextually and deal effectively with ambiguity.
PREP-WORK: We begin by challenging you to create your Why. Your Why identifies your core values. Your values drive your actions. Without your why, you cannot Innovate. By innovating, you sustain your personal Why and build on your values. From this beginning we begin to innovate.
Estimated time commitment for the pre-work: 4 hours on average
Honing our ability to imagine involves three building blocks.
Building Block 1: Community Centric Vision
Developing a Community Centric Vision begins by learning about our covert and overt constraints: what stops us from engaging effectively and collaboratively with others? We examine the implied and cognitive biases that affect our decisions. What are the implicit biases that we bring to any communication, collaboration, and interaction with others? What are the repeated thinking patterns we are locked into that can lead to inaccurate or unreasonable conclusions?
Estimated time commitment for this section: 10-12 hours on average
Building Block 2: Community Co-creation
From vision to co-creation, we next identify the multiple stakeholders in any given situation whether business or personal. How can we develop an external mindset by pro-actively considering external factors at play rather than looking only at the company’s inner workings? How can we become aware of stakeholder perspectives so that we drive stakeholder engagement and contribution to our success?
In developing perspectives on community co-creation, you will focus on Zara and the world of Fast Fashion as a case study.
Estimated time commitment for this section: 10-12 hours on average
Building Block 3: Value Chain Analysis
Continuing to build from the Zara Fast Fashion case, you will conduct a Value Chain Analysis using four different analytical tools: Company Value Creation, Market Leadership, Customer-centric Values, and Stakeholder Economics.
Estimated time commitment for this section: 18-20 hours on average
To innovate is to disrupt our everyday normalcies. But by becoming innovative, we transform ourselves into 21st Century Strategic Leaders with the capacity to embrace VUCA challenges, that is, the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous realities we face everyday. Here is where we “do things differently”. We can only do things differently at the fringe from which we build new beginnings.
Continuing to build from the Zara Fast Fashion case, you will apply two building blocks: Fringe Mapping [what needs to be done] and Scenario Planning [what can be done].
Building Block 1: Fringe Mapping
Converging our IMAGINE analyses, we will sketch the fringe guided by this Value Creation spectrum:
- Optimization: what resources need to be reduced and better managed to create value?
- Sustaining: what resources need to be added and what new strategies need to be implemented to create value?
- Breakthrough: what resources and processes need to be re-organized and used in new ways to create value?
- Disruption: how would we completely change the values, culture and economics of the business to create value?
Charting our fringe map, we will explore Zara and Fast Fashion’s micro and macro environments; map out three distinct fringe streams: Process, Operational, Criticality; and identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that could have an impact of creating value.
Estimated time commitment for this section: 18-20 hours on average
Building Block 2: Scenario Planning
Once we identify and understand what could, should, and might be done and the risks involved in acting or not acting, then we can tell the story of what can and even must be done. The scenario we create is the plan to innovate, focusing in this instance on Zara and Fast Fashion.
Estimated time commitment for this section: 18-20 hours on average
LEVEL 3: BUILD Throughout the program, you have used innovation tools and honed strategic leadership competencies applied to Zara and Fast Fashion. At this point on our journey, we leave Zara and Fast Fashion with an Applied Innovation Toolkit.
Your Toolkit includes:
- The Tool – what you became proficient in using.
- The Story – the context about why each tool is critical.
- The Application – the guide on how best to use the tool.
- The Exercise – the practice on using and applying the tool.
Now the focus shifts to your own business experience, either the company in which you currently work, or past business experience. Armed with your Applied Innovation Toolkit it is up to you to innovate.
This is a self-directed online program.
- There are no pre-requisites to register.
- Program Start Date: 1st of every month.
- The program must be completed within one year (can be completed earlier as well).
- Registration is available
- for the full program, or
- in four installments (program materials will be released in stages)
COMPETENCY GOALS: you will learn to
- Identify and manage individual and institutional bias
- Create choices [divergence] and disruptive ideas through aggressive outward exploration
- Use strategic scenario planning to craft an innovation skills portfolio
- Design and develop iterative low-fidelity experiments
- Focus organizational purpose and grass roots buy-in
Subject Matter Experts:
Grayson Bass, Principal, Mayor Wilson
Grayson is a teacher, leader and inventor. With over 18 years of executive leadership experience, and as a person of diverse interests and experiences, he has worked with companies in various sectors such as Energy, IT, International Trade, Manufacturing, Socially Responsible Businesses, Advertising, and Education. With a track record of building and managing diverse teams around the world, he brings a unique skill-set in how to approach and lead organizations, and a unique capability to find order in chaos.
Victor Deyglio, Founding President, The Logistics Institute
Working with academics, governments, companies and industry practitioners, Victor has designed corporate and sector workforce development strategies, national skills and curriculum standards, and competency-based human resource programs in supply chain and logistics. With expertise in logistics, global supply chains, change leadership, and professional ethics, Victor has 25+ years of experience in designing executive and management training programs. He is a facilitator for the Institute’s SCL Leadership Program, as well as Professional Ethics, and Team Dynamics. His past teaching experiences include logistics at York University in Toronto, philosophy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and literature at the University of Toronto.
P.Log. Designation
By successfully completing this program, you will earn the P.Log Designation.
The P.Log designation is owned and maintained by the Logistics Community of Interest under the stewardship of the Logistics Institute. The P.Log designation is a registered trademark of the Logistics Institute.
The P.Log™ designation belongs to the Logistics Institute as a trademarked asset. P.Log™ professionals are members of the Logistics Institute. Earning the P.Log™ designation entails the successful completion of a certification program designed to meet the certification requirements set by the Professional Review Board of the Logistics Institute. All program content is developed and owned by The Logistics Institute, wholly or in partnership with industry experts.
The P.Log designation must be renewed on an annual basis for continued use of the trademark. The professional year runs from November 1 – October 31.
Designations must be renewed on an annual basis for continued use of the trademark. The professional year for all designations runs from November 1 – October 31.
Annual Professional Fee | $495.00 |
The Logistics Institute has the mandate to foster business, trade and economic developments between and among supply chain logistics professionals to sustain global trade built on an even playing field, led by competent and ethical certified professionals, based on the fundamental conviction that global trade can only be sustained at the human level by practitioners and professionals who are capable of building trust.