Managing an Innovation Session Like a Project: Lessons from the Motorola Law Department

For many organizations, managing the innovation process may be a problem. But not for the Motorola Law Department. The company has enhanced its advanced inventing process to generate more and better quality intellectual property rights and patents. In this Profit through Process podcast, you will hear how the Motorola Law Department stepped away from unstructured brainstorming and moved toward managing innovation sessions like a project.

Genna Weiss of Six Sigma IQ speaks with Maria B. Thompson, Director of Intellectual Asset Management Process and Tools for the Motorola Law Department and featured speaker at IQPC’s 5th Annual Process Excellence Week for the Service and Transactional World summit. Thompson discusses how the Motorola Law Department developed their innovation sessions. She explains the specific Directed Innovation process of creative problem solving that Motorola has developed, which is based on four phases: 1) Plan, 2) Do, 3) Check and 4) Act. In addition, Thompson goes over best practices for managing people during innovation sessions—which include ways to engage introverts in the innovation process and maintain respect for people’s innovation ideas—and reveals how the Motorola Law Department developed a way to protect the intellectual property of ideas that are generated during the innovation sessions.

Thompson also gives a sneak peak of what she will present at the 5th Annual Process Excellence Week for the Service and Transactional World summit being held from the 21st to the 24th of September.