InnovatorsDigest

New "88 Great Meeting Planning Questions" Book Helps Innovators Plan Successful Events

Now You Can Ask More & Better Questions to Plan Better Meetings & Events.

Get the new 88 Great Meeting Planning Questions by Gerald "Solutionman" Haman. It contains 88 Great Questions you need to get started in planning great meetings, events, conferences, conventions, tradeshows, workshops, seminars facilitations, retreats and experiences!

People spend a lot of time attending meetings, but they seldom have enough time and help to effectively plan the meetings. During the past 20 years, the author, Gerald "Solutionman" Haman, attended, planned and facilitated meetings for hundreds of small groups and large audiences of several thousand people. As a result of those experiences, he developed these 88 Great Questions in this 10-page booklet to help people plan better meetings and events. 

Here is a preview of the book's Table of Contents that reveals the 12 question topics:

 
Order from Amazon.com or directly from Haman's company, SolutionPeople Innovation.
Save 50% by ordering downloadable eBook for only $8.88 (only 10 cents per question)from SolutionPeople by clicking HERE. 

Order a printed booklet from Amazon.com for $18.88 (only 21 cents per question) by clicking HERE.

 

Relate-to-Innovate: Join the “Top 20 LinkedIn Innovation Groups" from SolutionPeople

Did you know there are over 400,000 "Groups" within the 45 million member LinkedIn social network? Since there are over 2,500 groups focused on innovation or innovators, we want to make it easy for you to join Innovators Digest's "Top 20 Innovators Groups" by clicking on the links below.

• More than 110,000 people are members of the Top 20 Innovation Groups
• 1,000 people per week are joining the Top 20 Innovation Groups
• The Marketing/PR/Sales Innovators Group is the 11^th largest LinkedIn Group with over 67,000 members
• The Twitter Innovators Group is the largest Twitter-focused Group on LinkedIn with more than 11,000 members who tweet
• Over 9,200 people belong to the fast-growing Green & Sustainability Innovators Group

•  More than 8,000 people belong to the helpful InnovationPeople Group

Click on Links Below for Details or to Request to Join the Groups in the "Innovation Top 20"

1. Marketing, PR, Sales, Word-of-Mouth & Buzz Marketing Innovators
2. Green & Sustainability Innovators 
3. InnovationPeople Expert Network
4. Brand & Branding Innovators
5. Sales & Selling Innovators
6. New Product & Service Innovators
7. HealthCare, Wellness, Medical, Pharma & Biotech Innovators
8. Learning & Education Innovators
9. Leadership & Change Management Innovators
10. Communication Innovators
11. Meeting & Event Design Innovators
12. Association, Convention & Conference Innovators
13. Twitter Innovators
14. Facebook Innovators
15. Technology & Mobility Innovators
16. Government & Political Innovators
17. Fundraising & Philanthropic Innovators
18. Innovative Networkers
19. GTD - Getting Things Done Innovators w David Allen
20. "Experience Economy" Innovators w Pine & Gilmore

Innovation Group Members Have The Following Icons Displayed in Their LinkedIn Profiles:

 

Click on any of the above icons to get more information or request to join the group.

Relate-to-Innovate!

Does Your Company Support Consumer Experience Innovation? – Fast Company Article

A few years ago, we were asked by a regional coffee roaster to redefine the coffee experience for fine dining. We knew that Americans drank coffee after dinner for functional purposes (to wake/sober up), but we wanted to understand how we could create a more emotional experience. We grabbed our notepads, went into the field, drank a lot of coffee, studied coffee rituals from different cultures and ultimately crafted a compelling coffee experience that could have resurrected the after dinner coffee ritual in America. The client loved it, but never brought it to market. Why?

It used to be that you could invent a widget, patent it and dominate a market. Today that's becoming more and more difficult due to the mass-commoditization of products. From Microsoft to BP, companies that have traditionally won with product and business innovations are trying to create value by delivering better consumer experiences--integrated product and service experiences that attract and engage consumers and extend that relationship over time. These companies know that winning in the future means managing a portfolio of innovation that includes business, technology and consumer experience. They aspire to deliver experiences as compelling as Apple and Whole Foods, but few have the culture it takes to deliver these types of experiences.

Like our coffee roasters, many companies are attracted to the concept of consumer experience, but are hampered by the very cultures that made them great at delivering product and business innovations. They are often looking for the next "silver bullet"--a single product or service that they can roll out--and struggle with the idea that great experiences can be a collection of seemingly ordinary things. Their organizational structures have evolved into functional silos that are efficient at bringing new products and services to market, but not effective at delivering deep, rich experiences across multiple touch points. Consensus-based decision-making prevents them from creating strong stories that are necessary to create real value. The result is an overemphasis on what (offering) they are delivering not the why (promise) and how (delivery) it is delivered.

To read the full article by Steve McCallion in Fast Company, click HERE.

My Thinkubator Experience - a Review by "Experience Economy Expert" Bill Gibeault

Gerald Haman loves questions. In fact, his favorite question is "What is your favorite question?"

So here was my question. How did he and his company, SolutionPeople, get me to travel half way across the country to attend his Accelerated Innovation & Creativity Workshop in Chicago?

 

Throughout my years in corporate America, I have experienced learning and training encounters in virtually every shape or form you can think of – leadership, selling, negotiating, public speaking and streaming media. Why was this going to be any different?

In their bestselling book, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre and Every Business a Stage, Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore ask a series of great questions. In a world where most products and services have little differentiation, what would customers really value? Better yet, for what would they pay a premium?

The answer is experiences—how companies engage customers in an inherently personal and memorable way. The buzz on Haman's Accelerated Innovation Workshop was that it wasn't the traditional lecture and 3-ring binder snore, but a real EXPERIENCE.

This was a big lure for me. I had just became was certified by Pine & Gilmore in the theories and models of The Experience Economy. I wanted to discover if the Thinkubator "experience" lived up to its impressive word-of-mouth billing.

Located in a spacious loft in Chicago's West Loop, the Thinkubator is a truly innovative venue. Festooned with toys, games, large-screen TVs, Aeron chairs, light bulbs in various shapes and forms, bean bags, sofas and sculptures, it invites you into a world that definitely isn't business as usual.

Haman's opening act is literally transforming. It's called the "Know Your Brain Game Experience." It's a quick, but amazingly accurate "brain scan." I won't spoil the surprise, but attendees gain some insight into how their brain works and how they can use this knowledge to become more consistently innovative. The game is a highly interactive experience and sets the stage for the introduction of SolutionPeople's 4-quadrant brain model and 4-state Accelerated Innovation Process. (Investigate, Create, Evaluate and Activate). At this point, every participant gets a KnowBrainer® Innovation & Creativity tool. The brainchild of Haman, it's an innovative hand-held tool that uses a combination of questions, words, quotes and images to help people think through all the stages of his proven creative problem solving process.

Cool fact: Tests by students at Northwestern University and Wayne State University found that the KnowBrainer tool increased creativity levels by over 500% versus traditional brainstorming with flip charts. In just the first 3 hours of the Innovation Workshop, SolutionPeople delivered a memorable experience – engaging clients with entertainment, education and a dynamic venue.

A great experience? Most definitely. One of the most remarkable accomplishments of SolutionPeople is that the "experience" has fueled the growth of the organization. Haman hasn't relied on traditional advertising to get clients; growth was a result of word of mouth and the continuing story amazing Thinkubator experiences.

Author's Footnote: SolutionPeople's Gerald Haman recently invested an entire week with Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore to become a Certified Experience Economy Expert. He is already making plans to enhance the Thinkubator Experience by applying new ideas inspired by his interaction and discussions with Pine & Gilmore. Haman has organized a new LinkedIn Experience Economy Networking Group for fans and practitioners of The Experience Economy.