Translating what we learn in class to your real-world experience

minimum of 5 pages, single space, time new roman. Just need to answer the

question.

FINAL White Paper: DUE Saturday, April 30, 2016 before midnight.

Translating what we learn in class to your real-world experience and development as an innovative leader is a critical part of the learning process. To culminate the class, you will candidly assess yourself as an innovative leader and develop a strategy for furthering your growth and development beyond this course. Drawing from the course material, your experience advancing your innovative leadership project, and your innovative leadership reflections, analyze what have you learned about design thinking and yourself as an innovative leader. Are you able to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your team and the organization/system in which you must operate? What are your strengths and weaknesses? How have you already developed as an Innovative Leader since the start of class? How might you improve your performance as an innovative leader going forward?

For your final reflection, you will produce a written (minimum 5 pages, single-spaced, 12 font) analysis and plan that addresses the following:

1. Candidly assess your personal strengths and weaknesses in leading/participating in creative, crossdisciplinary

teams and articulate ways to improve your leadership capacity going forward, including (but not

limited to):

· An analysis of specific factors that foster or limit creativity and innovation within your immediate

· workgroup or team;

· Your capacity to create a psychologically “safe” environment where people can brainstorm, share

· mistakes and risky ideas, and share their diverse opinions;

· Your capacity to manage creative abrasion and the editing of ideas, while still maintaining everyone’s

· commitment;

· Your capacity to manage challenges and opportunities for effective “teaming;”

· Your capacity to handle sub-par contributions and performance

2. Candidly assess your personal strengths and weaknesses in leading innovation and change. As part of this, please articulate ways to improve your capacity to lead innovation in the future. This should include an assessment and discussion of:

· Your personal leadership style;

· Your comfort with, and ability to manage the three forms of ambiguity inherent to the collective creative

· process;

· Your facility with different aspects of the design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype,

· test);

· Your fluency in key innovative leadership capacities (invent and imagine, the ability to express your ideas

· in a compelling way using an array of media, systems thinking, visual thinking, and improvisation);

· Your capacity to deal with resistance to change and navigate implementation of new ideas;

· Your ability to give voice to values.

Overall, your final journal reflections should be precise, organized, logical, and appropriately supported. Highgrades are reserved for well-written papers that demonstrate a clear, in-depth, and sophisticated understandingof key processes and concepts.