TRACK
This track explores how companies create and evolve their product strategy to stay competitive, meet future customer needs, and align with business vision. Through case studies and frameworks, sessions emphasize the importance of strategic alignment, bold experimentation, and user-centric innovation.
Attendees learn how organizations like the Pella Corporation and the Federal Reserve Bank have reshaped their approaches to product development, and how figures like Taylor Swift inspire unexpected lessons in brand leadership. The focus is on turning vision into action by building iconic, scalable, and strategically aligned products. This track is ideal for leaders and strategists seeking fresh models for long-term innovation success.
Product and Innovation Strategy
TRACK
Focused on the operational side of innovation, this track provides insights into how teams execute strategy through structure, tools, and technology. Sessions dive into AI-powered decision-making, the growing role of Product Operations, and the tactical use of design thinking to overcome big challenges.
Case studies demonstrate how companies like InVue and Pendo successfully built processes and systems to scale innovation and respond to market demands. Attendees will gain practical frameworks and tools for enabling high-performance product teams and executing innovation at speed and scale. This track is for practitioners seeking proven methods to deliver smarter, faster, and more impactful results.
Innovation Execution
TRACK
Real Challenges, Real Solutions
Monday, September 15, 2025
Exclusively for senior leaders, the Executive Innovation Track at PDMA’s Ignite Innovation Conference is a half-day immersive experience designed to spark strategic breakthroughs and accelerate innovation at the top. This year’s executive session invites high-level decision-makers to step beyond static presentations and into a dynamic, two-part format grounded in real-world challenges and collaborative problem-solving.
Part One: In a candid, interactive session, participants will surface and explore their most urgent innovation challenges. These open discussions offer a rare opportunity to connect with fellow executives across industries and uncover shared constraints and opportunities.
Part Two: Building on the themes from Part One, participants will engage in a high-impact innovation workshop designed to map their business landscapes, identify the constraints that matter most, and explore targeted paths to value creation. Using a systems-thinking framework, the session equips leaders with tools to make faster, more contextual decisions, communicate strategy across silos, and build organizations that sense and respond to change with agility.
Leave with actionable insights, fresh strategic perspectives, and a peer network committed to solving today’s most complex innovation challenges.
The Executive Innovation Lab is facilitated by Matt Phillips of Phillips & Co. and Mike Hyzy of Evolve Collaborative.
Executive Innovation
TRACK
Main Stage Presentation: Will SYSTEM THINKING Ignite or Destroy Innovation Success?
This point / counter point presentation will confront the realities, both positive and negative, of applying system thinking discipline to the Innovation process.
Maggie Nichols will ask Kevin Cahill and Doug Hall to respond to newly fielded quantitative research on managers perceptions and attitudes towards applying system thinking to their innovation process.
The result will be a spirited conversation on the leverage points and watch outs of applying system thinking to help you increase speed and decrease risk with your innovations.
At the end of this discussion you will have a full three dimensional understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of a systems based approach.
Certificate Track: Leveraging the Power of System Thinking on People, Work Process & Product/Service Innovation
Dr. W. Edwards Deming pioneered the application of system thinking to factories starting with helping American factories produce quality goods during WWII. After the war, during reconstruction, he taught the Japanese how to use system thinking to produce quality goods. Later he taught the USA and the world. His pioneering work is the basis for LEAN and 6 Sigma.
The Deming Institute in Partnership with The Eureka! Ranch are proud to share with the PDMA community their latest learning on how to leverage the power of system thinking on people, work process and product/service innovation.
The Benefits of System Driven Innovation Include
500% more “disruptive ideas” in your Innovation PIPELINE than from brainstorming
500% Faster speed from idea to market because of increased EMPLOYEE Engagement
500% Greater odds of profitable success as a result of Smarter Innovation SYSTEMS
Participants attend one or more of the Experience sessions detailed below. These 45 minute sessions efficiently enable you to experience and discover the fundamentals of how to leverage the power of system thinking on people, work process and product/service innovation.
After the session, a collection of videos on the fundamentals of applying system thinking to innovation make it easy for you to share what you’ve learned with your team, department or organization. If appropriate - advanced in person coaching and the complete library of the Deming NEXT and Eureka! Jump Start Your Brain on-line courses are available.
Certificate: Participants who complete the three sessions, and some online work, will receive an Innovation Engineering White Belt Certificate. Participants are required to attend at least one of the breakout sessions live at PDMA - the others can be done online.
PDMA Breakout Session 1: EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: Research finds that less than 40% of employees are actively engaged in their work. The consequences of low engagement include absenteeism, safety incidents, turnover and poor work quality. When asked why they are not proactively engaged employees over 6 in10 employees say “they don’t know what to do” and or “don’t see it as their job.“ Experimentation with employee groups across education levels and job titles finds that engagement is ignited through intrinsic motivation. The starting place for this is first focusing on “stopping the stupid” work systems that prevent employees from doing their best work. This approach has received “Net promoter” scores from employees of 74, equaling the ratings of world class organizations such as Apple, Amazon and Southwest Airlines.
PDMA Breakout Session 2: HOW TO FIX FLAWED HUMAN WORK SYSTEMS. The average manager wastes 3.5 hours a day dealing with employee mistakes and broken work systems. Of these, nearly 80% are due to flawed work systems such as: 1) Flawed SOP, 2) Broken Digital Systems, 3) Bureaucracy, and or 4) Poor Communications. By applying Deming approach to system improvement that considers among other things variation in the system as well as the psychology of igniting worker engagement your innovation process you can increase speed to market 6X while decreasing risk by 80%.
PDMA Breakout Session 3: INNOVATION PIPELINE: Innovation processes such as Stage Gate have seen wide spread adoption because they bring discipline to innovation. System Thinking builds on that discipline by adding tools and work systems that enable organizations to think in a less linear and more dynamic way to avoid the classic declines in “project value” that occur due to development compromises. The principles and methods taught in this session have been validated in academic papers and industry practice as delivering 5X more “big ideas” than classic brainstorming.