The biggest reason this topic is important is that we can not achieve the outcomes we want without innovation (i.e., resilience, equity). It is imperative that we build this strength. For the past 5 years, we have been working deeply with design firms around the country, helping them get “unstuck” as they struggle to implement critical design strategies for climate resilience, health and equity. Through that experience we’ve come to realize that every barrier typically encountered can be tracked back to innovation, both as a skill and a practice (a personal ability and an intentional, organizational cultural imperative). When we’ve led firms through the process to develop innovation that we intend to replicate (in brief) in this session, we’ve seen that it pulls on many threads – but also connects them. For example, having “all voices heard”, overcoming the “this won’t work” mindsets of consultants or clients, structuring charrettes or working meetings specifically to support innovation (it’s a “thing”) – so that there is better clarity about what, why and how to pursue a strategy – all of that can be improved, accelerated and amplified through a lens of innovation, which also happens to get people excited and re-invigorated. One thing we’ve found (by accident) is that when working with executive leadership in firms, they can get defensive about certain topics or have mental blocks about shifting how things are done, if you address those issues head-on. But when you come at those issues through the lens of innovation, it’s amazing how open and interested they are and how much progress can be made which was not possible before! This is the reason we have begun to focus on Innovation to unlock capability at both a personal and practice level – it seems to be the “magic key” at the moment! RE: conference theme: We’ve done scores of workshops on resilient design within firms from both the technical and “how to talk to/convince clients to do resilient design” and over the last 18 months, have revised to do the same workshops thru this lens and you can see and feel the difference in how people engage with the topic. One thing that is surprising is the gap between how we perceive ourselves to be (creative thinkers, innovators, using ‘design thinking’) and the reality – which can be assessed through fun ‘tests’. Once people realize that and understand what it really is to be an innovator – they get excited about stretching an untapped (or under tapped) part of their brains!