Melissa Dinwiddie

Hey there, innovation champions! Most innovation efforts don’t fail because teams lack ideas. They fail because smart, capable people are waiting for permission to be perfect—and by the time they feel ready, the moment has passed. I’ve watched this pattern stall product launches, kill momentum after conferences, and quietly drain the energy out of teams that leaders genuinely believed were “high potential.” I know it well, because perfectionism once stopped me cold too. The Wedding Document I...

Hey there, innovation champions! Before I head to Alabama and Arizona to spend the holidays with family, I wanted to share something that could save your Q1 innovation initiative before it even launches. Because here's the pattern I see every single year: In January, leaders roll out ambitious innovation programs. By February, they've quietly fizzled out. By March, everyone's back to business as usual, and the expensive consultant's slide deck is gathering digital dust. Sound familiar? The...

Hey there, innovation champions! Your smartest people are sitting on half-brilliant ideas. They're waiting to make them bulletproof before sharing. Meanwhile, your competitors are testing rough prototypes and learning what actually works. I see this constantly when I work with high-achieving teams—researchers at Meta, leadership teams at healthcare companies, high-potentials at national creative agencies, audiences at my Creating the Impossible keynote. Brilliant people who've trained...

Hey there, innovation champions! "We need to innovate, but we can't pull people away from their desks." If you're a VP of L&D, a chapter president planning your annual conference, or a research director managing tight project timelines, you've said some version of this. Your team needs breakthrough thinking capabilities, but you can't pause operations for elaborate training programs. Here's what I've learned working with teams at Google, Meta, Salesforce, and most recently with 125 project...

Hey there, innovation champions! The CEO of PMI San Francisco Bay Area had a problem. Her members—project managers who pride themselves on precision, process, and predictability—were facing an uncertain future with AI. Would AI take their jobs? How could they position themselves as strategic partners rather than task executors? And most pressingly: how do you prepare people for a future you can't predict? "I want people to think differently," she told me in our discovery call. "The future is...

Hey there, innovation champions! Here's irony for you: there were years when I was making my living as a professional artist, when I made very little art. Oh, I sold a lot of art, but most of it was prints of art I'd created in previous years. I spent most of my time fulfilling orders, customizing designs on the computer, then printing them out, packing and shipping. Believe me, it was not what I'd signed up for when I envisioned the artist's life! I was performing the role of artist without...

Hey there, innovation champions! When I tell tech executives I'm a former Juilliard-trained dancer turned innovation strategist, I can practically see the mental math happening. They're wondering: Does creativity have an ROI? Can someone from the arts really understand our technical constraints? Where are the case studies proving this works in our world? Here's what they're missing while they're calculating: The capabilities that unlock breakthrough innovation aren't technical—they're human....

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FOR EARLY SUPPORTERS Want to read Innovation at Work before it hits the shelves? I'm looking for a small group of innovation champions to join my official book launch team — the inner circle helping bring Innovation at Work into the world. You'll get: ✨ Early access to the complete book (mid-January)📖 Exclusive bonus materials not available anywhere else🎯 First look at all 52 micro-experiments before the world sees them Your part is simple: Read (or skim the parts most...

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FOR EARLY SUPPORTERS Want to read Innovation at Work before it hits the shelves? I'm looking for a small group of innovation champions to join my official book launch team — the inner circle helping bring Innovation at Work into the world. You'll get: ✨ Early access to the complete book (mid-January)📖 Exclusive bonus materials not available anywhere else🎯 First look at all 52 micro-experiments before the world sees them Your part is simple: Read (or skim the parts most...