Mentoring Program
We want to help as a "Project Centre of Excellence" where your team can come to
with confidence for project advise, templates, tools, education, processes, and
a sounding board when they need one.
Our mission is to help people. Mentoring and coaching is the basis for our consulting
practice and we are committed to working with our clients to make certain that the
resources they have entrusted us with are treated with the respect and attentiveness
they deserve.
A synopsis of a report by Marilyn Zuckerman Michaels, released by the Conference
Board of New York, appeared in a recent Innovation University newsletter. Highlights
of this synopsis, "Is Speed Killing Creativity?" written by Robert Tucker, an author,
speaker and Innovation Network associate, include:
A survey of 95 companies indicates that Senior management's demand for more new
products launched at a faster pace is stymieing breakthrough innovation
Eighty-three percent of companies in the U.S. and Europe have achieved only moderate
success with efforts to accelerate new product development
The products being produced are derivative rather than exponentially different Investment
in R & D ranges from 1 percent to 30 percent of revenues, averaging about 5
percent
In half of the firms, "new" products or services are those defined as created within
the past two years
Less than 20 percent describe four- to five-year-old offerings as "new"
Breakthrough innovation accounts for a small portion of company offerings today
New and unusual approaches to produce breakthrough thinking are being utilized,
including using cultural anthropologists to gauge how people use products in real
life and how they adapt existing products to fit new needs
The Innovation Network printed these key findings from a study on Global Survey
for Innovation conducted by Arthur D. Little, Cambridge, MA: (surveyed: 669 companies,
10 industries in US, Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific)
84 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: "Innovation in our company
is viewed as a much more critical business success factor than it was just five
years ago."
Two of the most significant obstacles to creating value are aligning innovation
activities with strategy and operating effective cross-functional innovation processes.
Of companies which consider themselves successful innovators, the survey identified
such factors as clear top management support, co-locating marketing and technology
people, expanding the role of the chief technology officer, and a seamless innovation
process accounting for their performance.
Atocrates, Inc. believes in innovation and freeing up resources from recreating
project management approaches that have been written about and summarized in numerous
books, methodologies, and tools.
We have condensed these best practices and approaches
and have them in our kit bag. All your staff have to do is place a call and no matter
what phase or need they have in their project, Atocrates Inc. has the resources
to help.
All of the services that are listed on our WEB site are available through
our coaching and mentoring program. The difference is when you sign-up for our mentoring
and coaching program, your staff can use any or all of our services through e-mail,
phone support, facilitation or as part of their on-site team. They can choose the
approach they need and we will respond.