Business Improvement Architects (bia™) set out to improve the way in which business people work by teaching them better approaches and processes and helping them to become self-sufficient to implement their core strategies effectively.

So it’s very satisfying to receive accolades from happy customers because it keeps our mission relevant and alive—like our work with Air Cruisers earlier this year. Air Cruisers is a US company based in New Jersey. It is the world’s leader in inflatable technology. They produce corporate and general aviation life jackets, life rafts, life vests, helicopter floats and evacuation systems for aircrafts. Most of us rely on the quality and safety of their emergency evacuation products every time we fly somewhere.

When bia™ was asked to develop an innovation training program for their leadership, which included the company President, we decided that to be effective, we needed to go further—to help them develop a complete innovation strategy and innovation process that could start with their vision of the innovation initiative, all the way to the implementation of the innovative ideas. The outcome was highly successful.

Over the three days that I worked with their executive team, they were able to develop their vision for innovation, created change management plans to re-shape the organizational culture to prepare for innovation, developed the future structure of the organization and generated innovative ideas. The experience, according to Tom Swierkocki, an executive at Air Cruisers, “far exceeded all of our expectations and I would highly recommend his services to anyone starting on an innovation journey.”

The story of Air Cruisers demonstrates that a commitment of just three days of customized focused facilitation and business training can pay back many times over the investment in time and cost incurred. So often, leaders are concerned about spending three continuous days of planning or training, but, in the words of Tom Swierkocki, “it proved to be the best decision we could have made.” For Air Cruisers, it forged the way for a new journey into Innovation.