Helene Cahen is an Innovation Consultant, Trainer, Coach and Speaker. She helps companies navigate their innovation challenges. As an experienced Innovation Consultant with an M.S. in Creativity and Change Leadership and over 20 years of insights, she focuses on working with organizations to create best practices, processes and tools for developing innovative products/services and building effective teams. She has a proven record of guiding these organizations toward user-centered innovation, helping them discover solutions that address their evolving needs and support change.
Ms. Cahen has received accolades for her valuable assistance to Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and non-profits. She has been a lecturer, coach and facilitator for the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business where she taught innovation principles and is currently a coach for the Haas Executive Program.
Ms. Cahen’s previous experience includes managing multi-million-dollar marketing research budgets for The Clorox Company and directing agency advertising campaigns for Unilever, Nestle and Kraft Foods in France. She has held executive and management positions in advertising, marketing research, HR, finance, and sales as well as VP of Innovation for an online start up.
Born and raised in Paris, France, she graduated with a business degree from elite Sciences-Po Paris and earned a Master’s of Sciences degree in Creativity and Change Leadership from the State University of New York.
She is often a speaker on the topic of Design Thinking and Creativity at conferences such as American Creativity Association, Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI), Creativity Expert Exchange, and the Design Thinking Unconference.
Driven by her personal interest in education and growth, she was instrumental in co-creating a TEDx youth event and is on the advisory board of CodeChix, a non-profit focused on helping the retention of women engineers.
• Why does innovation fail? Why is it so hard to innovate?
While many organizations claim they want to be more innovative, innovation and change is difficult and not always successful. Understanding how the culture, processes, and people have an impact of the outcome is critical.
• Is Design Thinking a fad?
Design thinking seems like another buzz word, tried by some companies, questioned by others. What are the watch-outs and ways to bring design thinking successfully in your team or your organization?
• How can you become more creative?
As adults we all use our creativity daily in our own life and at work to solve problems yet we do not see ourselves as creative. We can help your audience understand how to become aware of their own creativity and how to develop it in a systematic way
• Is Brainstorming obsolete? Obsolete no, just misunderstood and misused. Brainstorming is one tool in service of a process and we should stop criticizing the tool and focus on how we should build our house
Other topics
• How important is the culture of an organization to the success of innovation?
• Why is ethnography becoming more important in organizations?
• What does user centered design mean?
• What is the difference between a designer and a design thinker?
• What is a Business Model Canvas (BMC) and why is it a powerful tool?
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