James Todd

James Todd

BA, MScA

ON, CANADA
James Todd knows innovation and creativity from the inside. He shows audiences how to lead innovation, unleash creativity, build culture, and foster teamwork.

James has worked in creativity-intensive businesses all his life. Along the way he has been part of innovative projects in an astonishing array of fields, ranging from architecture to parks to industrial IT to genetics to economics, with such organizations such as 3M, Hewlett-Packard, FedEx, Oxford Learning, the CRA and the Canadian Army.


Years of in-depth study led to a graduate degree in innovation and leadership. He earned his speaking skills delivering to the toughest of audiences – first year college students!


His insights can help your audience transform themselves or their organizations and engage the talent inside them. With wit, irrepressible creativity, and deep insight, your audience will hear from a speaker who can ignite the capacity for creativity and innovation inside themselves or inside an organization just like yours.

James has worked in creativity-intensive businesses all his life. Along the way he has been part of innovative projects in an astonishing array of fields, ranging from architecture to parks to industrial IT to genetics to economics, with such organizations such as 3M, Hewlett-Packard, FedEx, Oxford Learning, the CRA and the Canadian Army.


Years of in-depth study led to a graduate degree in innovation and leadership. He earned his speaking skills delivering to the toughest of audiences – first year college students!


His insights can help your audience transform themselves or their organizations and engage the talent inside them. With wit, irrepressible creativity, and deep insight, your audience will hear from a speaker who can ignite the capacity for creativity and innovation inside themselves or inside an organization just like yours.

Leading Innovation: A Day In The Life

Often, the challenge for innovators is knowing what to do on a daily or weekly basis. The highly-interactive presentation outline key aspects of innovation leadership while reinforcing key ideas with stories, games and activities. Customized for each audience.
Audience ActivityEducational / Informative

Ignite!: The Six Cs of Innovation

Innovation isn't just for global companies: every organization faces the imperative to innovate to grow and survive. Tightly focused on small-to-medium enterprise, this highly interactive presentation outlines the five key components of innovation (personal creativity; culture; collaboration; character of leadership; organizational capacity; communication), with a distinct emphasis on how to apply these insights. Ideal as a keynote for a conference with a theme of innovation or change, to set...
InnovationAudience ActivityEducational / Informative

Creativity: Unleashing the Secret Sauce of Innovation

With wit and enthusiasm, this highly interactive presentation challenges audiences to throw off years of resistance and unleash their personal creative prowess. Based on the core belief that every personal is creative in some way, audiences learn to connect with their motivation and learn to apply new skills in creativity. Ideal for audiences full of individual contributors in organizations facing change and innovation ventures.
CreativityAudience ActivityEducational / Informative

Better Together: Collaborating for Innovation

The idea of the solo inventor is a myth: most innovation work is done in teams. In this highly interactive presentation, audiences not only learn how to work as an effective team (drawing from world-class scholarship on the subject) but also learn how to cooperate to foster personal creativity and group innovations. Ideal for audiences with many individual contributors or the people who lead them.
Audience ActivityEducational / Informative

Creating a Culture for Innovation

Managing innovation isn't a single event: it's a culture, a way of doing and being every day Building that culture takes focused attention, deliberate action, and intentional communications. This highly interactive presentation engages audiences in how to map out and implement a culture that will allow creativity to flourish. Introduces an Innovation Culture Canvas™. Ideal for leaders who plan to launch an innovation initiative or for leaders aiming to shift the organizational culture, and...
Audience ActivityEducational / Informative

The Nod: What Business Can Learn From The Art of Jazz

Jazz musicians make it look easy, but the art of improvisation - creatiing something of value spontaneously - requires significant planning and effort. In this highly interactive presentation, audiences will learn how the traditions of jazz mirror the processes needed to create new value in business, and come away with a whole new model and vocabulary for creativity. Ideal for audiences needing a see innovation and creativity from a new angle.
Audience ActivityEducational / Informative