Melissa Dinwiddie

Most organizations declare innovation as a core value — then hand their leaders a mandate and leave them to figure it out alone. The result? Innovation theater that’s forgotten by Monday.

Melissa Dinwiddie is an innovation strategist, keynote speaker, and author who specializes in the teams most speakers write off: the analytical, skeptical ones. Her Create the Impossible™ framework—Play Hard. Make Crap. Learn Fast.—gives even the most left-brained teams a repeatable practice for building innovation into how they actually work.

Proof: a skeptical research manager at Meta called the idea of a playful virtual offsite "a waste of time"—and within 6 months had referred Melissa to 5 other teams inside the company.

She studied dance at Juilliard, spent 15 years as a professional artist, and jazz singer/songwriter. She is the author of Innovation at Work: 52 Micro-Experiments for Brave Leaders. When not transforming corporate cultures, she's attempting ukulele-and-bass duets with herself.