Have you ever had a great idea but got stuck in the process of turning it into a great solution? Lem Lasher, an internationally recognized thought leader on digital strategy and innovation, discusses this process and delivers the practical innovation strategies that can make a difference. He is the president of global solutions and services and the chief innovation officer of the Office of Innovation at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). During his eight-year tenure, CSC has become recognized as a thought leader in innovation and has received widespread acknowledgement and numerous awards for the accomplishments of Lasher’s Office of Innovation.

With a dynamic and engaging style combined with an extensive reservoir of knowledge, he is a sought-after expert. With more than 25 years of global management and innovation experience, he speaks with unique authority about the challenges and issues companies face, and he has the real-world experience to back up his field-tested theory. In presentations, Lasher discusses the importance of innovation and how the challenge is not in coming up with great ideas but turning those ideas into great solutions. He shares insights on the four types of innovation – business model, product/service, management, and operating model; how to measure success; and how value will be co-created with customers and users. He also looks at how good management can kill innovation, suffocating creativity with a focus on strict objectives. To Lasher, innovation is photosynthesis – it needs light and air and water to thrive, and it must have room to fail. A systems problem at the core, innovation is about the culture of an organization. He has also worked extensively on implementing innovation, and he incorporates leading change into his methodology. Smart and lively, Lasher’s genuine excitement about good innovation shines through each presentation.

Office of Innovation. CSC formed its Office of Innovation based on the belief that consulting firms need to bring clients new thinking and ideas and use innovation as a way to reinvent themselves. Since 2004, Lasher has headed CSC’s many innovation accomplishments, which include becoming an industry thought leader in the strategic use of IT; industry awards for work in competitive intelligence; the introduction of social media as a way to collaborate with clients and colleagues; the establishment of an “ideation” practice for crowd-sourcing creative problem solving; and the management of CSC’s global solutions portfolio, which introduced solutions that generated more than $500 million in revenue. Lasher also accomplished the difficult feat of measuring how innovation affects an organization’s bottom line by looking at how the initiatives improved customer relationships, won new business, developed new solutions, shortened project delivery, and increased financial and operational contributions.