Cisco Blogs / Craig Wirkus
Craig Wirkus
Craig Wirkus is a Program Manager for the Services Innovation Excellence Center (SIEC) at Cisco and has more than ten years of experience in innovation. He began his tenure with Cisco with the creation of the Innovation Maturity Model, Innovation Capability Foundation training course, and many of SIEC’s playbooks.
He currently leads the backend of innovation support for incubation teams, innovation teams, and Innovation Funding Boards. His Innovation Funding Board framework, Innovation Project Management training and Startup//Cisco intrapreneurship workshops provide a whole systems approach for managing the backend. He has successfully helped entire Cisco business lines to transition to these new approaches, resulting in significant programmatic improvements.
Prior to joining Cisco, Craig worked at Allstate Co. as a Strategy and Innovation Consultant, where he founded their Innovation lab and was responsible for creating a culture of sustainable innovation through strategy, tools, processes, leadership, and consulting.
Craig frequently speaks at innovation conferences such as the Intrapreneurship Conference, Back End of Innovation Conference (BEI), and International Society of Service Innovation Professionals Conference (ISSIP). Universities often ask for his help with their entrepreneurship and innovation programs.
He lives in the Greater Chicago Area with his wife and three sons. When he’s not working, he enjoys meditating, landscaping, and watching humming birds flit about his wildlife-friendly yard.
Articles
The Role of Assessment in an Effective Innovation Maturity Model
In the previous blogs of this series, we discussed the importance of building an Innovation Maturity Model (IMM) that properly addresses each organization’s innovation strategy. In this final blog, we will examine the key role that regular assessments play in the maturation process of organizations…
Building the Right Innovation Maturity Model for your Business
In the first blog of this series, we discussed the important role that an innovation maturity model (IMM) plays in creating a strategic, repeatable framework for innovation excellence. In this second installment, we will look at the process of creating an effective IMM, drawing on Cisco’s own IMM as…
The Time is Now for a More Strategic Approach to Innovation
The ability to consistently and effectively innovate is something many organizations find challenging. While the importance of innovation is widely acknowledged for long-term business health, surprisingly few can legitimately claim to be achieving powerful, repeatable results on a regular basis.
Thi…
