Building a Culture of Innovation Through Design

Presented by Stephanie Wade, Founder and CEO of Ascendant, this session reframes innovation culture not just as an aspirational value, but as an organizational design challenge, something that can be intentionally architected, measured, and evolved. Drawing on her work leading civic innovation at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the U.S. Government Innovation Lab@OPM, and now through her global consulting firm Ascendant, she brings a practitioner’s lens to the question every organization designer quietly wrestles with: How do you build an organization where innovation isn’t an exception to how work gets done, it’s the foundation?

Through Ascendant’s Innovation Maturity Model, real-world cases, and facilitated conversation, this session invites participants to audit their own organizations, honestly, and leave with a sharper sense of where the design levers actually are.