Why The Key to Innovation is Failure with Kimberly Wiefling

Today on The WAM Podcast, host Rosemary Coates welcomes Kimberly Wiefling of Wiefling Consulting. Kimberly is known throughout Silicon Valley as the Guru of Innovation. She is a physicist by training, a techno-nerd, and an extraordinary networker and today, we discover how she has come to be one of the most respected business owners by her manufacturing clients worldwide. We can all agree that innovation and creativity are essential to the evolution of any business. But what type of mindset and environment fosters innovation and creativity most effectively?

Meet Our Guest, Kimberly Wiefling

Kimberly Wiefling is the founder of Wiefling Consulting, and co-founder of Silicon Valley Alliances. She helps strengthen individuals, teams and organizations so that they overcome the most common causes of failure, fix things that damage and destroy companies, and survive in a world of disruptive change. She and her team do this through her highly engaging, experiential, interactive “Learning Laboratories”. Kimberly lives in Silicon Valley, and has worked all across the US, Europe and Asia. Her superpower is bringing people together, across borders and boundaries of every kind, to achieve what seems “impossible”, but is merely difficult. Her first book, Scrappy Project Management, was also published in Japanese. She has edited and co-authored an additional 6 books in the “Scrappy Guides” series, and dozens of blogs. Her latest book is a collection of insights from 16 Silicon Valley consultants, “Turning Ideas Into Impact”. Her mentor, Dr. Edgar Schein, wrote the foreword to her new bi-lingual (English & Japanese) book “Inspired Organizational Cultures – Discover Your DNA, Engage Your People, and Design Your Future. Kimberly strongly believes that companies doing business across borders and boundaries of every kind are a powerful force for peace in Our World. She is committed to supporting purpose-driven organizations in attracting high-quality investors and the best people through the competitive advantage of a healthy organizational culture. Her big dream is that, one day, both investments and workers will preferentially flow to these kinds of organizations instead of the soul-sucking variety, and the sick, twisted, dysfunctional organizations of Our World will wither and die for lack of financial resources and the talented people they’ve driven away to more life-affirming workplaces… for a better world.

Meet Your Host, Rosemary Coates

Ms. Coates is the Executive Director of the Reshoring Institute and the President of Blue Silk Consulting, a Global Supply Chain consulting firm. She is a best-selling author of: 42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China and 42 Rules for Superior Field Service and The Reshoring Guidebook.

Ms. Coates lives in Silicon Valley and has worked with over 80 clients worldwide. She is also an Expert Witness for legal cases involving global supply chain matters. She is passionate about Reshoring.

About the Reshoring Institute

The Reshoring Institute’s mission is to support companies starting, restarting, or expanding manufacturing in the United States. As experts in manufacturing, we use our considerable global experience and skills to achieve this goal in the following four ways:

1. Global Manufacturing Consulting Services
2. Manufacturing Industry Thought Leadership
3. Reshoring Research and Publications
4. University Internships in Manufacturing, Engineering, and Business