Hunter Museum of American Art

A client-specific tailored program, Designing Innovation is developed by the Hunter Museum of American Art  to meet the needs of Chattanooga's business community.

Designing Innovation is a program that the Hunter Museum of American Art has created to meet the needs of the business community. This client-specific tailored program allows the Hunter to utilize the approach often used in education programs developed for school groups to instead partner with local for-profit and not-for-profit organizations that seek skill development in a variety of areas critical to innovative business competitiveness today.

This program is developed in collaboration with a professional business coach who assists the Hunter through the initial client meeting up to the implementation of the final program. After meeting with each client, the Hunter Designing Innovation team determines that clients’ needs and goals based upon a client survey. An extended training program is then developed to meet those expressed needs. These areas of focus usually reflect those often discussed in the latest business journals including team building and management, critical thinking, balancing risk, change execution and nurturing creativity.

Based upon these terms, the Hunter team works with the business consultant to develop a multi-part program that involves both in-museum work and out-of-museum fieldwork to ensure that the skills learned in training are applied directly to the workplace and to develop accountability measures for these skills.

At the Museum, projects include business focused lessons as well as “Out of the Vault” activities that utilize the Hunter’s collection and space to reinforce business lessons. These “Out of the Vault” activities even the knowledge base of business participants, taking them out of their comfort zones but also giving them a safe space in which to test and develop new skills. This program is particularly attractive to companies that usually seek critical human resource training and corporate development projects out of town. This program, offered locally and spread out over several months, allows executives to attend courses while still working and offers a very reasonable fee in comparison to the often very expensive out-of-town workshops. Qualitatively, it also offers deeper and more tailored sessions and a type of long term coaching that is often lacking in other business development programs. The Hunter benefits as well, not only from an innovative revenue source but also from an expanded audience as Designing Innovation also provides the participants with a deeper understanding of the museum and its collection which will inspire repeat visitation during leisure time and long-term commitment to the Museum.

For more information on how you and your company or work group can join in this innovative approach to professional development, call Adera Causey at 752-2053 or email acausey@huntermuseum.org.