Most keynotes ask an audience to sit still for an hour. Dr. Darin Eich designs keynotes where the audience spends most of that hour taking part: building, sketching, talking with people they just met, reflecting, and working on challenges that matter to them. The session fits the keynote slot on your agenda and runs with the energy and participation of a workshop.
The idea behind every one of these keynotes is a shift from presentation to participation. Your audience becomes a room of participants, the content becomes an experience, and inspiration turns into action people actually take after the event. For conference organizers and event planners, that means a keynote attendees talk about for the rest of the conference, and one that does what many organizers hope a keynote will do: connect people and send them home with something to act on.
What Our Clients Say
“Darin did a series of interactive activities that were a welcome change from our usual “death by PowerPoints” we typically endure. … Attendees said they “used places in their brain they didn’t know existed” and felt invigorated after it was over.”
“In planning CultureCon, I was looking for a keynote presentation that was different than past conferences I’ve attended. I wanted an engaging keynote that would give attendees actionable items to take back to their organization and create change. … His keynote was hands on and super engaging. Attendees raved about it throughout the conference.”
“In the past, many attendees were on their phones checking emails from colleagues or text messages within the first hour or two of this annually-held meeting, but not this year as the energy and engagement levels started high and remained that way throughout the entire day. Collaboration, innovation, and risk taking replaced the usual 4-6 mundane PowerPoint presentations that typically dominated the meeting.”
“The results exceeded our expectations. … At the end of the event, I had a large number of attendees say this was “the best leadership offsite meeting they’ve ever had”. Note that many of the attendees come from companies like Apple, Cisco, IBM, Google, etc. so this is a hard crowd to please.”
“Our team really appreciated Darin’s interactive, relaxed, insightful and engaging approach. He received a 95% overall rating and feedback received included that he made innovation seem “simple” and that their perspective on innovation and how they can play their parts was made clearer.”
“Dr. Eich is a wonderfully engaging and in-the-moment speaker who captures the imagination of the audience in a personally rewarding manner!!”
“He incorporated our topics into his materials to make for a personalized and real experience for the dozens of engineers and managers attending this event.”
“Dr. Eich had us engaged from the first minute.”
“The room was ELECTRIC … Participants co-created solutions, prototyped ideas, and walked away with actionable options for innovating culture in our workplaces. Thanks to Darin’s masterful leadership and facilitation, we also created real connections in a short time.”
“People who did not think they had the capacity to innovate left with ideas, solutions and renewed energy for the project.”
“I remember meeting Darin for the first time at a speech he was keynoting at the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery (WID) for the Year of Innovation Kickoff for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). Initially I was impressed by Darin’s enthusiasm and his ability to energize and keep a large audience captivated.”
“Darin Eich has presented numerous times in my presence and it is always fun, engaging and informative no matter what the size of the group or purpose of the conference or event.”
Contact Us to Plan Your Keynote
Meet Your Interactive Keynote Speaker
Dr. Darin Eich is a keynote speaker, facilitator, and founder of InnovationTraining.org. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, has written books including Innovation Step-by-Step and Root Down & Branch Out, and has designed programs for more than 100 organizations, including Oxford, Dartmouth, NASA, USPTO, Pfizer, VMware, Adobe, and Levi Strauss.
What makes his keynotes unusual is the facilitation skill underneath them. Darin has spent more than two decades designing and leading workshops, and he brings that craft to the main stage. He has been reinventing the conference keynote for well over a decade, from university and association conferences to corporate leadership summits, and wrote about the change in the shift from presenter to facilitator. His keynotes on innovation, mindset, and culture have opened events from Silicon Valley to London and across his home region of Wisconsin and the Midwest.
What Makes a Keynote Interactive
Every keynote is designed for its audience, so no two run the same way. A useful rule of thumb: participants experience something new and different about every 10 minutes, moving between stories, pair conversations, small group activities, and individual reflection. These are some of the ways Darin turns a room of listeners into a room of participants.
Build to Think
People get their hands on materials such as LEGO® bricks, sketch cards, and everyday objects that become metaphors for the ideas in the talk. Making something turns an abstract idea like culture or calculated risk into something people can see, hold, and explain to each other. Engineers, scientists, and other people who think by making tend to come alive here.
Connect Across the Room
Tables become teams within the first few minutes. People meet colleagues from other departments, locations, or organizations, and those conversations often continue long after the session. For many attendees, those connections are the most valuable part of a conference.
Work on Real Challenges
The ideas in the keynote get applied to challenges participants bring from their own work, so the hour produces something useful to take back to the office.
Hear From the Whole Room
Live polling and quick AI synthesis gather the thinking of hundreds of people in minutes and reflect the patterns back, so everyone sees what the group as a whole believes and wants. Tools like Slido make this work for audiences of any size.
Reflect and Commit
Short reflection moments help people make meaning from what they just experienced. Participants leave with a specific next step they chose themselves, and often a partner who will check in with them on how it went.
Stories That Set Up Action
Darin still tells stories and shares research. He keeps them short and uses each one to launch the next thing the audience does.
Contact Us to Plan Your Keynote
Designed Around Your Event
Before every keynote, Darin talks with organizers about the audience, the theme, the outcomes they want, and even the venue. A recent keynote for 200 senior leaders of an engineering and environmental consulting firm, held at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, drew on the stadium’s story. The session was designed so every leader would leave with a small innovation experiment to try and a colleague to help them follow through.
Keynotes have been delivered for audiences from a few dozen people to several hundred, including engineers and scientists, HR and culture leaders, university faculty and staff, and executive teams. At CultureCon in Madison, an organizational culture conference keynote got hundreds of attendees from startups to Fortune 500 companies building and sharing ideas together.
Interactive Keynote Topics
Each topic is a starting point. Darin adapts the focus, examples, and activities to your organization and event theme. For keynotes centered on the subject matter itself, see innovation and design thinking keynotes.
Culture of Innovation
Creating and Leading a Culture of Innovation
See what a culture of innovation looks like in everyday behavior, then choose one small experiment to lead with your own team.
The 3 Cs of an Innovation Culture
Practice how to create, collaborate, and communicate so innovation becomes part of how your organization works.
Moving Past “We’ve Always Done It This Way”
Spot the habits that keep teams stuck and try practical ways to stay curious and open to new ideas.
Innovation Mindset
The Innovative Mindset
Build the curiosity, creativity, and calculated risk-taking behind innovative work, and apply them to a challenge of your own. Organizations that want to go further can continue with an innovation mindset program.
Growth Mindset for Teams
Explore how people respond to challenges and setbacks, and practice the habits of a growth mindset together.
The Design Thinking Mindset
Experience how design thinkers approach problems and try those mindsets on something that matters to you.
Design Thinking and Creativity
Design Thinking in Action
Move from challenge to ideas to action in one session, using hands-on design thinking methods any team can use the next day.
Creative Collaboration and Ideation
Generate more and better ideas as a group with brainstorming and innovation methods that bring out every voice in the room.
Build to Think with LEGO®
Use LEGO® Serious Play® methods to make ideas visible and start the conversations that usually stay unspoken.
Leading People and Change
Leading Innovation
Learn practical ways leaders invite ideas, coach experiments, and lead a culture of innovation through everyday choices.
Storytelling for Leaders
Discover how leaders use stories to share a vision, build trust, and move people to act.
People-First AI Adoption
Explore AI adoption as a leadership and culture challenge and practice ways to bring people along with new tools.
Keynote Formats
Opening Keynote
Set the tone for your event by getting people connected and contributing in the first hour.
Closing Keynote
Help attendees turn a full conference into a few clear commitments they will act on.
Keynote Plus Breakout Workshop
Pair a keynote for the full audience with a deeper, hands-on workshop for a smaller group later the same day.
Pre-Conference Workshop
Give your most engaged attendees a pre-conference workshop that builds momentum before day one.
Leadership Retreats and Offsites
Open or anchor a leadership offsite or retreat with an experience that gets the whole team working together.
Darin can also connect you with other leadership, innovation, and design thinking speakers from his network.
Watch Darin’s Innovation Speaker Origin Story
Interactive Keynotes in Wisconsin, the Midwest, and Beyond
Darin is based in Madison, Wisconsin, and drives to conferences, association meetings, and company events across the region, including Milwaukee, Green Bay, the Fox Cities, Oshkosh, Wausau, Eau Claire, La Crosse, the Wisconsin Dells, Chicago, Rockford, Dubuque, Rochester, and Minneapolis–St. Paul. Regional organizers get a speaker with national and international experience without the cost and logistics of flying someone in. He also travels across the country and internationally for keynotes and workshops.
Tell us about your event: the date, the audience, the theme, and what you want people to walk away with. We will share keynote options, video samples, and references from organizers who have hosted Darin.