William Grace Frost

William is passionate about developing people’s creative potential and leading innovation initiatives for the sake of a sustainable planet. “It’s not enough to be innovative simply for the sake of new ideas and better mousetraps anymore,” he says. “Sure, we always need new ideas to move us forward, but I believe the environment, and all its inhabitants, need creative leaders to take responsibility for guiding innovation efforts that can ensure a sustainable future, more now than ever.”

William brings many years of ideation facilitation experience with Fortune 500 marketing teams and organizations. After writing his first book in 1987, a Master’s thesis debunking the myths of creativity and delving into “An Affective Approach to Nurturing Creative Behavior in Design Students,” William went on to successfully facilitate hundreds of groups ranging from multinational corporations to non-profit organizations, communities and post-Apartheid students in South Africa.

As Senior Partner and Facilitator at Ideas to Go, Inc., William was for many years the firm’s premier process innovation designer. His imaginative work helped support the company’s growth from $800,000 to $8,000,000 in annual sales, from one office to three, and from four facilitators to fourteen. William has designed and led breakthrough sessions with the likes of PepsiCo, Frito-Lay, General Mills, VISA, P&G, Ocean Spray, Nabisco, Quaker Oats, McDonald’s, American Express, Kimberly-Clark, Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Cargill, AT&T, Bath & Body Works, Bank of America, NationsBank, Brach’s, FedEx, Nestle and many more.

Never content with the status quo, he is always exploring new ideation techniques such as: adding a cadre of “Conscious Creatives” to client teams for an in-depth sustainability perspective; his “empty-mind” method of idea generation; somatic insight development; and the integration of indigenous wisdom practices for comprehensive perspective inclusion (i.e., leaving no stone unturned when looking for solutions).

His extensive career has also included being a restaurateur, professional soccer player, labyrinth designer and builder, executive coach, non-profit development director, a multi-year leader at the Creative Problem Solving Institute, and a landscape architect, where he was first awakened to the radical importance of being a good steward for a sustainable Earth.

Rounding out his “eclecticity” (it may not be a word, but William would define it if it was), are degrees in Economics from Brown University, in Landscape Architecture from the University of Minnesota and in Educational Psychology, also from the U of M. A father and stepfather of five amazing young men, William can be found in his spare time beach-combing along the wild and scenic shores of Northern California with his wife, Quiana, appreciating nature through his camera lens, and mentoring men – young and old – towards claiming their fully creative, authentic power.