The old playbooks no longer work. In 2026, success in corporate innovation isn’t measured by how many cool ideas are generated or shiny pilots were launched— it’s about how innovation translates into tangible business outcomes. Budget cuts, executive pressure, and the rise of AI have forced us to get brutally clear about what actually drives results.

Today’s business context is asking us to change what we’re doing and how we’re doing that, in order to deliver impact. We’re kicking off the program with a roundtable discussion to explore the “”what, how and why”” of reinventing the innovation function for the realities of 2026.

Your organization hired an innovation team—but for what, exactly? “”Drive innovation”” isn’t an answer.

Join Susie Braam for an interactive session that applies Jobs to be Done theory to innovation team design. Through discussion and a practical decision matrix for choosing between three core orientations: Architects, Builders, and Enablers, you’ll identify the functional, emotional, and social outcomes your organization is really seeking—and whether your current team orientation is fit for purpose. Bring your real challenges; leave with actionable clarity.

There’s a lot being said about leveraging AI for innovation. But what’s actually working today?

In this session, Vincent wil show how top teams are modularizing AI in practice, when and how synthetic personas can be trusted, and what AI exposes but cannot repair. Each case ends with one practical move you can apply right away.

Your company faces plenty of challenges that hinder your ability to convert good opportunities into businesses that move the needle.

As practitioners for over thirty years each, Paul Campbell and Steffen Bartschat have keenly observed the successes (and failures) of corporations and the fast-moving world of startups. They’ve translated the body of their experiences into a framework to help innovation leaders improve corporate innovation programs, as codified in their upcoming book The Corporate Innovator’s Playbook.

In this session, they will share the key elements of successful innovation programs and the synergies that turn them into growth factories, and invite you to take stock of your current efforts.

Many innovation leadrs have been (forced to) reorganize their function and structures, and in most cases that means innovation is getting de-centralized. When innovation becomes part of BU’s, the focus inevitably shifts to short to mid term impact. What are the pros and cons of setups like this, and how can innovation teams make the most of it? And when most of the work is about delivering tangible results within 1-2 years, how can we not fully loose the mid/long-term “”explore”” focus?

In this conversation with Strategyzer’s Alex Osterwalder, we’ll discuss the implications of decentralizing innovation and how to balance short and long-term focus.

Most org charts still show corporate innovation as a function. In reality, it is becoming a capability that lives inside BU growth conversations. Miss those conversations, and the role slowly dissolves.

Relevance isn’t claimed. It’s granted by the people who need you. If the business doesn’t need you to deliver growth under uncertainty, no one will protect the role long term.

Many teams feel safe because their calendars are full. 2026 will be the year when that assumption is tested.

In this session, Frank will show how innovation relevance is actually judged today — and which moves help innovation leaders stay credible where it counts.

In this session, we will explore the critical funding mechanisms essential for successful venture building, moving beyond general success factors. We will compare strategies like CVC, balance sheet capital, economic development collaboration, and consortium models for securing the capital needed to build new ventures.

You’ll leave with a comprehensive financial playbook for funding venture building programs and corporate venture studios. You will learn how to select the optimal capital structure for your projects, secure leadership buy-in, and ultimately launch and scale new ventures for high impact.

Whilst large organizations are good at operating the current business, most struggle to build what’s next. The obstacle isn’t a lack of capable people or good intentions; it’s that the systems guiding decision-making weren’t built for innovation.

As innovation professionals, we experience this tension every day: despite having promising ideas and proven methods, the real levers of change—capital allocation, incentives, governance, and executive focus—sit higher up the hierarchy.

Executives, for their part, work within structures that reward consistency, efficiency, and short-term performance. These priorities make sense. They are not evidence of weak leadership, but of a system optimized for predictability rather than possibility. The irony is that the very mechanisms that sustain today’s success can quietly suppress tomorrow’s potential.

That’s why the future of corporate innovation won’t hinge on adding more frameworks and tools. It will depend on senior leaders deliberately redesigning the systems of the enterprise, so that exploration and execution can thrive side by side. In this session, we’ll explore what that could look like, and how we can address some of the systemic issues we’re facing as a function.

Most incubators and innovation units fail, and yet these groups keep making the same missteps. Wunker has worked with corporate innovation programs for 20 years, since he led two himself then joined Prof. Clayton Christensen – who coined the term disruptive innovation – to advise countless others. In that time he’s seen many notable successes. In this session, he distills his learnings about what the best programs do right, as well as some key pitfalls to avoid.

What works, what doesn’t (yet), and where do we go from here? Join this fireside chat to hear from Christina how AI is transforming insights and innovation at Unilever’s €13.2 billion Beauty & Wellbeing business.

Based on GlassDollar’s analysis of over 250,000 corporate-startup relationships (as of 09/2025), this session explores how procuring and testing innovative solutions from startups impacts company performance.

You’ll discover which corporations are most active in startup partnerships, how these collaborations are linked to sustained market outperformance, and why, for many leading innovators, externally sourced (VC-leveraged) innovation now surpasses internal R&D.

Leaders are facing unprecedented pressure to navigate rapid change and complexity, yet many struggle to develop the innovative thinking needed to adapt and thrive. As an innovator, you already have the skills to fill this gap—navigating uncertainty, interpreting trends, and driving strategic imagination.
In this session, executive innovation advisor Elvin Turner will equip you with actionable strategies to elevate your role and influence.

Here’s what you’ll learn:
– How to position yourself as a trusted advisor to senior leaders
– Strategies to inspire leaders to embrace fresh ideas
– Ways to ignite systemic innovation across divisions
– Practical tools to build credibility for your team
– Techniques to drive meaningful change and accelerate your career growth

The bottleneck isn’t idea scarcity—it’s idea throughput. This session reframes AI’s role in innovation: not as a creativity replacement, but as infrastructure that accelerates ideation, testing, and routing. Drawing from venture studio practice and the principle that quantity drives quality, we’ll discuss how to build organizational systems that generate more ideas, test them faster, and route them to the right pathway—whether product integration, spin-out, partnership, or strategic cold storage.

You’ll discover that
– Innovation is structured imitation, not romantic genius
– AI shifts your role from generation to curation and judgment
– Multiple pathways beat single funnels

You will learn a practical framework for organizational ideaflow—the throughput of ideas from generation through testing to strategic routing—so that they can use AI to accelerate innovation without outsourcing the judgment that matters most.

We’ve heard a lot during the program so far. To wrap up, we’ll hear from a few senior innovation leaders what impact they are aiming to achieve in 2026, how they are going to get there, as well as their tips for innovation teams for whom 2026 might be a defining year. Tune in for a final dose of insights to inform your plan for impact this year.