How To Choose And Lead The Right Innovation Strategy
Innovation works even in the worst of times. According to a recent McKinsey report, those who take on this challenge during adversity outperform other companies by 10% during the crisis and 30% post-crisis. Realizing those returns requires a sound innovation strategy, and the capabilities required to deliver it. In their Innov8rs Connect…
How To Get Leadership On The Side Of Innovation
In a recent Ask Me Anything session with Rita McGrath, one of the key themes that emerged during the conversation was the need to get leadership support for innovation. Rita suggests you approach your leadership through the lens of your portfolio activities. When discussing innovation with your CEO or CFO, you will have to address two levels of…
Lead From the Future: How to Use Future-back Thinking to Lead and Innovate in Times of Crisis
As the Covid-19 pandemic shakes the global economy and disrupts the way we live, work, and conduct business, leaders are scrambling to manage the immediate fallout. But, visionary leaders like Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela didn’t simply react to the most imminent threats confronting them; they were guided by their vision for a better…
How to Become an Invincible Company
When we say “invincible” we understand that no company is actually invincible. All companies are at risk of failure in one way or another; however, there are things that your company can do to stay ahead. Alexander Osterwalder hosted a Ask Me Anything session during our recent Innov8rs Connect Unconference. He shared that in his experience, there…
What Corporate Innovators Need to Do to Ensure Post-Crisis Growth
Corporate innovation has always been a tough job. It is now even tougher by budget cuts and working from home. At the same time, corporate innovators are asked to do new things from a smaller base: they are supposed to help navigate uncharted territories (the “New Normal”) and to set up the company for post-crisis growth. It is easy to view these…
To Innovate for “Real”, You Must Disrupt The Core
We are facing massive uncertainty, especially at times like these. We, as innovators, can and should lead our organizations forward. To do so, Brant Cooper, CEO at Moves The Needle, believes we need to leverage the five “E’s” of disruption poetry: Empathy, Experiments, Evidence, Execution and Ethics. The trick here is that we need to stop…
The Darker Side of Innovation: Innovation Fatigue, Innovation Stress, and the Innovation Crisis To Come
Innovation isn’t all fun and games, and professor Alf Rehn has dedicated himself to exploring the darker, more difficult sides of it. He has introduced notions such as “innovation fatigue”, written extensively on innovation stress, and discussed today’s and tomorrow’s innovation crises. In the Ask Me Anything we hosted with Alf as part of the…
From Corporate Startup to Scaleup: Incubation at BASF, BP, Wärtsilä and EnBW
Many large organizations have established different types of incubation and acceleration programs. These agile, design-thinking-driven idea chambers help you experiment with radical ideas outside the lens of your core business model. You get a chance to test out new tools, play around with those crazy business models, and experiment with the…
Key Takeaways From Innov8rs Connect Unconference Week 8
"I lost count of questions answered, insights shared and frameworks taught..." We've made it to the end. In 100+ sessions, with 550+ innovators from 50+ countries, we've explored a wide variety of topics relevant at this moment, and addressed the many challenges -old and new- we're facing leading innovation in large organizations. Here's a glimpse…
Key Takeaways From Innov8rs Connect Unconference Week 7
The ride continues. In the 7th week of the Innov8rs Connect Unconference, we've talked about topics ranging from customer excellence, intrapreneurship, scaling up ventures, selecting innovators and forming teams, executive buy-in and transfer of ownership. Here's a glimpse of the many rich conversations we've had. The Intrapreneurship Imperative…
Seeing Around Corners – Ask Me Anything with Rita McGrath
Rita McGrath is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has…
How to Build Disruptive Leaders (Who Deliver Innovation)
Disruption has never been more present and palpable. Even before COVID-19, disruptive trends like the relentless evolution of technology, the rise of emerging markets and climate change were all forcing companies to reimagine how they did business. The ability to learn and adapt faster than anyone else is becoming one of the only sustainable…