Balancing The Three Horizons: Stories of GE, EnBW and AirFrance KLM
Despite our love for embracing the new, there’s nothing quite like an enduring innovation framework. McKinsey’s ‘Three Horizons’ is one such useful and time-honored taxonomy: a way of helping various stakeholders to visualize and realize an ambidextrous organization. The core principle is simple: companies can continue to build and execute on…
Why Culture/Market Fit Matters (More Than Anything Else)
When it comes to the future of work, you’d be forgiven for thinking we should all religiously follow the example of a handful of currently-successful organizations - a cookie cutter recipe for corporate culture. Be part of a squad like at Spotify, be nimble like Netflix or design-minded like Apple. Do it as they do, and mirror their successes……
When Fosbury Flopped: Three Lessons for Disruptors
In 1968, Olympic fans and athletes watched in bemusement as a college sophomore jumped over the high bar backward. Until that day, every gold medal winner, indeed every Olympic athlete, who had competed in the high bar had gone over forward. Dick Fosbury literally turned his back on that tradition … won the Olympics … and forever changed the way…
Intrapreneurship: People or Process?
Is innovation more about people or process? It has been one of the fundamental questions in our field- and the answer is probably both, as outlined in this HBR article. "People matter; process matters. Talented people can be hobbled by poor processes; hesitant people can be uplifted by smart processes. In the best of all possible worlds,…
Confronting Innovation Challenges: Behind AllianceBernstein’s Transformation Journey
Despite calls for customer-first organizations, it’s clear that very few companies actually put the customer first — and risk alienating them with bad customer experiences or product/market fit that misses the mark. At Innov8rs in New York, Alpha’s co-founder Thor Ernstsson and Koley Corte, AllianceBernstein’s Senior VP and Global Head of Business…
Social Movements Can Teach Us A Lot About What It Takes To Innovate
When Occupy Wall Street took over Zuccotti Park, in the heart of the financial district in Lower Manhattan, they inspired the nation and the world. Soon, similar protests soon began popping up in nearly 1000 cities in 82 countries. It was a massive outpouring, but within a few months the protesters had disappeared, achieving little if anything at…
Why It’s Important to Help Leaders Learn Fast From Failure
From a young age, we are programmed to avoid failure. Or we’re taught that it’s OK to fail as long as we don’t make the same mistake twice. But as we grow up and enter the working world, failure has different consequences. Failure, the thinking goes, comes at a high price professionally. It’s often expensive for employers and it can be costly to…
Why Do So Many Innovation Programs Fail?
Whenever we talk to executives and ask how their past innovation efforts have succeeded, we usually get quite a muted response. Most have tried at least some innovation initiatives or programs, and many have had positive experiences from some of them, but overall the end result often seems to be a bit of a disappointment. These executives aren’t…
"Innovation" Has Lost Its Meaning. How Can We Get It Back?
The true definition of innovation has been lost amid the chaos of our infatuation with the new. Alain Sylvain explores how we got here and what comes next. The business world is obsessed with “innovation.” We’re appointing Chief Innovation Officers, attending innovation festivals, reading books and articles about it (case in point), taking courses…
Calling BS on Corporate-Startup Engagement Myths
We need to take a step back from the accelerator fairytale to ask ourselves a fundamental question: why? Christian Lindener, Managing Director at Wayra Deutschland, connoisseur on the start-up-venture-capital scene and speaker at Innov8rs Helsinki (5 September 2019), tells us how we identify whether or not engaging with startups is a complete…
Loonshots: How to Embrace a Culture of Crazy Ideas
Why do organizations pull the plug on many of their greatest ideas, before they have the chance to take root or prove their value? Safi Bahcall explains how innovation teams can make meaningful structural adjustments, to nurture what he calls loonshots. It’s the way we reach the discoveries and inventions which will ultimately shape our world:…
A Journey Through Explorium: Shanghai’s Omnichannel Retail Lab
To glimpse the future of retail, look no further than China’s east coast megapolis, Shanghai. And the experience wouldn’t be complete without a sojourn to the Fung Group’s Explorium - once a member’s only shopping club, now a start-up incubator and retail experimentation lab. On 26 June, Explorium will open its doors to corporate innovators from…