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…
Why We Need To Stop Inventing Things
Corporate innovation often isolates or alienates those who are best-placed to solve real problems.
Lessons Learned In Navigating China’s Innovation Frontier
China is fast closing the innovation gap. In recent years, a handful of Chinese companies garnered a great deal of attention on the global stage. As such, there has been a dramatic change in outside perceptions of the country’s capacity for innovation: what was once a question of whether China can innovate, has now become one of how it is…
ING’s Digital Transformation: 4 Lessons on Culture, Collaboration & Competition
It’s been 25+ years since Bill Gates dismissed retail banks as ‘dinosaurs’, and banks have come a long way from the self-satisfied ‘take it or leave it’ attitude when it comes to customers and their products. We humans don’t want to have to think about managing money: simply put, we have better things to do. And yet the world of banking is turning…
How Co-creation Is Driving Corporate Innovation In Shanghai
Silicon Valley was long considered the world’s crucible for innovation. But Shanghai, the face of China’s economy and financial capital, is set to compete head-to-head with San Francisco and transform itself into a hub for science and technology innovation, with a specific focus on integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, and biomedicine,…
Amdocs Shapers: Bringing Breakthrough Ideas to Life
Two years ago, Amdocs spearheaded Shapers, a disruptive leadership program which sought to turn 18 self-nominated employees with big ideas into millions of dollars in revenue. Amdocs, providing services and software globally to leading media and telecoms companies, wondered how, in a world of exponential change, they could outpace themselves and…
Scaling-Up: The Framework
In theory, innovation should be the domain of large corporates, not of greenfield startups. Established large companies have installed bases- direct access to customers and industry influencers, brands, supply-side and distribution-side networks, in-house experts, IP, production facilities, etc.- and resources that a greenfield startup often only…
The First Ever Innovator Profile Study: Who We Are (And Why We Can’t Do It Alone)
In 2018, in partnership with FourSight and BridgePoint Effect, we embarked on the first global research project to better understand who we are as corporate innovators from a cognitive perspective. Specifically, the goal of the study was to reveal the thinking profile of corporate innovators. Is it different from the general populace? Are there…
6 Takeaways from Innov8rs Paris
With 40+ speakers from Bayer, Oracle, Thales Alenia Space, Fazer, BNP Paribas, Osram, ŠKODA AUTO, GE, ING Group, and many more, sharing their insights on their corporate innovation programs, there's more to learn than one could handle. Christian Mühlroth gave a keynote and moderated an insightful case study panel at the conference, and shares his…
The 3 Buckets of Corporate Innovation in 2019
If one is to segregate enterprises on their approach to innovation, one would most likely end up with three buckets. This first one - and probably the largest - would be made up of companies that talk about the importance of innovation for their companies' growth. Talk! A second group would be made up of companies pretending they are doing…
