Innov8rs LA: Everything Corporate Innovation From Start to Scale
When we say Innov8rs is your must-do yearly innovation upgrade, we mean it. When we claim "This is the one conference you don’t want to miss", we mean it. And when we promise you’ll bring your challenges and leave with solutions, we mean that too. Regardless of where you are on your innovation journey, and no matter what industry you’re in, we've…
The 3 Most Common Mistakes of Catalytic Leaders
When I met Anika she was in a state of paralysis because she had so many things happening at once. She was in negotiation to become a partner in her medical practice. She had previously run her own practice, but was eager to become part of an existing practice at this stage. She was trying to write a book summarizing research she had been…
Consumers Don’t Care About Your New Product…Unless It Puts Them In Control
It’s finally happened - your new product has launched. The R&D behind it is solid. Your marketing is on point. All the time, money, and energy you’ve devoted to this project is about to pay off in spades...right? If you’re like most companies, maybe not. Despite the billions of dollars invested to design and market new products, they have a…
Getting Lean in Italy: An Interview with Tristan Kromer
This is a guest post by Andrea Cocchi, Lean Enterprise & Startup Coach and Innovation Consultant based in Milano, Italy. For Italian companies, Lean mindset is no longer a nice-to-have - it is a must. So why are so few firms getting on board? It’s not that Italian companies are unaware of Lean, or of the need for innovation; the digital…
Talk To Me When You Scale: Since Big is Now Favored Over Small, Is It Time To Ignore Startups?
Apart from some exceptions, the results for corporate-startup collaboration have been generally disappointing. But Joe Haslam believes there is hope - and his optimism comes from experience. Not only is he a professor at IE Business School in Madrid, where he teaches founders and MBA students how to scale their startups, he has co-founded and…
#MonkeyFirst Innovation
At Google’s X division, the company’s “moonshot factory,” the mantra is “#MonkeyFirst.” The idea is that if you want to get a monkey to recite Shakespeare on a pedestal, you’d better start by training the monkey, not building the pedestal, because training the monkey is the hard part. Anyone can build a pedestal. The problem is that most people…
Don’t Go On Your Own: Lessons From LoyaltyOne’s Corporate Innovation Lab
Some corporate innovation labs never seem to get rid of the image that they're just there for PR purposes, or as nicely decorated conference rooms. Yet some are effective, and have an important role in realizing their organization's innovation agenda. The key? They are not set up and managed as standalone entities, without any real ties into the…
Corporate Innovation: The Talent Perspective
Innovation — the internal capacity to generate new ideas, products, or processes that create value — is one of the engines of corporate success. Unfortunately, it is also an engine of corporate angst. Don’t take my word for it. In a recent survey of CEOs, 81 percent said innovation was critical to their firms’ share price. The same survey found…
Lean Enterprise Transformation: Why We Need It And What It Looks Like
The word transformation seems to scare people off. Many people associate the word with traditional, linear, multi-year programs that don’t take into account the speed of change, rarely test before deploying at scale, and expect significant investment of resources before any measurable business outcome is achieved. And I agree; those efforts scare…
An Ugly Business (Or: Why You Need to Reframe Your Ugliest Challenges and Constraints Right Now)
This article by David Hicks was previously posted here and has been republished with permission. Image © Ugly Models On a scale of 1-10 how beautiful/handsome would you say you are? OK, let’s look at things a bit differently: on a scale of 1-10 how ugly do you consider yourself to be? Were you honest with your assessment or did you try and…
