Why do organizations keep failing at innovation — and what does a living system look like instead?

The people inside organizations aren’t broken. The systems are.

In this keynote, we’ll explore why innovation keeps failing inside organizations that genuinely want it. Drawing on a decade of building innovation labs, communities and networks across some of the world’s largest companies, Paqui maps the seven rooms every organization needs and almost none have — creating space for the questions and problems that actually matter at a planetary scale.

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Is venture building dead — or entering its next evolution?
Across industries, companies invest heavily in innovation, yet too often struggle to turn breakthrough technologies into businesses that truly scale. Bosch is making a bold bet to change this.

With Bosch Business Innovations, venture building moves to the edge of the core — where industrial strength meets entrepreneurial speed. By combining Bosch’s research, IP and assets with external founders, investors and partners, new companies are built outside traditional corporate structures to unlock new markets.

In his opening talk, Axel Deniz, CEO of Bosch Business Innovations, shares why venture building can become the critical bridge between invention and commercial traction — and what it takes for breakthroughs to truly win beyond the lab.

Shifting to sustainable transport involves widespread change across the entire ecosystem of transport, from infrastructure and energy systems to policy frameworks and financing models.

By forging partnerships with other key actors throughout the transport value chain and remaining close to its customers, Scania helps drive the changes that no company can achieve on its own, accelerating progress toward a climate-neutral transport system and circular business models. The Scania Pilot Partner program, established in 2021, evaluates and tests a wide range of technologies and methods, from battery-electric solutions – which remain the company’s strategic focus – to combustion engines powered by range extender and emerging alternatives such as hydrogen fuel cells.

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In this talk, Susana will share the practical story of how she addressed a real corporate innovation challenge: designing and putting in place, in just two months, an innovation portfolio governance model.

The mandate came in Q4 2025 and required bringing structure, rhythm, and decision-making discipline to innovation activity. Drawing on multiple years of hands-on experience in corporate innovation, she will explain how sh approached the challenge, from identifying who needed to be involved, to shaping the governance model, cadence, and follow-up mechanisms. Through real examples, you will learn pragmatic ways to turn innovation activity into accountable portfolio decisions and measurable outcomes.

When innovation strategy changes, the operating model rarely keeps up. At Synthomer, a Board challenge and process review led Divisional teams to absorb activities traditionally owned by Central Innovation; creating confusion, duplication, and strained relationships.

Stepping into this environment, David shares his experience of reshaping an innovation function in real time. Rather than forcing control back to the centre, he explores how to redefine Central Innovation’s role around platforms, capability, and connectivity all while rebuilding trust across the system.

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AI doesn’t fail in organizations because of technology – it fails because of three human gaps: insufficient AI literacy, lack of team diligence, and fragmented integration.

Drawing on the Lufthansa Group’s approach to tackling these blockers, this talk reveals a deeper blind spot in the AI debate: AI interpolates, moving between known data points. Humans extrapolate – thinking beyond what is already known.

As AI standardizes the repeatable, human creativity grows in value. The organizations that thrive will be those that pursue both: systematic AI integration and the deliberate cultivation of divergent thinking.

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In this talk, Simon & Seamus share how The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre has deliberately built an innovation‑ready culture and what it takes to make it real in day‑to‑day NHS practice. They explore practical approaches used at Clatterbridge to empower staff, create psychological safety, and move ideas from bedside to boardroom.

Through real case studies, the session shows how innovation has improved services while boosting staff confidence, motivation, and pride.

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How do you drive disruptive innovation inside a large, complex, global organisation without it turning into theatre?

In this session, Mike will share what he’s learned from a large innovation programme within Experian: how to get started before everything is perfect, how much governance is enough (and how much kills momentum), and how to create real accountability when everyone still has a day job running the core business.

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In this session, we’ll explore why corporate innovation programs succeed or fail not because of process design, but because of human engagement.

Drawing on over a decade of experience leading innovation at HP and Orbia, Avi Zoaretz shares how he built global intrapreneurship programs that achieved over 70% employee engagement across a 22,000-person organization. Beyond frameworks and methodologies, the session focuses on the “secret ingredient” that transforms innovation programs into scalable movements: human connection, motivation, storytelling, and ownership.

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Innovation methods get plenty of airtime in training rooms and very little use afterward. People learn them, then go back to working the way they always have.

Innovation School was built to close that gap. It’s a hands-on program designed for non-innovation managers and beginners who need methods they can actually use, not just follow along with in a workshop. Sarah and Jannik share how the award-winning program evolved across several iterations, with Design Thinking as the backbone, adapted for people with no innovation background, and AI used where it genuinely helps.

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At Johnson Matthey, they have a mandate to find new applications for PGMs, and the time to get a truly new product from invention to market can be 5-7 years. In this talk, Kristn will explore how they are deliberately designing collaborations to accelerate the innovation timescales, reduce risk and create competitive advantage.

She will explore why collaboration has become a competitive necessity and how different partnerships deliver value, and share practical examples of how they are partnering across academia, start-ups and industry, what can go wrong and how to build a balanced approach.

Many innovation initiatives fail to scale because the organization wasn’t built to tolerate the risk that change requires. Amale Ghalbouni, transformation strategist and author of Experimental, combines a short talk with facilitated group work to explore what it really takes to scale innovation from the inside.

You’ll leave with a clearer diagnosis of the specific resistance patterns blocking progress in your organization, practical tools for building the conditions that make an experimental culture harder to shut down, and a concrete next step you can act on before the week is out.

In this session, Tony will go deeper into the design of the Pilot Partner program as shared on the plenary stage in the morning.

He will in that process also reflect on 15 years experience of implementing innovation inside a big corporate, and highlight why it is so difficult, what applied combinations of innovation frameworks he has used to beat the odds, and what he has learned. For example, he’ll propose why polarization and culture are the main barriers to success, and how trust, partnership and customer focus are key success factors.

There are few companies that say they don’t measure innovation but there are few that actually measure it properly and use the analytics the right way.

Join this hands-on workshop to learn how you can step up your innovation measurement game, get a feel for what real innovation accounting metrics look like and what you can do to get to that level.

Most innovation teams are set up to fail. Not because of bad people, but because of unclear purpose, misaligned focus, and the wrong operating model for the context they’re in.

In this hands-on workshop, Susie will give you two practical tools to design – or redesign – your innovation function with intention.

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The expectations around innovation are changing — and many innovation leaders are trying to understand where they can create relevance and value going forward.
One opportunity space: growth initiatives that look manageable during planning often start drifting once execution begins.
Hidden assumptions surface. Friction rises. Momentum fades.
And organizations realize too late they were managing uncertainty like execution.

This is often where innovation capabilities start to matter.

In this highly interactive workshop, participants will work on one real growth initiative from their own organization.

Using a practical diagnostic lens, peer discussion, and live reflection exercises, participants will

• learn how to recognize hidden bets early,
• spot where strategic initiatives may start drifting, andexplore where they can become critical contributors inside growth delivery.

For forty years, Stage-Gate has run corporate innovation — built for a world where evidence was scarce, slow, and expensive. AI agents have broken that assumption.

When research, voice-of-customer, competitive analysis, and business cases can be generated in hours at near-zero cost, the bottleneck shifts from doing the work to making the decision — and long stages and periodic gates become the constraint, not the safeguard. Most teams just bolt AI onto an unchanged process.

This hands-on session makes the case for going AI-native: compressed stages, agent-built business cases, continuous gating, and gatekeepers refocused on strategy. You’ll leave with a 90-day pilot plan.