Innovator Profiles

Id Summary Bio Answer 1 Answer 2 Answer 3 Answer 4 Answer 5 Leader Actions
59  <p class="p1">Eugene Xiong's leadership as president and CEO has allowed Foxit Solutions to grow immensely and become a worldwide leader within the PDF industry.</p>  First we work with an organizational chart to make sure everyone has clear responsibilities and also has support from other colleagues. It&rsquo;s important for people to understand their role in the company so they can feel empowered to make decisions, including some that might be &nbsp;non-conventional. Secondly, we promote customer and market oriented evaluation of people&rsquo;s performance, so they will treat outside input very seriously instead of looking inward all the time. This view allows for fresh ideas to flow into the company. Last but not least, we make a strong effort to encourage innovative work, including handing out recognition and awards.  <p>As organizations grow, it takes more and more people to change processes in order to implement an idea. with each added personal layer or filter, it becomes a little more difficult to move an idea forward. Also, innovative ideas often don&rsquo;t bring in short term results.</p>  <p>We are introducing the Baldrige Excellence Framework to Foxit, a big perspective of this framework is innovation. We are associating innovation with every aspect of our operation, including strategy, customer relationships, process management, valuation, improvement, and of course, results.</p>  We believe cloud technologies will the biggest driver in our industry for the near term. Not only are people moving data onto the cloud, they will move all applications on the cloud as well. Also, a lot of new use cases will arise because of cloud adoption. In the longer-term future, we also believe AI will drive very big changes to our industry as well, allowing applications and services to help people working with their documents more efficiently, and do more.  Foxit implemented a web-based PDF engine and through continuous innovation we made it very efficient. Right now we have the most efficient PDF engine on the web, and based on this engine, we have built web-based PDF applications that can be deployed and managed within enterprises easily. This also supports our innovative ConnectedPDF technology, which allows documents to be protected, tracked and managed across all use cases.  Eugene Xiong View Edit Delete
58  <p>Wai is Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Serviceaide. A serial entrepreneur, he has been in the high-tech industry for 36 years. Wai held executive leadership roles at BEA where he was the EVP and Global Chief Product Officer and at CA Technologies where he was the SVP and GM of the Unicenter brand, SVP and GM of WW Services, and SVP and GM of interBiz.<br /><br />Wai received his Master&rsquo;s and Bachelor&rsquo;s degrees in computer science focusing on AI and Systems Architecture from Columbia University in NY.</p>  <p>It starts with the fundamental belief that we all have responsibilities to our customers, partners, shareholders and fellow employees. We have to believe that what we do is valuable to our customers and to the market as a whole.&nbsp; This is the foundation of why we have to keep innovating, changing and doing better.<br /><br />I have found that some people that are incredibly innovative in one area (ex: technology, operational processes, business model, etc.) can be very resistant to change in other dimensions.&nbsp; Individual and collective mental inertia and the organizational mandates that reinforce the inertia are what makes change hard.&nbsp; However, if an organization takes things to the extreme on the other end of the spectrum, people often revert to becoming cautious and hesitant in fear of doing the wrong thing because there is no clear set path.&nbsp; Finding the middle ground by creating an environment with a foundation that is multiple faceted enough to stand even when major pieces are being modified is key to innovation. This allows people to support change to get to a better place with the understanding that the pain of change is a prelude to something better.</p>  Standards and processes can be great, but when organizations go overboard it can lead to a checkbox mentality that isn&rsquo;t well suited for innovation. At the same time, if solutions are not thought out fully, and they predictably fail &ndash; this can greatly impact the trust in innovation and change.&nbsp; The key is to focus on the value of results, keeping innovations practical, when implementing new ideas.&nbsp; Of course, research is also important in determining which ideas are worth major efforts and which are not.  I believe that we should never say NO, immediately.&nbsp; Accept ideas as worthy of some mental investment and at least one discussion to tease out how it can create value for your constituents (customers, partners, shareholders and fellow employees). Of course, if it comes from any of the constituents, the likelihood of it being impactful is even better.&nbsp; The cycle of idealization to feedback to implementation back to idealization is an implicit optimization loop.  The AI model, based around insights and encoded knowledge, will be extremely impactful in the coming years.  There are many areas where an organization can innovate: technologically, operational processes and business models, etc. I see compelling innovation put to use constantly - the highly diversified technology threads of Google, the use of SaaS as a business model by ServiceNow, the full iphone consumer all-in-one experience by Apple, or IBM&rsquo;s Watson AI initiative.&nbsp; They are all industry changing from the value they have created.&nbsp; In many cases (like in AI), innovation in pure technology also makes possible innovation using the technology in operational processes and business models. That is where we at Serviceaide are making our own small contribution for Service and Support use cases.  Wai Wong View Edit Delete
64  Anne Schl&ouml;sser is founder and CEO of <a title="http://www.studiomem.com/" href="http://www.studiomem.com/">studiomem</a>, an innovation company and <a href="http://www.memoratio.com/">Memoratio</a>, a data driven venture builder. She has spent her career in solving innovation and design challenges for start-ups, mid-sized businesses and large corporations in Europe, the US and China. As a business designer and entrepreneur she discovers customer or market need, builds innovative offers and defines innovation strategy along the value chain of an organization. A lot of her work has been in transitioning product manufacturers into becoming service providers, and specifying the right digital product or business offer in a given environment. She studied Product Design at Art Center College of Design in California, and worked in consultancies in the US and Europe, before becoming a founder. She is at home close to Munich in the south of Germany, from where she collaborates with clients worldwide.  The ability to change is fundamental to the survival of any organism.&nbsp; Organizations, like organisms, are subject to the same type of darwinistic rules to evolve under. Finding a fit to the environment is key to survival. Successful organisms strive, unsuccessful ones wither. Beyond the ability to change and adapt, organizations need to innovate to anticipate the next critical adaptation. Digital Innovation, oftentimes is a disruption if not a successful evolution of an existing analog system. Digitalization is penetrating all areas of life. As much as the ability to change, successful companies have to find their right fit in the digital environment. For manufacturers of physical products it means to become digital service providers, just as much as service providers can&nbsp; &ldquo;product-ize&rdquo; their offer to remain relevant.  I personally believe &ldquo;unlucky opportunism&rdquo; is a big impediment to innovation, no matter what sector or organization. Things done opportunistically, not following overall culture or strategy will hinder change and adaptation. Managing opportunism across an organization can only be done with a strong evolving and guiding culture. Sometimes, however, opportunistic events, will turn into an adaptation, or even an innovation strategy, that&rsquo;s &ldquo;lucky opportunism.&rdquo; Both, agility and foresight are needed to navigate opportunism.  studiomem is a strategic innovation and design company, with a 12 year history of delivering innovation services from strategy to implementation to start-ups, mid sized businesses and global fortune 500 clients. We constantly ask ourselves: what is the future of our business, dedicate time to gain foresight and innovate our offer. The paradox is, that selling innovation services, does not make you innovative yourself. You&rsquo;ll have to eat your own medicine and dedicate as much time to innovate for your own business, as you expect from your clients. Earlier I mentioned that service providers will have to productize to be successful in a globally digitalized world. That&rsquo;s what we are driving forward now. Two years ago we co-founded the data driven venture builder, Memoratio. A logical consequence of our experience as an innovation company, ultimate proof of expertise in innovation means venturing into entrepreneurialism. Besides venture building, Memoratio and studiomem are productizing our services by offering our clients<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://studiomem.com/data-driven-innovation">Data Driven Innovation formats</a><span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>or our<span class="apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.studiomem.com/visioneering">foresight format &lsquo;Visioneering&rsquo;</a>. In these formats, we are combining design thinking methodology with Big Data and AI - our clients benefit by gaining never-before-seen precision in finding opportunity and in understanding their audience in the future.  It is March 2021, we are in the midst of the third wave of the pandemic in Germany. Countries are getting ready to start-up again. The post-pandemic world feels within reach. Right now, everybody is asking themselves, how will it be different? What will change, what will stay or come back, what will be gone forever? Technologies driving the next two years will be anything, which is enabling rapid advancement and the evolution of digitalisation. During the Covid Crisis the world has became smaller as we collaborate and compete across organizations, societies, continents digitally. The given circumstances delivered the need to adapt to new environments. Within these new environments customers demand and businesses will deliver a new fit. The post-pandemic world however will by no means be less troubled. The climate crisis is here and now, more than ever, radical transparency, boosted by global digitalization will drive forward environmental, social and governance criteria. Change and adaptation will be crucial, not only for the survival of the individual organism but this time for the survival of the species.  Our current transition is driven by the pandemic, digitalization and climate change. Organizations are trying to understand how the post pandemic world will be different, how climate change will impact their business model, and how they can use technology to drive forward these changes to create positive impact. We utilize our <a href="http://www.studiomem.com/visioneering">foresight format Visioneering</a> to support organizations in finding ways to deal with these changes and uncertainties. Visioneering is based on forecasting plausible future scenarios, based on technology, social, environmental and business trends. We help our clients to think forward 20-30 years into the future and imagine their organization&rsquo;s brand, products and services. We then sketch a roadmap backwards, giving them a long term innovation strategy and future purpose to work with. Our clients tell us, that besides the strategic outcome, their organizational cultures are deeply impacted by becoming more future-focussed and more aware of thinking long term.  Anne Schlösser View Edit Delete
12  <p>Wendy Mayer is Vice President of Worldwide Innovation for Pfizer, responsible for driving ideas and fresh thinking across the organization through the identification of transformative and disruptive innovation platforms, and through the development of capabilities and a culture that will support continued innovation.</p>  <p>You have to have that enthusiasm and drive from the kind of grassroots level of the organization, but then they have to be supported and feel as if they have the ability to take action on those ideas from above. And so it's the combination of those two that really enables, I think, productive activity across an organization.</p>  <p>I think a big one that people very often talk about is the fear of failure. The best innovations have really iterated and require actually a lot of failure and learning from that failure in order to deliver successful innovation. And so, if people feel as if there is no tolerance for failure, or that that is a mark on their reputation or on their career path, that will kill innovation right in its tracks.</p> <p>The other thing I think is the funding aspect. If funding is only available for projects that have a demonstrated ROI, then that will also kill the ideas. If you're comparing new ideas to established proven tactics or strategies, the innovation and the new idea is going to lose every time. So depending on what sort of metrics or bar you're holding up as a success measure, that could very often, if you don't have the right one, be a barrier to innovation.</p>  <p>I think [CIO] titles vary across organizations. To me, the point is that there is an element of getting out from under the business and influencing strategy, even organization, at a senior level. And so, there's been a lot written about the importance of having [the] innovation function reporting high into the organization. I think you also need to be strategic around where you innovate. Organizations need to be thinking at a high level strategy standpoint, as to what's the innovation ambition. Do I think you need to be a chief innovation officer? No, not necessarily. Obviously that's not my title, but I think it's more to the point that it needs to be a high level role, and one that can influence and be comfortable amongst senior leaders within an organization.</p>  <p>[Big data] changes the game in a few ways. Internally as an organization, it presents a lot of information you have accessible to you, as well as new channels and new opportunities and ways in which you could use that data. So, it can become fodder for innovative ideas. The second thing is just the evolution of computing power and technology, and accessibility to data. This is the democratization of innovation where beyond the walls of expert organizations, this information is available, and people have the ability to use it to develop new products, to come up with insights and offer that up to some of the more traditional organizations.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Our CEO has been very active in the program that we're working on now, and has been extremely vocal in sharing across many forums across the organization to tell people: this is a priority capability for our organization, and this is going to be required for our future success.&nbsp;</p>  Wendy Mayer View Edit Delete
49  <p>In the UK&rsquo;s world of IT, Martin Summerhayes is known as &ldquo;The Billion Dollar Man,&rdquo; having once innovated a billion dollar business for HP while also working as a field engineer.</p> <p>His expertise in customer experience and service needs derive from innumerable physical visits from his field engineer days, which have enabled him to create enhanced service models with a customer-friendly but up-front extended warranty. This innovation became a huge new revenue stream for Fujitsu, and a model emulated by many companies since its inception. His service ideas stem from customer-centric realizations like this: Why should a customer have to deal with the complexity of choosing between hardware, software or warranty departments in seeking solutions from their provider? Surely the provider should be able to take their problem &ndash; or, better still, already know or anticipate the problem &ndash; and refer them to the right channels to solve it.</p> <p>Summerhayes is now Head of Delivery Strategy and Service Improvement for Fujitsu &ndash; one of the world&rsquo;s top five IT service providers, with products and services available in&nbsp;more than 100 countries. The company&rsquo;s &ldquo;human-centric&rdquo; tech innovation is far-reaching, ranging from farming sensors for better harvests to software for the hearing impaired, and augmented reality systems to reduce truck rolls for field engineers. Its slew of recent awards includes the Citrix Award for Partners, in which Fujitsu managed to get a key agency of the New Zealand government back online within days of the country&rsquo;s 7.8 magnitude earthquake, with a cloud-based desktop-as-a-service solution.</p> <p>Rather than seeing their tech portfolios managed in a series of add-ons and piecemeal updates in response to changing&nbsp;needs and improved software, enterprise customers routinely hail the fact that Fujitsu IT services are continuously up-to-date thereby enhancing personalization for the client&rsquo;s needs.</p> <p>One of Fujitsu&rsquo;s most famous clients in the UK is McDonald&rsquo;s. At a recent Fujitsu Forum event, Doug Baker, head of IT for McDonald's UK, said the partnership had gone beyond the traditional &ldquo;break-fix&rdquo; contracts of the past, and toward a flexible service which enabled a personalized, optimized customer experience for its 1260 restaurants.</p> <p>The partnership, including the new CARE program, is enabling kiosk-driven table service &ndash; and the remarkable recognition that &ldquo;the biggest focus for technology innovation in restaurants is leveraging a customer&rsquo;s own device,&rdquo; &ndash; as well as a very human kind of load-balancing, where drive-thrus take simultaneous orders in two lanes and deliver efficiently in one.</p> <p>Having learned some high traffic retail customers do not like the disruption of even rapid response site visits by predictive IT engineers, Fujitsu responded with &ldquo;invisible service provision.&rdquo; Martin Smithen, head of Fujitsu&rsquo;s TMS Offering Development, notes to ensure the success of the remote, invisible support, the service requires customers are kept fully informed. Despite the benefits of optimized engineering support, the role of human intelligence remained on a par with technology&nbsp;in formulating business strategy, Doug Baker, head of IT for McDonald's UK, says, &ldquo;The most powerful data we have had comes from CARE engineers who go to sites, talk to the stores, and brief us on how the systems are being used.&rdquo;</p> <p>No one knows the value of both human intelligence and technology better than&nbsp;Summerhayes, who remarks, &ldquo;The consumer is driving changes like the opportunity for prediction, the cost of IT, and the spread of the Internet of Things. Thirty years ago, we could monitor container ship&rsquo;s location. Twenty years ago, we could monitor the containers. Ten years ago, we could monitor the pallets in the containers. Now, we are talking about tracking products throughout their entire journey, through lower cost RFID tags on value-based consumer items. Lower levels of granularity present huge opportunities for customers.&rdquo;</p>  <p>Fujitsu is an organization that manufactures everything from telephony systems to PCs, mobile phones, enterprise servers, mainframes - and much more. It operates in a software development space and provides solutions for customers.</p> <p>In Fujitsu, we hope to bring intelligence, big data, analytics, predictability, and predictive tools together&nbsp;to answer big questions: How can we better track trends and anomalies? How can we predict failure before failure occurs? How can we drive preventative programs? How can we use our engineering workforce, our partner workforce, and our repair workforce to ensure our customers do not experience downtime? My team is leveraging software tools and partners, plus the knowledge we have developed to be able to look at that space.</p> <p>A new type of service model called CARE uses intelligent engineering to drive and support the customer&rsquo;s changing requirements. One of our prominent customers, McDonald's, is leveraging our CARE service to allow customers to pre-order and select a time for pick up before the customer gets to the store via an app on their phone; the customer can use&nbsp;a connected kiosk; customers have a choice.</p> <p>Fujitsu ensures uptime and availability to those stores, which often operate 24/7.</p> <p>As a part of the outsourcing space within my team, I look in how Fujitsu provides managed services to customers who have either IT products or It services provided by another partner we can take over.</p> <p>From a game-changing perspective, ten years ago, there was IT outsourcing version 1.0 &ndash; where the company decided to move it to a partner who managed its IT provision on a holistic basis. Outsourcing moved through a tower model called IT managed services or outsourcing version 2.0, in which the IT provision breaks up into various towers. It is like an orchestra of independent companies playing together, or the company orchestrating it themselves.</p> <p>My team is looking at how we provision engineering-type services, provided either remotely or on customer sites. It is <em>how</em> we provision and make available those engineering services to customers that is a key game changer. We hope to provide a service before the customer realizes they have a problem.</p> <p>Fujitsu tries and pilots programs like an intelligent error engineering deployment for one of their customers in the UK. Their goal is to take it from white screen concepts to a working prototype within two weeks.</p> <p>We are looking at augmented reality from our engineering workforce perspective. The ability to use a smartphone, and point at another device&nbsp;for both visual and providing verbal instructions to the engineer in the terms of how best to resolve the problem.</p> <p>Fujitsu hopes to use virtual reality tools to train our engineers like "just in time training" - broadly scaling our engineering workforce in terms of a core set of skills.</p>  <p>Speed is the biggest hurdle to overcome when it comes to IT services, as our customers expect rapid deployment and zero downtime. The complications of adopting speed of change with the challenge of demonstrating return on investment limit innovation. It becomes difficult to clearly articulate the value of innovation without taking the C-suite on a customer experience journey, where they can clearly articulate those savings.</p>  <p>Fujitsu&rsquo;s innovation depends on the speed of adoption versus the speed of change. Most companies, whether banks, retail institutions, or manufacturers, have a legacy environment plus a small element of new code, and its service models vary dependent on those factors.</p> <p>Amazon is a disruptor in retailing and supermarkets. In the UK, Amazon states they are the online supermarket. Consumers can even order fresh produce from Amazon. Many companies are seeing disruption within their industry by new competitors.</p> <p>There is little to consider as first generation, innovative. Small pocket organizations create an innovative idea, it develops, and then it is realized as a blue ocean market opportunity or a disruptive market opportunity. That is how innovation happens, and how innovation gets inculcated in an organization.</p> <p>I see innovation in Fujitsu and in many of its competitors. Fujitsu implements an encouraging culture for innovation. The challenge is in demonstrating the business case and the return on investment.</p>  <p>Within IT services, the Internet of Things, the connectivity of many devices, and the integration of big data through analytics will be the major industry disruptors.</p> <p>Augmented reality and virtual reality will have an impact, although AR will be more prevalent. It is how companies bring those various elements together around industry vertical solutions. How vertical solutions are brought together to offer a solution to the customer is key.</p>  <p>Google&rsquo;s innovations are highly compelling. When traveling, Google gives online recommendations through Google Maps in terms of products and services nearby the user. A consumer can submit photographs and narratives of places they have visited via social media channels, and contribute to shared information.</p>  Martin Summerhayes View Edit Delete
62  Rolf Unterberger, CEO of Cherry Group and founder/CEO of RMU CAPITAL, is an internationally accomplished executive Manager with over 25 years&rsquo; experience in different industries, countries and leadership positions.  <p>Innovation was actually part of our DNA from the very beginning. And change is also an integral part of our company history. We have reinvented ourselves again and again.</p> <p>CHERRY was founded in 1953 in the basement of a restaurant in Highland Park, Illinois, to produce electronic switches. The company quickly gained a reputation for the quality of its microswitches in particular, which became commonly referred to as &ldquo;CHERRY switches.&rdquo;</p> <p>In the early 1960s, CHERRY expanded to Germany, creating a global brand known for key switches and high-quality computer input devices. In 1973, we began manufacturing computer keyboards. Today we are the oldest manufacturer of computer keyboards and a pioneer in the computer hardware industry.</p> <p>In 1984, we filed a patent for the CHERRY MX switch. In 2008, CHERRY was sold off to a German firm called ZF Friedrichshafen, a company that specializes in parts for automobiles. In 2016, CHERRY was acquired by the private investment firm GENUI, and our focus shifted from automotive parts to computer input devices.</p> <p>These are just a few milestones to show that innovation and change have always been an integral part of CHERRY.</p> <p>To make sure this spirit doesn&rsquo;t get lost nowadays, we are working and building innovation hubs internally as well as together with external people. Furthermore, we are running small innovation teams and projects outside the box or the so called comfort zone.</p>  <p>As a German company, we are subject to a whole host of legal regulations and provisions - at both national and European level. This goes so far that we have to comply with different governmental and environmental regulations for products in different European countries and have to prove a large number of certifications.</p> <p>Another problem is the fact that our products can easily be copied. These pirate copies then naturally fall far short of our high standards in terms of quality, environmental compatibility and safety. They damage our good reputation with all the unpleasant consequences.</p>  <p>To think around the corner, to always be one step ahead - that was already the motto of our founder, Walter Cherry. So it is not surprising, that the CHERRY brand stands for top quality, innovation, high-end design, technological expertise. This is what we still live every day.</p> <p>We are constantly working with innovation consultants. One of their tasks is to constantly challenge us in the development of new products and features. The basis for this is a clearly defined product development process that also includes milestones.</p> <p>To always be better than the competition is a tradition, a basic constant and our daily motivation! After all, we have a good name to defend. One way of achieving this is by setting up a review and approval meeting.</p>  <p>We, too, will continue to be strongly influenced by the major trends that have been emerging not just since today. First of all, there is the digital revolution, which is far from over and affects us in many ways.</p> <p>This starts quite trivially with the fact that many aspects of social life are digital and we therefore spend much more time in front of the computer - whether we shop online, deal with official business virtually, chat over the internet, play games, stream. All this requires high-quality input devices that are resilient and also meet expectations in terms of form and ergonomics.</p> <p>The world of work is also becoming increasingly digital, the forms of work more arbitrary if you like. More than ever before, people are working from where they want and when they want. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear to even the last home office refusenik that things actually work wonderfully. So in future, work will be much more hybrid and the home office will become a permanent feature. This, too, will undoubtedly have an impact on our business development.</p>  <p>Being innovative is virtually part of our DNA. This means that we actually see ourselves as early adopters. However, we are also self-critical and are very aware when we need to catch up in certain areas. Only recently we announced the acquisition Theobroma Systems Design and Consulting GmbH, an Austrian-based developer and trusted manufacturer of embedded systems. These support various industrial applications in the field of IoT and Industry 4.0. With this acquisition, CHERRY is specifically expanding its development and production capacities in the security sector.</p> <p>Furthermore, we partnered with Argand Partners to support Cherry&rsquo;s next phase of growth. Our business has gone from strength to strength, and we look forward to continued investment in our people, research &amp; development and manufacturing technology. The positive trends currently accelerating the adoption of PC gaming and the digitalization of healthcare make it an exciting time to be Cherry.</p>  Rolf Unterberger View Edit Delete
52  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Hicham Sabir is the Open Innovation Leader for North America at Philips Lighting. He holds an Engineering Degree from French Engineering School&nbsp;<em>Arts et M&eacute;tiers</em>&nbsp;and a Master of Science in Applied Physics from&nbsp;<em>Chalmers University of Technology</em>&nbsp;in Sweden. Prior to his current position, Sabir worked in Philips Lighting&rsquo;s R&amp;D and venture teams to build up Philips&rsquo; LED Lamps portfolio, professional systems and connectivity solutions. Sabir says the iconic global brand is responding to a profound disruption &ndash; connectivity &ndash; not only with leading connected solutions and optimized illumination but also with transformative new business models.</span></p> <p>In addition to its market-leading suite of lighting products for both B2B and B2C environments, Philips Lighting offers data-enabled solutions in an extraordinary diversity of applications &ndash; from helping building managers optimize their office spaces, to guiding retail shoppers to sale items with game-changing accuracy, to improving safety and livability for smart cities.</p> <p>&ldquo;Lighting is ubiquitous,&rdquo; says Sabir. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s everywhere people are. Imagine connecting even a small percentage of this lighting, you will end up with the largest connected IoT network in the physical space. Our ambition for Philips Lighting is to be the lighting company for the Internet of Things, turning light sources into data points to connect more devices, places and people through light.&rdquo;</p> <p>Sabir says the company is achieving transformation through a collaborative approach to innovation that includes partnerships with expert vendors in new technologies and use case applications to achieve their maximum potential through lighting infrastructure.</p> <p>He told BPI that the applications and value emerging from its data-enabled services are such that it is no longer optimal for traditional procurement or lighting executive teams to explore partnerships on their own &ndash; because other departments&rsquo; stakeholders, from IT and finance to sustainability and marketing, stand to benefit directly from the data-enabled solutions.&nbsp;</p> <p>&ldquo;From our <a href="http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/systems/connected-lighting/citytouch">Philips CityTouch</a> connected street lighting solution to the category leader for connected home lighting, <a href="http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/">Philips Hue</a>,&ndash; connectivity is driving innovation use cases throughout the entire Philips Lighting portfolio,&rdquo; he says.</p>  <p>There are two significant trends driving the growth of the lighting industry and new innovations in lighting technology.</p> <p>The first is increasing demand for more energy-efficient light. According to the US Energy Information Association, <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_use">lighting accounts for 10% of total electricity consumption in the US</a>. Switching to LED enables light-related energy savings up to 50% - and that number jumps to 80% when paired with smart controls. There is a tremendous retrofit opportunity as a significant portion of light points in the US still need to be converted to LED.</p> <p>The second is the increasing potential of lighting systems and services that harness the power of digital light. Lighting infrastructure already exists everywhere that people live, work, travel, shop, dine and interact. From cities and stores to offices and homes, lighting systems are being transformed into information pathways with the capacity to collect and share data, and offer new insights that enable, and really drive, the Internet of Things. These lighting systems become a conduit to exciting new services, enabled by data, that make people&rsquo;s lives more safe, inspired, and comfortable, make businesses more productive and profitable, make cities more efficient and livable, and make the world more sustainable and prosperous.</p> <p>Connectivity will continue to proliferate as technology evolves and volumes drive costs down. The smart city is a great example of growth potential for connectivity. Globally, just 2 percent of installed street lighting systems are connected today, but this number is set to reach 35 percent by 2025, according to a recent market analysis from Philips Lighting. This represents a huge opportunity to help enable smart cities in order to improve public safety and services.</p> <p>In retail, our visible light communication technology enables customers to have precise positioning of devices to help them navigate the retails stores and find sales, while at the same time providing the store with detailed analytics on what the shoppers are doing. In commercial buildings, connected lighting systems can collect, share and analyze data that uncover insights into new capabilities such as space optimization and employee experience. With technology that exists today, we can equip every light with a sensor that can collect all kinds of data points about the office environment and its uses. With these insights, there is so much more value that a building can afford its tenants, or companies offer to its employees, beyond illumination.</p> <p>The Open Innovation team is responsible for the identification of disrupting trends and the selection of the startups and partners that will help us respond to those disruptions. My approach with the open innovation team is to be vocal about what we are trying to do and find the right partners within the greater innovation ecosystem who specialize in areas of technology that are complementary. Our overall innovation strategy is to grow the company in data-enabled services and build partnerships with organizations who we may not otherwise have dealt with &ndash; those with higher risk profiles, or larger companies within verticals we would not normally engage.</p>  <p>The benefits of our connected systems go far beyond the lighting itself. When we talk to a city, we talk to the lighting and infrastructure and utility guys. They know all about lighting and energy savings, but when you start talking about acoustic sensing, or lighting that can help improve traffic safety, you need a discussion with additional departments. Those applications will trigger further innovation for both parties. We are starting to see cities hiring Chief Innovation Officers and CTOs, precisely to bridge the gap between technology , city operations and public services.</p>  <p>We have a long history of innovation, and we are well positioned on awareness on the need for innovation. Our 125-year legacy of innovation is core to our business and to meeting our customers&rsquo; needs.</p> <p>We are pioneering breakthrough innovations in products, system architectures and services &ndash; making bold investments in sensors, cloud-based controls platforms, connected lighting, indoor positioning technology and consumer-based personal wirelessly controlled home lighting systems.</p> <p>We invest approximately 5% of sales revenue in R&amp;D to ensure we remain at the forefront of lighting technological developments.</p> <p>Our culture was formerly structured around large internal R&amp;D teams. Over the past five or six years, we became more structured toward partnerships for external innovation. We recognize that there are partners that have complementary areas of expertise and experience. By sharing, learning and working with one another, we can explore new ideas and open new opportunities.</p> <p>There is no comparison with the current speed of innovation compared to ten years ago. There is a sense of urgency where a typical innovation project today will take three to six months, while that might have lasted two years prior to the LED revolution.</p> <p>Internally, we have a number of innovation challenges within and between our R&amp;D teams. For example, every few months, there will be a challenge for sourcing ideas from engineers on how new approaches can be applied elsewhere in the portfolio. We try to bridge this gap by involving additional stakeholders in the organization. One of the things that has been most instrumental is connecting with marketing. Meetings with our marketing teams on what they are seeing outside help us to make more informed decisions about how to improve our products or create new solutions.&nbsp;</p>  <p>We want to become a data-enabled services company. Technologies like AI and IoT are all critical to delivering services based on data insights, so they are vital for our continued success and innovation.</p> <p>We need to have connected systems and sensors to extract information from the physical space. We also need to make sense of unstructured data, which is where artificial intelligence comes in. And we need to be able to commercialize and offer services, including exciting new business models.</p> <p>In the professional space, in some of the smart cities and smart building projects we do, the customers are paying for lighting services, not for the light system itself. This is what we call light-as-a-service. Our revenue depends on the performance of the system, so it is vital to ensure the system is operating as efficiently and effectively as possible.</p> <p>With IoT, you can optimize maintenance contracts. If I send people to repair three street lights, they will have the right diagnosis and the right parts. If I see there are ten nearby lights that will fail in a month or two, I can make the decision to replace them all now to reduce my overall maintenance costs. The ideal scenario will send someone to fix the problem before the customer notices there is something wrong.</p>  <p>I am a big fan of innovative products like our Philips Hue connected home lighting system. When paired with smart home platforms, particularly voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant, Philips Hue is transforming the way consumers experience and interact with light at home. Finally, I am intrigued by the autonomous driving revolution and the scaling-up of electric vehicles.</p>  Hicham Sabir View Edit Delete
67  <p>Antony (Tony) White is Executive Chairman, enChoice. He has extensive experience in launching, developing, and managing technology-based start-up companies. He was instrumental in founding both of the predecessor companies to enChoice, namely ICI Solutions, Inc. and en technologies corporation. Tony is a pioneer in the ECM industry, having been active in the segment since 1989. His prior career included 15 years with IBM, where he advanced to a senior position before leaving to launch a start-up.</p> <p>Hidden in plain sight as unstructured content, a treasure trove of information lies in corporate repositories just waiting to be unleashed. If AI can discover, search and interrogate this content, then it will be able to deliver key business insights &mdash; and, ultimately, a powerful competitive advantage.</p> <p>But companies still need convincing.</p> <p>&ldquo;Every organization has a natural resistance to change, especially when it comes to investing in something that&rsquo;s not yet proven,&rdquo; says Tony White, executive chairman at enChoice. &ldquo;But today, you need to be technically innovative to be competitive.&rdquo;</p>  <p>It&rsquo;s a great question, because it really goes to perhaps the most important aspect. I just have one word to address that question: belief. You have to find something that you buy into, believe in, and then make. So what does that belief comprise? It&rsquo;s a belief that must be acceptable for the business, in terms of market innovation and acceptance, and something that your people can really buy into.</p> <p>In our case &mdash; we&rsquo;re a 30-year-old organization &mdash; our strong belief was that there was just too much paper in the world. The key to the future was to digitize paper and employ it in business processes. While we weren&rsquo;t the first to believe in that, we were one of the very early companies that commercialized this area in the mid-market. It was a critical component of how we started.</p> <p>Although it took an awfully long time, this belief turned out to be very accurate in that it developed into unstructured content. All the various kinds of content in an email, e-business, social media videos comprise unstructured content, which is 80% to 90% of all the key information in any organization. In those days we just called it imaging, which was converting paper documents to electronic content.</p> <p>With AI emerging, unstructured content emerged as a key resource for AI. We sort of got into a sweet spot.&nbsp;So that's how I believe we validated&nbsp; our belief and culture.</p>  <p>We have to convince our customers to believe that unstructured content is definitely a component for AI and business processes, which changes the way organizations do business. It&rsquo;s easy to establish the principle, but the the how has to be convincing.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s impossible for any organization to have the skill sets across all the components needed to make any company technologically self-sufficient. This is a real challenge for our customers but also where enChoice can provide the solution..</p> <p>One of the things that every organization faces is a natural resistance to change. No one likes it when something new comes out. Yet we&rsquo;re asking people to completely uproot traditional ways of doing business and invest in something new that, in their eyes, is not proven.</p> <p>To me the biggest impediment is, how do you convince people to spend a lot of money &mdash; to do it properly doesn't come cheaply &mdash; and make that change. It&rsquo;s a challenge because there have been past failures of key technology projects and often someone gets fired. Everybody wants to hang on to their job.</p> <p>But you still need to innovate if you want the benefit.</p>  <p>Innovation has always been part of our life, part of our culture, because we&rsquo;re in a rapidly developing industry. Our people want to be on the forefront and constantly bring us new ideas, especially the new generation who are extremely digitally aware.</p> <p>In our case, we got into the right area but it was very painful for a long time. Very slow adoption. Then recognition emerged that digital automation is a necessity for the future of every organization to be competitive.</p> <p>Imagine a cake where AI is the frosting on top. Your cake is your massive, unstructured content. It is not easy to manage and leverage it. So there&rsquo;s a huge pool of unrealized resource &mdash; unstructured content &mdash; that we've been fortunate enough to get into. We still have the problem of convincing organizationsthat the risk can be managed and the payoff is huge.</p> <p>Now we can honestly say it's key. Our expertise in unstructured content fuels the AI journey, and we hang our hat on it.</p>  <p>We deal with large companies that know AI is critical to be competitive but don&rsquo;t know what to do about it. We have the capability to get the unstructured data needed for AI, and big companies partner with us because of&nbsp;this.</p> <p>Anybody can use Chat GPT to write an essay, but how do you apply AI to your business? It&rsquo;s a much more complex question. The reality is there's a lot of work and a lot of preparation and understanding needed.</p> <p>But process innovation, like I said earlier, runs into resistance to change. Companies cancel projects because they can&rsquo;t get users to accept the new technology and new way of working. Successful projects happen when top management buys in and insists on the change. While this may be a little painful, it almost always pays off in the long run with improved competitiveness and efficiency, higher profitability and employee morale.</p> <p>One of the ways companies can ease cultural change is to tie the new technology, new way of doing things, new innovation to something that benefits society or, if you like, the planet.</p> <p>For instance, we&rsquo;re involved in helping threatened species. We provide technical support for a project called SPARK, or Sentinel Protection Against Rhino Killing, aimed at keeping rhinos from extinction. The project leverages the Internet of Things and AI. It&rsquo;s a good, positive thing. Our employees love it, and our customers love seeing us doing something outside of selling.</p>  <p>Strategy is changing the cost benefit equation. How do you show what is worth doing? That's the challenge for all of us. The good news is that the current availability of tools and technologies, from the cloud, containerization and subscription pricing, has changed the equation for so many companies and projects. Everything is more feasible and effective, and so we can do things that we couldn&rsquo;t do before.</p> <p>We know technology has made things more efficient. Just take a look at workflow in insurance. Paper documents used to float around, and it would take two weeks to process a claim. With digitized content, it takes only two days. Now we have pictures showing how many filing cabinets we&rsquo;ve saved just among our current customers. You couldn&rsquo;t fit them in a room.</p> <p>We still scan paper documents and manually enter them in the right place, but now we can start using AI to pull a lot of the information off a document.</p> <p>These are the things that take away the drudgery, drive innovation, and help you become more competitive in a challenging marketplace. It&rsquo;s absolutely worth doing. Now you have to take the leap and do it.</p>  Tony White View Edit Delete
48  <p>Digital marketing entrepreneur and strategy innovator Sean Shoffstall is pioneering a more relevant and measurable approach to messaging in today&rsquo;s multi-channel world of engagement. Shoffstall formerly delivered data-driven marketing strategies for Fortune 500 brands at Teradata. Now, he is a prominent speaker and thought leader who is widely credited for successfully leveraging the &ldquo;Quantifiable Creativity&rdquo; marketing approach.</p> <p>Despite the emergence of numerous new marketing technologies, Shoffstall told BPI he sees the state of innovation in digital marketing as stagnant, with training that lags the landscape, and marketers who spend too much time mastering complex technologies and too little time on messaging and strategy.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sean founded his own company, Crave Metrics, which will serve as the host for a software product with game changing potential. Having decoded both B2B and B2C customer brand engagement within growing channels, data and devices, Shoffstall is writing the code that he believes will automatically cut to the relevant numbers.</p> <p>Sean tells BPI: &ldquo;My ultimate goal is to benefit the marketer and the end consumer. The marketer wanting to create an awareness campaign should be able to log into our platform Crave Metrics, and find the top five awareness campaigns that have run in the last six months. The marketer can then find the right marketing mix that is perfect for a given audience and truly considers how to help the end consumer. If we start messaging customers with the right marketing message mix, then we can send fewer messages to consumers." He adds &ldquo;Our goal is to have an alpha out at the end of June, and we have already identified a few key customers to be working on that pilot with. We will hopefully have an open beta in mid-September.&rdquo;</p> <p>Shoffstall says the past seven years has seen a significant consolidation of platforms. Marketers are spending more time on technology than on messaging. He believes we need to bring the power of the marketing message back, leveraged by the power of platforms.</p>  <p>I started Crave Metrics to focus on customer journey analytics. We are trying to solve misleading data with Crave Metrics by giving people a broader view of their campaign&rsquo;s effectiveness across all their channels, because many marketers do not realize every campaign drives brand awareness and the end value that it creates.</p> <p>Marketers look at a campaign and might see the click-through rate and the open rate, but they are not instantly able to see how it compares against other similar campaigns, or against their company's benchmarks.</p> <p>Our platform will allow customers that review a campaign to not only see what their score is against the Crave Metrics key marketing measures, but also to see how it&nbsp;performs against the company benchmarks, and against&nbsp;similar campaign benchmarks. This answers the marketer&rsquo;s question that many platforms miss today, I&rsquo;ve got a metric but what does it mean?</p>  <p>There is an influx of so much new technology. Companies must constantly go from Paid Search, to Twitter, to Facebook, to Email, to Instagram, and be prepared to adapt and market to any and all other digital marketing technologies that develop popular user platforms. Current digital marketing technologies are complicated and ever changing: this leads to siloed information and messaging, and can lead to paralysis for marketing teams who get stuck with basic batch and blast marketing.</p> <p>In spite of all this, universities and colleges are still primarily teaching traditional marketing strategies. Companies then hire young people simply because they know how to use certain media platforms or marketing tools, which can be problematic on its own. New educational and training systems will be vital to success in coming years to help bridge the talent gap.&nbsp;</p>  <p>The leadership of a given team drives its innovation. One thing I have always done with my teams whenever someone new joins us,&nbsp;is bring up the top three to five trends I am seeing succeed with our customers or elsewhere, and ask them questions about its success, which opens the door for them to bring their own ideas to the conversation.&nbsp;</p> <p>At the same time, I am willing to pilot certain ideas. I am willing to invest 8 percent, 10 percent, 12 percent of my team&rsquo;s time to pilot one of these ideas. We cannot always go after the newest platforms, but we can test new platforms on campaigns. If a campaign fails, at least we learn something. &nbsp;</p> <p>I have also seen mid to large size companies create a sandbox marketing environment that allows a safe atmosphere to test the latest social platform or API integration, just&nbsp;to see if it breaks. If it works in the sandbox, we bring it in. You need a partnership between leadership, the IT group, and the marketing department to try something new.</p>  <p>VR and augmented reality will change marketing. In-game marketing is another platform that is similar, these immersive environments is where we are going to see the most growth and change. Marketers will need to again focus on the message and make sure it fits in these environments without being obtrusive or obnoxious.</p> <p>I believe another key business trend will be, I hope, a focus more on consumer data privacy. We protect financial and healthcare data and have seen the repercussions when it isn&rsquo;t secured. Consumers give marketers their trust by accepting cookies, by signing up for our newsletters, by purchasing and registering their products. They entrust marketers with their data, so marketers have a responsibility to use the data for marketing without releasing potentially sensitive information. I think customers will start to demand more protections like other sensitive data.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Amazon's Alexa. The simplicity of voice activation to access music at any time, to interact with different lists and calendars, to listen to podcasts or news sources, and to use fewer screens, is a game changer for the consumer marketplace.&nbsp;</p>  Sean Shoffstall View Edit Delete
9  <p>Pieter de Villiers is responsible for establishing Clickatell as the world&rsquo;s leading mobile messaging provider, enabling tens of thousands of enterprises and millions of consumers to interact, communicate and benefit greatly via their mobile phone. De Villiers has led the organization through a decade of robust growth and innovation by providing high value, application-to-person (A2P) SMS services to banks and other financial services providers, governments, social communities, and a myriad of mobile developers in several additional vertical markets.</p>  <p>Building an organization or culture that embraces change is no easy task since both are a reflection of its people and most people do not like change -- we are, after all, &lsquo;creatures of habit&rsquo;. However, I&rsquo;ve found if the change or innovation is focused on efforts that improve, enhance, or simplify things you are already doing, it is generally accepted by smart organizations. You can then get those same smart people to innovate in areas outside of what you do today as long as you provide a clear &ldquo;Vision&rdquo; and &ldquo;Why&rdquo; to your people.</p>  <p>Not having a clear &ldquo;Why&rdquo; or &ldquo;Vision&rdquo; for the business that translates into relevance is a large impediment to enterprise innovation today. It is important for a company to know who and what it is and what is brings to the industry (example Kodak: Thinking of themselves as a paper or camera company instead of a company people associate with their most precious memories).</p> <p>Not having the courage to manage stakeholder expectations as you invest for change is another innovation impediment. Executive teams are measured on how well they meet quarterly earnings expectations, so it is understandable that many would prefer to just &ldquo;deliver the numbers&rdquo; than take risks. However, this does not produce an environment conducive to change and innovation. It is better to manage expectations and know that as your technology or company changes, the measurement and expectations need to change too.&nbsp;</p> <p>Organizational agility and management ability to &ldquo;re-tool&rdquo; for change is a must have. Managing people is difficult enough, adding in the complexity of &ldquo;re-tooling&rdquo; the organization with training and hiring creates an additional burden to an already complex role as a manager. A manager without the skills to handle these issues impedes effective change and innovation.</p>  <p>At Clickatell, we are thinking a lot about our &ldquo;Why&rdquo; and our relevance in order to update our thinking and match it with our customer&rsquo;s perspective. We have also allocated funding to new initiatives and products even though they only contribute to the bottom line in the &ldquo;out years.&rdquo; We have embraced new methodologies (agile/scrum) and tools/platforms as we design new solutions and optimize existing offers (Hadoop, Amazon- Cloud, etc.).</p>  <p>Two years is a short time frame, so it will have to be those technologies that have some level of &ldquo;mainstream&rdquo; acceptance already. This would include mobile technologies with their super-size reach, Cloud Computing which improves speed to market and reduces start-up costs and lastly Big Data &amp; Analytics which allows us to better understand our customer behavior and monetize in new ways.</p>  <p>People (typically product folks) that are very close to customers, engage them often and understand how they are using the product embody the innovation mindset. These are the same individuals who measure results frequently and are willing and/or able to iterate and invest in expanding/improving the organizations value proposition. I don&rsquo;t feel there is a specific company to name because for me, there is no singular company that gets this right all the time.</p>  Pieter de Villiers View Edit Delete
60  <p>Mehdi Tabrizi is the CMO and General Manager of Innovation and Customer Experience for Moda Health. He says his role is about creating authentic connections,&nbsp; the best possible customer experience, and meaningful innovation. Above all, it is about making a positive impact in people&rsquo;s lives and the communities Moda serves.</p>  <p>Prior to coming to Moda Health, I worked for one of the world&rsquo;s most renowned customer experience, innovation and brand consulting agencies for over a decade. I was fortunate to partner with a lot of different companies around the world, from global Fortune 500 businesses to startups and across a very broad range of industries. My observation in working with those companies is that a culture of innovation requires a commitment at the highest level. That commitment has to include the right structure, resources and investments. Without that you&rsquo;re not going to succeed in creating a culture of innovation. You might have an innovation project, but then it goes away. Once you have a strong commitment, you must have a strategy that is closely aligned with the company&rsquo;s DNA and vision. If you&rsquo;re a technology laggard, you cannot suddenly become a technology disruptor. However, you might decide to become a fast follower. You really need to have a strategy that fits within the context of your business. You also need to understand where your innovation focus should be, which domain you&rsquo;ll concentrate on. Is it on the operations side, the product side, or the customer experience side?&nbsp; You also need to have the right structure and leadership that can build the necessary competencies in the organization and bring in the right staff and skill sets. &nbsp;Creativity is key to innovation, and therefore you need to have people with a creative background. Your innovation leaders need to have a rich understanding of what innovation is, how you build a strategy and how you put in place the processes to get there. It&rsquo;s important to find people who are both passionate and can drive the innovation process. Finally, you must have the appropriate systems in place to support them.</p>  <p>In the health care industry, governmental policies and regulations can be a real impediment. Innovation often requires a long-term view of the market. But if every four years or so there&rsquo;s a change in regulatory policy, it makes it very difficult to think long term. Also, I think there is often a lack of true innovation culture in health care organizations. Many of the people in health care have only worked in the healthcare industry and therefore they don&rsquo;t have experience in other industries where innovation is better practiced. So, in health care, some of the impediments have to do skills, culture, policy and, in some cases, a lack of true competition, which can spur innovation. The industry is also very fragmented. We have a lot of small operators who don&rsquo;t have the resources to both drive and scale innovation. However, I do think things are going to change. We&rsquo;ll see the larger players push significant innovations, and the smaller players will either have to innovate or partner with organizations that have developed new technologies and platforms. More generally, I believe there is also a lack of expertise about the practice of innovation. For example, organizations need to understand and appreciate that not every innovation is going to succeed. Failure is an important part of the innovation process. To be successful, companies need to have the right mindset.</p>  <p>Innovation needs to be inclusive. You have to empower people if you want to make innovation part of your culture. If companies want to make it part of their DNA, then everyone should take part. You need to celebrate your wins and understand that your failures are learning experiences that can also drive innovation forward. Another key factor is cognitive diversity. You need to celebrate diversity of people, backgrounds, thoughts and ideas. In organizations that are very hierarchical and top down, you often don&rsquo;t have the flow of information and ideas. Innovation happens top to bottom, bottom to top and sideways.</p>  <p>Two of the big factors that are driving change in the health care industry are affordability and the consumer. The impact of Covid-19 has only increased the consumer dynamic. The virus has shown that it can affect any of us, no matter what our income, ethnicity or geographic location might be. And when it comes to safety and security, people want to be in control. To meet the needs of the consumer, health care needs digital transformation. Right now, it is behind most other industries. However, digital transformation is coming to health care and it will drive major changes at every level, whether its operations, experience, treatment, such as virtual care or remote care, or wellness, with things like wearables and remote devices. Another big trend is the shift to home care. Home and local care is going to become more prominent. The idea that every time you&rsquo;re sick you go to a major hospital is changing. Something else we&rsquo;ve seen coming for some time is the shift from fee-based to value-based reimbursement. That is an important trend that is changing our industry. Ultimately, in terms of technology, I think the confluence of data and digital will be a huge driver of change.</p>  There is a lot of innovation going on in health care. Innovation can be compelling at a lot of different levels. There&rsquo;s the offering&mdash;the product and service side. There&rsquo;s operational innovation in terms of the business model, the network, and the infrastructure. One area that a lot of companies are focused on is engagement, which is the service side, the channel and the overall experience.&nbsp; On the product offering and experience side, an example of an exciting innovation is ultrasound-to-go, in which a pregnant woman is given an ultrasound she can take home and hook it up to her phone, so the doctor can do an ultrasound without the woman having to leave her home. From an operations perspective we&rsquo;re seeing diligent robotics that can take over many of the tasks now performed by nurses. There are new patient monitoring systems that take advantage of artificial intelligence and vision technology, so that patients can be effectively monitored without nurses having to enter the room. In terms of wellness, you&rsquo;re seeing new solutions that help people with aerobic fitness and conditioning. There is increasing amount of innovation starting to take place in health care across the spectrum. It is a great time to be in healthcare. And the most rewarding part is that you have an opportunity to make a real difference.  Mehdi Tabrizi View Edit Delete
61  <p>Dhrupad Trivedi, president and chief executive officer of A10 Networks, brings global leadership experience across multiple businesses and is passionate about driving leading technology businesses to win by creating value for customers.</p>  <p>I would say one of the keys to building an innovation culture is having people within your organization and on your teams that continuously challenge the status quo and have the ability to think about the biggest problems and challenges customers and markets are trying to solve and how your company can evolve to address them. Typically, that is going to require you to look at things from multiple points of view. You have to think about it from a technology point of view; you have to think about it from a user point of view; and you have to think about it from a structural and macro trend point of view. So, when I think about this, I think about organizations and cultures that are continuously connecting what they do with how they can help their customers and markets achieve value. This may include breakthrough technology, doing something no one else can do, but it is always about connecting what you do with your customers and markets. It may be your customers don&rsquo;t really know the solutions they need, but still you need a culture that is always focused on solving the customer&rsquo;s problem.</p>  <p>One of the biggest impediments is being anchored to what has worked in the past. Too many technology companies begin by doing something great, but they fail to understand what the next great thing should be. Where can I continued to innovate? The second factor, which is related to that, is inside-out thinking rather than outside-in. Companies can spend too much time thinking about what they do without bridging that to what their customers really need. Companies may have important technology and expertise that their customers don&rsquo;t have, but they still need to make that relatable to the customer and ultimately deliver solutions that improve the customer experience and deliver better business outcomes. Now there are some innovations that you may build that never translate into customer success, and that&rsquo;s okay. However, it&rsquo;s critical that you keep thinking about where your customers and markets are going and how you can help them get there.</p>  <p>One of the things that drives innovation is creating a problem-solving culture. You need to create a culture of examining the biggest problems your market faces and figuring out how you can help solve them. The problem might not be the product itself. It might be that you need to make the product easier to use and consume. Maybe it&rsquo;s a technology problem. Maybe it&rsquo;s a usability problem, or maybe it&rsquo;s a customer interface problem. But being clear on the problem you&rsquo;re trying to solve is essential. It takes an analytical mindset in which you are always being driven by the problem you&rsquo;re trying to solve. You are trying to solve a problem in a new and different way, and there is always the chance that that won&rsquo;t be the right way. There is always an executional risk. But an analytical mindset will help you understand that risk, along with the invention side of the equation. It guides you in a more structured way and helps you understand why you are trying to do something and what success will look like.</p>  <p>There are many. One of the really big trends in our industry has to do with the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. More sensors and objects are being connected and are collecting and generating more data. And all of that runs through networks and into applications. All of it needs to be efficiently and flexibly managed and that represents a major opportunity and challenge for our industry. The second thing that affects our business is that, as all of this gets connected, it creates a naturally attractive target for cyber criminals and attacks. A10 Networks brings a deep understanding of networks, but also an understanding of the nature and structure of those attacks with the technical expertise to detect them and remediate them. I don&rsquo;t expect cybersecurity to become less of a problem over the coming years, especially as connectivity becomes more and more important. A third big trend is the continued adoption of the cloud for storage and compute. This is a huge trend for the industry and also for us. How do we support our customers as they continue to move into the hybrid environment of public and private clouds and on-premises systems? All of these trends are also creating a major skills gap, so it&rsquo;s incumbent on us to continually create greater customer ease of use.</p>  <p>Achieving alignment across the organization and all of your teams&mdash;commercial teams, engineering teams, product teams, marketing teams&mdash;on why you are doing things is really a strategic imperative. And then you need to connect all of that to the customer. As I&rsquo;ve said before, not everything you try is going to work. But if you can create a much more inclusive conversation on why you are doing something, it really helps you get there. Now I think it&rsquo;s true that if you do everything the customer tells you to do, you will not be very successful because the customer doesn&rsquo;t know what he or she doesn&rsquo;t know. But if you understand their underlying problems, you can be far more effective as an innovator. What we are trying to do at A10 Networks is to create a shorter closed loop between sales, engineering and product management, so that we can function as one team focused on solving problems for our customers, whether that is a new product or a new consumption model, for example. Another strategic requirement for A10 is always focusing part of our development efforts on breakthrough ideas and solutions. They may have a low probability of success, but if we are successful, we will solve major challenges for our customers.</p>  Dhrupad Trivedi View Edit Delete
19  <p class="p1">Jorge is a global Innovation Insurgent and author of the innovation blog&nbsp;<a href="http://www.game-changer.net/"><span class="s1">Game-Changer</span></a>.&nbsp;</p> <p class="p1">Jorge is known as the Puzzle Builder and Pain Reliever by companies such as FedEx Ground, TelVista, The Jumpitz, Tuni&amp;G, IOS Offices and Chivas USA. This is because whether it's planning and executing strategies to improve processes, helping companies "wow" their customers, or creating new capabilities, products and services and launching them in the market; he's done it.</p> <p class="p1">He is the Co-founder and Chief Strategist of Blu Maya. Connect with Jorge on Twitter&nbsp;<a href="http://www.twitter.com/jorgebarba"><span class="s1">@jorgebarba</span></a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgebarba/"><span class="s1">LinkedIn</span></a>.</p>  <p>Leaders that want to build an organization that innovates consistently must provide three things to employees: freedom, support and challenge.&nbsp;Those are the key ingredients needed to accelerate innovation in any environment. In other words, you can put it like this: Have bold goals, get out of the way and reward people for trying. The last point is very important because when people see that getting rewarded for trying, not getting punished, is like a badge of honor; they will start giving a damn.&nbsp;Try it, you'll see.</p>  <p>Innovation is as much about attitude and perspective as it is about process. So, the impediment to innovation for large organizations, today and forever, is human nature. The fear of losing what one already has is probably the most pervasive bias of all, and it reflects itself in how enterprises behave in the marketplace.&nbsp;There are some forward-thinking organizations that deliberately keep biases at bay by doing specific activities that force people to expand their perspectives, experiment and try new things, and collaborate with people outside their domain.&nbsp;The activities themselves are not hard to do, what's hard is accepting that you have to make time for "assumption busting" activities and that they are priceless for the long-term existence of the enterprise.&nbsp;</p>  <p>I'm a proponent of organic over systematic innovation. Embracing organic change is when the mindset is being developed in a slow but deliberate process; rather than being dictated. &nbsp;Systematic innovation takes a more MBA approach, where the assumption is that you can manage and measure innovation. This is the approach that is sold by consultants to large organizations. I don't believe you see a lot of breakthrough comes from systematic innovation. Heck, look at any list of the most innovative companies and most are innovators because they live the ethos of the innovator rather than dictate it.</p> <p>I am also a proponent of speed, so experimenting to quickly eliminate assumptions we are making is key for me. Rapid prototyping can take many forms such as physical products, mock ups, storyboards, role playing, etc.. The point of rapid prototyping is speeding through your list of assumptions, changing and getting to "better" faster.&nbsp;</p>  <p>There are many that in combination will drive massive change across enterprises and all size of business. Specifically, I'm looking at artificial intelligence, big data, augmented reality, virtual reality, natural language processing, and speech recognition.&nbsp;Why these? Because in aggregate we will see them both in the consumer and enterprise domain; specifically in how we get stuff done, how we hire and how we collaborate.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Nike, Porsche, McLaren Automotive, Darpa, Google, Amazon, Apple, Pixar; to name a few. The reason? Simple: they have bold goals, they don't compromise on their values, and they constantly push boundaries to make things radically better.&nbsp;</p>  Jorge Barba View Edit Delete
50  <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Kim Smyth works for AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company, where she leads a Silicon-Valley-based Technology Innovation Lab. Kim&rsquo;s team explores emerging trends, scouts new companies, and delivers innovative proof-of-concepts for stakeholders within AstraZeneca&rsquo;s science and business units.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Kim has more than twenty years of broad cross-industry experience in consulting and operational roles, focused on how to help large companies take advantage of new technology to improve top and bottom lines. She joined AstraZeneca in Australia in 2010, where she led strategy, digital innovation and patient program functions. She moved to Silicon Valley in the office of the CTO to help accelerate technology innovation across the full company life cycle from discovery through clinical trials and commercialization.</span></p> <p>While Kim can&rsquo;t yet speak in detail about the exciting new partnerships and initiatives her new team is spearheading, she says that the pace of technology change &ndash; driven by advances in computing, machine intelligence, data analytics, and connected devices &ndash; is creating many opportunities for life sciences companies and the healthcare delivery system.&nbsp;</p> <p>Smyth tells BPI:</p> <ul> <li>&ldquo;I'm very excited about the potential to marry digital tools and approaches to support our therapies. I have seen a lot of great progress, especially in chronic disease, where behavioral aspects such as adhering to lifestyle, diet, and exercise changes are key..."</li> <li>&ldquo;We have a broad mandate, looking for innovation that optimizes current processes, or re-imagines our industry. Because we&rsquo;re looking to the future, we emphasize value potential vs immediate ROI. We follow our Company Values: putting patients first, following the science, and doing the right thing. If we get those things right, the business case and competitiveness will follow.&rdquo;</li> </ul>  <p>My team operates in Silicon Valley with three goals: bring Silicon Valley perspective and knowledge into our company; find and incubate new partners (especially start-ups) to demonstrate the power of new technology and approaches, and build a West Coast presence that leverages technology as well as life science leadership.</p> <p>My team sits in IT, so we serve all therapy areas and functions. Technology is changing the game in many industries &ndash; or eating the world, as Marc Andreessen might say. We look for innovation that can bring medicines to market more quickly, or make therapies more effective. This could be re-imagining how we recruit or operate clinical trials, delivering mobile services that complement our medicines, or applying machine intelligence for clinical or patient support.</p> <p>Our industry is complex, so we work closely with internal teams for the necessary scientific, clinical, and business domain expertise. We are a catalyst, empowering innovation rather than trying to own it in our team. This requires new technology skills in areas such as data analytics or IoT, as well as soft skills in communication, influencing and teamwork. We prioritize based on the importance that differentiating new technology plays in the opportunity, whether the potential value is incremental or transformational, and how closely the company matches our current needs and therapy area focus.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Healthcare and drug development are highly regulated environments, with enormous - often literally life-and-death &ndash; impact on people&rsquo;s lives. This makes innovation all the more important, but it has to be done carefully and respectfully.</p> <p>Regulators have a very difficult job to keep up with impending changes, and sometimes lag the &ldquo;state of the art&rdquo; in areas like social media, or machine learning. How will a regulator assess a machine learning algorithm that doesn&rsquo;t offer a clear rationale for a diagnosis, for example?</p> <p>Another challenge is the complexity and deep specialization required across multiple scientific and technological domains. We need people with deep knowledge in both technology and science or clinical areas &ndash; or who have exceptional ability to work with together.&nbsp;</p> <p>The healthcare environment is a complex and fragmented system with many regional variants, and even though we are a large multinational, our impact on the overall system can be limited. People like to say it is easy to pilot a healthcare innovation, but hard to scale it.</p> Finally, we have a very successful core business. It can be hard to convince highly accomplished people of the need to change - especially when many aspects of digital health are still generating clinical evidence, or have very different operating models.  <p>One of the hardest parts about embedding innovation is moving from a successful proof-of-concept into widespread adoption.&nbsp;</p> <p>Ideally, at a grass-roots level, we work jointly with highly motivated internal stakeholders at a very early stage, so that if we are successful there is a home for the project to land and grow. This is a balancing act &ndash; at times, we need to push the envelope too!</p> <p>However, top down executive visibility and endorsement is critical. When our leaders understand technology trends and potential impact on our business, they provide invaluable recognition and support of projects that might otherwise &ldquo;fly under the radar&rdquo; or be seen as optional. Executive support has also helped to embed innovation objectives for employees more broadly &ndash; moving everyone from innovation &ldquo;if and when I have time&rdquo; to &ldquo;a core part of my job, which I&rsquo;m accountable to deliver.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>  <p>There are huge advances in the way we store, transfer, use, and think about data, software and devices. The real change is driven not by a single technology, but by the combination of several: cloud computing, increasing digitization of healthcare, more personal and linked data, connected devices in the hands of patients, and changes in the ways we interact with computers.</p> <p>We are arriving at a new class of data-empowered healthcare tools. Formerly invisible factors involving behavior, diet, environment, genetics, omics, or early cancer risk can now be measured and assist in risk assessment and diagnosis support. The cost of sensors and medical grade devices is decreasing, improving our ability to monitor continuously. Machine intelligence is exceeding human ability to recognize patterns in medical images and data. This opens possibilities to identify patients at risk, understanding disease progression, and analyzing historical and real time data and making appropriate recommendations. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>At the same time, issues like cybersecurity, privacy and cost sustainability must be addressed if we&rsquo;re to realize these benefits without introducing unacceptable risks.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>  <p>I am most excited by companies that surprise me and challenge the way I think &ndash; bringing fresh approaches to some of our industry&rsquo;s longstanding challenges. I believe there is huge potential in combining the rigor of science with the power of human-centered design. One company is using sensors and data analytics to quantify the degree of control in asthma patients, which could help predict an attack days before it would otherwise have happened. I&rsquo;m also fascinated by &ldquo;doctors on demand&rdquo; services and the degree to which smart logistics, advanced teleconferencing, conversational UI and machine learning-enabled clinical support could improve the experience of healthcare while dramatically lowering costs. And I am excited about companies who are thinking about the whole ecosystem &ndash; for example, one that is looking to create an &ldquo;app store&rdquo; for genomics, challenging potential partners to offer value at a very personal level to their customer base.&nbsp;</p> <p>The variety and impact these companies will have is part of what makes my role such an exciting and rewarding one!</p>  Kim Smyth View Edit Delete
31  <p class="highlight">As the Director of Innovation at Vodafone Global Enterprise, Shannon Lucas focuses on empowering global Fortune 500 businesses to stay agile, competitive and sustainable.</p> <p class="highlight">One of the world&rsquo;s largest telecoms companies, Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries; partners with networks in a further 55; and provides fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of June 2015, Vodafone had 449 million mobile customers.</p> <p class="highlight">Lucas is passionate about developing ecosystems which trigger collaborative innovation between multiple stakeholders, and has presented her game-changing vision at TedX.</p> <p class="highlight">Armed with the unique leadership and team lessons of having served as a mountain rescue volunteer, the Bay Area disruptor developed her career with cutting edge technology experience at companies like Microsoft and T-Mobile.</p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">At Vodafone, she&nbsp;</span><span class="s2">is part of the core team that focuses on a global&nbsp;</span><span class="s1">program to generate innovative solutions by turning enterprise customers into collaborative partners.</span></p> Within the enterprise, Lucas has not only supported dynamic intrapreneurship and a broad culture of change, but has invited employees to take on the role of customers in a program which has generated transformative ideation and engagement models.  <p>The Vodafone Innovation team is fortunate to be positioned at the intersection of the world&rsquo;s leading total telecommunications company, innovation and relationships with the largest global enterprises. Mobility is the heartbeat of today&rsquo;s innovation. While not every innovation is built on mobile, mobility is transforming the way the world operates. This gives us the freedom to embark on an innovation journey with our customers.</p> <p>We run approximately 100 customer innovation workshops each year and take the radical approach of having an open conversation without an agenda and ask big questions starting with, &ldquo;What if?&rdquo; We are confident that no matter what emerges, we can help our enterprise customers on their innovation journeys. This approach shifts the relationship from customer-vendor to collaborative partners. The conversation is focused on business transformation, not technology. Of course, we look at ways that technology is supporting an ever-changing world. But first we collaboratively develop the vision of, &ldquo;Where do you want to be in 3 years?&rdquo; At the end of the workshop, we collectively ideate solutions, refine and prioritize and then execute with a lean, agile approach. The innovation program is our think-and-do tank.</p> <p>Increasingly we see disruptive ideas or solutions emerge from our workshops that cannot be tackled alone. In response to this growing need for co-creation we launched the Enterprise Studio. It&rsquo;s both a physical space in Silicon Valley and a global methodology. We pull from a variety of innovation frameworks like design thinking, lean, agile, etc., but as each project is wildly unique, we have to be willing to adapt our approach. The Studio is not an &ldquo;app-factory.&rdquo; We tackle problems such as user-based, real-time car insurance in the UK, to financing for smallholder farmers in Africa, to holistic analytics platforms to manage supply chains.</p> <p>We have a lot of experience to draw from having run so many workshops in the last few years. At the same time, we recognize this is an iterative process and we are always looking to learn from our own experiences as well as thought leaders from across the global innovation community.</p>  <p>One of the biggest challenges to driving innovation into large enterprises is the size and complexity of these organizations. The size and scale of large corporations can enable truly transformative solutions. They have access to human and financial resources, a global footprint, and infrastructure that allows for scale. However, the complexity of navigating stakeholders, competing project priorities and finding the appropriate subject matter experts can slow down innovation. Within Vodafone Global Enterprise we are fostering a culture that embraces lean and agile concepts to help navigate the accelerating speed of change that businesses are facing today.</p>  <p>Two years ago we started running Innovation Bootcamps in Vodafone offices globally. We replicate and condense a customer innovation workshop and invite Vodafone employees to take on the role of the customer. We bring to life concepts like design thinking, divergence/convergence and personas.&nbsp; We have our employees ideate as if they were a customer. The experiential learning fosters a deeper understanding of the value of innovation as a tool for internal business transformation and as a differentiated engagement model with our customers. We have also started running workshops to generate new solutions or tackle business challenges internally.</p> <p>We don&rsquo;t want people to just take our word about the impact of the Vodafone innovation program. We share data regarding opportunities created, new executive customer relationships established and highlight examples of how the program has demonstrated positive impact with our customers.</p> <p>Optimization is a constant journey. The innovation team is by definition always finding ways to improve. &nbsp;We pause at the end of the year to reflect on what has worked well, where we need to improve, where we see innovation as a practice heading, and then create a plan for how to improve for the following year.</p> <p>This year we have a strong focus on scaling the program. The success of the workshops and co-creation engagements has generated a large number of opportunities that require a strong global bench of Innovation Champions (Vodafone employees) to help execute. We have created tiered certification programs for both the champions and the sales teams. We believe that the training opportunities we are creating for the Champions provide excellent personal and professional development. We know that a simple &ldquo;Thank you&rdquo; can go a long way, so we have also created a rewards and recognition program to highlight the efforts of these employees.</p>  <p>The ubiquity of connectivity cannot be overstated. As you look at the number of people joining the connected world in emerging markets as well as the number of connected things, the question becomes, &ldquo;Why do you want to connect with someone or something?&rdquo; not how.</p> <p>In our world of enterprise innovation, co-creation can be game changing. Organizations that successfully tackle big challenges will simultaneously create tremendous value for their company and for society. It&rsquo;s our view that this takes a new type of business relationship, where new partnership models evolve based on open innovation and co-creation to build disruptive solutions.</p> <p>Co-creation uses two companies&rsquo; current capabilities as a foundation, while building a new solution on top, creating something disruptive that could not have been easily accomplished by one company on their own. Co-creation also allows the team to tap into the collective wisdom of both organizations, de-risks the project and strengthens the relationship between the two companies. We are seeing demand for this type of engagement and are excited about the possibilities that can emerge.</p>  <p>There is no magic formula for innovation. It&rsquo;s a combination of openness (to new approaches, opinions, mindsets, partners), perfectionism (how do we make this better still?), collaboration (together is easier than alone), and hard work (good innovation takes practice!). Our program has embraced iteration as a key philosophy and we are always looking for ways to improve.</p> We have the found biggest determinant to our enterprise innovation program is employee empowerment. By providing a way for top employees to channel their passion, we create a win-win for the organization. The innovation program can have large impact with a very small core team, because we foster a global community of innovators who contribute their skills to the program. Those folks, in turn, get to participate in meaningful and exciting work while developing their professional skills and increasing their visibility within Vodafone. Because their voices are heard and their ideas acted upon, they are more likely to speak up and suggest ways to improve or help our customers. Not only that, but also they become key participants in building those solutions. They are the evangelists for new ways of thinking and doing business, which is what enables the innovation program to accelerate success. It&rsquo;s a virtuous circle of enterprise innovation.  Shannon Lucas View Edit Delete
39  <p>Alex Blanter is a partner and leader of A.T. Kearney's innovation practice. Armed with over 20 years&rsquo; experience in driving high-tech business growth in Silicon Valley and beyond, Blanter is a global thought leader on new technology deployment for enterprise-scale businesses, and on novel solutions for complex problems.</p>  <p>This technological and business model transformation we are living through actually requires companies to innovate differently. The set of innovation practices companies could rely on to stay in the game &ndash; even recently &ndash; are no longer sufficient. In the past, and even the most recent past, the main philosophy was that innovation is a science &ndash; that you can go through a number of predictable steps: create new ideas; decide which ones to invest in; have an efficient development engine that gets those ideas to market; and manage your portfolio in the marketplace.</p> <p>What&rsquo;s happening now is that the level of disruption is such &ndash; and the level of fluidity is such &ndash; that this is no longer enough: you now need to plug into the ecosystem of these new technologies, and monitor your broader role in the marketplace. I explain it to companies this way, especially for larger enterprises: you need to play the long game fast.</p> <p>As we know, the capabilities deployed from new technologies allow you to do amazing things. But out of those 50 amazing things you can do, we assess which of those will actually deliver the most value within your timeframe, and what you need to do within that timeframe to take maximum advantage. Some of these technologies, and corresponding opportunities, are mature enough that you actually need to jump on the bandwagon and start developing a product right away, or start implementing a feature. Some technologies (and business models) are farther out, and therefore you shouldn&rsquo;t do that &ndash; but you do need to engage with the ecosystem and monitor the development of those technologies so you are in the flow, and are not left behind.</p> <p>Whether you look at IoT, or AI, or Big Data, or any one of those fundamental tech shifts &ndash; and even the business model shifts &ndash; we see that they are affecting the majority of the industries in a way those industries are not used to. Companies are either seeing real benefits or are suffering.</p> <p>Take IoT, for example. If you think about being able to source granular data in real time, process it and effect change back in the physical environment, you can think about all kinds of examples of solutions. Look at LA, where drivers lose millions of hours a year just looking for a parking space.</p> <p>If I can instrument my parking garages so that they can show the absence and presence of cars in specific parking spaces, and if I can couple it with positioning sensors in the cars so I can understand where they are going, I can actually create predictive models where I can direct drivers to the places which <em>most likely</em> have open spaces at the time of their arrival. I can even predict when a space will likely <em>become</em> available, or at least predict turnover on average stays. I&rsquo;ll know that 15 cars are leaving every 5 minutes. If I install sensors in various places in this whole use case &ndash; then think of it as a use case with multiple players &ndash; parking garage; traffic controls; individual drivers. I can actually collect and connect that information to optimize the whole use case and deliver value to multiple players at the same time.</p> <p>At a strategic level, we&rsquo;re helping companies figure out how technologies like IoT present a potential for disruption: in some cases, fairly minor, which can be dealt with in the normal course of business, but in other cases, the disruption will be fundamental. And the challenge is not just that they will be fundamental, the challenge is that they will sneak up on you. These start as an interesting curiosity, but before you know it, you are behind the curve.</p> <p>Industries with significant capital assets like oil &amp; gas are not going to be displaced by the next Internet company, but they can be materially affected from a competitiveness point of view. If some competitors start instrumenting their assets and increasing their asset utilizations &ndash; e.g., predictive maintenance based on predicted wear &ndash; that will be a competitive game changer that will demand a response.</p> <p>Let me give you another example. Let&rsquo;s say you have a logistics company with warehouses, which you might think is not a very cutting edge business. You will find that as simple a thing as a garage door can be the focus point for a significant opportunity. Residential garage doors in the U.S. have some level of automation at around 80%, but only about 30% of commercial doors are instrumented in any way. By 'simply' installing automation and the sensors on the garage door, you can significantly reduce energy consumption, because you&rsquo;re otherwise losing all that heat or AC to the environment &ndash; and who thinks about keeping the door closed? There is nobody in charge of closing the door within 10 seconds of a truck coming in. Then you go a step beyond that &ndash; with algorithms that allow me optimize goods and truck flow through those doors, and that creates additional opportunities from the same technological solution.</p> <p>At A.T. Kearney, when it comes to innovation and disruption our differentiators are three-fold.</p> <p>First, we have a very deep understanding and knowledge of the industries in which we operate. So, for a project we did recently for an insurance company, we brought our financial services group and our high-tech group together, both to the pitch and the project.</p> <p>Also, because many of us here are engineers or technologists by training, we come into all of that with a very pragmatic lens. Its very easy to get completely absorbed into the hype: &ldquo;Okay, robots and Big Data are taking over the world; AI is the next best thing since sliced bread; IoT is nirvana.&ldquo; And to present big messages and great forecasts.&nbsp; But where it becomes valuable for our clients is our ability to actually translate that into what it means for their business, now and in the medium and long term, and how they need to respond to it in very pragmatic terms. Very few companies have unlimited money &ndash; therefore, while you can have the best strategy, you still need to be able to make the right choices.</p> <p>A third differentiator is that we are truly a single global partnership; there is no friction in bringing together our capabilities in the Silicon Valley and in Korea or Germany. Many of our competitors are regionally or even locally structured, so they have a more difficult time in bringing a global perspective to bear. What we can help companies in a very collaborative, open way, is to really drive to a better set of choices that will allow them to do what they need to be successful in this ever-changing landscape.</p> <p>Beyond the right choices, companies are faced with the need to incubate things that have a much longer gestation period. If you are an automotive insurance company, for instance, instrumenting all the cars in order to take all their information will change your business model, from a statistical, actuarial model to an individual use model. But you&rsquo;re not going to instrument old cars en masse, only new cars, and you&rsquo;ll need to achieve fleet thresholds &nbsp;&ndash; so its a 5 or 7-year horizon. Look at what&rsquo;s happening at Intel &ndash; the pre-eminent chip company is laying off 12,000 people, and its because they were not fast enough; not agile within the ecosystem when it came to mobile. With the new technologies, that agility will be even more important.</p> <p>I have looked at how innovation has evolved, going way back. In the Middle Ages innovation was mostly considered magic, and the winner became a tribal chief and the loser possibly was burned at the stake. In later centuries it was then driven as art, and it evolved to a more or less a science by the end of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. We are in transition right now, and it is now fundamentally culture driven &ndash; a culture that requires rapid experimentation and constant involvement in the ecosystem.</p> <p>Even the recent past, when you were innovative, your prize was your position of dominance in the market.&nbsp; What you have now as a prize is simply an opportunity to innovate again; that&rsquo;s all you actually get. Just science isn&rsquo;t enough; you actually have to change the DNA of the company to innovate differently.</p> <p>Different industries will move at different speeds. The number of technologies that are now available for a broader set of industries and how those technologies interplay with each other is fundamentally changing the business environment.</p> <p>Before, you had communications and computing at certain speeds, and sensors at a certain cost &ndash; when you put them together, each of those things was useful, but they were not reinforcing each other. Now they are all at the level of cost/performance where you can put them together in a way that creates completely novel outcomes. They are no longer additive; they are multiplicative.</p>  <p><em>In a major presentation to executives in Silicon Valley last year, entitled &ldquo;Rethinking the 'How' of enterprise innovation,&rdquo; Blanter listed some key obstacles to innovation within large organizations, including:</em></p> <ul> <li><em>Stable &ndash; and somewhat frozen &ndash; business models;</em></li> <li><em>A complex regulatory environment, and resulting risk aversion;</em></li> <li><em>Culture of large organizations &ndash; with its premium on current performance and business stability;</em></li> <li><em>Legacy infrastructure &ndash; and significant costs to re--platform.</em></li> </ul> <p><em>He added: &ldquo;Addressing these challenges one-by-one is a losing proposition. A change in DNA is required.&rdquo;</em></p> <p>Blanter told BPI:</p> <p>&ldquo;The incumbency curse is real. And old innovation methods will deliver old innovation results." Organizational inertia is a real challenge; every large enterprise is struggling with the notion of delivering value today, with adapting and adjusting to delivering value tomorrow. And the metrics are built for the very short term.</p> <p>Playing the long game fast. The majority of innovations, when they are just starting out, are not material enough to a big company to matter. Therefore, one of the biggest challenges to innovation is to figure out how to stay the course with these small but very new projects, while at the same time executing on the business plan for revenue. You simply don&rsquo;t know which of the twenty small projects are going to be the next great thing.</p> <p>Look at Amazon &ndash; one reason they are so successful is that, for many years, they told a story to the street that they were not expecting to be profitable in near future. That allowed them to plough money back into the business &ndash; like echo device or cloud services. Most regular companies would never have had the foresight to do that.</p> How many companies are actually able pull off not just the story, but the execution? It comes down to DNA of the company.  <p>Culture isn&rsquo;t an objective; it's a means to something bigger &ndash; growth or profitability or competitive advantage. We don&rsquo;t want to destroy value &ndash; there are countless examples of new CEOs turning companies upside down just for the sake of change, and destroying value.</p> <p>But many large enterprises are clearly not evolving fast enough, with average tenure of companies in the S&amp;P500 dropping by 80%. So we look at the culture through the lens of the journey the company has taken; where the CEO and the executive team wants to take the firm, and what things need to change, and for what purpose.</p> <p>To measure innovation the right way, you are actually introducing a level of discomfort into the organization, because that&rsquo;s a mechanism to change culture. You can&rsquo;t just delegate innovation to people in the corner, you actually need to change the culture &ndash; and that is probably the most difficult thing to do; certainly, more difficult than changing strategy. You want to amplify the right messages and behaviors, and to create barriers for the wrong ones. One interesting metric for innovation is revenue from new products. But what is a new product? &ndash; that&rsquo;s actually not a trivial determination.</p> <p>Removing organizational barriers and silos, and all the normal problems enterprises grow up to have &ndash; difficulty in collaborating across regions; difficulties in taking risk; difficulty in connecting engineering with manufacturing; difficulty in driving revenue from new products; it is all a challenge for changing culture.</p> <p>On metrics: We worked with a semiconductor equipment company, whose main business is equipment, but they also have a significant services and spares businesses. We found that the innovation measure for their equipment business needed to be very different from their innovation measure for their services business.</p> <p>Conversations with our clients start at the business problem level &ndash; some of those are actually big enough to require culture change.&nbsp; Within Kearney itself, we try very hard to practice what we preach in terms of an innovative culture. We have put in place mechanisms for collecting ideas; we have a global innovator competition, where winners get real resources to implement those ideas. We look across our client portfolio, and look at which project was most innovative, and what lessons can be learned from that.</p> <p>But we found that the infectious impetus of personal passion can also drive culture change. We do a lot of work in the digital space, but we started with a number of partners and staff who were simply passionate about innovations in that space, personally, and that had its own momentum.&nbsp;</p>  <p>The transition we are in is being triggered by a collection of new technologies, not a single one. But, okay, take 3-D printing.&nbsp; Some people believe that this will disrupt manufacturing overall in the near term. Yes, it will materially impact how manufacturing is done, and, yes, it will allow people to make things locally, versus globally. But I don&rsquo;t think it will change manufacturing in the near term; the installed base is just too great.</p> <p>That said, I would argue that the impact of 3-D printing will be much greater on design: it will allow design engineers to design parts that could not be made now, and especially in designing simpler, more reliable products with fewer parts. Its value is disruptive in nature in the short term, rather than a huge monetary impact. Cars are not going to be 3-D printed in 3 or 5 years, but the design of cars will start changing because of it.</p> <p>Big data and analytics will bring a level of insight that was never possible before, for a broad range of industries, and in ways those companies can start taking advantage of it in more explicit ways. I think the number and variety if business models companies will be able to deploy will increase significantly. Insurance is a good example &ndash; when companies start to charge on actual use, rather than on statistical models, that&rsquo;s a very different business model, leading to a very different relationship with the customer.</p> <p>If I look at large industrial equipment: at the moment I make it, I sell it; you pay me to use it. What if, now, I can instrument that equipment to better manage it, so that I can guarantee things to you that I could not guarantee before?</p> <p>The Nest Thermostat started as a replacement for individual consumers to regulate their private heating and cooling. Yet it is emerging as a remarkable tool for power utilities &ndash; because it has information from individual homes, the company can go to the power utility and say: &ldquo;in this part of the grid, by making very minor automatic adjustment to the temperature, we can reduce your peak load requirements, so you don&rsquo;t have to bring additional power plants online, or build them.&rdquo;</p> <p>Business models based on a combination of integrated technologies &ndash; that&rsquo;s the game of the future. Its not jumping on the bandwagon of a single technology, partly because none will deploy fast enough, especially in the industrial space. A lot of companies underestimate this potential.</p>  <p>The whole proliferation of sharing business models, enabled by technology, is something no one saw coming at this level.&nbsp; You have a set of underutilized assets &ndash; like homes or cars &ndash; and what is fundamental about this is that a set of technologies and business models increase utilization of physical assets, and that is profound. Because if you can do it with cars and homes, you can do it with anything.</p> <p>The whole notion of AI is exciting, in terms of the convergence of technologies. Look at what Kaiser is doing in Healthcare; they are at at forefront making patient records not only electronic, but minable.</p> <p>With a good enough data structure, you can start to look at prevention, not just&nbsp; treatment. A patient was recently diagnosed in an emergency room by referring to data from the person&rsquo;s FitBit.</p> <p>Novel ways to use technologies; that&rsquo;s what is exciting for me.</p>  Alex Blanter View Edit Delete
28  Steve Hoffman is a virtual midwife to the future of humankind at Founders Space. &ldquo;Captain Hoff&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t just predict a world in which computers replace accountants and IOT chairs automatically adjust to your personal dimensions, but he actively selects and empowers the tech innovators who are shaping these kinds of revolutions.&nbsp; Named a Top 10 incubator in its first year of active mentorship, the Silicon Valley-based and globally focused accelerator is helping to mature hyper-innovative tech companies which could change our lives.   <p>We've been innovating on the incubator/accelerator model.&nbsp; Instead of just adopting the standard 'Y-Combinator' model, which is meeting start-ups once a week for 3 months followed by a &ldquo;Demo Day,&rdquo; we spent 18 months interviewing start-up founders and asking them what they'd like us to do differently.&nbsp; Here's what we learned:&nbsp;</p> <p>a) Three months is a long time to wait for a Demo Day.&nbsp; Most start-ups apply to their accelerator several months in advance, and then if they get accepted, it&rsquo;s another 3 months until they actually get to pitch investors on Demo Day. That means that many start-ups must wait 6 months or so from the time they first apply until they are in front of investors. In half a year, everything changes: competitors, market conditions, funding trends, etc.&nbsp; A start-up can miss their window by waiting.&nbsp; Founders Space solves this problem by having Demo Day at the end of the first month.&nbsp;</p> <p>b) &nbsp;The second issue founders have with the traditional model is being committed to stay in Silicon Valley for 3 months during a program. This is a big issue, especially if the start-up is coming from overseas and has employees, family and customers back home.&nbsp; Founders Space solves this problem by having a more condensed, intensive program.&nbsp; Instead of having mentoring and training sessions one or two days a week for three months, Founders Space has them every single weekday for four weeks, followed by Demo Day.&nbsp; This way startup founders can move quicker and get the same benefits.</p> <p>c) Lastly, the Y-Combinator model ends after three months, leaving start-ups on their own.&nbsp; It turns out start-up founders have more questions after Demo Day than they do before.&nbsp; But most programs end after Demo Day.&nbsp; Founders Space solves this issue by allowing startups to continue to attend all mentoring sessions and workshops for an entire year after Demo Day.&nbsp; This way startups can receive&nbsp;on-going support when they need it most. &nbsp;</p> <p>We work with a lot of corporations who say they are innovating, but when we ask them to sacrifice revenue, they recoil.&nbsp; The one strategy that we propose to our partners is to reward innovation with virtual dollars.&nbsp; These dollars count as real dollars, but they aren't actual revenue.&nbsp; This way managers can justify spending time on innovative projects.&nbsp;</p>  <p>We often find that founders who have a good idea &ndash; but not a great one &ndash; will get too stuck on it and keep hammering on it, as rivals pass them by. Acceleration needs to be that, and we push them hard to identify the best ideas they have &ndash; and if they&rsquo;re pushing a boulder up a hill, they should stop, and switch to something else. Also: Most people see a model or idea that works and then they copy it, making some incremental changes along the way.&nbsp; True innovation means rethinking everything and challenging all the assumptions you have.&nbsp;</p> <p>You need to question every aspect of your business.&nbsp; Why do we do it this way? &nbsp;Why is this the model?&nbsp; What if we tried this? &nbsp;And then you have to take risks.&nbsp; You have to be prepared to fail over and over until you discover a new way of doing it.&nbsp; Most managers in large corporations are risk averse.&nbsp; That's how they got to the position they are in.&nbsp; They don't want a series of failures attached to their names, so naturally they go for the safe bets.&nbsp; But safe bets don't transform a business.&nbsp;Risk does.</p>  <p>When we started Founders Space, we felt that we had to develop something new.&nbsp; There are thousands of accelerators out there, and we didn't want to just follow the herd.&nbsp; So we've been constantly experimenting and pushing ourselves to come up with new ideas that get better results for ourselves and our start-ups.&nbsp; It's a continual learning process, as we change and improve our model and program every quarter.</p>  <p>The startup ecosystem is constantly changing.&nbsp; Large corporations are now jumping into the startup game in a much bigger way with open innovation, intraprenuership, incubators and funding. &nbsp;We are launching new services to partner with global corporations and help them collaborate with startups.&nbsp; This is the biggest change we see on the horizon, and it's the biggest opportunity.&nbsp; We just launched a new service called Founders Edge, which does exactly this: <a href="http://www.FoundersEdge.com">http://www.FoundersEdge.com</a>.</p>  <p>It&rsquo;s simply inevitable that machines will replace the jobs we do &ndash; blue collar; white collar; every collar. Surgeons are going to be replaced by robots, which will do the procedure precisely the right way every time. The tax code is a system of laws to follow and optimize &ndash; so there is no reason an algorithm can&rsquo;t do it far better than an accountant.&nbsp; Legal contracts can all be written by computers. We will get to a very interesting point in society where people will have to ask themselves &ndash; what unique value can we provide? One wonderful impact will be in longevity. They are building nano-bots which we can put into our body to repair organs; and smart pills that can measure all the bacteria in your digestive tract, and tell you precisely what drugs or foods you need to take to be healthy and live longer. Ultimately, we will be upgrading our bodies; even our genetics.</p>  Steve Hoffman View Edit Delete
37  <p>Andria Long - VP of Innovation at Johnsonville Sausage - believes that effective innovation is, most centrally, about delivering on the ideas which actually solve consumer needs in a differentiated way. When it comes to innovation, her first question is: "what differentiators are consumers actually willing to pay for?"</p>  <p>We are a deeply entrepreneurial company, founded by a family of entrepreneurs and we are still family-owned today. It&rsquo;s no accident that we are ranked number one in our category. Ideas are not the hard part; rather, the challenge arises from actually delivering on those ideas.</p> <p>Everything can be made better, and I do mean everything. Differentiation is critical, but we&rsquo;ve found that you can skip some traditional steps in innovation: weeding through ideas and holding ideation sessions, and waiting for &ldquo;perfect information&rdquo; can hold up the process needlessly. We are focused on the front end &ndash; delivering on real insights of what consumers need.&nbsp;</p> <p>In the CPG industry, driving competitive advantage from innovation techniques is all about figuring out and meeting a consumer's unmet need in some new or different way. It is learning how to balance the risk and reward of how much you know with the amount and depth of information and research you need in order to make a decision. You're never going to have perfect information. You need to achieve that precarious balance of using good business judgment combined with enough consumer research to confidently approach the market.&nbsp;</p> <p>The success we&rsquo;ve had with the Fully Cooked Breakfast Sausage is a great example of delivering against a trifecta of insights. We found that convenience really is key for time-pressed consumers. We also thought about how consumers actually use products. It turns out that not everyone eats 12 sausages at a time, so we used re-sealable packs. And consumers want to see their foods, so we use clear packs. In essence, we lean in on where and what we need to know versus what is nice to know. Companies that do this well will have competitive advantage over others in their industry and will have greater speed to market.&nbsp;</p>  <p>The fear of failure impedes innovation because it is always easier on an existing business to know what lever to pull versus leaning in on a completely new initiative. Innovation is fundamentally contrary to human nature in that it requires willingness to change, willingness to fail, and a willingness to accept the unknown. Add to those challenges the natural inclination to form attachments to one's own projects. Innovators have to be able to kill initiatives, be agile, and shift when necessary. Failure is not failure if you learn from it. But if you fail and don't know why, then that is a concern.&nbsp;</p> <p>Another impediment to innovation is cross-functional collaboration. Innovation needs to be a top priority cross-functionally, but cross-functional teams often have multiple projects and initiatives across different business units, so ensuring that all of the leaders across those business units are working together towards similar goals with similar priorities can be a major challenge.&nbsp;</p>  <p>In recent years we have seen a dramatic increase in innovation-centric roles. This is due to the recognition that companies need dedicated resources, both people and financial, and dedicated leadership to accomplish innovation. In the past, innovation was a part of someone's job, and it is really hard to manage a base business with short-term goals and also try to deliver longer-term innovation goals. Also, not every person who manages a base business is also the right person to do innovation. So it wasn't that innovation didn't exist before, but the shift is in the discovery that it is essential to have those dedicated roles for innovation. The growth in the importance of designated roles has also led to higher visibility of those roles and as such we are seeing higher involvement from the C-Suite - which helps innovation to become better integrated in the overall company structure. Now, there are dedicated resources - both people and financial - dedicated roles, dedicated cross-functional teams, and a designated executive leader.</p> <p>At Johnsonville Sausage, we have found that the fundamental requirement is giving employees the freedom to fail. We've talked about the fact that fear of failure impedes progress. With the plethora of information out there, it is easy to iterate something to death in order to decrease risk, but not only can that iterative process dilute down what was once a great idea, we've also seen that in a rapidly-changing environment, those iterative processes can impede agility and speed to market, thereby contributing to a loss of competitive advantage. We've found that our organization itself and the people within it need to be comfortable with a rapid pace of change, and a lot of change, and as innovation leaders we have to be the champions of that change.&nbsp;</p>  <p>The pace and rate of change in our industry is dramatic. Three of the companies I worked for in the past 10 years no longer exist. The churn rate is phenomenal. The average lifespan of an S&amp;P 500 company used to be 61 years; now it is 16 to 18 years. Fortunately, Johnsonville is already over 70 years old, and more relevant to consumers than ever.</p> <p>I like the comment by Peter Senge, from &ldquo;The Fifth Discipline,&rdquo; which may help account for the success we&rsquo;ve had: &ldquo;The ability to learn faster than your competition may be the only sustainable competitive advantage than you can ever achieve.&rdquo; CPG companies who are able to shift and respond to the rapidly changing environment, use relevant consumer insights without getting bogged down in process, and get to market quickly will succeed.&nbsp; The ones that don't have a very good chance of being replaced by more agile competitors.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Well, as a commuter in Chicago, I can tell you that one innovation I particularly like is Passport Mobile Pay. Its revealing for me that, on top of a $3 parking fee, consumers are also willing to pay at extra 50 cents &ldquo;convenience fee,&rdquo; to pay their parking from their device, and not have to bother locating the parking pay station. And as a beer drinker, I like Yeti colster. I&rsquo;m always on the lookout for something to keep beverages cold, and I bought a Yeti colster, and it is phenomenal. Again, it tells you something that consumers like me are willing to spend $35 to keep their drink cold &ndash; that&rsquo;s amazing. I&rsquo;m also a fan of what Hello Products are doing in the oral care space &ndash; breaking category molds with design and consumer-centric thinking.</p>  Andria Long View Edit Delete
45  <p>Ayad sees a trend in the retail landscape where the front end registers disappear, and where check-out lines are eliminated through predictive data analytics, sensors, and artificial intelligence &ndash; and, eventually, where self-driving shopping carts meet you at the entrance of the store with your shopping list already uploaded into the cart screen, and even direct you to the items you need.&nbsp;</p>  <p>I really don't know whether we are changing the game or the game is changing us. Success in business, today, is all about the optimal intersection of the physical and digitals worlds, and the interaction between humans and intelligent machines.</p> <p>If you really think about the retail industry, so many innovations have compelled companies to start to think different, to act different, and to plan for potentially different outcomes. Within workforce management, for example, the industry is going through tremendous shifts due to the expansion in internet selling coupled with rapidly changing demographics and regulations. Thus, brick and mortar stores are under a different type of pressure. And it is said that necessity is the mother of all inventions, so many organizations find the dynamics of the environment and the accelerated speed by which innovation is happening a threat and an opportunity leading to new strategies and innovations.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m of the opinion that societies change slowly, and despite so many years in e-commerce rapid growth, e-commerce is still a fraction of the total retail and service industries. So, it is going to continue to be a combination of digital and physical for the retail industry. Many organizations are utilizing data - predictive modeling, advanced algorithms - to better forecast work in the stores. And once work is forecasted and measured, then it becomes easier to schedule people to be at the right places and times - either when the truck is coming to the store to deliver products, or when customers are coming to the stores to receive a service.</p> <p>You need optimizing software to help deliver efficiency. But no one platform is going to be the only and the ultimate solution. I think what's so clear, at least in my mind, is that the future is a blend of the digital and physical capabilities.</p> <p>Based on my academic and my industry knowledge, I can tell you that customers want to shop anytime and anywhere. Leading retailers, including Bed-Bath, want to serve customers wherever, whenever, and however they wish to be served.&nbsp; Leading retailers want to be there for customers when they want to shop, the way they want to shop, and the way they want to complete the transaction, whether it is &ldquo;ship it to my home&rdquo; or &ldquo;let me pick it from the store&rdquo;, or a combination of both.</p> <p>What's exciting about the current technology is how friendly it is to everyone involved. For example, 10 years ago you had to go to the store to see your schedule as an employee. And the manager of the store ultimately decided who worked when. There was little freedom or flexibility. Today, technology allows you to see your schedule on your phone, and even to opt for available shifts. Employees can swap shifts with their coworkers if they need to, without disrupting operations. This is a significant win-win change.</p> <p>The technology is not only allowing organizations to respond better to customer needs, but also to employee's needs and situations. It's becoming more participatory versus top-down. And it is proven in research and in practice that happy employees create an environment of happiness for the customers. Efficient workforce management is beneficial to customers, and to the business. That's why companies invest in them.</p> <p>In terms of benefiting from customer insights, today, you can measure and map customers&rsquo; movement in the stores from the entry point to the exit point through sensors. Based on data, you would know exactly, or on average, know how long the customers will be shopping in your store. Eventually, you would know when they're going to get to the register. Ultimately, you will be able to know the number of employees that need to be at the front end to help the customers exit the building and pay for the merchandise. So, it is not just long-term predictive modeling, but on-time, live, as you go, so that there will be totally no long lines up front for customers who choose to interact with an employee, and managers would be able to respond faster to customers&rsquo; needs.&nbsp;</p>  <p>I&rsquo;m very familiar with two industries: the retail industry and the academic industry. Luckily, both industries have adopted and encouraged innovation, perhaps because of the competitive nature of the retail industry, and the critical thinking nature of academia.</p> <p>Fear of failure and siloes are often common challenges.&nbsp; Financial obstacles and opportunities are both drivers and blockers of embracing innovation. You might go after an innovation because it's financially rewarding, but then you may not embrace it fully because it's financially&nbsp;burdening on the short term.<br /><br />Some are short-sighted; they might&nbsp;think about the quarterly results, and not necessarily look at the long term. The other fascinating aspect is the speed of innovations. Some companies are hesitant to embrace innovation because today's innovative solutions may become obsolete quickly, which add burdens on the organization; especially from a change management perspective.&nbsp; However, perhaps the biggest impediment lies is the culture of the organization; organizational culture is the make or break for innovation.&nbsp;</p>  <p>The retail industry was among the first industries to benefit from (disruptive) innovation. Take Walmart for example, it started with Sam Walton&rsquo;s innovative ideas about the nature of the retail store - the role of transportation and logistics, and the mindset of trying new things. Walmart optimized innovation by supporting its people to become owners of the business and by techniques such as profit sharing and career planning. You see, employees are called associates, and associates call Walmart stores &ldquo;my store&rdquo;. A culture that's built on the idea that the employee is the owner of the business unit, not the keeper of the business unit, is positioned to benefit from the unlimited creativity of people.</p> <p>Another example from Walmart: They have a practice called VPI, or Value Producing Items, where employees compete and have fun adopting and promoting specific items. Employees get recognized on results. All this infuse tremendous amounts of energy, engagement, pride, and innovation into organizational culture.</p>  <p>The Internet of things, robots, artificial intelligence, brick and mortar store closure, regulations, and the entry of new organizations to the marketplace. For example, the entry of Lidl from Europe to USA.</p> <p>Lidl already has 10,000 stores in Europe, and they&rsquo;re coming to the United States like Aldi did, and Aldi already has 1,600 stores in the US, and by some reports, in&nbsp;the 2018,&nbsp;they may have another 400 stores, reaching 2,000 stores. That's almost half the size of Walmart! Granted, the stores are smaller, but they are everyday low-price, because of their competitive pricing and their business model Walmart has to respond, and they are. Walmart recently announced drops in the price, and&nbsp; Target - a couple of days ago - announced a significant investment in price. So that entry of new organizations, and new regulations will significantly impact&nbsp;the retail industry.</p>  <p>From my perspective, one of the innovative strategies that I find very compelling is the idea of underground delivery of freight, supported by drones and self-driven cars and robots. The idea of moving freight underground by a magnetic field that's created by electrified coils, when complemented by drones and self-driven cars seems fascinating and disruptive. Research is happening, especially in the UK, around the concept of underground fright delivery. Why not, water and electricity are delivered to homes underground; why not packages! Imagine that!&nbsp;</p>  Amine Ayad View Edit Delete
7  <p>Chris Hummel has a 20+-year career in enterprise sales and marketing and is a globally-recognized thought&nbsp;leader and widely-respected senior executive in the technology industry. Chris Hummel is a true international executive, having lived, worked, and successfully led organizations around&nbsp;the globe, including the US, Germany, Eastern Europe and Asia.</p>  <p>Innovation is something you don&rsquo;t easily teach or even force on an organization.&nbsp; It requires fresh and unique perspectives gained from either pulling people out of their traditional roles and comfort zones or by bringing in outside perspectives through new talent acquisition or external expertise.&nbsp; At the same time, executive leaders must display and encourage a strong preference for thinking &lsquo;outside the box&rsquo; and a willingness to take risk to foster a change/innovation culture.&nbsp;</p>  <p>Innovation is stifled in companies that operate in silos, where leaders are inwardly focused, and where stakeholders have allowed business challenges, market dynamics or competitive pressures to dominate decision making and investment decisions.&nbsp; There is ample evidence of brands who have seen market leading positions deteriorate due to over-confidence and too much &ldquo;we know best&rdquo; mentality.&nbsp; Finally, companies whose research and development agendas are dominated by engineering or product focus rather than a market focus often fall behind peers from an innovation perspective.</p>  <p>A determined shift to a market-focused R&amp;D&nbsp; agenda is helping to drive an accelerated pace of innovation at my company.&nbsp; We have shifted away from investment decisions driven by the product portfolio or so-called &ldquo;long tail&rdquo; development projects toward a decision schema driven on careful analysis of industry trends and changing customer requirements.&nbsp;&nbsp; Those companies whose investment priorities are the result of market-facing analysis will have a faster time to value from innovation projects.</p>  <p>The emergence of improved collaboration and communications technologies will enable innovation workers to better come together as virtual teams and amplify the collective effort of today&rsquo;s &ldquo;anywhere workers.&rdquo;&nbsp; Such technologies will seamlessly combine voice, video, text, structured and unstructured content while also enabling a much improved collaborative environment that will drive not only higher levels of business performance but also accelerate the pace of innovation.</p>  <p>I admire Apple for what they have done for product design.&nbsp;&nbsp; Frog showed us the power of bringing customers into the conversation around innovation.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the end, I admire any company who has the courage to seek a better alternative when the &ldquo;good enough&rdquo; option won&rsquo;t do.</p>  Chris Hummel View Edit Delete

Page 1 of 3, showing 20 records out of 58 total, starting on record 1, ending on 20

< previous123

Actions

(default) 22 queries took 1 ms
NrQueryErrorAffectedNum. rowsTook (ms)
1SELECT `Menu`.`id`, `Menu`.`slug`, `Menu`.`referrer`, `Menu`.`url`, `Menu`.`report_id`, `Menu`.`other`, `Menu`.`created`, `Menu`.`modified` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`tracking_routes` AS `Menu` WHERE 1 = 115150
2SELECT `Article`.`id`, `Article`.`date`, `Article`.`title`, `Article`.`author`, `Article`.`publisher`, `Article`.`description`, `Article`.`url`, `Article`.`program_only`, `Article`.`innovator_news`, `Article`.`created`, `Article`.`modified`, `Article`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`articles` AS `Article` WHERE `Article`.`program_only` = '0' ORDER BY `Article`.`date` DESC LIMIT 8880
3SELECT `Program`.`id`, `Program`.`title`, `Program`.`subtitle`, `Program`.`summary`, `Program`.`description`, `Program`.`image`, `Program`.`thumbnail`, `Program`.`date`, `Program`.`feature`, `Program`.`enable`, `Program`.`created`, `Program`.`modified`, `Program`.`modifier`, `ArticlesProgram`.`id`, `ArticlesProgram`.`program_id`, `ArticlesProgram`.`article_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`programs` AS `Program` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`articles_programs` AS `ArticlesProgram` ON (`ArticlesProgram`.`article_id` IN (1365, 1361, 1359, 1360, 1358, 1363, 1354, 1355) AND `ArticlesProgram`.`program_id` = `Program`.`id`) 440
4SELECT `Leader`.`id`, `Leader`.`name`, `Leader`.`job_title`, `Leader`.`company`, `Leader`.`headshot`, `Leader`.`company_logo`, `Leader`.`bio_full`, `Leader`.`summary`, `Leader`.`category`, `Leader`.`featured`, `Leader`.`program_only`, `Leader`.`game_changer_only`, `Leader`.`enable`, `Leader`.`created`, `Leader`.`modified`, `Leader`.`modifier`, `ArticlesLeader`.`id`, `ArticlesLeader`.`article_id`, `ArticlesLeader`.`leader_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`leaders` AS `Leader` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`articles_leaders` AS `ArticlesLeader` ON (`ArticlesLeader`.`article_id` IN (1365, 1361, 1359, 1360, 1358, 1363, 1354, 1355) AND `ArticlesLeader`.`leader_id` = `Leader`.`id`) 000
5SELECT `Tag`.`id`, `Tag`.`tag`, `Tag`.`created`, `Tag`.`modified`, `ArticlesTag`.`id`, `ArticlesTag`.`article_id`, `ArticlesTag`.`tag_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`tags` AS `Tag` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`articles_tags` AS `ArticlesTag` ON (`ArticlesTag`.`article_id` IN (1365, 1361, 1359, 1360, 1358, 1363, 1354, 1355) AND `ArticlesTag`.`tag_id` = `Tag`.`id`) 000
6SELECT `Article`.`id`, `Article`.`date`, `Article`.`title`, `Article`.`author`, `Article`.`publisher`, `Article`.`description`, `Article`.`url`, `Article`.`program_only`, `Article`.`innovator_news`, `Article`.`created`, `Article`.`modified`, `Article`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`articles` AS `Article` WHERE `Article`.`innovator_news` = '1' AND `Article`.`program_only` = '0' ORDER BY `Article`.`date` DESC LIMIT 4440
7SELECT `Program`.`id`, `Program`.`title`, `Program`.`subtitle`, `Program`.`summary`, `Program`.`description`, `Program`.`image`, `Program`.`thumbnail`, `Program`.`date`, `Program`.`feature`, `Program`.`enable`, `Program`.`created`, `Program`.`modified`, `Program`.`modifier`, `ArticlesProgram`.`id`, `ArticlesProgram`.`program_id`, `ArticlesProgram`.`article_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`programs` AS `Program` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`articles_programs` AS `ArticlesProgram` ON (`ArticlesProgram`.`article_id` IN (1247, 1245, 1244, 1217) AND `ArticlesProgram`.`program_id` = `Program`.`id`) 000
8SELECT `Leader`.`id`, `Leader`.`name`, `Leader`.`job_title`, `Leader`.`company`, `Leader`.`headshot`, `Leader`.`company_logo`, `Leader`.`bio_full`, `Leader`.`summary`, `Leader`.`category`, `Leader`.`featured`, `Leader`.`program_only`, `Leader`.`game_changer_only`, `Leader`.`enable`, `Leader`.`created`, `Leader`.`modified`, `Leader`.`modifier`, `ArticlesLeader`.`id`, `ArticlesLeader`.`article_id`, `ArticlesLeader`.`leader_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`leaders` AS `Leader` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`articles_leaders` AS `ArticlesLeader` ON (`ArticlesLeader`.`article_id` IN (1247, 1245, 1244, 1217) AND `ArticlesLeader`.`leader_id` = `Leader`.`id`) 000
9SELECT `Tag`.`id`, `Tag`.`tag`, `Tag`.`created`, `Tag`.`modified`, `ArticlesTag`.`id`, `ArticlesTag`.`article_id`, `ArticlesTag`.`tag_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`tags` AS `Tag` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`articles_tags` AS `ArticlesTag` ON (`ArticlesTag`.`article_id` IN (1247, 1245, 1244, 1217) AND `ArticlesTag`.`tag_id` = `Tag`.`id`) 000
10SELECT `Event`.`id`, `Event`.`name`, `Event`.`date_start`, `Event`.`date_end`, `Event`.`date`, `Event`.`not_exact_date`, `Event`.`location`, `Event`.`description`, `Event`.`url`, `Event`.`image`, `Event`.`category`, `Event`.`event_type`, `Event`.`created`, `Event`.`modified`, `Event`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`events` AS `Event` WHERE `Event`.`category` = 1 ORDER BY `Event`.`date_start` DESC LIMIT 3330
11SELECT `Brainwafe`.`id`, `Brainwafe`.`issue`, `Brainwafe`.`ednote_title`, `Brainwafe`.`ednote_content`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_headshot`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_logo`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_logo_url`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_title`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_content`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_headshot`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_logo`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_logo_url`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_title`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_content`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_title`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_content`, `Brainwafe`.`enable`, `Brainwafe`.`current`, `Brainwafe`.`url_hash`, `Brainwafe`.`modifier`, `BrainwavesEvent`.`id`, `BrainwavesEvent`.`event_id`, `BrainwavesEvent`.`brainwafe_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`brainwaves` AS `Brainwafe` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`brainwaves_events` AS `BrainwavesEvent` ON (`BrainwavesEvent`.`event_id` IN (129, 127, 53) AND `BrainwavesEvent`.`brainwafe_id` = `Brainwafe`.`id`) 000
12SELECT `Program`.`id`, `Program`.`title`, `Program`.`subtitle`, `Program`.`summary`, `Program`.`description`, `Program`.`image`, `Program`.`thumbnail`, `Program`.`date`, `Program`.`feature`, `Program`.`enable`, `Program`.`created`, `Program`.`modified`, `Program`.`modifier`, `EventsProgram`.`id`, `EventsProgram`.`event_id`, `EventsProgram`.`program_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`programs` AS `Program` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`events_programs` AS `EventsProgram` ON (`EventsProgram`.`event_id` IN (129, 127, 53) AND `EventsProgram`.`program_id` = `Program`.`id`) 110
13SELECT `Event`.`id`, `Event`.`name`, `Event`.`date_start`, `Event`.`date_end`, `Event`.`date`, `Event`.`not_exact_date`, `Event`.`location`, `Event`.`description`, `Event`.`url`, `Event`.`image`, `Event`.`category`, `Event`.`event_type`, `Event`.`created`, `Event`.`modified`, `Event`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`events` AS `Event` WHERE `Event`.`category` = 0 AND `Event`.`date_end` >= '2025-04-29' ORDER BY `Event`.`date_start` asc LIMIT 3000
14SELECT `Report`.`id`, `Report`.`date`, `Report`.`title`, `Report`.`subtitle`, `Report`.`summary`, `Report`.`author`, `Report`.`body`, `Report`.`upload`, `Report`.`image`, `Report`.`internal`, `Report`.`url`, `Report`.`featured`, `Report`.`program_only`, `Report`.`related`, `Report`.`enable`, `Report`.`created`, `Report`.`modified`, `Report`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`reports` AS `Report` WHERE `Report`.`id` IN (3, 5)220
15SELECT `Tracking`.`id`, `Tracking`.`referrer`, `Tracking`.`user_id`, `Tracking`.`non_member_id`, `Tracking`.`report_id`, `Tracking`.`report_download`, `Tracking`.`other`, `Tracking`.`date` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`tracking` AS `Tracking` WHERE `Tracking`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) 000
16SELECT `Download`.`id`, `Download`.`user_id`, `Download`.`non_member_id`, `Download`.`report_id`, `Download`.`tracking_id`, `Download`.`date` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`reports_download` AS `Download` WHERE `Download`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) 32320
17SELECT `Program`.`id`, `Program`.`title`, `Program`.`subtitle`, `Program`.`summary`, `Program`.`description`, `Program`.`image`, `Program`.`thumbnail`, `Program`.`date`, `Program`.`feature`, `Program`.`enable`, `Program`.`created`, `Program`.`modified`, `Program`.`modifier`, `ProgramsReport`.`id`, `ProgramsReport`.`report_id`, `ProgramsReport`.`program_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`programs` AS `Program` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`programs_reports` AS `ProgramsReport` ON (`ProgramsReport`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `ProgramsReport`.`program_id` = `Program`.`id`) 110
18SELECT `Tag`.`id`, `Tag`.`tag`, `Tag`.`created`, `Tag`.`modified`, `ReportsTag`.`id`, `ReportsTag`.`report_id`, `ReportsTag`.`tag_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`tags` AS `Tag` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`reports_tags` AS `ReportsTag` ON (`ReportsTag`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `ReportsTag`.`tag_id` = `Tag`.`id`) 000
19SELECT `MediaCoverage`.`id`, `MediaCoverage`.`date`, `MediaCoverage`.`title`, `MediaCoverage`.`author`, `MediaCoverage`.`summary`, `MediaCoverage`.`publisher`, `MediaCoverage`.`url`, `MediaCoverage`.`created`, `MediaCoverage`.`modified`, `MediaCoverage`.`modifier`, `MediaCoverageReport`.`id`, `MediaCoverageReport`.`media_coverage_id`, `MediaCoverageReport`.`report_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`media_coverage` AS `MediaCoverage` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`media_coverage_reports` AS `MediaCoverageReport` ON (`MediaCoverageReport`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `MediaCoverageReport`.`media_coverage_id` = `MediaCoverage`.`id`) 000
20SELECT `Brainwafe`.`id`, `Brainwafe`.`issue`, `Brainwafe`.`ednote_title`, `Brainwafe`.`ednote_content`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_headshot`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_logo`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_logo_url`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_title`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`feature_content`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_headshot`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_logo`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_logo_url`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_title`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`interview_content`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_title`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_subtitle`, `Brainwafe`.`contributed_content`, `Brainwafe`.`enable`, `Brainwafe`.`current`, `Brainwafe`.`url_hash`, `Brainwafe`.`modifier`, `BrainwavesReport`.`id`, `BrainwavesReport`.`brainwafe_id`, `BrainwavesReport`.`report_id` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`brainwaves` AS `Brainwafe` JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`brainwaves_reports` AS `BrainwavesReport` ON (`BrainwavesReport`.`report_id` IN (3, 5) AND `BrainwavesReport`.`brainwafe_id` = `Brainwafe`.`id`) 000
21SELECT `InnovatorProfile`.`id`, `InnovatorProfile`.`linkedin_url`, `InnovatorProfile`.`summary_bio`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_1`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_2`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_3`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_4`, `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_5`, `InnovatorProfile`.`leader_id`, `InnovatorProfile`.`modifier`, `Leader`.`id`, `Leader`.`name`, `Leader`.`job_title`, `Leader`.`company`, `Leader`.`headshot`, `Leader`.`company_logo`, `Leader`.`bio_full`, `Leader`.`summary`, `Leader`.`category`, `Leader`.`featured`, `Leader`.`program_only`, `Leader`.`game_changer_only`, `Leader`.`enable`, `Leader`.`created`, `Leader`.`modified`, `Leader`.`modifier` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`innovator_profiles` AS `InnovatorProfile` LEFT JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`leaders` AS `Leader` ON (`InnovatorProfile`.`leader_id` = `Leader`.`id`) WHERE 1 = 1 ORDER BY `InnovatorProfile`.`answer_4` desc LIMIT 2020201
22SELECT COUNT(*) AS `count` FROM `bpinorg_dev`.`innovator_profiles` AS `InnovatorProfile` LEFT JOIN `bpinorg_dev`.`leaders` AS `Leader` ON (`InnovatorProfile`.`leader_id` = `Leader`.`id`) WHERE 1 = 1110