Innovation Labs in Corporations

Ever noticed how "innovation initiatives" can become their own worst enemy?  Traditional organizations have great intentions. Companies establish innovation labs, generate long lists of ideas, and work hard to bring innovators inside. But then something happens – ideas get stuck in the funnel: • Legal department asks for yet another review  • Finance insists on yet another scenario modeling  • Marketing team worries about brand dilution and suggests hiring consultants to analyze the impact The hard truth: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. What were supposed to be tools to build a safe harbor become a deadly swamp.  Bureaucracy is like mold spreading across an organization. To succeed in innovation, you need to eliminate the clutter. Reduce the layers. 🚩 Warning Signs:  • Too many executives responsible for innovation  • Too many meetings  • Too many approvals    Remember: The goal isn't to create perfect processes – it's to create breakthrough innovations. Sometimes, the best way forward is the simplest one. #stanford #stanfordgsb #venturecapital #startups #innovation #technology #founders #venturemindset 

Most companies claim they embrace failure. But walk into their Monday meetings, and watch people scramble to hide their missteps. I've seen it countless times. The same leaders who preach 'fail fast' are the first to demand explanations for every setback. Here's the uncomfortable truth:  Innovation dies in environments where people feel safer playing it safe. But there's a difference between reckless failure and strategic experimentation. Let me show you exactly how to build a culture that genuinely embraces productive failure: 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 Stop asking "Who's fault was this?" and start asking: "𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘺𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨?" "𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘶𝘴?" "𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?" 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 '𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬' Monthly meetings where teams present their failed experiments and the insights gained. The key? Leaders must go first. Share your own failures openly, specifically, and without sugar-coating. 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 "24-𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞" After any setback, give teams 24 hours to vent/process. Then require them to present three specific learnings and two potential next steps. This transforms failure from a dead end into a data point. Most "innovative" teams are just risk-averse businesses in disguise. They've mastered innovation theater, not actual innovation. Don't let your people think they need permission to innovate. Instead, start building systems and a culture that make innovation inevitable.

Major barrier to accelerating innovation for hardware is dominant waterfall thinking. The V&V development process epitomizes this mindset, which we frequently see with our large clients. Machina Labs’ tech offers numerous advantages depending on the application, such as shortened lead times, reduced costs, or enabling processing of entirely new material. However, the common, but outdated, approach is asking whether our process can directly replace a sub component or even a part in existing one. We found out we need to work with our customers in a different way: starting with the business case and potential end-to-end benefits, and aiming for at least a tenfold improvement. This approach involves challenging all existing requirements and using Robocraftsman to develop a product from start to finish. Our tech’s super power is order of magnitude faster iteration compared to traditional techniques, moving quickly from feedstock to the final system to assess the benefits comprehensively for the final system as opposed to its subsystems. It also means we rapidly add capabilities to Robocraftsman along the way. For instance, if you’re considering building the lunar lander fuel tank, it is common to start replacing and meeting requirements for individual sheet metal panels one at a time with Roboforming, but we propose constructing the entire tank end-to-end and rapidly iterate on that cycle, only evaluating the global performance of the final system. The faster that cycle is the better the improvements become at the end. Each iteration focused on removing one major risk. This method allows us to see how the new process can enhance every stage of product development, from raw materials to the completed system using Robocraftsman. This shift away from linear, step-by-step thinking to embracing rapid, end-to-end iteration may be challenging, but it’s crucial for effectively integrating the Robocraftsman platform and delivering at least tenfold value to our customers. I came across Charles Kuehmann insights on this topic at the NAE. His work at SpaceX and Tesla is pioneering in this type of approach. https://lnkd.in/gRpUTAuT

Ever found yourself facing a team that might not naturally be considered "creative," but you know deep down there's untapped potential waiting to be ignited? That's where the real magic happens – when you transform a group of individuals into a powerhouse of innovation! Here are a few strategies to nurture creativity in even the most unexpected places: 1️⃣ Diverse Perspectives: Embrace the beauty of diversity within your team. Different backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets can create a melting pot of ideas that spark innovation. 2️⃣ Encourage Curiosity: Cultivate a culture of questioning and curiosity. Challenge your team to explore the "what ifs" and "whys" to uncover new solutions. 3️⃣ Collaborative Storming: Gather your team for brainstorming sessions. Fostering an environment where no idea is too outrageous encourages free thinking and inspires unique concepts. 4️⃣ Cross-Pollination: Encourage your team to draw inspiration from unrelated fields. Sometimes, the most innovative solutions come from connecting seemingly unrelated dots. 5️⃣ Empower Ownership: Give individuals ownership of projects and allow them to take creative risks. When people feel their ideas matter, they're more likely to contribute their creative juices. 6️⃣ Learning from "Fails": Embrace failure as a stepping stone to success. Encourage your team to share their failures and lessons learned – these experiences often lead to innovative breakthroughs. 7️⃣ Structured Creativity: Implement frameworks like Design Thinking or Ideation Workshops. These structured approaches can guide your team to think creatively within a defined framework. 8️⃣ Celebrating Small Wins: Recognize and celebrate every small burst of creativity. This positive reinforcement encourages more innovative thinking. 9️⃣ Mentorship and Learning: Pair up team members with differing strengths. Learning from each other's expertise can lead to cross-pollination of ideas. 🔟 Lead by Example: Show your own passion for creativity. When your team sees your enthusiasm for innovation, it's contagious! Remember, creativity is not exclusive to certain roles or industries – it's a mindset that can be nurtured and cultivated. So, let's harness the potential within our teams, empower individuals to think outside the box, and watch as innovation unfolds before our eyes! #InnovationAtWork #whatinspiresme #culture #teamwork #CreativeThinking #TeamCreativity #LeadershipMindset #bestweekever

🔮 Unleashing the Future of Strategic Innovation: Our Gift to the Innovation Community Two years ago, I found myself in a middle seat at Boston Logan Airport, deep in conversation with ChatGPT about the future of business. Today, I'm thrilled to announce something that emerged from that moment: the world's first Strategic Imagination Machine (SIM), developed in partnership with the brilliant 🔮Kes Sampanthar ✨ and our incredible augmented team at Valize Advisory. But what exactly is a Strategic Imagination Machine? Imagine being able to simulate a million different futures for your innovation before writing a single line of code or investing a single dollar. Imagine combining the pattern-recognition power of AI with the creative genius of human imagination. That's what we've built. We recently field-tested this approach at Columbia Business School's Leading Strategic Growth and Change program with leaders from across the Gulf Region. The results were extraordinary. Here's what makes this different: 1. Beyond Traditional AI: While AI has commoditized knowledge, expertise, and analytical thinking, we're pushing into new territory - augmented strategic imagination. 2. Systems Thinking Reimagined: We've expanded on Kahneman's work, integrated Andy Clark's extended mind theory, and incorporated Kasparov's centaur thinking to create a comprehensive framework of Systems 0-X thinking. 3. Practical Innovation Tools:    - 100 AI-generated disruption patterns   - 20 business models   - 7 founder archetypes   - A revolutionary combinatory play approach The magic happens when these elements come together. In our MENA workshop, teams used this framework to generate startup ideas that weren't just innovative - they were deeply aligned with regional trends and opportunities. But here's where it gets really interesting: We then ran these ideas through our simulation engine, testing them against: - Market dynamics - Team capabilities - Regulatory challenges - Technology risks - Customer adoption patterns - And much more The result? A five-year projection that doesn't just predict success or failure - it illuminates the path to innovation success. 🎁 Our Gift to You Today, we're releasing a simplified version of our SIM to the innovation community. While it's not the full enterprise version we use with clients, it's a powerful tool for exploring the future of your ideas: https://lnkd.in/gmmi7F-m This is just the beginning. Our enterprise simulations go even further, featuring: - Agentic workflows - Synthetic customer modeling - Adjacent possible mapping - Zeitgeist scoring - Pre-MVP testing capabilities To my fellow pioneers at the jagged frontier of innovation: Let's explore these new possibilities together. Let's imagine better futures. And most importantly, let's build them. Special thanks to Alex Savage, our AI thunder from down under, Noah Frank, Daniel Wolfson, and of course, Rita McGrath, for helping bring this vision to life.

HOW TO CREATE SAFE SPACES FOR UNSAFE IDEAS You hire brilliant people and tell them to innovate. Then you make it impossible for them to do so. Most companies develop an immune system that rejects new ideas like they're some kind of virus. Here are the five innovation killers you need to spot and eliminate: KILLER #1: DEMANDING CRYSTAL BALL ACCURACY You want detailed business cases for projects that are inherently uncertain. The fix: Create different approval processes for exploration vs. execution. Exploration projects get smaller budgets and you measure success by what you learn, not what you earn. KILLER #2: BEING SCARED OF EVERYTHING Your processes are designed to avoid any downside risk, which also kills any upside potential. The fix: Separate "experiments you can't afford to mess up" from "experiments you can't afford not to try." Different projects, different comfort levels with risk. KILLER #3: MAKING INNOVATION FIGHT FOR SCRAPS Innovation projects have to compete with your proven money-makers for resources. The fix: Set aside dedicated innovation resources. 10% of engineering time, 5% of budget, just for projects where you don't know what'll happen. KILLER #4: JUDGING EVERYTHING ON QUARTERLY RESULTS You evaluate innovation projects on the same timelines as your day-to-day operations. The fix: Innovation gets measured by learning cycles, not calendar quarters. Success is about insights you gain, not deadlines you hit. KILLER #5: THINKING FAILURE MEANS SOMEONE SCREWED UP You define success as "execute the original plan perfectly." The fix: Success becomes "figure out what works as fast as possible." Changing direction gets celebrated, not punished. The framework that can transform your innovation culture: EXPLORE → EXPERIMENT → EXECUTE EXPLORE PHASE: Small budget, big questions. Win = quality insights. EXPERIMENT PHASE: Medium budget, specific hunches. Win = fast validation (or fast failure). EXECUTE PHASE: Full budget, proven concept. Win = flawless delivery. Different phases, different rules, different ways to win. Companies don't lack innovative ideas. They lack innovative environments. QUESTIONS TO DIAGNOSE YOUR INNOVATION IMMUNE SYSTEM: ❓How many good ideas die in approval meetings instead of real-world tests? ❓What percentage of your "failed" projects actually teach you something valuable? ❓How long does it take to get approval for a $10K experiment vs. a $10K efficiency upgrade? ❓Do your best people feel comfortable pitching risky ideas? If your best employee came to you tomorrow with a risky but potentially game-changing idea, would they feel safe pitching it? *** I’m Jennifer Kamara, founder of Kamara Life Design. Enjoy this? Repost to share with your network, and follow me for actionable strategies to design businesses and lives with meaning. Want to go from good to world-class? Join our community of subscribers today: https://lnkd.in/d6TT6fX5 

The announcement from #vwgroup on its intent to form an #AI company is interesting, meaningful, and in line with my research over the last decades. Volkswagen has established a specialized “AI Lab” as a globally networked competence center and an incubator. It will identify new product ideas for the Group and coordinate them internally within the Group. It will not be limited to internal competencies. Still, it will actively invite external collaboration with technology companies to tap into the innovation potential and take advantage of the speed of the AI sector. Vijay Govindarajan (VG) and I write in our book, #FusionStrategy, that the new pockets of value in traditional industry sectors will be unlocked through real-time data and algorithms. Most industrial companies have succeeded in digitizing business processes inside their companies and, in many cases, with their extended supply chains. That has contributed to efficiency benefits, but much more is possible and will be realized in the decade ahead. The digitization of industrial products and business models is different. That requires a higher degree of coordination amongst the CxO teams. One option to consider is creating a central unit, such as what #vwgroup aims to do. Allowing for rapid infusion of ideas from an extended ecosystem of partners is a way to guard against potential disruption from ambitious startups who know how to attack with their agility and speed. Winning in the fusion future is more than starting AI projects to overlay on the old business models. Such AI labs--if they are to be truly strategic and transformative--should reveal how and why the value is likely to shift from standalone automobiles to the role of automobiles as computers-on-wheels connected to the cloud in the broader mobility and sustainability ecosystems. This idea should be of interest not only to other traditional automakers but also to leading legacy industrial companies in many sectors. #DigitalMatrix

Innovation doesn’t always mean reinvention. Arguably, iteration is how many game-changing technologies are built. Take Apple and BlackBerry. BlackBerry had proven the smartphone category worked, but there was massive room for improvement. Apple didn't invent the smartphone; they transformed it. Back in 2020, we saw the same opportunity with intravascular lithotripsy (IVL). In just two years, IVL went from zero utilization to being used in over 10% of PCI procedures in the U.S.— and its adoption only continues to grow. In fact, most reports suggest the therapy will be used in over 20% of coronary interventions by the end of this decade. Based on some nascent research suggesting laser-based systems could generate the same therapeutic shock waves as electric platforms, we saw a huge opportunity to iterate on proven first-generation technology. The potential: A laser system that could offer a more efficient, predictable, and controllable technology in comparison to electric IVL platforms that generate shock waves from spark discharges. The challenge: Coronary vessels have a very unique set of requirements. - Small, tortuous anatomy; and - Patients with compromised cardiac output requiring faster therapy delivery; and - The risk that comes with electromagnetic interference operating close to the heart. These hurdles demanded solutions that existing technology couldn't provide. A laser-based IVL platform hadn’t been developed before, but we believed it could be. By early 2023, after a few years of extensive R&D work, we hit an inflection point. We finally thought we could pull it off. Fast forward to May of this year and we’re now in the throes of a coronary feasibility study. The lesson: You don't always need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, you can build a better wheel (like Apple did). Iteration on proven technology can be just as transformative as starting from scratch.

When uncertainty looms, innovation teams are at risk of being on CFO’s chopping block. Most recently, I joined a half-day roundtable with an outstanding group of corporate innovators, convened by Peter Temes at the ILO Institute during which we tackled this pressing reality and paradox: Companies invest in innovation during good times... but they NEED it most during uncertain ones. This plays out in two ways: 🚫 The First Camp: Slashes innovation budgets at the first sign of trouble. "We’ll restart when things stabilize," they promise. By the time stability returns, competitors have already leapt ahead. 🤦♂️ The Second Camp: Keeps innovation teams intact—but strangles their impact. ROI on experiments must be immediate. Quarterly returns on long-term bets. Zero tolerance for the failures that actually drive learning. I’ve seen both—sometimes inside the same company. The result? Innovation teams lose morale. The best talent disengages—or walks. Stakeholders pull support. A "one-and-done" mindset kills promising ideas before they can grow. 💡 Look at financial services. They came late to the internet, mobility, and social media. Now they’re risking the same mistake with AI, ceding direct customer relationships to fintechs and risking relegation to utility status. Why does this cycle persist? Because the short-term savings of cutting innovation are immediately visible. The long-term catastrophe is invisible... until it's too late. 🔥 Here’s how to keep innovation alive when budgets tighten: 1️⃣ Dramatically lower the cost of individual experiments 2️⃣ Prioritize customer-backed innovation for real-time feedback 3️⃣ Create distributed innovation networks across the org 4️⃣ Speed up cycles by challenging slow status quo processes 5️⃣ Position innovation as risk management, NOT risk-taking ⏳ Don’t let uncertainty kill your company’s future. The best organizations don’t innovate despite uncertainty. They innovate because of it. 🚀 Innovation isn’t a luxury—it’s a lifeline. Julie Fishman, Alex Trotta, Miles Garrett, Andy Grove, Anthony Di Bitonto, Kate Pomeroy (née Stubbs) #innovation #leadership #learning

In tech, everyone talks innovation. But the real game-changer? Creating a team that isn’t afraid to fail ↓ My biggest edge in scaling tech teams? I borrowed it straight from IO psychology. It's the lever nobody talks about: Psychological safety. In the fast-paced world of tech, where innovation is king, we often overlook the human element. A team that feels safe to take risks is a team that innovates. How do you create this environment? 1. Encourage open dialogue 2. Celebrate failures as learning opportunities 3. Lead by example - admit your own mistakes 4. Reward vulnerability and honesty 5. Foster a culture of constructive feedback When team members feel psychologically safe, they're more likely to: - Share innovative ideas - Take calculated risks - Collaborate effectively - Learn from failures - Adapt to change quickly The result? A more agile, creative, and productive tech team. This approach has helped me build high-performing teams that consistently deliver groundbreaking solutions. Remember: Technology is our tool, but people are our greatest asset. Invest in your team's psychological safety and watch your innovation soar. Create an environment where your tech talent can truly thrive.