The Funnel - Israel's Corporate Innovation Magazine

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The Hard Work of Innovation: 9 tools to help you manage PAGE 12

The Places Innovation comes from PAGE 18

From Entrepreneur to Corporate Innovator PAGE 22

Spring 2018

CONTENTS Business Title

03

Editor’s Letter

04

The Funnel Shorts

06

Skill, Evaluation, Innovation

10

The Hard Work of Innovation: 9 tools to help you to manage

18

Innov8rs confrence at a glance

20

Being an Entrepreneur in a large Organization

22 From Entrepreneur to Corporate Innovator

24 Future innovation events

14

Some platforms on which innovation communities can be managed

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16

The Places Innovation comes from

CONNECT WITH THEFUNNEL THEFUNNEL@DUCO.IO

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EDITOR’S LETTER On behalf of the entire Duco team, I want to welcome the readers of the first issue of “The Funnel” from the private, public and academic sectors. It is really exciting to write the introductory words to a magazine that encapsulates knowledge on corporate innovation that we and others have accumulated over the years.

We wanted to create a space with professional content that could convey the right experience and tools in the non-conventional field of Innovation.

As an entrepreneur, mentor and consultant of many organizations around the world in various sectors, I am aware of the tendency of innovation to become a festival with lots of fireworks accompanied by cynicism. Today, after developing methodologies with the world’s leading scholars and implementing them in countless organizations, I would like to invite you to dim the flashes for a few hours, dive into the professional content that this magazine provides, and enter the world of organizations that do this in a systematic and structured manner.

Hope you’ll enjoy it (at least as much as we did when preparing it) and, of course, I and my team are all at your disposal to answer any question or request.

Here’s to many more issues!

Dan Balter Global Managing Partner Duco

The Funnel shorts Forbes recently released its list of the most innovative companies in the world. Two of the top ten companies are from India, only one sells software, and most of these companies were founded in the 90s. The largest market cap, estimated at 427 billion dollars, is for Amazon.

The top ten companies are: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Salesforce (third year in a row) Tesla Amazon.com Shanhai RAAS Blood Products Netflix Incyte Hindustan Unilever Asian Paints Naver Regenron Pharmaceuticals

INDUSTRIES 3 BIOTECH

1

1

1

COMPUTER SERVICE

SOFTWARE

CHEMICALS

2

1

RETAIL

AUTOMOTIVE

REGION FOUNDATION DATE 04 THE FUNNEL

6

4 1

US

SOUTH KOREA

2 INDIA

1 CHINA

2 80-90

90-00

1

1

00-10

40-50

G

oogle, Amazon and other innovation giants deserve their due, but one of the first innovation giants that stays on the forefront of technology and research, is the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, more commonly known as Darpa. These are the people who were involved in creating the Internet, drones and stealth technology. They have been innovating since 1961 and are still considered to be the trailblazers of technical innovation. One way they do this is by setting a fixed term to anyone who works there and printing the final day on his security badge, to serve as a constant reminder that the time to do something big is running out.

Urgency is being used as an innovation tool!

In an interview with Kyree Leary (nov.2017), a former executive at General Motors, he estimated that in about five years most cars will be autonomous.

Companies inside, such as GM, and outside the automotive industry, Google, for example, are gearing up to that day.

This will be an entire industry that will have to understand how to undergo significant innovation - or perish.

Congratulations to CheckPoint founder and CEO, Gil Shwed, who will be awarded the first Israel Prize in the field of technology and innovation (19/4/18).

SKILL, EVALUATION, INNOVATION Large organizations, governments, NGOs or corporations, all have one thing in common: they were created some time ago and were optimized for one purpose. This is the modern theory of management, the usual way of doing things. But what happens when you want to break from habit and create a new line of business or a project that is not naturally ingrained in your organization’s DNA? That leads to the innovator’s dilemma.

Ahi Gvirtsman, VP of Innovation for a large international corporation and author of “The PEAK Innovation Principles,” has some thoughts on how to deal with this dilemma.

THE INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA

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There are success stories of organizations that are able to innovate but it usually has to do with a strong leader or a fortuitous series of events. There is no real story of executing innovation in a systematic way. This is where Ahi comes in.

We discussed his main challenge as an innovation professional and Ahi said, “There’s the challenge that everybody thinks is the challenge and there’s a real challenge that most people don’t see. The obvious challenge is that organizations think that the key to innovation is having great ideas. That’s what 80% of resources are devoted to – generating creativity. Most organizations are trying to innovate by trying to generate great ideas, to be exposed to creativity.” Ahi thinks that the real problem is somewhere else. The real challenge is not about the creativity. “You can take the best idea ever, an idea with high potential, you love this idea, you’re funding it, but in the end, 99.99% of the value of the idea will fade away and disappear.” The reason is that organizations aren’t built to properly evaluate and then execute innovative projects which, by definition, come with massive amounts of uncertainty and require the organization to do things it is not accustomed to.

“We are asking the organization to do something that is new and not natural. Commonly, projects require normal

project management tools. However, organizations try to manage innovation projects like regular projects as well, when they should be handled differently. Many of the functions in the organization that are involved on the outskirts of such a project have to work on something a little different than what they are used to. They might not have the skills and the knowledge to do that, so the organization doesn’t actually have the skills and tools they need for a successful project.

“So, you have missing skills and, added to that, you have the challenge of not understanding the importance of constant evaluation and measurement of the project. You have to measure everything and adjust, eventually eliminating uncertainty, eliminating risks. The organizations are building instead of measuring and not thinking about what happens after we actually have the project.”

Ahi thinks corporations fail with innovation just like Startups by making unvalidated assumptions. He says they fall into the trap of thinking, for example, “I have a great market presence and I want to create some valuable product. Because I want to enter this new market, I could use some channel that I already have in order to sell this product. Why do I need to establish a new channel from scratch?” In reality, executing such a plan still demands much more attention and adjustment that organizations aren’t equipped, or are simply unwilling, to make. We don’t think about all the ramifications when we establish an innovation project.

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A

hi thinks that the real problem is somewhere else. The real challenge is not about the creativity. “You can take the best idea ever, an idea with high potential, you love this idea, you’re funding it, but in the end, 99.99% of the value of the idea will fade away and disappear.” The reason is that organizations aren’t built to properly evaluate and then execute innovative projects which, by definition, come with massive amounts of uncertainty and require the organization to do things it is not accustomed to.

AMAZON - MAKING IT WORK Amazon carved the way they do things. Employees are expected to take risks. In business they experiment, they try things and learn from their failures and their failures have inspired them to launch something like Alexa. And, as an Amazon customer, you feel constantly that the company is doing a better job to satisfy the customer; they are constantly changing. They have been able to grow without losing their innovative spirit.

THE STARTUP TREND Ahi mentions that he sees techniques and tools that startups apply making their way into large organizations.

It’s happening very slowly because if you look at the low tech environment – government establishments, factories, traditional industry – it’s very difficult for low tech organizations to assimilate the cutting edge technology. But they need the innovation just like everyone else because that can change their business substantially.

Innovation management applies any form of change very slowly.

Ahi expresses concern for this trend – organizations are now more aware of the fact that they need to innovate; however, they are going for it in a completely wrong way.

They are focused on the ideas but they have no idea what happens next. You have your startup fair, you get a few ideas. But what does that do? What happens next? That’s actually quite concerning.

INNOVATION DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN TECHNOLOGY

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Ahi is excited about his work with the Tel Aviv municipality, which started about 2.5 years ago. One example of the outcomes of this work is a project called “Spacebook.” Two teachers came up with the idea that libraries are basically wasted space inside the school. The idea was to repurpose that environment where you can do more things than just borrow books. This space is not just about learning. It is also about the community. It became a hub for the kids not just from the school but from all over the area. This is what innovation is all about – the experiment included an element of uncertainty because schools are not used to doing something like this. So they said, “Let’s do this in one school and let’s measure the success. And then we can spread it to other schools.”

The thing that Ahi loves about this project is that it answers the problem: “How can we innovate without technology?”

The innovation is not about hi-tech; it’s not about cutting edge technology. Technology should be used for the purpose of innovation, but in itself it’s not innovation. That is a key distinction many people miss.

The innovation is not about

hi-tech; it’s not about cutting edge technology. Technology should be used for the purpose of innovation, but in itself it’s not innovation.

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INNOVATION IN NINE

By Elena Donets, Global Partner @Duco

Is your Organization innovative?

All (or most) organizations want to be considered innovative, but few actually innovate in an organized, reliable or effective way. There are many methods and models for innovation: Closed, Open, On the edge. Some try to spark innovation through ad hoc efforts like hackathons or task forces; others set up accelerators and incubators to work with startups, while some, like P&G, build large-scale innovation factories. Whatever the model, the basic blocs are the same - Ideas, People and Process.

Innovation managers are tasked with bringing some order to the chaos of changing worlds. In this article you will find platforms and software that will help you do just that. From sourcing and managing ideas through the Open Innovation model, to Ideation platforms and community management, we are proposing a way of maintaining innovation for the long term.

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THE HARD WORK OF INNOVATION: 9 TOOLS TO HELP YOU MANAGE

THE HARD WORK OF INNOVATION: 9 TOOLS TO HELP YOU TO MANAGE Open Innovation Open Innovation applies the principles of free trade to innovation, advancing new ideas through the use of tools such as partnerships, joint ventures, licensing and strategic alliances. By collaborating with outsiders—including customers, vendors and even competitors—Open Innovation enables the laws of comparative advantage to drive the efficient allocation of R&D resources. By reaching beyond corporate borders, a company can import lower-cost, higher-quality ideas from a wide array of world-class experts to improve the speed, quality and cost of innovation. This approach allows the business to redirect its own innovation resources to where it has clear competitive advantages. Ideas are also exported to businesses that can put them to better use.

Chaordix Chaordix specializes in community innovation and crowd activation. Chaordix uses crowdsourcing to help organizations gain sustained community engagement and predictive intelligence with their very own technology, Crowd Intelligence™.

The process can be applied to deliver ideas, intelligence and solutions from the collective wisdom of participants of team insights programs, B2B forums, and product innovation communities.

100% Open 100% Open is an open innovation platform servicing top-notch corporations. Clueless how to start? Their 100% Open Tool Kit provides a list of what you need for your company, and suggests what you should use. For example, are you setting an innovation strategy? Then you’ll be provided with the necessary tools you need to facilitate the process.

OpenIDEO: A Platform to Harness Collaboration for Social Good

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OpenIDEO is an open innovation platform where people from all corners of the world collaboratively tackle some of the toughest global issues through launching Challenges, programs, and other tailored experiences.

A Challenge is a three-to-five month collaborative process that focuses attention on the topic and creates a space for community members to contribute and build off each other. This approach is modeled on IDEO’s design thinking methodology.

Increasingly, companies will compete based on the speed at which they can discover, develop and implement ideas for new products and services. To compete at this level, organizations must efficiently tap into the creativity of all of their employees. Not only that, but they must also be adept at channeling employees’ creative energies to key business issues — gathering and evaluating ideas efficiently, and quickly identifying those with the greatest bottom-line potential for implementation.

Idea management technology is a type of enterprise software that can help to make such an innovation strategy possible. These new Web-based applications enable companies to solicit targeted ideas from all employees - regardless of their geographic location — and funnel them to a centralized online database. Idea management systems also provide structured processes for evaluating and sharing ideas, so managers can quickly zero in on those with the greatest potential.

Brightidea This innovation management software is a SaaS (software-as-a-service), accessible via a Web browser, for tracking innovation programs within organizations. It’s a good arsenal for innovation program leaders who have advanced knowledge in harnessing open innovation within an organization, where a record of all the activities, from hackathons to crowdsourcing to design competitions, is managed. The platform provides a complete suite from idea collection to the execution of the entire program to global customers.

Spigit Spigit participants are already familiar with your business, so you can gain more valuable ideas for product development and innovation from them. Who are the participants? The community itself, which includes the employees, partners and customers. With extra (and by all means, hundreds and thousands of) brains and eyes to think and see beyond the company’s perspective, you can identify and drill for new ideas.

Community Communities serve many roles. In innovation, they are one of the major elements that ensure sustainable, repeatable and scalable innovation. Community provides the organization with the option to work outside the structured hierarchy, and identify the people who are most interested and committed to carrying out innovation projects. Through the community, innovation leaders can gain and provide procedural, resource, social and knowledge support as well as amplify their achievements. They may come in different sizes and levels of inclusivity, but they all serve the purpose of advancing innovation in and out of the organization.

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Idea Management

SOME PLATFORMS ON WHICH INNOVATION COMMUNITIES CAN BE MANAGED: 1.

EcoIdeas is a innovation community management platform, a space in which your members would love to stay connected, participate in challenges, and attend events. Contact: tom@compie.co.il

2. eXo Platform offers a large set of collaborative tools uniquely integrated around a social layer. It has a user-centric design that generates spontaneous engagement. In addition, eXo Platform is open source software and favors open standards for better integration with existing IT systems such as a user directory, single sign-on systems or business-specific applications. It’s also an applicative platform coming with APIs and high customizability that can be leveraged by developers for socially-enabling your business.

What makes eXo Platform a prime tool for collaboration is its design as a social application. It is built as a social platform and is integrated with social tools that make work and work-related processes, such as document management, community building, etc, fast and easy.

3.

Vanilla is cloud-based community forum software for building customer loyalty, growing sales and improving customer service. Vanilla is powerful platform to serve as a portal for customers to help each other and deflect tickets, where customers ask questions and accept each others’ answers.

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Using a combination of these tools to manage the different stages of the innovation process – from ideation to implementation – can assist you as an innovation leader to ensure prolific, sustainable innovation in your organization.

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THE PLACES INNOVATION COMES FROM MARK ZAWACKI RUNS A CONSULTING FIRM CALLED 650 LABS THAT IS BASED IN SILICON VALLEY BUT HAS A GLOBAL CUSTOMER BASE. 650 LABS WORK IN OVER 80 COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD AND THEIR CLIENTS ARE FROM A VARIETY OF INDUSTRIES: HEALTHCARE, MEDIA, FINANCIAL SERVICES, AUTOMOTIVES AND MORE. WE CAUGHT UP WITH MARK SOMEWHERE BETWEEN FLIGHTS. INNOVATION FOR THE DIGITAL AGE Mark believes corporate innovation does not work well, and he knows why. Large organizations trying to innovate, recognize the world is shifting from the industrial to the digital age. They can see it and try to emulate it, but they’re doing it within an industrial age model. They are trying to innovate inside their core business which was built for reliability, predictability and stability, and creates mostly short-term projects.

On top of that, there is a management layer called bonuses where everyone is focused on financial results which creates conflict. Here is your organization built for reliability, predictability and stability; along comes digital thinking and the need to innovate, and it’s not working because you’re stuck inside a risk averse core.

Mark’s solution is to remove innovation from the core and do it from the outside. It’s called Edge innovation.

Creating innovation outside the organization – where you’re less limited by the rules, policies, hierarchy and culture, you are able to move much faster. When you’re doing it from the inside, it usually ends up being just a lot of noise without results.

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ON THE EDGE Innovating from the edge is not a new idea; in fact, it’s a 75 year-old idea that goes back to WWII. In the middle of the war the US government realized that the Germans were making better jet-planes. They reached out to Lockheed Martin and said, “We need to make our jet planes faster.”

Lockheed Martin decided they could not complete the

project, and meet the tight deadline within their existing structure because it was too bureaucratic, too slow and too procedure-oriented. They decided to create an entity free from all those blocks and work outside the main Lockheed Martin body – and that’s the legacy of “Skunk Works.” We still use this term today – the idea of creating innovation outside the company because the core is too slow. It’s used to build things fast without the red tape.

So companies need to understand this core versus edge model, working outside but still with the essence and DNA of the parent company.

GET THE RIGHT PEOPLE Large organizations also need to figure out how to build their organizational DNA to attract top talent. The top Israeli companies need to realize they’re in a war of talent. As we move more and more towards Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, these skills will become the core business. If you don’t have a way to hire top people, you won’t have the talent to deliver in the next decade.

TALKING TO DISRUPTION Mark says, there’s a recipe of corporate innovation where you open a lab, and then you play with startups but, in reality, there’s a very limited value in that. There are two big challenges. One challenge is a very high failure rate (about 90%) for startups. Secondly, Mark says the most disruptive companies don’t even want to talk to corporates. By definition, they go around them.

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Airbnb didn’t go partner with the hospitality industry, even iPhone didn’t go partner with the mobile industry.

Corporates have this false sense of security that they’re seeing the disruption but the truth is they’re not seeing the disruption: the disruption doesn’t want to talk to them.

THE THREE TIERS OF INNOVATION Mark describes his work as the intersection of three domains. Picture three circles. One is disruptive innovation. The second is strategy and growth. The last one is organizational change.

INTERNAL CROWDSOURCING Mark has recently done some work with Zurich Insurance and the CEO, Mario Greco. Mark describes Greco as a pretty refreshing CEO. Starting the project he said, “We need a new strategy. Instead of hiring consultants to tell us, we’re going to crowdsource internally.”

Greco set up something called “strategy task force” which Mark was involved with. Zurich has 60,000 employees. 2,500 applied to this special project and only 40 were selected. It was a 5-month project and they had built the group of 40 from all over the world, Mexico, New York, Zurich and more. The group members came to Zurich every other week where they created a new strategy, internally, using just the smart talent in the organizations. It was extremely motivational for them.

Mark’s now replicated it with two other clients. They’re doing it in two other locations right now. It crowdsources the best ideas, motivates people. That’s the really exciting part of the project.

Mark says the most

disruptive companies don’t even want to talk to corporates.

By definition, they go around them. Airbnb didn’t go partner with the hospitality industry, even iPhone didn’t go partner with the mobile industry.

INNOV8RS CONFRENCE AT A GLANCE

By Talya Vaish

Bright and early at Innov8rs Tel Aviv, Sari Migdal from IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries) tells us that “The Innov8rs conference is great from our point of view, as it is the main connection between the big industries and startups. This allows us to create new ideas and to find the right ideas.”

Getting geared up to hear all the knowledgeable speakers present, Zvi Maayan, the executive VP business Dev, explains what corporate innovation means to him. “It’s like breaking walls and doing things that corporations do not normally do. Corporate innovation inspires you to set bars higher than any other with the goal of getting there in the end.”

Tom Maister, project manager of Compie, described the company’s system in one line: “We’re building an innovation pipeline fuelled by a constant flow of challenges, high value ideas and product concepts.”

At the Innov8rs event, Sofie Lindblom pointed out how she views the conference: “It’s a great community and the first one of its kind.” Sofie explained that she found the community four years ago, while she was working alone with Spotify.

Says Sofie, “I followed the newsletter to find like-minded people as I believe it’s an extremely important forum to find common ground and to establish a language for innovation management.” Sofie also gave a life lesson she had learned through her experience in the industry: “Don’t wait!”

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Isaac Greengruz expressed his opinion on the Innov8rs conference. He had been to many innovation conventions in the past year, but this was the first time he felt he had gained new perspectives on so many topics. Isaac also confirmed that he now has valuable insights to take home with him.

Sarah Thurber, the managing partner of FourSight, sharing her view on the Innov8rs conference concludes that this is “a great collection of speakers.” She goes on to explain that “It is always useful to get both points of view, insights from people who are in it on the ground level as well as from a theoretical or consultant point of view.”

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Moshe Ushpiz, an innovation manager who worked at SKY TV, shared his thoughts on the speakers he listened to today and his overall opinion on the Innov8rs event.

He says, “There were several people I really enjoyed listening to today and, throughout the event, I thought they were really great. I was very impressed by Mathilde Durvy (Cisco) with her presentation and activities. I also thought that Shachaf Snir (Amdocs) and Omer Yuval (IAF) were very interesting.

I think the Innov8rs event is a wonderful opportunity for people who are engaged in professional innovation to connect from different areas in Israel and with guests from abroad.

From what I can see, there are not many offers to the public for innovation management positions in the industry – which is a pity. Innov8rs sets the stage to publicly speak about it, not just as a word but rather as the core of how you would actually use innovation in a corporation: Which methods to use? How to change? How to grow? In a company or an organization these are very important topics.”

Itay Zetelny, a speaker at today’s event, explains what corporate innovation means to him at EY. “Corporate innovation for us is about open innovation. It’s about creating a disruption in order to be able to integrate new ideas within the organisation which will touch the main pain points and, ultimately, create a significant change in the company.”

BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR IN A LARGE ORGANIZATION Avichay is an organizational consultant, specializing in corporate innovation and a Global Partner at Duco, a consulting firm that specializes in entrepreneurial processes in large organizations. He has been doing this for the past five years.

Before that Avichay was a producer in the media industry.

THE INNOVATION GAP

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After working as an organizational consultant for a few years Avichay found himself discussing innovation often and came to realize he wasn’t bringing enough value to his customers as a traditional consultant. He met Elena and Dan, his now-partners in Duco and they started discussing the gap between the outcomes innovation provides to the Israeli startup ecosystem and the outcomes it brings in the corporate world. Over this period of discussions the three of them came to realize this gap is mostly due to the lack of execution methodologies within large organizations.

Meaning, corporate innovation was most focused on the ideation and the product development stage but there wasn’t enough focus on the product market fit part of the innovative solutions. They believe this part is the most important in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the most intense and the missing link. They created methodologies and model that enable corporations to execute innovative ideas in the same manner as they would do in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

FOR ORGANIZATIONS TODAY IS TO REALIZE THAT IDEAS ARE NOT THE FOCUS OF THE INNOVATION. Ideas are just the starting point of a much more important journey that continues in product market fit and implantation of cutting edge technologies. Such a process should be measurable, systematic, managed so it speaks the language of the organization and embraces the organic organizational mindset. Innovation is a strategic management process and not an ideation event.

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MEASURE ONCE, MEASURE TWICE

Avichay says, based on his experience, the main challenge for companies is their inability to measure and foresee the potential within innovative ideas. They either disregard the idea as crazy or heavily invest in an unchecked idea without any room for staggered validation and pivoting.

Duco has recently finished very challenging project with the IDF. It took time for the organization to understand why it has to innovate. They knew they should, because everyone else was, but they didn’t fully understand why. The process included mapping the pros and cons of an innovation unit. On the one hand, it made life a bit more difficult for people who got used to do things a certain way, on the other hand, the army’s customers are usually young and up to date people. Another challenge in this project was the difficulty of sharing information in such a highly classified organization. The process took over 6 months. Avichay started by interviewing many of the key people in the unit and was able to find the right motivations for innovative processes and to design a system that included measurement and the option to correct course. The emphasis on creating the right process, which included constant evaluation and reevaluation insured the project was not only a publicity stunt, but more importantly, will bring change to the way decisions are taken and new technologies are embraced.

Ideas are just the starting

point of a much more important journey that continues to the product market fit and the implanting of cutting edge technologies. Such a process should be measurable, systematic, and well-managed

FROM ENTREPRENEUR

TO CORPORATE INNOVATOR Dan Toma is an innovation practitioner who doesn’t define himself as a consultant. Dan started out as a start-up entrepreneur with a couple of companies of his own; then he worked with a few startups and accelerators. Dan started getting more interested in corporate innovation, at first out of curiosity. He found it fascinating that people who don’t have any money are able to create amazing products that people like, while the people who have ample funding are not able to do so. It seemed paradoxical to him how organizations striving for liquidity are being more innovative than organizations that have a lot of financial resources at their disposal.

Dan started getting more and more involved with this topic, got a job with a major company in Europe and saw with his own eyes the difference between startup and corporation culture. Dan says he was really excited to work in this new arena but, at the same time, it was really frustrating to face so many challenges and roadblocks. He started to believe there has to be a better way of doing things. With his two co- authors (Esther E. Gons and Tendayi Viki), he wrote “The Corporate Startup,” in which they report that, even while working in different industries and locations, they encountered the same questions and difficulties.

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Dan is proud of the work he has done with corporations.

But one project he is really proud of is not a corporate innovation per se. In 2015-2016 he was working in South East Asia for the government of Vietnam and helped to develop a national innovation ecosystem including an accelerator program. Part of the project included taking all the lessons they learned and exporting them to neighboring Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

CORPORATE LIFE INSURANCE The way Dan sees corporate innovation is that of a life insurance for a corporation. Without innovation, a corporation cannot exist. It will not be able to survive in the future. In much the same way as you would pay a monthly premium for life or health insurance as an individual, so do corporations need to budget for innovation. If you spend on innovation, you have the option to adapt and grow, although you may not necessarily need it. However, if you are not spending on innovation, you have no way of growing. In today’s disruptive environment, Dan finds it shortsighted not to invest in innovation. Even if you don’t want to capitalize on those options created by the innovation department, you still have them in case something goes south and you can pretty much try to utilize those existing new ideas that you’ve created.

THE INNOVATION WEB Corporate innovation is not a structured list but a web of challenges influencing each other. One of them is definitely culture. A certain corporate culture instills in people the fear of trying out new things – it’s all inherited in the culture. Another thread is Human Resources. The HR department keeps hiring people that are really good at following directions, when you actually need people who are breaking out, trying to find and do new things.

Budgeting is another big issue – it’s crucial how you structure the budget for innovation. Another aspect of this web is how to measure innovation.

Although there are many differences in challenges and strengths among countries or industries, you can see the same issues hounding them. In some organizations they

THE DOWNFALL OF THE CORPORATE ACCELERATOR Back in 2014-2015 corporations were really happy to invest in corporate accelerator programs. Dan believes we are starting to see the downfall of such programs. In fact, a lot of corporations are now moving away from the idea of “et’s build a lab and the innovation will happen,” which he believes is a step in the right direction.

NO SILVER BULLET The other new trend Dan keeps seeing is that many corporations are now moving into start-up collaborations.

They say, “Well, we can’t create new ideas in our labs, so let’s just choose to collaborate with startups.” This is happening in many different companies throughout Europe but he doesn’t know if this is good or bad or where it’s going to end up.

Dan believes this start-up approach is still not going to solve the problems of corporate innovation mainly because corporate leaders should stop having a silver bullet approach to sparking innovation. They think: “The silver bullet is called our accelerator”, or “The silver bullet is called startup collaboration”.

No, there are a lot of things that you need to do in order to become innovative. Just doing one is not going to help.

The way Dan sees

corporate innovation is that of a life insurance for a corporation.

Without innovation, a corporation cannot exist. It will not be able to survive in the future. innovation, but in itself it’s not innovation.

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might find it hard to practice ideation, while in others there might be an over-regulated environment. But it all boils down to the same thing: lack of incentive to innovate.

FUTURE INNOVATION EVENTS

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March 28-29 2018 Houston

The Texas Open Innovation Conference is a forum where business, government and academia intersect to spark more development, collaboration and dialogue for the advancement of technology and ideas.

IOT TECH EXPO GLOBAL 2018

April 18-19 2018 London The IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo and AI Expo Global 2018 will bring together 12,000 attendees from across the world for two days of top level content exploring the entire ecosystem. This co-hosted event series will highlight the convergence of the latest technologies, and explore the opportunity for collaboration and partnership. Industry leaders will be sharing their knowledge and case studies, in addition to hosting a vast exhibition with over 300 companies showcasing the latest innovations, to enable visitors to experience the fusion of these three technologies under one banner.

CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER SUMMIT April 25-26 2018 London

At the Chief Innovation Officer Summit in London on April 25 & 26, world renowned brands will explore the opportunities and challenges within innovation in today’s competitive climate.

THE OPEN INNOVATION SUMMIT April 25-26 2018 London

We are pleased to announce the Open Innovation Summit which will take place in London on April 25 & 26! Join us and learn open innovation best-practices and applications from leaders of world renowned companies. Hear from over 25 industry expert keynote speakers, and get involved and share your thoughts in interactive panels with your peers!

FUTURE FESTIVAL NEW YORK

May 16-17 2018 New York “Our two-day New York Business Conference immerses you in the most important trends, while connecting you with top innovators from across the city. This is Trend Hunter’s second year bringing the insights of Future Festival to New York City, so we’re pumped to make this a memorable and valuable experience. See you at the conference!”

JOURNÉE INNOVATION 2018 - INNOVATION ECOYSTEMS AGORA May 28 2018 Paris

ISPIM INNOVATION CONFERENCE

17-20 June 2018 Stockholm A 3-day, multi-track conference full of thought-provoking innovation management content

LONDON INNOVATION CONFERENCE July 5 2018 London

“Our London innovation conference brings our world-renowned innovation and trend content to Europe. Our 1-Day Accelerated Program is a trends conference combined with an innovation conference. It’ll bring you all of the essential content from our multi-day marquee event in Toronto.

Find out why Trend Hunter is the #1 trend firm in the world, and start to prototype your future now.”

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TEXAS OPEN INNOVATION CONFERENCE

FUTUREFEST

July 6-7 2018 London FutureFest, one of Europe’s largest festivals of the future, invites you on a breathtaking journey designed to explore how the most pressing challenges of our time could be tackled by developing radical alternative future visions.

FUTURE FESTIVAL CHICAGO July 19 2018 Chicago

“Our Chicago Innovation Conference is a 1-Day Accelerated Program that brings Chicago innovators the best of our epic Future Festival – Trend Hunter’s multi-day trends, insight and innovation mega-event. This is our second year bringing the accelerated trends & innovation conference to Chicago, so it’s a great opportunity to experience next year’s trends from the #1 trend firm while prototyping your future.”

HELLO TOMORROW Summer Paris

Hello Tomorrow is a global organization which gathers together a community of the world’s brightest talent to propel collaboration between promising young “disruptors” and leading entrepreneurs, executives and investors, to bring breakthrough technology to the market.

FUTURE FESTIVAL TORONTO

September 18-20 2018 Paris “Our Toronto innovation conference is our Future Festival World Summit, designed to be the ‘World’s Best Innovation Conference.’ Over 700 attendees come together to prototype their future. While most attendees come from all over the globe, Toronto, Canada is our HQ city with trend safaris, workshops and thought leaders. If you are free to choose, we highly recommend the Canadian conference versus any other city event because it is the complete 3 experience.”

LEAN STARTUP WEEK

October 29 - November 16 2018

Lean Startup Week brings the big ideas from Eric Ries’s books off the page to show how organizations are making them real around the world. Alongside keynotes and case studies, we offer workshops and mentoring sessions at Lean Startup Week, where you can have more immersive experiences, breaking off a chunk of the practice and working through it with seasoned experts. The learning you come away with happens on all levels, from the practical to the inspirational.

CORPORATE INNOVATION SUMMIT November 6 2018 Lisbon

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The Corporate Innovation Summit is a one-day and invite-only event right before Web Summit.

Expect intimate workshops, presentations and networking events, all with the people operating at the forefront of the 21st-century enterprise.

YOUR PARTNER FOR INNOVATION GROWTH. Passionate innovation experts, uniquely focused on accelerating Corporate Innovation using cutting edge intrapreneurial models in the existing organizational ecosystem.

INNOVATION

We develop

INTRAPRENEURSHIP

TAILOR MADE,

state of the art entrepreneurial tools, that keep your organization

MOVING FORWARD.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Corporate innovation, in many cases, concludes at ideation and motivational events, but does not reach the true goal of achieving competitive advantage.

In order to attain this goal, innovation must be materialized in the form of entrepreneurship within an organization, intrapreneurship!

WE BUILD PROACTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE ORGANIZATIONS THROUGH CUTTING EDGE ENTREPRENEURIAL SOLUTIONS. DEVELOPING PEOPLE

Creating an entrepreneurial mindset and community in the organization

Practicing entrepreneurial skill set Establishing mentorship programs Building entrepreneurial management programs

DEVELOPING KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge creation and management

Enhancing a knowledge sharing environment Fostering cooperation and collaboration with academia and customers

DEVELOPING INFRASTRUCTURE

Building an innovation infrastructure and principles

Designing entrepreneurial processes Developing innovation strategy Creating a network of strategic partnerships with the relevant entrepreneurial ecosystem

o f f i c e @ d uco . i o | w w w . d uco . i o | + 9 7 2 - 52 - 6 88- 3336

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Spring 2018