Why is innovation more important than ever?

This is the question that opened up our recent Corporate Innovation in Action conference.

And as I said in my introduction to this event, answering this question leads us to an even more fundamental question: “why innovate?”

This has been a central question in my work with leaders of large organisations in the last decade. And when you boil it down to the essential I’ve only encountered three reasons:

1. Some leaders use innovation as a way to manage the risk of disruption of a business.

   They leverage innovation to “play defense”.

2. Some leaders need innovation to achieve their growth goals, sometimes in new arenas beyond the core business.

   They leverage innovation to “play offense”.

3. Some leaders introduce a test & learn approach in their organisation to find their way in a highly uncertain environment.

   They make innovation their new “game plan” to lead in uncertainty.

Now is any of this still relevant today?

Well… Our economic climate seems as uncertain as it ever was and recent technology developments (e.g. in AI) are creating new risks and opportunities that might lead to the creative destruction of previously successful business models and the creation of new businesses and industries we can’t even start to imagine.

So, today more then ever, leaders of large organisations need to leverage innovation to:

• Manage the risk of disruption of their business(es),

• Deliver on growth ambition and targets,

• Adapt (test & learn) to a highly uncertain environment.

Why do you innovate in your organisation?

---

More posts on innovation

---