Before Alpha: Rebooting Corporate Innovation

Over the last decade, we’ve seen a meteoric rise in “corporate innovation”. In response to digital disruption, innovation programs, centers, and funds have been spun up as a means to incorporate and outmaneuver the future. These efforts have largely fallen flat, leaving innovation at an inflection point.

We’re launching Before Alpha, an innovation partnership, to re-plot the course for innovation.

Innovation has a blind spot that people have not been able to evade. Technology no longer enables change, it incites it. It is changing how and why we do work. Consumers have adapted and evolved and they are demanding technology at a similarly rapid pace — forcing every company to revisit both who they are and what they do. Companies designed for a pre-digital economy simply can’t be successful with today’s rapidly changing landscape and expectations — let alone address the challenges of tomorrow.

Innovation has failed for a number of different fundamental reasons:

1. Business models are in transition and can never return to their former selves. Technology is not just changing the way we do business but why the business exists. Well-worn business models are eroding quickly and will never be the same again. More efficient, often divergent, methods prevail over existing, antiquated ones.
2. Customer expectations outpace company offerings, leaving a permanent dissatisfaction. Customers have instant access to information, social proof, and competition, so companies now compete for both attention and dollars on a global scale. Customers demand experiences and authenticity over polish and promise — a puzzle to those laser-focused on the portrayal of perfection.
3. Processes are slow; people are slower, which renders real change almost impossible. After decades of refining and shaping an organization, most companies have grown large and lethargic, incapable of capturing the nimbleness of their earliest days and their upstart contemporaries. Agile processes and risk-taking are required for revolutionary times.
4. Incremental product updates are the norm for organizations encumbered with process and free of fresh perspective. Informed consumers can quickly see through “packaging as innovation,” compounding the perception of problems facing companies. Existing products and services offer an incompatible platform for innovation. Instead, agile iterations offer opportunities to experiment, evaluate, and expand on new learnings and success.

Companies no longer need to suffer this fate. We believe that the future of innovation is iteration — the continuous development, deployment and assessment of small changes toward a sustainable future. Entrepreneurship holds the template for future success.

Before Alpha is an innovation partner, designed for rapid iteration, by industry insiders. That’s a mouthful worth unpacking.

Partnership is our model. We believe that innovation requires building strong bridges and buy-in. When all parties are aligned and moving in the same direction, we take advantage of everything we can. We will work alongside our customers as a team member. We believe that, as an outsider, we can help identify, organize, and qualify new opportunities.

Rapid Iteration is our method. We embrace the power of constraints and lightweight processes. We understand the discomfort of the unknown, but respect the power of making small, educated steps that can correct themselves. We judge everything in terms of the knowledge and insight it yields.

Industry Insiders are our foundation. We are a collective of founders, investors, domain experts, and creators with first-person experience defining, creating, and driving all manner of invention and disruption. Expertise has gone real-time and we rely on our network to find the best people with the freshest ideas. We believe that this kind of expertise offers an unfair advantage we’re ready to take advantage of.

We’ve put together an amazing core team to drive this vision. We come from many different parts of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, from investors to advisors to founders. Our team includes:

Co-Founders

• Sumeet Jain, venture capitalist — identifies and sizes opportunities
• Gregarious Narain, serial entrepreneur — designs and develops solutions

Strategic Advisors

• Brian Solis, futurist and analyst — distills and connects expertise to enterprises
• Balaji Gopinath — corporate innovator — maps the startup ecosystem to the corporate landscape

We’ve already started working with our first partners. We’re looking forward to finding the next ones. Find out more at http://beforealpha.com.

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Gregarious Narain is a serial entrepreneur and product strategist. A reformed designer and developer, he writes on his experiences as a founder, strategist, and father on the regular. Work with him at Before Alpha, connect on LinkedIn, follow on Facebook, or say hi on Twitter.

Format and style of this post credited to Phil Libin's announcement for All Turtles, an A.I. startup studio.