Inspiration Needs Execution: Takeaways From the 2016 Front End of Innovation Conference

Published in

disruption at readytalk

3 min readMay 16, 2016

This May, I attended the Front End of Innovation Conference in Boston. Innovators from many large industries were in attendance.

The Need to Innovate is a Given

Many of the brands in attendance are huge, and recognize they must evolve or die. But we’re all trying to figure out how to thrive in this rapidly changing world. The question is not “should we innovate” but “how should we?”

Innovation is Culture

Support for innovation must come from across the organization, and not simply as lip service. There must be some structures in place to allow for innovation to occur. Specifically, there was a lot of discussion around Design Thinking, which focuses on identifying areas of opportunity. Those who ‘think differently’ should be encouraged and supported. Innovation Labs that are kept separate from the core business can help ensure employees aren’t stuck in the rut of prevailing ways of doing things.

Focus on Big Trends and Strategic Imperatives

We need to focus on big shifts in the world and anticipate the implications. We cannot stay fixated on small shifts related to our existing industry. This is the space of uncertainty in which we can truly seek to be innovative.

Intrapreneurs Serve Two Masters

A great idea is unlikely to survive without support; getting internal stakeholders excited about a vision is critical. Keynote speakers Dan Heath (Made to Stick and Switch) and Jonah Berger (Contagious) presented frameworks for proposing ideas to increase their likelihood to incite excitement and adoption.

Idea Generation from Across the Org (and Beyond!) is Desirable, but Leaders Must Help Shepherd The Best Ideas

From Shell TechWorks to Pfitzer’s Dare to Try Program to the P&G Clay Street Project, there were many stories of the importance of a dedicated team to work through ideas. Sometimes an ideator would be included as part of the team moving it forward, but there was not a lot of talk of a first-time innovator coming up with an idea and exploring it on his own. Again, this is a matter of support: there may be fewer ideas that get explored, but they may have a higher likelihood of success.