Hot Topics and Take-Aways from the12th Annual New Product Innovation & Development: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange

Erin Graham Production Manager, Events Frost & Sullivan

Patricia Jacoby Publications Editor, Events Frost & Sullivan

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

While those who attended this year’s 12^thAnnual New Product Innovation & Development: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, did not necessarily do the impossible, this highly engaged group definitely had fun as they explored many different approaches to business-to-business innovation. From learning about the latest B2B applications of artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented reality (AR), to learning how to ignite the internal creativity necessary for a truly innovative mindset, everyone left with inspiration and implementable ideas that would have seemed impossible even a few short years ago.

Alessandro Vigilante, Head of Global Innovation Ecosystem, Fidelity Investments, opened the event with a keynote entitled Every Company is a Software Company: Re-Imagining Your Business and its Environment in the Digital Era. Alessandro urged participants to frame their businesses to accommodate digital disruption and new technologies. He encouraged everyone to explore and nurture adjacent business areas. A key take-away: In order to be successful today, companies must have a framework to find and nurture digital adjacent assets and fold them into the company.

Mohan Nair, Senior Vice President, Chief Innovative Officer, Cambia Health Solutions, presented Going from Customer Focused to Customer Obsessed. This session was definitely a hot topic. Turning the popular “customer obsession” business focus on its head, Nair proclaimed that although it is very important that companies remain customer obsessed, it’s also true that they can become too customer obsessed and lose sight of who they are and what they want to represent. He reminded participants of companies that have gone out of business since 2010, all due to their customer-centered model.

Mohan observed that another big factor causing these companies to fail centered on structural change. It used to be that companies were 80% consistency and 20% innovation, now the reverse is true. Today, innovation is a weapon of transformation, so companies need to embrace volatility instead of consistency. Mohan recommended that companies find a greater cause, define their value proposition, and build a competence beyond customer obsession.

The panel discussion, IoT: Changing the Way Value and Profit Are Created, moderated by Jeffrey Worsham, Sector Lead, Innovation, Northrop Grumman Corporation was another session that had the participants talking.  Examining issues such as the importance of Iot security and success metrics, a key learning was that beyond all the hype, Iot is essential to  making businesses more efficient, predicting outcomes and correcting problems. With IoT, your business becomes a living organism.

Leland Maschmeyer, Chief Creative Officer, Chobani, delivered the Transformational Keynote, Pushing the Boundaries on Your Risk-Taking Comfort Level. Advocating a soulful approach to innovation, Leland expressed that to build a true culture of innovation, leaders should honor the inherent, often messy, creative process, and create an atmosphere where ideas can be fostered internally and fused with the external environment. Leland provided a business rationale for this approach when he noted that today’s workplace is changing. Scale and efficiency are losing to speed and flexibility. Many believe sustainable organizational advantage is dead. A key take-away: Execution, agility and creativity are the differentiators now.

In the Capstone Keynote, Culture Eats Strategy: Using it to Your Advantage to Inspire Innovation Action, John Klick, Innovation Catalyst, Dare to Try Program, Pfizer, marveled at all the great ideas presented at the 12^th Annual New Product Innovation & Development: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. He also noted that many participants were probably wondering how to begin implementing them. Klick summed up a key event take-away and a common organizational challenge when he said, “The problem with well-managed companies is that they struggle to innovate because they are well-managed. You could say they manage out all the innovation.”

As Klick stated, although it is difficult for established organizations to embrace a loose, entrepreneurial spirt, it can be done, often via allies and advocates who operate as go-betweens from the organization to idea generators or start-ups. It is also true that leading these large, layered organizations into a nimble, innovative mindset can sometimes feel like “doing the impossible,” as Walt Disney would say.