Innovation Roundtable Insights

Welcome once again to the Innovation Roundtable Insights Podcast! In this episode, Ferry Winter, Director of Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam at Shell discusses the company's approach to innovation and strategies for driving innovation across the company. He mentions a centralized technology organization, seed money for startups, academic partnerships, and ventures.  Ferry also emphasizes t...

Welcome once again to the Innovation Roundtable Insights Podcast! In this episode, PJ Mistry,  Foundry Strategy & Operations Lead at Unilever discusses  her experience partnering with social enterprises in Africa and Asia to meet the needs of low-income households. She expresses how partnerships and collaboration are critical to address major global challenges. This episode was recorded at the...

Welcome once again to the Innovation Roundtable Insights Podcast. We are thrilled to be back, featuring insights from leading innovation experts across various multinational corporations. Join us as we delve into cutting-edge ideas, strategies, and experiences that are shaping the future of innovation in the global marketplace. In this episode, Ulli, Vice President Artificial Intelligence and IoT...

Ilaria Iurilli, Global Digital Product Manager at Ingka Centres, explains how her team works on developing digital products for IKEA customers, highlighting how digital should amplify their experience rather than being an experience itself. She also explains the importance of how the connection to the company’s KPIs and business objective is a key criterion, both for selecting and adopting new tec...

Julia Hitzbleck, formerly Head of LifeHub Berlin/Corporate Innovation Berlin, talks about LifeHub Berlin, an internal incubator for ideas of employees embarking on a journey of learning and applying iterative methodologies such as design thinking, lean startup, and agile to develop new value propositions. This episode was recorded at the Innovation Roundtable workshop hosted by GE Power in Berlin...

Søren Bro, Group Director, Head of Ecosystems & Partnerships at Grundfos, talks about the company’s collaboration model with large players and startups, as well as partnership selection criteria including strategic fit, culture, and values, and how the company is positioning itself in the emerging ecosystems. He also discusses the process of digitalizing solutions, and testing and evaluating n...

Hartmut Mai, formerly Chief Regions & Markets Officer at Allianz, discusses how organizations should approach emerging technologies and, importantly, how to assess the impact they will have on the business. Mai dives into how Allianz organizes its digital projects, along with how the teams are set up and what is required from leadership. The conversation also tackles the privacy- and security-...

Serge Hermans, Head of Innovation Personal Care at Philips, discusses the role emerging technologies play in enabling new personalized solutions to consumers. In its move beyond products, Philips has implemented a wealth of changes to enable more experimentation and testing with users. Serge deliberates upon a few of his learnings from this work and his current role. This episode was recorded at t...

Bret Snyder, Chair and CEO at W.L. Gore, talks about nurturing a culture of innovation. Based on his work at W.L. Gore, Bret shares stories and lessons learned on the most effective methods, such as the dedicated “dabble time”, emergent leadership approach, and enabling agile play. This episode was recorded at the Innovation Roundtable workshop hosted by W.L. Gore in Newark, Delaware on Ambidextro...

Jean-François Barrand, Head of Innovation and Collaborative Work Faculty at Airbus’ AirBusiness Academy, delves into design thinking, lean startup, and agile methodologies to uncover how they can best be applied in large organizations. He also explains how these iterative methods can be combined with the traditional stage-gate framework, and how projects can transition between these approaches. Th...

Markus Bold, Managing Director at Chemovator, the business incubator of BASF, explains how the incubator is organized and connected to the core, and how partners are selected to engage in the company's innovation projects. Markus also explains how Chemovator prioritizes long-term innovation and how it extracts lessons from unsuccessful projects. This episode was recorded in June 2019 at the I...

David Gram, Intrapreneur in Residence, discusses how large and valuable brands can experiment with MVPs without risking their reputation. He also details the key characteristics of high-performing innovation teams.   This episode was recorded in June 2019 at the Innovation Roundtable workshop hosted by Allianz in Berlin on Internal & External Startups for New Business Creation. Visit Innovatio...

Olivier Delabroy, VP Digital Transformation, i-Lab & La Factory founder, discusses how Air Liquide sets up experiments and PoCs, how it selects test users, and which criteria it uses for evaluating success. He also details how companies can assess trends, leverage digital platforms, adjust their leadership styles, and build an effective digital transformation strategy. This episode was recorde...

Salima Douven, Director Digital Strategy & Innovation at HenkelX Ventures, talks about the unit’s startup collaboration strategy - how the unit leverages PoCs to enable business units to collaborate with startups, the startup scouting and selection process, as well as the guiding principles and processes needed for successful and agile collaboration. She also details the models used in the inv...

Axel Menneking, Vice President Startup Incubation and Venturing at hub:raum, explains how startups are selected to be developed in Deutsche Telekom's accelerator, and the conditions which must be in place for their sustained growth. Axel also details how Deutsche Telekom validates ideas and value propositions, and explains some of the key factors that determine successful partnerships. This e...

George Yip, Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Imperial College Business School, talks about the differences between innovation in China and the West. In this discussion, George also addresses concerns about the Chinese market such as those regarding IP infringement, government regulations, and technology security. He also highlights the overall importance of learning from China. This...

Nina Maldonado, Agile Transformation and Digital Innovation Manager at AkzoNobel, discusses the core elements of the company’s agile transformation journey and the importance of having the right mindset to enable that process. Nina also details major pitfalls of agile initiatives, how design thinking can be used to gain deeper customer insights, and how teams that use agile, lean startup and desig...

Pieter Wolters, Managing Director DSM Venturing and VP DSM Innovation Center at DSM, talks about corporate venturing – from finding the right strategy, to setting up the team, to deciding on which stage of the startups to invest in. Pieter also tackles the challenge of how large corporations can be effective at working with startups. This episode was recorded at the Innovation Roundtable workshop...

Jean-Luc Meyer, SVP Strategy, Marketing & Business incubation at Schneider Electric, discusses the primary challenges for making radical innovation a reality in corporations. Jean-Luc also explains the criteria Schneider uses to decide if it should scale up an internal or external startup, and how these differ. This episode was recorded at the Innovation Roundtable workshop hosted by IBM in Ne...

Linda Thackeray, Director of The Garage, New England Research & Development (NERD) at Microsoft, discusses how organizations can prepare for hackathons, how they can free up time for employees to innovate, and how this can reduce "innovation theatre".  Linda explains the key principles for assembling and motivating teams, the leadership approach that produces the best results, and th...

Amy Trejo, Open Innovation Manager at Procter & Gamble, discusses the role Silicon Valley and other "hot" ecosystems play in innovation partnerships. She further elaborates on how companies can protect their IP when engaging in such collaborations, and how they can decide on which projects to select.  This episode was recorded at the Innovation Roundtable workshop hosted by DSM in Ma...

Fabio Tentori, Head of Enel Innovation Hubs and Startup Initiatives, talks about how startup collaborations at Enel have evolved over time - from an investing model to one that co-creates with startups within different business lines. In doing so, he also provides examples of best practices when collaborating with startups and provides advice to those struggling working with them.  This episode wa...

Fredrik Östbye, Group Vice President & Head of Digital Transformation at Grundfos, discusses how digital transformation is approached within the company. Fredrik explains the role of digital platforms within the transformation, how key customer insights can be uncovered, and the challenges to merging hardware with software. He also explains how companies can successfully position themselves wi...

Eric Chaniot, Chief Digital Officer at Michelin, discusses how Michelin selects startups for collaboration, how internal teams are assembled to communicate with selected startups, and how digital innovation can be enabled within and outside the company. Eric explains how the company builds its digital capabilities by combining internal and external perspectives, and stresses the crucial role of le...

Abhijit Ganguly, Manager Business Model Innovation and Incubation at Goodyear, discusses how the company does business model innovation and incubation, and how innovation efforts are split between technical R&D and BMI teams. Abhijit also details how Goodyear articulates the critical assumptions on which a new business model is based and selects test users and the environment in which experime...