Ingeborg Gasser-Kriss: 7 Reasons Why Corporate Innovation Fails

Hey everyone, how's it going? My name is Ehan Isaacs, I'm the head of global growth for the Founder Institute. Super excited to be hosting today's webinar on 7 reasons why corporate innovation fails. We have Ingeborg with us. For those who don't know, she's our co-director for FI Switzerland, and she also has a very extensive background. I'll let her self-introduce herself, you know, shortly, but she comes from the corporate innovation world and is very well experienced, and I'm really, really happy, you know, that she's taking the time out to give us her presentation today. Before, we're going to start in about 30 seconds there. Before we do that, I just want to go over some housekeeping. You can see on the right-hand side of your screen there's a chat. Please throw in the chat, let us know where you're coming in from. I'm seeing Tel Aviv, New York, Alberta, South Africa. I'm based in Toronto right now. Ingeborg's in Geneva or Zurich. I feel like I was close. Okay, in Zurich. We have Argentina, London. So nice. And we had about 200 people sign up. We're already at 55 people. So not bad. Really looking forward to speaking to everyone. So please, the chat, use it to communicate with everyone. If you do have a question towards the end, please use the Q&A section. It's right underneath the chat. The reason is you can go and see what other people are asking, upvote it, and then we can bring it up on screen later on. So in terms of an agenda, you know, Ingo Board will do about a presentation for about maybe, let's say, 20 to 30 minutes. After that, we'll jump into Q&A. We'll leave the last 10 minutes or so for open networking, so that way everyone can get to know each other. With that being said, oh, the last, most important, there's some emojis at the bottom of your screen. If you think what Ingo Board is saying is good, valuable, insightful, please show those reactions. That's the only way we know. That's the real-time feedback we get from the audience. Okay, Ingeborg, we haven't even started and you're getting thumbs up and hearts and all of that stuff.

So maybe you're getting them, eh, Han?

I am good. All right, I'm going to stay quiet, Ingeborg. I'll let you self-introduce yourself, you know, take us away. I'm really, really excited. This is a very important topic. I'm sure a lot of the audience wants to learn more about you and your extensive experience. Yeah, so whenever you're ready, feel free to share your screen and kick things off. I'll jump back on in about 20 minutes or 30 to do questions. All right, and I'll be in the chat if anybody wants to throw anything in there. I'll be responding to it as well. All right, Ingrid, you good?

Yeah, cool. Thank you. And can you see my screen now?

Yes, perfect. Whenever you're ready.

I'll get started. Great. Hi everyone, I'm Ingeborg, and like Eihann said, I will be talking about corporate innovation. I'll be introducing myself in, I think on slide 3 or something, but before that, I just wanted to say that if you are actually calling in as a corporate innovator, this may hurt a little. It's a pain that I have experienced myself. What we will cover today is, like I said, introducing myself very briefly, hopefully, and then understanding the stumbling blocks for corporate innovation, right? Like not just what they are, but where they come from and how to recognize them. I hope I can cover that in 25 to 30 minutes. Well, let's hope that. I will give a quick preview of all the other stuff I'll cover in the bootcamp that I han mentioned. Because there isn't that much use in, you know, sharing with you the stumbling blocks and where they come from and how to recognize them if I don't also tell you in the bigger format of the bootcamp what you can do about it or what in my experience can be done about it for corporate innovation. And then there will be time for Q&A. So as a quick intro, And you don't have to read all this text, right? Today, I'm serving as a board member and an advisory board member, both in larger, older companies and in very young, very small companies, commonly known as startups. I also work as a senior innovation advisor, and I'm a director of Foundry Institute Switzerland. But the reason I could talk about corporate innovation and the pitfalls and the stumbling blocks and the success factors for hours, is because before that I was 26 years in, you know, the companies that became Jacob Suchard, Kraft Foods, and Mondelez International. And I specialized on innovation quite early on. So, I had 13 years of leading regional and global innovation roles, and I learned a lot. And, you know, the last act basically in my corporate world and my corporate career was as a global VP of innovation to design an incubation and venturing unit, which is kind of where the world of corporate and startup began to touch each other. And the logos of the companies below are those that I have worked with, am working with partly, who knows, maybe the one or the other person in the audience will recognize their own company logo if you're fast enough, just to say that Yes, my own experience, my basically in-corporate experience was mainly in food and consumer goods. But ever since I've had the privilege to work with companies from all walks of life, really B2B, B2C, food and non-food. There is of course a skew towards food in here because that's what I love doing, but also other consumer goods and like I said, B2B. So that kind of, that experience has confirmed to me that we're all struggling with the same problems in corporate innovation. And the thing is that, you know, for 13 years while I was wondering, why is it so hard? And examining what I could do to make it work. I was kind of, you know, it was really hard. And once I was outside, I could see suddenly a lot of things that from the inside simply I could not. And that's because we really don't see what we are in while we're in it. There is— it's a cognitive phenomenon, right? Like, we take things as a given that are in fact optional, but we cannot see that. They are optional and they can be questioned, but we don't know that while we're in them. And some of those things that we take as a given, some of the things that we don't even know are there, are real stumbling blocks to innovation in big companies. And those stumbling blocks are those that I want to focus on today. You know, in the shortness of time. You could say there are probably 10, but I found these to be the most common, the most common 7 stumbling blocks: that we're not asking the right questions. I'll expand on all of these, of course. Maybe I should go right into it, but just very briefly: we know too much, we find it very hard to let go, We're always on the lookout for fewer, bigger, better innovations. We allow our core operations to kill off our innovations, and I'll tell you how and why. We automatically think of innovation as something additional, especially when you're in the space of physical products. If it's tech, sometimes that's different. But I see it happen a lot. And we use the wrong set of KPIs, which is quite a serious one. So, let's dive right into it, into those stumbling blocks. We're not asking the right questions. So, you know, I often get asked to help companies with innovation, and my first question to them is, why do you innovate? Why do you want to innovate? And basically, if innovation is the answer, what was the question? And it's as unlikely as it sounds, these are the answers I get. And if you work in corporate innovation and you can hear me right now, maybe ask yourself if this would have been your answer. So, answers I hear a lot: we innovate, we invest in innovation to accelerate growth, right? Or to drive gross margin accretion, or we need to remain competitive in a dynamic market, or even more precise, we need 20% of our growth to come from innovation so we can achieve our plan, or because because analysts or shareholders or other stakeholders expect an innovation rate of above 12%. Fill in your number, right? Mine was 12. Or we want to innovate because it's good for corporate culture and employer attractiveness. Or because the world is changing, is changing, and we need to remain on top of it. These are all true. Most of them are probably true. But, you know, just because it's true, that does not make it a good innovation strategy. And if you don't know why you're innovating in the first place, what question you're trying to answer, that's not a great starting point and a real stumbling block in all phases of innovation. So, you know, better would be answers like, we invest in innovation because our core business will shrink in the long run, or because, you know, the tech development is shifting our route to market, or AI will eliminate the need for our services, or because our current portfolio no longer serves the needs of a new generation, or because the supply or the supply chain of key ingredients or components is problematic or collapsing. Or because our business endangers the health and safety of people or the future of our planet, which I hope it doesn't, but that might be actually a viable question that innovation needs to answer. Or because there will not be sufficient talent and workforce in the near future, so we can't continue the way we are doing today. You know, the big difference between the between the first page and this page is that all of the reasons to innovate on the first page were internally focused, and all of the reasons here are externally focused. So that makes them actual problems that somebody cares about, because nobody cares about whether your business will achieve its growth goals. Only you, only you care about that. Right? But if you're in business, it means that you want somebody to pay. And that means that you have to solve somebody else's problem, not your own. So successful innovation does require a razor-sharp problem statement. And if you're working in an innovation team, in a company innovation team, you know, the discipline of sharp problem statements can be learned. It can be taught. And I always advise innovation teams to not start working without a razor-sharp problem statement. They need a clear brief, otherwise, you know, it will fail. The second stumbling block is that we know too much. We are like this lovely elephant, like huge, you know, a huge corporation, probably a nice corporation. Elephants are nice, but elephants also have very, very large memories. Long memories, right? And all of those things that we know that will stop us from successfully innovating. That didn't work last time, of course, has to be everybody's favorite, right? The more experience you have, the more you know that, ah, that won't work. But, you know, the user is not willing to pay the premium. For how many decades have we heard that? About environmentally friendly innovation or more sustainable innovation, or no provider in this space is profitable. That's what you constantly hear about, for example, food delivery services, which basically means we shouldn't do it because no provider in this space is profitable, right? It's just a killer statement. The customer does not accept that, or it's not what our trend study says, or it's not a good fit with the brands. Or there are insurmountable technical hurdles. Has to be one of my favorites, the technical hurdles, because that landscape is shifting all the time. I remember the discussion about see-through packaging. Like, people want to see what they're buying, so they want see-through packaging, but that is an insurmountable technical hurdle because if The human eye can go through, light can go through. So light could damage the product. So we can't do it. People want it, but we can't do it. And then what happened? Kindbar did it. And the light did not damage the Kindbar. So these things are all true, all the things you know until somebody just goes and does it. So we need to unlearn. What we think we know. The things that we have learned are only valid until somebody goes and proves them wrong. And that should be us if we work in corporate innovation, not somebody else, right? Stumbling block 3 is that we just find it so hard to let go. This pic, you know, I use this a lot. You know the fable of the lion and the mouse, right? So, lion catches mouse. Mouse says, "Oh, please, please let me go. I'll do you a favor next time." And the lion says, "Yeah, like you can do me a favor," right? And lion falls into trap and mouse comes and kind of chews his whatever stuff off that keeps him trapped. So the little mouse can do something that the big lion cannot, and that's really my whole point here. Different companies, different people, different entities are good at different things, and we find that so hard to accept, and it becomes a stumbling block because collaboration is often more effective than competition, and Getting help, the ability to go get help is an art and it's a very important survival skill. It will get you to the finish line a lot faster than if you think you have to learn everything yourself. We are obsessed with stuff like, what are others better at? Why does that have to be a problem? Do things only ever turn out well if we do them ourselves? We seem to believe that. Because whenever the world around us changes and new skills are required to be successful in that changing world, our instinctive reaction, our default reaction is, "Oh, we need to get better at this." You know, "We need to get better at this. Let's make this our signature capability of the future." Like Agile was one of those. But it's so much easier and so much faster and so much more successful to instead find a mouse and not learn how to chew through your own trap straps or whatever they are called. So what makes a good collaborator? You know, if you're not a good collaborator, nobody will want to collaborate with you. But I can't cover that here. That's for the boot camp. I think it's maybe the most important skill to learn. So instead of learning all of those new skills, you learn the skill of collaboration and bring in skills by doing that, multiple skills. Stumbling block number 4 is that we have an obsession, usually in corporate innovation, with fewer, bigger, better. The metaphors we use are all about rocket launch. I mean, why does a product launch even— why do we call that a product launch? Because of the rocket launch. That's where this comes from, right? And I could give you many more examples. All of our metaphors come from huge things. And we believe that this is what we need. But the fewer initiatives you have, the bigger each one needs to be. Because otherwise, how are you going to achieve your growth goals, which is anyway the wrong goal for innovation. And the bigger your project is, the higher the cost of failure, which is why the rocket is such a good metaphor in the end, because if that one fails, The cost is really, really high. So, what— still, corporate innovators want big rockets, fewer, bigger, better rockets. And because the cost of failure is so high, they want to reduce the risk. We want to reduce the risk. And therefore, we have, you know, a very, very long due diligence, if you like, internal development phases, stage gates, and a validation process. And that really slows us down, you know. So while we're building our 3 rockets, we're probably overtaken by competition or startups who have found another means of transport. But at least we did everything right, right? At least we can't be blamed for making a costly mistake because we validated and we did all of the due diligence. It took us years, you know, and we went back and back and we did internal testing and we did prediction and we did planning. So if the rocket fails, of course it's going to do big damage, but at least it's not my fault. That is thinking that you can recognize when you hear quotes like this: "We need a focused innovation portfolio." You know, that's what your new boss says, right? "We need a more focused innovation portfolio." Or, "Which are our 5 big bets?" Or 3 big bets. Or this one: "We really can't afford for this one to go wrong." Let me just turn my phone away. This is not a good idea to call me now when I'm talking to you. So, we can't afford for this one to go wrong. True for rockets, true for corporate innovation. And because you can't afford for this one to go wrong, you will basically never launch it because you can never be safe. And this also happens to a lot of corporate innovations. You know, by the time they're finally ready, they don't get launched because there is still a risk left. So this, this is seriously 20th century innovation thinking. And we have so much better ways of looking at innovation portfolio management today. And again, I will share those in the bootcamp. Our fifth stumbling block is that we allow our core operations to kill off innovations. If you look at this, this pic, right, you can see why. Our core businesses are standardized and optimized for efficiency, streamlined, right? These boxes, these square boxes, they are absolutely optimized for how you can best utilize the cargo space of a truck, for example, if you're still trucking your stuff around the world or on a container ship or whatever. So as soon as something turns up that looks not square, not cubic, you know, it just screws up everything. This little blue ball here totally screws up the bonus, the performance bonus of the person in the company who is in charge and is measured against optimal utilization of warehousing and transport space. Because it doesn't really fit in and there are these little spaces where you have to transport air. So basically what a healthy core business will do, no matter which industry, is it will isolate, repel, and combat everything that's new and different, especially when they are competing for the same pool of resources. They react like a virus, like an organism to a virus, and competing for the same pool of resources, that's almost inevitable. It's inevitable unless you keep innovation completely apart from your core business or you ring-fence resources. But, you know, the pool of resources extends way beyond money. It's shelf space or online e-commerce shelf space. It's the wallet of, you know, people who will have to pay for your new innovation. But it's also the promotion budget and the sales force attention and so on and so on and so on. So the way we do innovations as something, you know, it's supposed to be different, but you bring it in touch with the core business and the core business will fight back. Normally it does that very successfully. And the problem is, one of the biggest problems, is that you only see this when it is too late, when your innovation is already in market and your core business is showing those reactions. I can explain that more. I know it sounds slightly mysterious, but it really isn't. It's very, very straightforward. You can recognize this when you hear sentences like, ah, this is such a distraction to my teams, or What's the ROI on this one? What's the ROI on this one means I'm sure it's lower than the ROI of my core operations. And what percent of the spending that we put behind the innovation is actually paying back into my brand, my existing brand? So those types of questions, that type of thinking, which you will hear a lot, is a sure sign that this stumbling block is looming very large on the path of your innovation. Stumbling block number 6: we think of innovation always as something additional. Let me tell you, I've worked with so many teams, right? And they automatically gravitate towards innovation as an addition to the existing portfolio. It doesn't matter what the existing portfolio is. Right? It could be consumer goods, or it could be tech, or it could be cars. Innovation is an addition to the current portfolio because— and this is the logic, right? Um, if we need to deliver growth, you can't take something away or just change something. You need to add something. We know that's not true. Of course, you can also achieve growth by making something existing better. But that's not the way we think. We think something new, because also inventing something new is so much more fun. It's so much more fun to make this little crown for the chicklet than to teach the chicklet on the left better manners, right? That will also not be visible. So Also, as soon as you regard innovation as making something existing better instead of adding something new, the existing chick will protest and say, "I'm already good enough. You don't have to teach me manners." You see what I mean? Like, improving something existing means admitting that it's not perfect. And we don't like to admit that the existing portfolio is not perfect, especially those people who are in charge of it. And those are not the same people who want to innovate or who need to innovate or, you know, in charge of innovating. So we do new things. And the more we add, the more fragmented our portfolio becomes and the smaller the incremental growth so that people that can then go and ask, What is the— how much of your innovation revenue is actually incremental? Well, not much, because, you know, I have always have to do something additional and the margins just get smaller and smaller. And while I'm pushing my 15th little fragment of addition to the portfolio into the same virtual or real shelf, that always goes at the expense of the current portfolio. Because again, it's the same pool of resources. So you see how all of these stumbling blocks are connected because we need to, because we think we have to do something additional. The core business has to fight back and it will. You can, I mean, that chick is definitely going to hack the other one's crown off. Innovation does not have to be something additional. It doesn't even have to be a new thing. It could be a new process. It could be a new way of doing existing things. It could be a way of bringing existing things to more new people. It could be doing something different with existing things. But that's not how we think about it, right? And we should, we should. I always recommend the 10 types of innovation which can be used across industries invented by Dublin. Dublin's 10 types of innovation, difficult to understand based on the material that you can get free in the public space, but it's really worth understanding. And stumbling block number 7, and this is a really weird one, we use the wrong set of KPIs, right? Even when I was, you know, talking about this boot camp, we were talking about how should we call it, how should we call the boot camp about why corporate innovation fails and how it could actually be made to work. I think the original title was "How to Accelerate Growth with Innovation." And I said, "No, we can't use that title because this, you know, thought that innovation is here to accelerate growth, while it's not wrong that innovation will accelerate growth, it's the wrong KPI to start off with." Revenue, revenue growth, gross margin accretion, ROI, payback, breakeven, and net present value, in case you don't know, NPV, and cash flow. Those are usually the KPIs that innovation teams get. They have to work against them, and that is not a good idea. I'll tell you why. So, on the one hand, you can't possibly predict, you cannot possibly predict with something that is really new and different at the beginning of the journey how much revenue it will make in year 3. You have to bring it to market first and see how it works, right? You can't sit in a room and write a PowerPoint about the year 3 revenue of something that doesn't exist yet, something that the customer has not had any experience with yet. So metrics you cannot possibly predict, and because you can't predict revenue, obviously you can't predict ROI or cash flow or anything else. They will also compromise product integrity. Like, okay, this innovation has to be, has to have a higher profit margin than our core business. Why? Because it will take away a little chunk of your core business if it's successful. So if your innovation takes a tiny bite out of your core business, it replaces higher margin with lower margin, and we don't want that. So it has to be margin-accretive, but it cannot possibly be. Why? As we've seen before, your core business is optimized, standardized for maximum efficiency. It has all the benefits of mind-boggling scale. And your little innovation does not have any of that. It hasn't been optimized. It hasn't been streamlined yet. It doesn't even exist yet. And no, it does not have the benefit of scale. So how can it possibly be margin-accretive? And not in year 10, but you know, it's supposed to be designed to be that from the start. And the worst reason, I mean, the reason why these KPIs are so super wrong is because you probably don't need innovation to achieve those. Again, ROI. If I give you, I don't know, $1 million, where will you get faster revenues? If you put that $1 million into you know, the core business, let's say, uh, distribution expansion or, or price promotion or whatever, like Tesla just did, you know, you will get instant ROI, won't you? Because your core business is already there, it already has a loyal customer base, and if you sell more of that, all of the benefits of scale kick in. So you cannot possibly ever get a better payback, a better ROI in the short term by putting the same amount of money into the development of an innovation that you could get by putting it in the core business, which is why those metrics are wrong. And if people give you those metrics and ask you to do corporate innovation against those metrics, you should refuse because they are not helpful. They compromise your Yeah, the integrity of your innovation. And as soon as, you know, you're ready to launch your rocket, somebody will find out that maybe it's not margin accretive in the first year. So, you know, the core business wants that money and the core business will pay back better, faster. No wonder the core business kills the intruder, right? The only problem is if you follow that short-term logic for sufficient time, you will simply run out of innovation. You will not have innovations. And then that doesn't bode very well for your core operations either. So those are the 7 stumbling blocks. And you know, I had to kind of, I couldn't dig too deep into them. Each of them is connected to the way that big companies operate. There is a good reason why they operate that way, but you need to understand how the intrinsic systemic way that big companies usually operate leads to all of those stumbling blocks. And honestly, seeing them, for what they are is already quite good, recognizing them when they appear, and you can navigate them. So, you know, I believe we can make it work. It's not easy, but corporate innovation can work. We see that all the time. A deep understanding of those at least 7 stumbling blocks plus What I would suggest are about 5 mind shifts, 5 key mind shifts that you need to make, and a number of design principles. When I say design principles, it's mainly about how to organize for innovation, right? Org design, but also the methodologies that you use and so on. Those would be design principles. In my experience, These 5 mindshifts and 7 design principles, while the list may not be totally complete, can get you a very, very long way. And I will dig into more of this in the bootcamp. Like I said, I'll do a recap of those 7 stumbling blocks for corporate innovation, the ones that we just covered and where they come from. I will dig into the 5 mindshifts and the 7 design principles. But for today, I think I've already talked longer than Eihann said I should. Yeah, almost exactly 30 minutes. So there will be time for questions and answers. If you have questions in the chat, I have not seen them so far because obviously all I see is my screen. And the presentation I do. But it is now Q&A time, and I will stop screen sharing and go back to Ermit.

Yeah, perfect. Thanks so much, Ingeborg. This has been super helpful. We have some questions coming in, so we'll definitely use that as an opportunity to bring it up. But I guess in the meantime, before we just do that, couple of housekeeping. So I sent out the link to everyone. If you guys want to learn more about Ingeborg's boot camp, I threw out the link in there. Do check it out and join the waitlist. Um, but, and also, if you found Ingeborg's presentation valuable or helpful, please, uh, express it in the emojis. Uh, all right, Ingeborg, thank you so much. That was super helpful. I'm gonna start doing questions, uh, and I'm gonna bring it up on stage, so you should be able to see it. Uh, Nitin's asking, what are the constraints on your problem statement that can detect, uh, and correct you have so far. It's phrased a little bit weirdly, but yeah, I understand the question.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, maybe— hey, let's try this. I'm not— try this. Hey, Nitin, are you still— I'm gonna invite you to the stage and see if it works. Um, but I think constraints on my problem statement. Yeah. Hey, Nitin, you there? Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can. Do you want to clarify your question, please? Oh yes, it might have been phrased a little weird.

I meant like, if you have a problem statement that you crafted, how do you make it better? Like, what are you looking for to say that you've nailed the problem statement? Well, uh, it has to be crystal clear, uh, to everyone that you share it with. Like, throw it around, right? Um, it has to be For innovation, right? You mean, you mean for innovation? Yeah.

For innovation.

Yeah. For innovation. Exactly. Um, it has to be super clear and you know what? It has to be created in the real world because what I see people do, and I include startups here, um, they make up problem statements because they would love that problem to exist so they can apply their solution to it. So a really good problem statement has to be tested in the real world. A couple of other things: it has to be single-minded. That's what I mean by razor-sharp, right? Not blah, blah, blah, blah, blah with, you know, loads of words. It should be razor-sharp and focused. And it should engage with those people who own the problem. Does that make sense so far?

It does.

Yeah.

Right. Awesome. Thanks, Nitin. This is the first time we've tried this feature, and I think it worked out pretty cool. All right, let me— we got some more Questions coming up. So here, let's do this.

Yeah, I saw a couple.

Yeah, so yeah, folks, please use the Q&A button because it allows me to do this feature where I can throw the question up and I can bring you up if I don't understand it. All right, I'm going after the ones that are the most popular, so if you find another question that's good, just upvote it. So Bongani from Joburg, South Africa, is asking, how does a risk-averse culture within a company impact innovation? What steps can businesses take to foster a culture that embraces risk-taking and experimentation? This is a big question. Yeah, it's a great question.

No, no, no, no, it's, it's a very, very good one. So listen, we like to bash big companies and corporations, right, for being risk-averse, but don't forget, they have a lot to lose. It's easy to take risk when you have nothing to lose. They have 100 years of history, they have tens of thousands of jobs that they have created, and they have billions of revenue, right? So obviously, and since especially if they are listed companies, not privately owned companies, right? They are actually working with other people's money. So wouldn't you rather for them to be slightly risk-averse? So this, in fact, this is one of the biggest misunderstandings about risk and failure that I would love to clarify right here and now. It's not about loving to take risk. I don't think that big corporates should learn to love taking big risks. There is a myth, right, that says that, yeah, we need to become more risk-friendly and less risk-averse and so on and so on. But think of the rocket. The reason why we are risk-averse is because we construct innovation to have a huge cost of failure. And I do this, I mean, in real life, this is not a theory, right? I work with companies and I try to help them understand that it's not about risk, it's about cost of failure. If you can construct your toolbox, your innovation toolbox to lower the cost of failure of each individual innovation project, you will see how, you know, people are all of a sudden more willing to take risks. Because if it fails, nothing bad happens. So that's why, and I'll talk about this in the bootcamp, instead of building 3 rockets, we have to build 20 small things at the same time, or even more than 20, right? And each of them with minimal cost of failure. And then we are also willing to take risks. Never isolate risk, the likelihood of failure, from the cost of failure. Those are— you can't separate them.

Awesome, though. That was a great response. Appreciate you going in depth there. I'm just going to keep moving on because we have about like 5, 6 that have come in. So I'm going to try to do another 2 or 3. All right, so Mikhail from Edmonton is asking, will you recommend companies create a separate business unit that only focus on innovation just like how they have CVC? I don't know what CVC is. Corporate venture capital. Ah, okay, cool.

Yeah.

So I guess maybe also reflect on your years of experience at Kraft and one of the ways like how did you guys tackle innovation? Was it a separate legal entity? Was it an internal thing? I know lots of people have asked me personally on this and like I thought, It's always, it depends, but yeah, I would love to get your two cents on this.

Yes. Uh, I mean, this is what I've done, right? Take a decision about exactly those, those, uh, questions. There are different types of innovation. Some innovations are better at home in the core operations. And those are obviously not the breakout innovations. Those are the incremental innovations. If you want to do something really new and different, yes, indeed. And you should do many of those. Yes, indeed. You need to separate them from the core business. You need to separate them from the corporations. And look, you've seen a lot of things that during, you know, in the 7 stumbling blocks, a lot of things that need to be true for innovation to succeed. You need different KPIs. You need different goals, very different goals. You need a different toolbox. You need to separate them from efficiency, standardization, streamlining, and scale while they grow. So, do you need a legal entity for that? I definitely recommended, and my recommendation was accepted, to build a new organizational unit. Legal entity, I don't know if that's the most important question, but an organizational unit separate enough to have its own set of KPIs, its own decision structures, its own methodologies, its own policies, because policies can also kill innovation. It's maybe stumbling block number 11 or something.

I like that. I'm learning so much from this. I appreciate you going into so much. I've done a lot of these interviews. I think the way you answer the questions are very well because it goes into a lot of details. I do appreciate you going into that level of detail. This is a fun question from Paulo. What innovation books do you recommend? I'm sure you have your own personal library, but anything that comes to mind?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think I mentioned two of them in the slides. One of them is The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. One is Growing the Core by Byron Sharp, which is basically anti-innovation. I would totally read The Lean Startup. And there was one other that I always recommend, which I can't remember right now. Oh yeah, Thinking Fast and Slow.

Yeah, Daniel Kahneman, right? Great book.

Yeah, Daniel Kahneman, behavioral economist, got the Nobel Prize for finding out, guys, for finding out and proving that you cannot ask people what they are going to do. And this whole thing about rockets and how you have to internally validate them and how you have to do due diligence for 3 years before you can launch the rocket, rests on the assumption that human beings can tell you what they will do once your product is in the market, but they cannot. And that's what Daniel Kahneman proved. So it's a really good mythbuster. It, you know, it will destroy quite a few of the beliefs that you've had. That's why it's such an important thing to read.

Yeah, perfect though. I want to do one more question, Ingeborg, and then we'll jump into some networking for the last 10 minutes. Whoever's available, please, I'll jump on to some tables. I know there's a lot of questions here, guys. Like, I just want to be conscious of everyone's time. Shamir is asking this. I feel like you kind of answered it. If you did, then we can do another one, but it's like bringing outside innovation into the teams.

What is DT?

I do not know. Sure, let's invite— sure, I'm gonna invite you to stage and then maybe you can clarify this.

DT. Oh yeah, well anyway, but this is about bringing innovation into the whole organization instead of just limiting it to an innovation team. Very interesting, very, very interesting. My approach would be a razor-sharp problem statement because everybody can relate to the problem, hopefully, right? So you would not— let me just close the window because a plane is overhead, just a second— your manufacturing company should not ask the blue-collar workers, what are your innovative ideas? Like share your innovation ideas with us. Like that crowdsourcing idea stuff that some companies do just to feel better about themselves really, or hope that employees feel better. That's not great. But what I've seen play out beautifully is if you send a problem statement into the organization, Like, what are your ideas to make X and Y more sustainable? What are your ideas to save warehousing space? You know, any ideas on how we can make our customer response time 50% faster? And you will see how stuff pours in. Clear problem statements will get you more results. And then yes, of course, the best ones you'll have to implement. You can't do this as a fig leaf. You can't do this as a culture thing. If you ask them to come up with ideas, you have to want them also.

That's awesome. I feel like a lot of things you say should be like posters in people's offices and just with a firm—

They should be. Absolutely. Yes. Good idea.

Yeah, this is— Yeah, so you're getting a lot of thumbs up. I think we should sell posters in the world. Algorand growth, you can be the face of it. Cool. I think, guys, this is a good time to end things. Ingeborg, thank you so much. I think this has been very educational, helpful. I'm going to share the link to everyone for the bootcamp again. If you've enjoyed this, please consider joining the waitlist. We're going to be releasing more information on that shortly. But the whole idea is to bring more of this content and more things that Ingeborg is talking about for individuals like you. Uh, Ingeborg, any final words for anyone before we break out for networking? Just so you know, we got close to— we have 73 people now live, but we had close to— let me just double-check the numbers— with 235 people sign up, out of which 128 people joined at one point. So this is a very high attendance rate. So a lot of people came to hear you speak. So any final words for anyone in the audience that's in corporate innovation, considering corporate innovation, or whichever?

Yeah, don't listen to people who say they have the solution and want you to pay for it, because there isn't one solution. Um, there's a couple of things you have to do, and it depends a bit on what your company is and, and what industry you're in. So there is, there is not just that silver bullet. It's hard work.

Perfect. I love it. I'm seeing some questions there on the recording. Yes, the recording will be available. We'll try to get out in the next 24, but we usually say 48 hours, and, um, we'll, we'll send it out to everyone so they can review it, um, because I'm sure, like, Ingeborg dropped a lot of great knowledge, so you guys can constantly review it as well. Uh, all right, we'll wrap up there. Uh, once again, Ingeborg, thank you so much. I'm gonna See you all on the networking tables. You know, if you have a few minutes, feel free to stick around. If not, that's totally okay as well. All right, guys, and I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day. Thank you so much for joining in, and we'll see you shortly. Thanks, bye!