You have to have that enthusiasm and drive from the kind of grassroots level of the organization, but then they have to be supported and feel as if they have the ability to take action on those ideas from above. And so it’s the combination of those two that really enables, I think, productive activity across an organization.

Three main differentiating factors between the Lufthansa Innovation Hub and other corporate innovation activities are:

1. Talent: Instead of “just relocating” existing line-managers to a fancy tech-location – we managed the challenge to get significant amount of entrepreneurial talent on board. Currently 80% of the Lufthansa Innovation Hub consists of people that have not worked for Lufthansa before.

2. Tool set: Instead of being a pure incubator, accelerator, technology lab, or corporate VC, we are deeply linked with the Lufthansa Corporate Strategy and pursue whatever innovation setup that is suited to a specific challenge.

3. Test-driven culture: Instead of writing five-year plans on whiteboards, we try to get instant market feedback, regardless if we are building prototypes and products or developing broader strategies.

This unique combination really allows us to support and drive the digital transformation within Lufthansa by supporting the existing business with startup partnerships and new products, (“better business”) as well as pursuing topics out of current business boundaries (“new business”).

Value Creation is a distinctive mind-set. It is a mentality driven by enhanced self-esteem, awareness, and pro-activeness. It goes beyond just doing your job, it is doing something extra. Value Creation is executing proactive, imaginative, or inspired actions that increase the net worth of products, services, or an entire business. This creates better gains or value for customers, stakeholders, and shareholders. Value Creation stimulates executives and business leaders to generate improved value for customers, driving success for the organization; it creates customer-conscious companies.

Value Creation Forums have been started in the US, Europe and Asia, along with Value Creation research. Programs are underway to modify MBA teaching to become less functional and more value creation oriented. The role of an executive is not just to be a good manager, administrator, or a good efficiency expert; his or her role is to create value. Ahead of my most recent book, I realized that value is completely misunderstood. Everyone has a meaning for it—some think value means price, benefits, or importance— you can think of it in any way. In business jargon, value is creating financial benefits, and for people around you, which will eventually create greater financial benefit for you. You cannot set out and say you’re going to create value for yourself; you have to create value for others, such that they recognize you are a person of greater value.

You hear words like CRM, customer satisfaction, customer experience, customer journey, customer this and that, yet all are only one part of what the customer is looking for. When you start investing heavily in things like customer experience and customer journey, you are essentially saying that they are very important—and they are—but you forget the context of their importance.

Once I have bought a cellphone, what is the experience I really want? I want it to work; I don’t want to waste a lot of time on maintenance. The moment I have to go back to the company—and that’s the experience companies are investing on improving but not the experience I as a customer want in the first place—I am making an extra journey. I just want to be left alone. Companies tend to glorify a journey that customers don’t want in the first place instead of making sure I do not have a problem. The real thing they should be working on is how to prevent that journey. Companies should be innovating toward zero complaints, toward zero defects.

It is easier to give examples of value destruction because they are so obvious. Value creation in a very simplistic sense is everything that goes beyond your job. You could be an accountant who does efficient work, you can’t fault his numbers, but the guy comes up to you and says, you know the tax laws are going to change and maybe we should do something with our investments and our accounting practice so we get an advantage. He’s done something extra. Everyone whose career progresses is creating value, but often he does not know that because he is doing it unconsciously. If you were conscious about it, you might create a little more value, and might destroy a little less.

Stephen Vargo is on the board of our journal, and he coined the phrase, ‘service-dominant logic’. Before that, there were other concepts, but he said no, it is not about products. Everyone is serving everyone and the product is just part of the service. This year, there might be thousands of papers written on service dominant logic, talking about value co-creation, but few people seem to know what value co-creation is. Many see it as some kind of a vague thing that is nice to think about.

We first started a journal that addresses both academics and practitioners: that’s a difficult mix because academics like to write in journals, and practitioners generally don’t like to write. They like to read. What we want is for academics to write in the way that business people can really understand, that is relevant. Then we encourage the practitioners to use this. On the other hand, we want practitioners to write about things that make academics pay notice. So if I write about zero complaints, they may wish to do research and find the best way to get to zero complaints. The second thing we have done is start Value Creation Forums around the world, and we have leaders in their fields come together and discuss value creation.

We set up one in the Benelux with academics and practitioners, and many universities in the Netherlands came together and discussed three things: one, how can you create value for the student in the present courses. The second was to look at courses like HR and IT and see if you can just add one lecture on value creation for those courses. The third was to have a general management elective which is based on value creation. If you look at HR, it is probably one of the most important functions in the company since people–employees, partners and customers— are really important. The question I always ask is, ‘Why don’t HR guys become CEOs? Why are they called a staff function?’ That is because they do their functional work; they really do not do their value creation work. Once they start to do it, they begin to create immense value for the company.

We have asked a college in India to look at values and value—what you stand for, such as ethics, morals, and integrity). The idea is that if you are a college that talks about values, do your students who become teachers do better than teachers for whom values were never inculcated? There is a professor at Wharton that does customer lifetime value; we want to work together so that he can correlate customer value-added with customer lifetime value. 

We are a deeply entrepreneurial company, founded by a family of entrepreneurs and we are still family-owned today. It’s no accident that we are ranked number one in our category. Ideas are not the hard part; rather, the challenge arises from actually delivering on those ideas.

Everything can be made better, and I do mean everything. Differentiation is critical, but we’ve found that you can skip some traditional steps in innovation: weeding through ideas and holding ideation sessions, and waiting for “perfect information” can hold up the process needlessly. We are focused on the front end – delivering on real insights of what consumers need. 

In the CPG industry, driving competitive advantage from innovation techniques is all about figuring out and meeting a consumer’s unmet need in some new or different way. It is learning how to balance the risk and reward of how much you know with the amount and depth of information and research you need in order to make a decision. You’re never going to have perfect information. You need to achieve that precarious balance of using good business judgment combined with enough consumer research to confidently approach the market. 

The success we’ve had with the Fully Cooked Breakfast Sausage is a great example of delivering against a trifecta of insights. We found that convenience really is key for time-pressed consumers. We also thought about how consumers actually use products. It turns out that not everyone eats 12 sausages at a time, so we used re-sealable packs. And consumers want to see their foods, so we use clear packs. In essence, we lean in on where and what we need to know versus what is nice to know. Companies that do this well will have competitive advantage over others in their industry and will have greater speed to market. 

Others try to be on the political side; some try to be advisors, but what we really offer is the practice. What we can deliver on is the knowledge and experience of 3000 company members – both large and also midsized.

We ask – are you prepared for 24/7? Are you prepared for changing from products to services? Are you really cyber-ready? I am talking a lot about IoT – we need to change in terms of its promise. How do we motivate this group of people who are doing IT business processes to adopt new business models to reflect these capabilities?

Many leading companies are evaluating the importance of digitization, and new business models, and I see a responsibility with vendors such as SAP to inform and accompany them in their transition to a digital future. I want to ensure people are aware of what they need to think about – to get from digital to practice. We don’t know everything, but we do know there will be huge change. Companies will really be out of the game if they don’t change their business models. There are companies which do sensoric very well, but they don’t understand the business models, and there are those with good business models, but no clue about sensoric. We must bring those together.

Business model development and innovation needs to have an iterative approach, not a sequential process. I think IoT will change asset-rich industries in a positive way – you’ll know the usage and change in your assets. You can add sensoric to 10 year-old assets and derive a longer lifecycle. The question is how you change your business model around it.

In terms of the mix of skills sets companies will need, what we see going on in the European ecosystem, for example – universities; schools – is that there is a lot of momentum to embrace a positive attitude about change. The question is only how far to take this attack mode. It is difficult to understand what’s going on regarding China and India – they are so huge. Everyone in the west knew Amazon; not many knew Alibaba, and yet Alibaba is much bigger than Amazon ever will get.

In Germany and Switzerland, and really Europe in general, there is nothing we can do anymore in terms of extracting materials from the ground. All we can provide is knowledge. In recent decades, our exports have been dominated by engineering; by producing the best machines. But knowledge is the future. Nevertheless, too many executives tend not to take the opportunity, and wait for others, which is a pitfall. More acting than (worrying) is the right thing to do.

Some organizations still believe they can run with isolated strategies – with marketing/sales and production/purchasing in isolation. I firmly believe you can no longer do this alone. Companies need to have a clear glide path of where they want to go; they need clear buy-in that transformation is both top-down and bottom-up. What I think companies normally don’t do, and what they should do, is to really attack markets. Uber attacked.  Do you really believe that if Uber had entered the market in the normal, slow way, analyzing and checking everything – they would have succeeded?  They did not wait. Many other companies should also move away from a risk-awareness position to attack mode.

They need to ask: How can I attack other areas where I am strong? Many companies believe they are world-leading, and then some company in China, or Korea, or India has already overhauled them from an income perspective.

Executives must ask: are we ready for the shared economy? Are we truly cyber-ready? A lot of people talk about data analysis and big data, but at the end of the day its not about the big data – its about finding a pattern from the data which creates a new business model.

Too often, this is not what companies do. We analyze to death; we prepare for a presentation, and we wait for someone to make a decision. And when the CEO makes the decision, they are not ready for that decision because they are too large. The way of working together needs to change.

Toyota has the largest number of units in operation in the Australian automotive market. We have more owners on the road than any other brand. Our strong dealer network services many of these customers. With innovative service, finance and repurchase products, we have the ability to move customers from their existing vehicle into a newer vehicle – which provides the customers with that Oh What A Feeling emotion as well as great value.

The specific innovation that my team has delivered is combining the best of our service and sales departments and assisting our customers to move from their current vehicle to a new vehicle. We call this sales and service collaboration. It’s been tried before in the market, but this time we have strong system support, combined with training, on site consulting, KPI management and follow up and most importantly segmentation and one-to-one marketing that tailors the offering to the needs of the customers.

This technological and business model transformation we are living through actually requires companies to innovate differently. The set of innovation practices companies could rely on to stay in the game – even recently – are no longer sufficient. In the past, and even the most recent past, the main philosophy was that innovation is a science – that you can go through a number of predictable steps: create new ideas; decide which ones to invest in; have an efficient development engine that gets those ideas to market; and manage your portfolio in the marketplace.

What’s happening now is that the level of disruption is such – and the level of fluidity is such – that this is no longer enough: you now need to plug into the ecosystem of these new technologies, and monitor your broader role in the marketplace. I explain it to companies this way, especially for larger enterprises: you need to play the long game fast.

As we know, the capabilities deployed from new technologies allow you to do amazing things. But out of those 50 amazing things you can do, we assess which of those will actually deliver the most value within your timeframe, and what you need to do within that timeframe to take maximum advantage. Some of these technologies, and corresponding opportunities, are mature enough that you actually need to jump on the bandwagon and start developing a product right away, or start implementing a feature. Some technologies (and business models) are farther out, and therefore you shouldn’t do that – but you do need to engage with the ecosystem and monitor the development of those technologies so you are in the flow, and are not left behind.

Whether you look at IoT, or AI, or Big Data, or any one of those fundamental tech shifts – and even the business model shifts – we see that they are affecting the majority of the industries in a way those industries are not used to. Companies are either seeing real benefits or are suffering.

Take IoT, for example. If you think about being able to source granular data in real time, process it and effect change back in the physical environment, you can think about all kinds of examples of solutions. Look at LA, where drivers lose millions of hours a year just looking for a parking space.

If I can instrument my parking garages so that they can show the absence and presence of cars in specific parking spaces, and if I can couple it with positioning sensors in the cars so I can understand where they are going, I can actually create predictive models where I can direct drivers to the places which most likely have open spaces at the time of their arrival. I can even predict when a space will likely become available, or at least predict turnover on average stays. I’ll know that 15 cars are leaving every 5 minutes. If I install sensors in various places in this whole use case – then think of it as a use case with multiple players – parking garage; traffic controls; individual drivers. I can actually collect and connect that information to optimize the whole use case and deliver value to multiple players at the same time.

At a strategic level, we’re helping companies figure out how technologies like IoT present a potential for disruption: in some cases, fairly minor, which can be dealt with in the normal course of business, but in other cases, the disruption will be fundamental. And the challenge is not just that they will be fundamental, the challenge is that they will sneak up on you. These start as an interesting curiosity, but before you know it, you are behind the curve.

Industries with significant capital assets like oil & gas are not going to be displaced by the next Internet company, but they can be materially affected from a competitiveness point of view. If some competitors start instrumenting their assets and increasing their asset utilizations – e.g., predictive maintenance based on predicted wear – that will be a competitive game changer that will demand a response.

Let me give you another example. Let’s say you have a logistics company with warehouses, which you might think is not a very cutting edge business. You will find that as simple a thing as a garage door can be the focus point for a significant opportunity. Residential garage doors in the U.S. have some level of automation at around 80%, but only about 30% of commercial doors are instrumented in any way. By ‘simply’ installing automation and the sensors on the garage door, you can significantly reduce energy consumption, because you’re otherwise losing all that heat or AC to the environment – and who thinks about keeping the door closed? There is nobody in charge of closing the door within 10 seconds of a truck coming in. Then you go a step beyond that – with algorithms that allow me optimize goods and truck flow through those doors, and that creates additional opportunities from the same technological solution.

At A.T. Kearney, when it comes to innovation and disruption our differentiators are three-fold.

First, we have a very deep understanding and knowledge of the industries in which we operate. So, for a project we did recently for an insurance company, we brought our financial services group and our high-tech group together, both to the pitch and the project.

Also, because many of us here are engineers or technologists by training, we come into all of that with a very pragmatic lens. Its very easy to get completely absorbed into the hype: “Okay, robots and Big Data are taking over the world; AI is the next best thing since sliced bread; IoT is nirvana.“ And to present big messages and great forecasts.  But where it becomes valuable for our clients is our ability to actually translate that into what it means for their business, now and in the medium and long term, and how they need to respond to it in very pragmatic terms. Very few companies have unlimited money – therefore, while you can have the best strategy, you still need to be able to make the right choices.

A third differentiator is that we are truly a single global partnership; there is no friction in bringing together our capabilities in the Silicon Valley and in Korea or Germany. Many of our competitors are regionally or even locally structured, so they have a more difficult time in bringing a global perspective to bear. What we can help companies in a very collaborative, open way, is to really drive to a better set of choices that will allow them to do what they need to be successful in this ever-changing landscape.

Beyond the right choices, companies are faced with the need to incubate things that have a much longer gestation period. If you are an automotive insurance company, for instance, instrumenting all the cars in order to take all their information will change your business model, from a statistical, actuarial model to an individual use model. But you’re not going to instrument old cars en masse, only new cars, and you’ll need to achieve fleet thresholds  – so its a 5 or 7-year horizon. Look at what’s happening at Intel – the pre-eminent chip company is laying off 12,000 people, and its because they were not fast enough; not agile within the ecosystem when it came to mobile. With the new technologies, that agility will be even more important.

I have looked at how innovation has evolved, going way back. In the Middle Ages innovation was mostly considered magic, and the winner became a tribal chief and the loser possibly was burned at the stake. In later centuries it was then driven as art, and it evolved to a more or less a science by the end of the 20^th century. We are in transition right now, and it is now fundamentally culture driven – a culture that requires rapid experimentation and constant involvement in the ecosystem.

Even the recent past, when you were innovative, your prize was your position of dominance in the market.  What you have now as a prize is simply an opportunity to innovate again; that’s all you actually get. Just science isn’t enough; you actually have to change the DNA of the company to innovate differently.

Different industries will move at different speeds. The number of technologies that are now available for a broader set of industries and how those technologies interplay with each other is fundamentally changing the business environment.

Before, you had communications and computing at certain speeds, and sensors at a certain cost – when you put them together, each of those things was useful, but they were not reinforcing each other. Now they are all at the level of cost/performance where you can put them together in a way that creates completely novel outcomes. They are no longer additive; they are multiplicative.

We’re very proud of our title as the first fully dedicated provider of turn-key dental suites. We sought to create a care delivery model for dentistry that previously did not exist in the same form, quality and packaging for campus environments.  We wanted to bottle the magic of private dental practice and drop it into corporate settings in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, and customized to those settings. We love the way clinical settings of every kind are trending more towards aesthetically pleasing environments as opposed to sterile and impersonal settings as found in days gone by.  

We like to think of ourselves as pioneers in this area.  Dentistry is perhaps the most interpersonal form of healthcare, since the services are provided “face-to-face.” While we are unable to eliminate every element of that experience, we strive hard to control the things within our reach to positively impact the clients senses. But the value-adds have been game changing too. We know that a filling today avoids a very costly crown tomorrow. But there is also a high correlation between a lack of routine dental care and large medical claims involving chronic disease later on.

One of the most valuable commodities is time, and employers are measuring productivity in terms of not just absenteeism, but also “presenteeism”, which involves remarkably significant losses – the degree to which they don’t have fully engaged employees within the workplace. If you have toothache, it’s probably a major reason why you’re not mentally engaged.

Also, a lot of our clients are really interested in optimal recruitment and retention – and they know the millennial generation is looking closely at the work environment.

Having a boutique dental office on-site goes a long way for clients in communicating the message that we really care about our community.  In fact, we do frequently have prospective employees come into our offices, because the employers are very proud of these amenities.

Leadership must allow people to take risks without fear of being fired. Companies only innovate when they are willing to go outside the box. Out-of-the-box thinking allows organizations to see new opportunities and execute against those opportunities. Change happens when leaders realize they can no longer maintain their vision through status quo.

This is not an easy prospect by any means, particularly when working within an established and age-old profession. Change is seen as a threat to existing stakeholders in many cases, but law firms are beginning to realize that through pure market forces alone they will eventually be required to innovate in order to compete. I have found that having an international perspective on how things are done helps to instill a desire for change, not only in seeing how different work cultures operate, but also in appreciating the broad inter-connectivity that we now all experience,  the need to keep ahead of the pack to serve clients’ more diverse and ever more challenging expectations, and to compete effectively. Giving employees and partners the latitude to experiment with ideas and, perhaps more importantly instilling a culture of respect for different ideas and initiatives is a key element which law firms have traditionally struggled with given their hierarchical structures. To innovate, I believe that you need to  instill a framework for acceptance of differing and new ideas and the creative potential of your people. This  is a fundamental cornerstone, particularly for the legal profession, for building organizations which can successfully embrace change.

It is tempting to say that there is no industry sector for what we’re doing, but in fairness we might compare Infobeing.com to social media like Facebook, Ello, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. These sites offer a Web 2.0 experience that is becoming obsolete for a few reasons.

Social media contributes to information overload by providing a massive amount of irrelevant information. This makes us feel physically ill. Information overload is becoming a real problem. Infobeing.com is different because it is designed so that users spend minimum time on the site and maximum time living, doing, and becoming.

Another problem with today’s social media is that there is no real mechanism to meet new people in order to easily form mutually-beneficial relationships. These sites are designed primarily for staying in touch with existing friends or, occasionally, meeting someone new in a random way. Infobeing is designed for the purpose of helping you meet the new people you need to know in order to move your life forward.

Social media leads to stagnation and inaction. It is passive. Infobeing uses the potential of the network world to create a People economy where everyone is doing what they want, what they are good at, just as they live in freedom and maximize their earning potential. This isn’t happening on Facebook.

Medical knowledge is doubling every two years and most people are receiving poor, conflicted medical information. 2nd.MD’s first goal is to make the ability to reach medical specialists more easily accessible. For example, our member​s can now ​enjoy a video consultation with a top specialist from ho​me ​within three days, getting remarkable clarity and up-to-date information regarding their condition. ​We are combining high-tech with high-touch, and the marriage is beautiful. Healthcare gets faster, easier and more personal.​

We’ve been innovating on the incubator/accelerator model.  Instead of just adopting the standard ‘Y-Combinator’ model, which is meeting start-ups once a week for 3 months followed by a “Demo Day,” we spent 18 months interviewing start-up founders and asking them what they’d like us to do differently.  Here’s what we learned: 

a) Three months is a long time to wait for a Demo Day.  Most start-ups apply to their accelerator several months in advance, and then if they get accepted, it’s another 3 months until they actually get to pitch investors on Demo Day. That means that many start-ups must wait 6 months or so from the time they first apply until they are in front of investors. In half a year, everything changes: competitors, market conditions, funding trends, etc.  A start-up can miss their window by waiting.  Founders Space solves this problem by having Demo Day at the end of the first month. 

b)  The second issue founders have with the traditional model is being committed to stay in Silicon Valley for 3 months during a program. This is a big issue, especially if the start-up is coming from overseas and has employees, family and customers back home.  Founders Space solves this problem by having a more condensed, intensive program.  Instead of having mentoring and training sessions one or two days a week for three months, Founders Space has them every single weekday for four weeks, followed by Demo Day.  This way startup founders can move quicker and get the same benefits.

c) Lastly, the Y-Combinator model ends after three months, leaving start-ups on their own.  It turns out start-up founders have more questions after Demo Day than they do before.  But most programs end after Demo Day.  Founders Space solves this issue by allowing startups to continue to attend all mentoring sessions and workshops for an entire year after Demo Day.  This way startups can receive on-going support when they need it most.  

We work with a lot of corporations who say they are innovating, but when we ask them to sacrifice revenue, they recoil.  The one strategy that we propose to our partners is to reward innovation with virtual dollars.  These dollars count as real dollars, but they aren’t actual revenue.  This way managers can justify spending time on innovative projects. 

Open communication and easy interaction between people of different backgrounds always have a net positive impact on society. We saw this at Mxit where we allowed millions of users to interact and communicate at a mere fraction of the cost of an SMS. Once again at YouNow, we are using the video medium to allow users from all over the world to socialize, meet friends and exchange ideas.  It’s an extremely interactive platform – you are chatting directly with the broadcaster and fellow viewers, live. There is this powerful need for social interaction, to share ideas and opinions, and this is a fantastic channel for that impulse.

Xerox has a long, well-known innovation tradition; it’s widely known for producing game changing inventions in particularly the 70s and 80s, with light lens copiers for instance, and the mouse. But, historically, we were not always so effective in capitalizing on those innovations. But while the culture has been maintained, and deepened to all levels, Xerox has transformed dramatically in recent years. We are now the leading enterprise globally in BPO services in areas like healthcare, financial services, education and even transportation.

In terms of traditional innovation and also blue sky research, we have 5000 scientists and engineers generating truly amazing things. The Xerox Innovation Group is a dynamic network of centers worldwide, including in the US, Canada, and France. We also have our major partnership in Japan with Fuji Xerox, and a center in India to capitalize on emerging markets.

We have a strong innovation culture company-wide, making sure the blue sky research we have going in Xerox Innovation Group is repeated and amplified across our services business. Some of this work does not relate directly to our core business today, but we want to keep that flexibility of researchers to come up with totally new ideas.

Innovation has been incremental in the BPO area, with profound results – you don’t have millions to spend on R&D in the service world, but the nice thing is that it is much more disruptive; you can innovate without multi-year projects. On the downside you have to be much quicker – you don’t have multiple years to develop those inventions.

Recently I’ve been involved more in customer care – an area we’ve invested quite a lot in, and where we place a lot of our innovation focus. Evidence of this is the Call Centre Association Innovation Award that went to our Xerox Virtual Performance Indicator product in 2013 – which is now deploying across the corporation, and which we plan to sell to external customers.

The indicator is really a small innovation, technically – but it does make a huge difference, once you make it right, you make 50,000 agents deployed more motivated, more productive, and more into their job. We have invested a lot in gamification – we’re motivating those agents by bringing an element of games and fun into their day-to-day work. They have key performance indicators, but we don’t want it to be a case of ‘Big Brother watching you’ – we want to use gamification in a positive way, and get people into their jobs. We are finding that agents are enjoying the spirit so much that they virtually belong to the customer company.

Turnover rates can be 100% for traditional call centers, with people too stressed or bored. With these technologies, you ensure they stay longer; they are more competent; I suspect there is even less sick leave taken. We have created a real sense of community and engagement in the call centers.

I believe we are able to make innovation work in a very difficult domain – Business Process Services – but are also able to deliver economies of scale, and even create potential new business for our customer.

Historically, an export mindset, the focus on quality and the embrace of innovation have been competitive advantages for Arla.  In general, a strong export focus in Sweden and Denmark was a big difference from co-operative movements in other countries. In Denmark, for example, one driver was exports to the UK of butter and bacon, which originated two of the biggest companies in Denmark today: Danish Crown and Arla

I see the DNA of the company as not just being a co-op, but innovative in terms of product quality. That continues today – to be able to maintain our dominant position in markets like the UK, and bolster our ability to enter new markets in China and the Middle East and U.S. as well. Particularly in China and the Middle East, the credentials of being high quality about products really helps our exports  – stemming from the famously stringent laws we have (in Scandinavia and Europe).

In addition to having strong dairy products, we are also manufacturers for other companies, so we also need to be competitive in technologies and efficiencies for production.

What I do is often researching about research – how can we find new ways to interact with other types of research partners, such as academic partners and smaller companies, to unlock ecosystems of innovation. A big game changer for us has been the ability to translate the Scandinavian traditions of dairy products and foods to deepen appeal within diverse global markets. One of these products is Skyr, which is based on an old Nordic tradition: translating Skyr according to the taste of other parts of world, like the UK and Holland – that’s been a game changer. Another has been the change in formulation in some of our high protein products, which have allowed very successful recent launches in China.

We are also moving toward more strategic partnerships with universities. Last year, we partnered with Copenhagen University and Aarhus University to launch the Arla Dairy Health and Nutrition Excellence Center. I believe dairy can unlock major global problems in terms of nutrition, and we have only begun to tap the potential applications of natural milk proteins. We actively seek out disruptive ideas from both internal and external sources; connecting with small companies and entrepreneurs. Our approach is based around ‘technology push; consumer pull” – so that potential new products must see a deep collaboration between from both scientists and marketers before launch.

Last year, we put together the Arla Food Innovation Challenge, in partnership with the Creative Business Cup. This challenged entrepreneurial ideas in competition, and brought winners to Copenhagen – and we were able to see fantastic ideas from preexisting businesses as well as from early-stage entrepreneurs. Stimulating entrepreneurs in this way gives us a new way of thinking about our products – providing new insights from external sources. I am very passionate about working with small and medium enterprises, which is what we will be pushing going forward.

One of the areas I am most active in is the application of machine learning to health care, specifically interpreting individual’s social media feeds and determining their health status. This sounds odd but social media provides a unique environment where people openly discuss their personal lives: how they feel, what they eat, their activities, etc. Social solves a big problem in health data in that it is immediate where most health data are not immediate and often take months to gather and process. At the same time hospitals and individual physicians are moving from fee for service to quality based programs that place emphasis on health outcomes, not how many procedures were performed. This tectonic shift in health care creates a need for information regarding the health of people around; let’s say a hospital, not just the people who come in the front door, but the ones living miles away.

To meet this challenge I developed a system that listens to social media posts within a certain geographically defined area and deconstructs the stream of posts to predict who displays signs of having diabetes. It works by looking for word patterns in the text of the post and then matching that information to the person’s profile information. In tests involving thousands of posts, it is 74% accurate. Some of the interesting patterns that emerge is that diabetics tend to have many friends on social media – over 1,900, but they don’t tend to status very often – less than 65 times in a year. They also tend to say really funny things regarding their disease. Actual tweet:

“Lets play a game called how many times will my relatives ask about my diabetes. #byyyyeeee”

This system could be helpful to health providers who are looking to engage with at risk populations as problems emerge, not just when patients end up in the ER.

The HITLAB is also active internationally and is part of (MOTECH), the groundbreaking mHealth initiative designed to increase the quantity and quality of pre- and post-natal care in Ghana.

MOTECH uses mobile phone technology to improve maternal and child health knowledge and health-seeking behavior in rural Ghana. The program’s Mobile Midwife Initiative provides pregnant women and new mothers with information on pregnancy and infant care, nutrition, malaria, maternal and childhood immunizations, and family planning, as well as reminders to seek timely health care. The initiative offers these services in either SMS or voice option, in multiple regional languages. MOTECH also helps community health workers identify women and newborns in their area who need healthcare services, while enabling these health workers to cut down on paperwork and increase accuracy by giving them the ability to enter patient data via their mobile phone.

The Vodafone Innovation team is fortunate to be positioned at the intersection of the world’s leading total telecommunications company, innovation and relationships with the largest global enterprises. Mobility is the heartbeat of today’s innovation. While not every innovation is built on mobile, mobility is transforming the way the world operates. This gives us the freedom to embark on an innovation journey with our customers.

We run approximately 100 customer innovation workshops each year and take the radical approach of having an open conversation without an agenda and ask big questions starting with, “What if?” We are confident that no matter what emerges, we can help our enterprise customers on their innovation journeys. This approach shifts the relationship from customer-vendor to collaborative partners. The conversation is focused on business transformation, not technology. Of course, we look at ways that technology is supporting an ever-changing world. But first we collaboratively develop the vision of, “Where do you want to be in 3 years?” At the end of the workshop, we collectively ideate solutions, refine and prioritize and then execute with a lean, agile approach. The innovation program is our think-and-do tank.

Increasingly we see disruptive ideas or solutions emerge from our workshops that cannot be tackled alone. In response to this growing need for co-creation we launched the Enterprise Studio. It’s both a physical space in Silicon Valley and a global methodology. We pull from a variety of innovation frameworks like design thinking, lean, agile, etc., but as each project is wildly unique, we have to be willing to adapt our approach. The Studio is not an “app-factory.” We tackle problems such as user-based, real-time car insurance in the UK, to financing for smallholder farmers in Africa, to holistic analytics platforms to manage supply chains.

We have a lot of experience to draw from having run so many workshops in the last few years. At the same time, we recognize this is an iterative process and we are always looking to learn from our own experiences as well as thought leaders from across the global innovation community.

We are redefining the game in arbitration by incorporating innovative corporate growth strategies to resolve arbitrations.  Previously, the handling of arbitration was often perceived as a separate function of a company, outside of the company value chain.  In viewing a dispute solely as a dispute instead of a corporate growth opportunity, what organizations faced was a myriad of legal procedures, sometimes time-consuming and outside of the scope of a company’s overall goals. Consequently, arbitrations could easily fall out of the hands of the company and individuals who are actual parties to arbitration and who have the most at stake in the arbitration. 

In response to increasing practical challenges in the arbitration space, what I have developed is the Dispute Innovation Practice, which essentially seeks to make disputes innovative, rather than conventional.  Dispute innovation changes the game in arbitration by turning arbitration into a dynamic opportunity for long-term corporate growth, rather than limiting it to the confines of the traditional in-box.  This is done by introducing new M&A technologies, strategies and methods into the space of arbitration. To not just accept the status quo as it is, but to make things better by doing things differently and disrupting factors that create legal and procedural saturation in the arbitration space.  

The ultimate question is: How can a company engaged in arbitration transform it into a major growth opportunity?  In fact, when viewing the forest through the trees, arbitrations can pave the way for commercial growth that can far exceed day-to-day processes to increase company revenue.  For example, the case of Microsoft Corporation vs. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), has the potential to impact the extent to which new products involving patented technology can be introduced into new global markets spanning different continents.  

In this backdrop, the message is simple and straightforward: Let’s look ahead of the game, and discover facts and reinvent strategies now that will invariably be highly relevant later, post-arbitration.  With the application of M&A technology to disputes to conduct factual and legal due diligence that would ordinarily be applied to an acquisition process, highly commercially relevant facts can be identified and discovered in the process of arbitration, and an assessment can be made as to how those facts can be linked to future growth opportunities in a given market. In a prior arbitration of Hanwha/ORIX/Macquarie v. KDIC before the ICC, an important issue was whether a party could exercise a put and call option to acquire shares in a company. Foreseeably, facts that could have been identified through M&A methods and software during the document discovery process in that arbitration could have had major relevance toward the successful acquisition of a company’s shares, as well as the successful growth of that company post-acquisition. Facts showed that if the purchase of shares had taken place earlier than later, then this would have mutually benefitted the parties involved. This process prompted a quicker win-win solution. 

The vision is in furtherance of redefining how arbitration is viewed, and thus handled. Companies who have adopted and shared this vision have transcended previously placed limitations of a ‘legal dispute’, and have transformed the challenge of an arbitration into a major opportunity for commercial growth.

We guide clients toward viewing their organization, in all facets, with a mindful innovation (MI) approach. MI is a tuned in, creative-thinking leadership engagement process — coupled with a five-step systematic approach including assessment, culture, strategy, implementation and measurement — empowering CEOs to improve the health of the enterprise and its workforce, reduce costs, improve productivity and ultimately, profitability in a global economy.

My idea of “hard-wired MI” emerged in mid-2009 as I watched CEOs working feverishly on getting their arms around their “Big Idea.”  And then, watching them formulate strategic plans to transform their companies by advancing their breakthrough brainchild as a “constructive, disruptive innovation.” Over and over these leaders were relying on outdated “thriving on chaos” playbooks not recognizing the competitive imperfections in the marketplace. 

The MI approach prompts quick-response adaptation when CEOs drive the process top down and encourage their people to embrace “imagining” from the bottom up — with all stakeholders striving for the competitive advantage that lies in the health of their people. 

MI is moment-to-moment, surround-sound awareness of organization health achievement in action. It generates CEO imagination, ingenuity and creative execution in the boardroom. Most importantly, MI upholds the principles of disruptive innovation guru, Clayton Christensen, who introduced the criteria by which a product or service rooted in simple applications relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.

MI is imagining what the future could look like, identifying mega-opportunities and building game-changing ways of delivering business value to all stakeholders. We do this by focusing our attention on next generation hard-wiring MI capabilities, technologies and learning system collective impact community collaboratives that provide MI solutions to the health industry in the short and long-term.

The US retirement space has changed significantly over the last few decades. People of a previous generation were more likely to receive a guaranteed pension either from their employer or the government. Today, Social Security is not enough to provide a stable retirement, and guaranteed pensions have largely disappeared. So Americans have to fend for themselves and are left with a legacy 401k system that was never designed for the middle class.

It has an overwhelming amount of choice, often high fees, and often poor selections of index funds. Many people are bewildered and overwhelmed by this complexity, and make no choice, often missing out on a decade of compounding returns. Others can make bad choices and pay away up to a third of their nest egg in fees, often without knowing it. 

Blooom is the first company that has a completely fresh approach to the 401k space. We are an online service that analyzes any 401k, no matter where someone works. We then recommend the necessary changes. Finally, if the client hires us, we completely take over the management of their 401k – we make the changes for them, we keep an eye on the accounts, and we rebalance it over time. We are not a ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Solution. We are a ‘Do-It-For-You’ Solution. All for a Netflix-like subscription fee of $15/month or less.

We use the image of a flower (hence blooom!) to represent the health of the 401k, instead of complicated jargon or charts or graphs that no one understands. Clients love the simplicity and we have grown quicker than anyone else in the automated advisory space in the first year since formal launch. We manage 401k’s for people in 48 states, from age 22 to 67. Our mission is to fix broken 401k’s for millions of Americans.

When we launched, there were several research sources which showed that the health of employees depends far more on what you eat than on how often you work out – yet there were very few solutions, if any, based on nutrition. You could attend seminars on how to cook healthier; you could get recipe books; you could be coached by dieticians. But you’d generally need to leave your workspace to attend those sessions, they weren’t scalable; and they asked people to do something they were not doing already. They also did not address the fundamental problems of affordability and confusion for the consumer.

Several research papers showed that the average American finds it much easier to file their own taxes than comprehend the nutritional fact panel of a food item in a grocery store. Go and pick up any food item; I bet you will not have heard half of those words in your life.  We know that sugar is generally bad for us – but it turns out that there are about 200 different words for sugar. Meanwhile, we found that there was a perception that certain brands were healthy, and certain brands were unhealthy – but that just isn’t true. There is in fact a wide range of nutritional value across the products offered by the same brand.

To decipher this confusion, we recruited a panel of dietitians, and we created an algorithm based on prior research which takes into account all food items and all nutritional information on the packaging. We were able to generate a nutritional score between zero and hundred; the higher number, the healthier the item.So for instance, our participants in the NutriSavings program can download our mobile app, scan the bar code of any food items in grocery store with their smart phone, and get the nutritional score right then and there.Using input from our panel of dietitians, users can also immediately learn what it is about that item that is good for you, and what you should watch out for.

But we do not tell someone not to buy this or that. Instead, the app will also show you healthier alternatives; foods with a similar taste, but with higher nutritional scores, as a gentle nudge in the right direction. But we also recognized that the absolute nutrition score of any food item was not as important as the change in score over time for participants, so incremental behavior change, and the ability to track that change, is the exciting game changer for large employers.

Many people do want to diet, but to do it they need to log their food intake – and who has the time to log 1000 meals per year? We can actually manage an individual’s pantry, and provide the log and the trends for them. We had to figure out a way that is scalable- so we built a network grocery stores – 10,000 nationwide – which we actually built connectivity with. Once we have permission from participants to reach out to grocery stores, we can use their rewards cards as unique identifiers and track the items they’ve actually bought. In addition to the primary benefits of health, we are passing along discounts from those stores to the members for items which show good nutritional scores – so healthy food has become more affordable.

The University of Tennessee has been studying the nature of highly successful business relationships since 2003. Our research was originally funded by the United States Air Force with a goal to provide a pathway to long-term, collaborative success among business partners. We codified our findings into a methodology and business model that researchers coined as “Vested” or “Vested Outsourcing.” Our research first gained notoriety with the publication of Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will Transform Outsourcing in 2010. In a way that book began a movement that got people interested in learning how to work better with their strategic partners. The Vested methodology is based on five “rules” that when followed create a business model that fosters a high collaborative “win-win” relationship that purposely creates and shares value so that everyone achieves the win-win.

The five rules are:

– Focus on outcomes, not transactions: Flip the thinking from a focus on specific transactions to desired outcomes – instead of buying transactions, buy outcomes, which can include targets for availability, reliability, revenue generation, employee or customer satisfaction and the like.

– Focus on the what, not the how: If a partnership is truly outcome-based it can no longer have a multiplicity of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that the buyer is micromanaging. The outsource provider has won the contract because he is supposed to have the expertise that the buyer lacks. So the buyer has to trust the supplier to solve problems. 

– Agree on clearly defined and measurable outcomes: Make sure everyone is clear and on the same page about their desired outcomes. Ideally, there shouldn’t be more than about five high-level metrics. All parties – which may of course include users and other stakeholders that aren’t directly signing the contract – need to spend time collaboratively, during the outsourcing process and especially during the contract negotiations, to establish explicit definitions for how relationship success will be measured.

– Pricing model with incentives that optimize the business: Vested does not guarantee higher profits for service providers – they are taking a calculated risk. But it does provide them with the tools, autonomy and authority to make strategic investments in processes that can generate a greater ROI and value over time, perhaps more than a conventional cost-plus or fixed price contract might produce over the same period.

– Insight versus oversight governance structure: A flexible and credible governance framework makes all the rules work in sync. The structure governing an outsource agreement or business relationship should instill transparency and trust about how operations are developing and improving. And, of course, of where the next threats and challenges may occur, because business happens.

News Corp is actually where the customers are, and that’s the change. Its about innovating around the proposition that content is about “and,” not “or.” In the past, customers either bought a newspaper or consumed content on mobile, or on PC, or Tele, or listened to it on the radio. Now, they are consuming content in newspapers and on Twitter, YouTube, in their cars, and on Spotify, so if you take the “and” model, it becomes about curating great, relevant content and delivering it where and how the customer needs it.

With declines of 15% circulation in Australia and 20% revenues on the newspaper side – you need to innovate yourself out of that bottle, but you need to innovate in the right way. We’ve embraced the reality that newspaper companies are never again going to own content and distribution and packaging. In fact, we don’t see ourselves as a newspaper company; we are a content company.

Habits for consuming content have changed, and we can shape those habits. Do people buy newspapers for breaking news? No they don’t: because news is broken on Twitter and Facebook and then on other platforms. Content habits have changed. But job of producing great content hasn’t changed. We are recombining content in new ways for customers. We are now producing multi-dimensional long-form story telling in digital; creating a rich immersive experience in video, audio, graphics, everything. The Captivate platform in Australia allows us to build those.

For example, we produced a story around Cinderella Man: the amazing journey of an Australian man to becoming the country’s first heavyweight boxing champion. We’ve just done a great piece of footage for surfers for an angle of a surf break which you would never have seen before, using drone footage, and two surfers: one a leftie, one a rightie. So how do we get to surfers? We promote it on Facebook, we promote it on Twitter, we made a 15 second video for Instagram, and then we moved it to content for tablet.

The Wall Street Journal is doing the same thing, with amazing footage from the Oracle boat for the America’s Cup. When we have these great stories involving multiple assets, we ‘re able to quickly build rich story telling elements now that we didn’t think we could do three years ago. So it’s a case of: We’re capable – lets do more of that.

The reporters who do these pieces, like Trent Dalton, now know when they start looking at the yarn, they need a videographer, a photographer; he needs to understand how to work with a developer and designer to tell the story best via the digital channel. And that’s just one space.

On the other extreme, we just launched in Australia – news.com.au and Foxsports – on Snapchat’s new Discover platform. Once again, here’s another area where we’re atomizing our content and saying we’re going to create an edition every day which is relevant to a Snapchat customer, which is more a teen, kind of funny, laugh-out-loud type of experience.

It should start from both the top and the bottom of an organization. Where leadership enables a culture of inspiring teams to develop ideas around change, provoke them to act on that change and then develop a framework that supports test/pilots to scale innovations that can be successful.

We help teams across Pearson gain insight into emerging trends – what we call developments “on the fringe.”  For example, over the last few years we have witnessed the consumerization of education. Students, teachers, and learners, for example, have similar expectations and behaviors in the classroom as they do outside.  As a result, they crave rich digital experiences and believe learning can take place anywhere and at any time. 

Acknowledging that technology is helping to drive change in education to deliver on the expectations of learners and teachers. We have been able to quickly identify and connect Pearson teams with startups – particularly through connections with incubators and accelerators (RocketSpace, 1871, 1776, MaRS and LearnLaunch). Then via Catalyst, Pearson’s accelerator, we’re able to build pilots collaboratively with the startups – all the while providing mentoring and insight that will help them grow and scale effectively.  We’re also championing the next wave of creators and makers by being involved with maker spaces where learners of all ages gain hands-on skills, whether it be in electronics, arts, science, or beyond.   

Leaders that want to build an organization that innovates consistently must provide three things to employees: freedom, support and challenge. Those are the key ingredients needed to accelerate innovation in any environment. In other words, you can put it like this: Have bold goals, get out of the way and reward people for trying. The last point is very important because when people see that getting rewarded for trying, not getting punished, is like a badge of honor; they will start giving a damn. Try it, you’ll see.

Your own personal leadership is essential. From our point of view, leadership is about strategic awareness, where you are willing to be aware of the future possibilities, are nimble enough to turn to advantage any of these possibilities, and wise enough to know that your personal points of view are what creates your reality. Leadership and innovation do not come from policies, procedures or structures. It all starts with you. In the case of any organization, the culture of innovation and change starts with the CEO. If the CEO thinks they can train innovation by external advisors, workshops, incentives and rah rah talks, and the CEO does not choose this him or herself, then the culture of innovation cannot be created. And the hallmark of any really good CEO is their willingness to be strategically aware.

First, the organization must be managed by strong leaders that know where the organization is heading, and have a clear purpose and clear goals. Second, in order to make the changes happen, the organization needs a management that “walks the walk”, adheres to its values and lives by them. Essentially, an organization needs management that believes in the necessity of change, and is willing to be committed to the change and its implications. Third, rolling out the change depends on management’s ability to lead and inspire its employees, to empower those who come up with ideas, nurture them and activate them as advocates.  In order to execute change, the employees must be involved. This is why the management should have an “open door policy,” encouraging an open flow of communication and demonstrating high levels of accessibility. Fourth, another critical parameter for rolling out innovation and change is trust. In an atmosphere of trust, innovation and speed reach their full potential. 

Within UC Berkeley Extension, education innovation is highly valued. We tend to look for examples outside the organization and compare those with opportunities inside the organization, and then try to create an innovative approach to solving our objectives.  Then communicate the value internally and embrace the change. But that’s all very theoretical until you consciously try to do new things or do the same things in a different, more efficient or more effective way. It’s very important to work at it. We tend to do ‘pilot projects’ to prove the concept and see what the outcomes are from both a financial and student satisfaction perspective.

It’s also very important to recognize and encourage ideas for innovation from all levels of an organization. These ideas can be simple changes to business processes to large shifts in strategy involving relationships to customers or vendors. Don’t underestimate the value of simple changes–in empowering the people who come up with them and in keeping the organization agile and welcome to change. We also like to use successful models or processes in one academic program area and try to apply it to completely different academic areas to see if it will work as a controlled experiment.  Our Dean likes to share examples of how we innovate, or how we focus on quality of student experience, or work more collaboratively in all-staff meetings to inspire staff to bring about change.

Let people pursue their natural curiosity and good intensions.  Nudge a person’s curiosity, intensions, and pursuit toward outcomes that benefit the organization, its customers and other external constituencies, as well as the person’s colleagues and self.  Help people overcome shyness about trying to make a difference.

Innovation is something you don’t easily teach or even force on an organization.  It requires fresh and unique perspectives gained from either pulling people out of their traditional roles and comfort zones or by bringing in outside perspectives through new talent acquisition or external expertise.  At the same time, executive leaders must display and encourage a strong preference for thinking ‘outside the box’ and a willingness to take risk to foster a change/innovation culture. 

Building an organization or culture that embraces change is no easy task since both are a reflection of its people and most people do not like change — we are, after all, ‘creatures of habit’. However, I’ve found if the change or innovation is focused on efforts that improve, enhance, or simplify things you are already doing, it is generally accepted by smart organizations. You can then get those same smart people to innovate in areas outside of what you do today as long as you provide a clear “Vision” and “Why” to your people.