Dear Contacts & Followers, it’s audience participation time! I regularly lecture and consult on innovating in large organizations, and I know that is an interesting topic for many of you too. I am looking to refresh some of the examples or case studies in my repertoire and I need your help. We all know about successful innovation stories like Apple and HP and unsuccessful (lack of) innovation stories like Kodak. We also know many companies who have been both successful and unsuccessful at different times like Nokia, IBM, and Samsung. Please post in the comments below your suggested examples or case studies on the below topics, the more recent the better. You don’t need to write the case study, just give a brief description. If I don’t know it, I might reach out to you directly to have a deeper conversation – I’m always open to learning. The comments alone will provide a good list for all of us, but I will pull together a summary of some of these cases and share it in a later post here.
The topics I’m interested in are:
Strategic Partnerships – Cases where a company has formed one or more valuable strategic partnerships leading to innovative initiatives. Particularly interesting would be examples of partnerships with competitors. In-house
Collaboration – We all know large businesses that operate within nearly autonomous silos, what examples do we have of businesses that have broken down these silos and brought forth innovation by collaboration? Introducing an
Innovation Function – What large organization has successfully introduced an innovation function that has been sustainable? No one-hit wonders here, who has managed to do it and keep it going?
Moving from Waterfall development – Agile and DevOps are all the rage now, but what established software development company moved from the tried and true Waterfall method to a sustainable Agile or DevOps model?
Senior Management – What is the role of Senior Management in sustainable innovation? How has a senior leader’s (CIO, CTO, or even CEO) role changed to drive innovation in a large organization?
Sustainability – Very popular to talk about your sustainability record, but what company has turned sustainability or energy efficiency from a cost savings method into a competitive advantage?
I would also love to hear more examples outside of these topics, so if you have a compelling story you’ve been involved in or know about, post it!