Key Takeaways from the Economist Business Innovation Summit
We share key takeaways and insights from the Business Innovation Summit, including expert perspectives on creating a culture of innovation, achieving sustainable growth, and reskilling and upskilling agile workforces.
The Business Innovation Summit by The Economist, held on March 28, 2023, at St. Paul's, London, tackled the pressures affecting leaders at global companies. With over 375 attendees working in strategy, technology, operations and human resources, the day was filled with thoughtful and engaging discussion.
Chris Locke, Aspire CEO and Katie Lewis, Aspire COO, attended the summit, and here they share key takeaways, insights, and a-ha moments.
The role of innovation does not sit with a Chief Innovation Officer but should be the responsibility of every employee.
Keily Blair, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer at OnlyFans, talked about how they have adopted this approach, which has helped them rapidly shift the business model to support new opportunities and drive revenue growth for the business
The leader's playbook of yesterday is not fit for today and tomorrow.
Susan LeMonica, CHRO at Citizen Bank, spoke about the need for Senior Leaders to stay in touch with rapid shifts in customer demands, focus on innovation and, be able to unlock talent across the company, to drive new growth.
Christina Schilling, SVP Chief Talent & Diversity from Verizon, supported this and reinforced the message that the role of the leader is evolving, and leaders need to be vulnerable, admit failure, empathise with others, test and learn, and humanise their approach.
Building the capabilities for a future fit company requires an ecosystem of partners.
To drive change, companies need to be able to democratise learning, and leaders need to model the value of lifelong learning across the company. This requires partners who can continually bring an outside-in view, share best practice from different sectors, and focus on delivering ROI.
It was a day of useful insights and a chance to connect with some great speakers and participants. One area that would be great to go deeper into next time would be clear examples around tangible success metrics, especially as the speed of disruption is only going to get faster.
Learn more about our thoughts on funding growth measures of success here.