Event Replay: How Market Leaders Can Unlock Innovation to Outpace Disruption

Watch experts Zoe Peden, Stephen Rapoport, and Ruth Penfold-Brown discuss how to profitably drive innovation and take new products to market faster. Our three experienced panellists provided unique views, having had senior roles inside corporates and high growth startups.

We focused on three main questions:

• How can market leaders identify where disruption is coming from and how quickly?

• How should market leaders govern and allocate capital to create sustainable and scalable innovation?

• How do you build the right capability to execute those new business models?

Below are the key takeaways.

Signals. There are two types of signals to future disruption: mature (ones already happening – white papers, competitor activity) and emerging (suggesting a direction of change not yet fully established – longer-term trends - VC funding, University research). Organisations must learn to think like venture capitalists and recognise the emerging signals.

Innovation Activities. Innovation is a catch-all term that means four different things: building, acquiring, partnering with, and investing in. Each of the four require a different team, set of skills, set of objectives and, to some extent, culture. Corporates need to deploy these activities in parallel to deliver meaningful returns.

Core or Disruptive? It’s important to create clarity around innovation types and distinguish between core innovation – new products, product improvements – and disruptive innovation. Corporates need a balanced portfolio of both to be successful.

Funding. Funding for disruptive innovation must come from fresh capital; one of the biggest mistakes is funding disruption from the traditional, annual P&L

Find your niche. The business landscape is too competitive for a generic investment thesis; specialising and having a focus or niche is critical.

Team & Process. It’s not that core businesses can’t execute disruption; they don’t. Building a functional team and designing a process fit for managing disruption well is vital.

Empowering your people. People are one of the most significant barriers to innovation. However, building strong relationships, establishing psychological safety within the team and developing trust can solve internal conflicts and culture clashes between innovation and the core business.

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