3 Days well spent: Summary from InnovationRoundtable 2022 held in Copenhagen

I was participating in the Innovation Roundtable Summit 2022 & Marketing Roundtable Summit 2022 at Copenhagen from Tuesday, 15th of November to Thursday, 17th of November. This was my first large scale summit after the Covid and I can truly say this was one of the best summits I have attended in years.

The format of the summit organised in Keynote speech, Track talks, Panel discussion, Labs and Roundtable discussion was very well structured and synchronised. Event also gave ample opportunity to network with the people from across europe working in different industries which otherwise would have been impossible. We always share information in our own or adjacent industrial vertical and build a knowledge set about the same but hearing from other completely different industries opens us our view to a wider perspective.

Event was organised in two themes:

1. Innovations Themes

Focus of the theme was on Innovations and was organised in different tracks

• Business model Innovation, Intrapreneurship & Future scenarios?
• Culture and Leadership for Innovation and Agility?
• Digital Innovation & transformation
• AI, IoT, data & Emerging Technologies?
• Design thinking customer-centricity and front end?
• Innovation for sustainability circularity and NetZero?
• Startup collaboration open Innovation & ecosystems?
• Innovation in Asia and Globalisation of R&D?

1. Marketing Themes?

Focus of this theme was on the B2B marketing and there were four different tracks?

• Marketing organisation & transformation?
• Customer experience insight and engagement?
• Brand strategy & purpose?
• Digital marketing martech & Multi-channel?

Even though I registered for Innovation Theme we were allowed to participate in the marketing theme as well.?

Day 1:?

Keynote speech by @Shahb Slemy from Nike “Six big learnings on digital transformation”

1. Companies refuse to change their operating model?
2. ?The focus is too much on technology and not on people
3. ?The work is in silos versus working across the organisation?
4. ?They are staffed with available team members
5. ?They fail to use partners effectively
6. ?Expectations do not align with reality

This was very well thought through and was resonating with many companies present there. If you don’t take care of the above list it was effectively a recipe for disaster.

Then there was a talk by @Hansj?rg Reick on “Why behind the lean & agile:” where he touched upon the effectiveness of the agile methodologies and how to overcome complex challenges of the innovations Silo Mindset, Decision Making, Lack of Focus and Fixed planning.? He also highlighted the Student’s syndrome of working in the last period of the work to the size of the effective team which is 7+2 and two pizza rules.?

Camila Cruz Durlacher from 3M talked about the Digital transformation at 3M and how to accelerate and create higher impact. She also talked about Foundations with Digital platform, Enablers: with data & analytics, Culture and Prioritization and the outcome with digital product, digital customer, digital operations and digital enterprise.?

Dr. Carsten Linz from ESMT Berlin, Gaining the competitive edge in a disruptive world. This was a lab format? about the business model? and how to move between different business models. Different business models are Product business model, Platform business model, Project business model and Solution business model.

Amy Chen from Kone talked about Bringing corporate innovations to market. She touched upon how to set up the function either in existing business setup where the need for strengthening core business is the most important factor vs the setting new business lines/subsidiaries looking at the purpose like diversification of customers; existing, adjacent or new.

John Mullins, associate professor of management practices at LBS spoke about the 6 mindsets which beaks the conventional rules and these are:

• Yes We can
• Problem-first and not product first?
• Think narrow not broad
• Ask for the cash, ride the float
• Beg, borrow but do not steal
• Instead of asking permission, beg for forgiveness later

I can clearly relate to all of these with my personal experience working in innovations at different companies.

William Grieco, Chief Innovation Officer from Innventure, showcases different businesses which have been built from taking the non-core offering from the company and creating a B$ opportunity. There were two examples from P&G and one from Nokia where the company took full control and formed newco leading to IPO and higher value for the partner company too.

?Finally on day 1 Garrick Jones from LSE talked about his research on Digital Humans and 12 digital trends and how they impact customers, products and way of working.???

Day 2

Day 2 started with the sponsor track talk with Yannic Metz from mantro sharing how the innovation has been initiated by mantro with many corporate he showcased how to quickly test the ideas before investing in any technical solution built by involving the customer from an early stage and testing the concepts.

Then, there was an inspiring talk by Ernesto Ciorra , Chief Innovability Officer from Enel he was referring himself as more Chief Ignorant Officer ?? He started with #NoCeoNoParty and his view on innovations needs to have buy-in from? the top level in order to disrupt existing business and create new business. Then he talked about #NoTeamNoParty and here he was referring to involvement of the whole organisation and having a cross functional organisational setup to make big impact innovations. He also talked about showcasing #MyBestFailure which is a way to celebrate failures. He advocated measuring everything to show the real value being created. Ernesto also advocated the faster careers for the innovators as the reward for the risk being taken by them. Using the right tool for innovation was also important to have full visibility to the innovations. In his perspective it is important to create a community of innovators across the organisations so the innovations flourishes, as often innovation needs hard work and innovations from different functions too to be able to create groundbreaking innovations.

After Ernesto there was talk by Thomas Saldft from B/S/H which no one recognises as Bosch Siemens Home Appliance company. He talked about connectivity and how IoT connected devices are leading the charge in markets like China and have been followed by BSH. He also touched on how a 360 degree view of the customer is important. He also talked about the highly costly failed experiment like retrofit kit solution which did not work in Germany and later did not work in China either.? Important in his perspective is to build small experiment with one feature, test? and then scale them and use AI/ML and complex data and counteringgut feeling with the data. He also mentioned about involving the other departments early to avoid the not invented here syndrome.??

Jannis Sutor and Dennis Heider from Volkswagen Group gave a Business modelling lab and how to use the Digital business modelling canvas and framework and also try out different business models like rent-instead of buy, to white label, flatrate etc.??

This was followed by another talk by Thomas Saldft from B/S/H on how to leveredge valuable insights by having the 360 degree view of the customer journey and to drive higher customer engagement. phases he showed are Awareness, Considerations, Purchase, Service and Loyalty.???

George Yip from Imperial College of London talked about China and how China is taking the leap from bold experiments to rapid innovations to leadership: How the Chinese ecosystem validates innovation practices. He talked about? How China is taking a lead in AI and other tech implementations. The Chinese workforce is 70% boss and 30% process driven vs in the west 90% process and 10% boss driven. China is also doing product innovations, business model innovations, process innovations, customer innovations, technology innovations and finally organisations innovations.? Companies like xiaomi are taking advantage of customers' and involving them in the innovations by being zero distance to the market. The way the Chinese are innovating are by Swarming, Tinkering, Customising, Upgrading, Resolving and connecting.??

Finally, Kai Jannek from Z Punkt and Sandra F?ster from Neste did a presentation on how they worked on the collaboration for? developing a foresight process on exploring the next strategic steps for Neste.

Day 3:

3rd and final day started with Jan Beránek from U+ on what it takes to build a successful corporate venture.? He also talked about having the customer on boards and experimenting. Silos of the organisation are hindering so breaking the silos are critical to make the successful innovations.?

Mauro Porcini, Chief Design Officer, Pepsico gave an inspiring talk on the Human side of the innovations and why people centricity and connecting? to the emotional side of the? human for a purposeful brand is important. Being meaningful for the customer. He also showed examples of how the Pepsico has used this with different design choices from personalised packaging with graffiti to mix of drink with kiosks.??

Amit Joshi, Professor of AI, Analytics and Marketing strategy at IMD, Lausanne. Amit was trying to showcase the negative side of the data collections and usage and what it is important to think ethically as regulations is and will be following and cannot be sued to stop the collection and utilisation of data. This was a lab setting where we experimented with a bank loan case and what kind of data needs to be collected, why and how to secure the data.

Michael Haenlein, professor of marketing ESCP Business school, gave his definition of ?Metaverse? and how it can change the consumer way of working. Metaverse can impact the businesses; this was also a lab setting? and gave an opportunity to explore the metaverse with some real use cases and have a discussion with people from different B2B companies around the concept.?

I also participated in a talk by Rebecca Meagher, product research leader from Lyft autonomous vehicle project. Low Ego Rockstar, ROI mindset, MVP mindset and ownership are critical for the innovation and these have been the founding principle of the Lyft,

Final presentation which I attended was by Mina Bastawros VP of creative and Digital Marketing, Airbus. His talk was around the topic of making B2B brand visible where the customer interactions are very limited. There is a competition for example where customers can participate in the Airbus Livery design.??

Then there was a Plenary Sharing and Key Takeaway by Axel the CEO of Innovations Roundtable that was very pictured as graphics doodle by Ludic Creatives, I was given the opportunity to talk about the Metaverse lab session.???

That’s it !! There were many more interesting session but these were my 3 days. There were a lots of other discussion too with the many companies and individual?which would be impossible otherwise.?

So thanks Axel Rosen? for creating this forum it a great work you are doing.

#irsummit2022 #copenhagen #misummit2022 #innovations #marketing #postcovid #corporateevents #corporateinnovation #corporate