Innovation in Business Strategy

The next wave of marketing innovation isn’t about automation alone — it’s about emotion. Which shoe would you get? AI today can recognize tone, facial expressions, and even micro-emotions in voice and text. This emotional intelligence is turning marketing from mass communication into personal connection. 🧠 Data speaks for itself: + 80% of consumers say they’re more likely to purchase when brands show they understand their emotions. (Capgemini Research) + Emotionally connected customers have a 306% higher lifetime value than those who are merely satisfied. (Motista) + 70% of marketers using AI-driven personalization report double-digit engagement growth. (Salesforce) 💡 Real-world examples: + Coca-Cola uses AI-powered creative tools to adapt campaigns to local culture and sentiment in real time. + Netflix’s recommendation engine reads emotional cues in viewing behavior to tailor what feels just right for each user. + Adidas combines AI sentiment analysis with influencer content to sense trends before they peak — turning feelings into foresight. This isn’t marketing as usual — it’s marketing that feels. When technology understands emotion, brand experience becomes unforgettable. #AI #MarketingInnovation #EmotionalIntelligence #CustomerExperience #DigitalTransformation #MarTech #BrandStrategy

𝟗𝟓% 𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬. 𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭. I recently read a conversation between Beena Ammanath and Chris Bedi. They describe what many companies are chasing: Gamified learning AI learning days Mass rollout And it works. 𝟗𝟓% 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭. 𝟑𝟒𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐝. Most organizations would stop here. Celebrate. Report success. Move on. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦. 𝐀𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞. It only creates capacity. And capacity is where things get uncomfortable. Because now leadership has to answer: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐰𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞? This is where most transformations quietly fail. Not at the technology. Not at the people. But at the moment 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫. Instead, something else happens. The time gets absorbed into: more alignment more reporting more coordination Different format. 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐭𝐲. So you end up with: 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐋𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 The companies pulling ahead do one thing differently: They treat adoption as the starting line. Not the finish line. And then they force the real decision: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐝𝐨 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠? One idea from the conversation stuck with me: AI ROI is not about time saved. It’s about what you do with that time. Sounds simple. In reality, it’s one of the most political decisions inside any organization. Because removing work means: Removing ownership Removing structures Sometimes removing the need for entire roles So here is the uncomfortable question: If your organization reached 𝟗𝟓% 𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 tomorrow… 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞? #Leadership #OperatingModel #BusinessTransformation #FutureOfWork #PrivateEquity 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘉𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘬𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘵, 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘵_𝘥𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘺𝘥𝘰𝘴𝘦

Strategy loves certainty. Innovation assumes the opposite. Guess which one adapts faster. A connection pointed me to the Presilience methodology by Dr. Gav Schneider. The core idea: don't just bounce back from disruption. Prepare for it. Build the capability to turn uncertainty into opportunity. My first reaction: that's exactly what good innovation management does. Every innovation process worth its name runs on a few principles: 💎 We work with assumptions, not truths 💎 We test before we commit 💎 We expect to be wrong and design for it 💎 We treat pivots as progress, not failure That's proactive by design. You don't need a special label for it when the process already bakes it in. But here's where it gets interesting for strategy. Most strategy work still operates as if we can predict the future. We build 3-year plans, lock in budgets, define milestones. And then reality happens. The innovation mindset would say: run smaller bets. Validate before you scale. Decide after each step, not before all steps. That's not anti-strategy. That's better strategy. Because the question was never "do we have a plan?" The question is: "how fast can we update and pivot when the world changes?" Strategy practitioners could learn a lot from innovation here. Not the creativity part. Not the brainstorming. The part where you systematically manage what you don't know. That's where real adaptability lives. What do you think, does your strategy process have a built-in mechanism to deal with being wrong?

I am constantly thinking about how to foster innovation in my product organization. Building teams that are experts at execution is the easy part—when there’s a clear problem, product orgs are great at coming up with smart solutions. But it’s impossible to optimize your way into innovation. You can’t only rely on incremental improvement to keep growing. You need to come up with new problem spaces, rather than just finding better solutions to the same old problems. So, how do we come up with those new spaces? Here are a few things I’m trying at Duolingo: 1. Innovation needs a high-energy environment, and a slow process will kill a great idea. So I always ask myself: Can we remove some of the organizational barriers here? Do managers from seven different teams really need to say yes on every project? Seeking consensus across the company—rather than just keeping everyone informed—can be a major deterrent to innovation. 2. Similarly, beware of defaulting to “following up.” If product meetings are on a weekly cadence, every time you do this, you are allocating seven days to a task that might only need two. We try to avoid this and promote a sense of urgency, which is essential for innovative ideas to turn into successes. 3. Figure out the right incentive. Most product orgs reward team members whose ideas have measurable business impact, which works in most contexts. But once you’ve found product-market fit, it is often easiest to generate impact through smaller wins. So, naturally, if your org tends to only reward impact, you have effectively incentivized constant optimization of existing features instead of innovation. In the short term things will look great, but over time your product becomes stale. I try to show my teams that we value and reward bigger ideas. If someone sticks their neck out on a new concept, we should highlight that—even if it didn’t pan out. Big swings should be celebrated, even if we didn’t win, because there are valuable learnings there. 4. Look for innovative thinkers with a history of zero-to-one feature work. There are lots of amazing product managers out there, but not many focus on new problem domains. If a PM has created something new from scratch and done it well, that’s a good sign. An even better sign: if they show excitement about and gravitate toward that kind of work. If that sounds like you—if you’re a product manager who wants to think big picture and try out big ideas in a fast-paced environment with a stellar mission—we want you on our team. We’re hiring a Director of Product Management: https://lnkd.in/dQnWqmDZ #productthoughts #innovation #productmanagement #zerotoone

Geopolitical tension and mass AI deployment are rewriting the rules of competition. At IMD, we ranked 117 companies across tech, pharma, and fashion for our Future Readiness Indicator. What I did not expect: Nvidia, LVMH, and Johnson & Johnson, in completely different industries, are converging on the same survival logic. They orchestrate entire ecosystems. That is what makes them nearly impossible to displace. 1. Own the entire user journey. This finding hit me hardest. I expected ecosystem ownership to be a tech play. I did not expect pharma and fashion to look like platform businesses. In India, WhatsApp lets users browse, order, and pay for groceries without leaving the conversation. In pharma, one company pairs an asthma treatment with a smart inhaler sensor and companion app so patients and clinicians monitor symptoms in real time. The drug becomes an integrated service. In fashion, RFID logistics update online availability the moment an item is scanned in-store. The technology disappears. 2. Design supply chains for shocks, not averages. The companies that score highest on supply chain resilience had redundancy built in before disruptions hit. Most companies optimize for one factory, one country, one route. A sizable portion of active pharmaceutical ingredients originate in China; if export controls hit, Western manufacturers cannot ramp up overnight. Samsung Electronics thrives playing both sides of the US-China divide. Inditex uses stores as a sensing network, turning runway trends into shelf-ready products in weeks. 3. Build new engines before the old ones stall. The concentration risk in our ranking was striking. Companies centered on one or two major franchises face the most volatility. In pharma, drugmakers built around blockbuster products are entering an era of tighter price negotiation; the leading ones are acquiring biotech firms to reset their trajectory. LVMH doesn't depend on any single brand. J&J moved beyond pills into integrated health platforms. Future-fragile companies wait for the crisis before they diversify. 4. Make innovation pay for itself. Some companies let innovation run riot with no clear revenue streams. Future-ready companies deploy AI where it changes outcomes and kill everything else. In fashion, AI spots emerging styles before consumers articulate them; fewer misses, less overproduction, margins that grow. In pharma, AI is compressing the speed and cost of drug trials. Innovation that cannot fund its own way is not innovation. It is next quarter's budget cut. Four different moves. One common destination. The future-ready companies have become the ecosystem others depend on. P.S. None of these wins came from heroic pivots. Why quiet leadership keeps beating loud leadership; link in the first comment.

Canva has become one of my essential business tools. I started out using the free version to create graphics for my LI posts (like this one). Eventually upgraded to a paid plan, and now there’s Canva Enterprise, which is great for teams. My main use case is collaborating on decks and presentations. I don’t even bother with other design tools anymore because Canva is so much easier. But Canva's only been around since 2013. So how do new products like Canva disrupt well-established incumbents? Typically through one of two approaches: 1. 𝐋𝐨𝐰 𝐄𝐧𝐝 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 The disruptor initially focuses on the least profitable customer, who is happy with a good enough product in exchange for a lower price. Over time, the disruptor adds new features and moves upmarket. Incumbents often aren’t interested in maintaining share of less profitable customers, so they also move upmarket and focus on their highest value customers. Think about the evolution of smartphone cameras vs. traditional cameras. Early smartphones had limited capabilities (low resolution, weak zoom, etc), but they were convenient. Over time, smartphone cameras have improved, so much so that most consumers opt not to purchase a separate camera. 2. 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 The other form of disruption occurs when a product caters to a new or emerging market segment that’s not being served by incumbents. The end result is net new customers entering the market. Classic examples include: 🚕 Ridesharing vs. taxis. Think of all the Uber/Lyft rides you take today that wouldn’t have happened a decade ago. Many users prefer the convenience, price, and safety of ride sharing apps to taxis or public transportation. 🛎️ Airbnb vs. hotels. Before homestay marketplaces like Airbnb, travelers could stay with friends/family or at a hotel. Now, instead of a commoditized product (i.e. hotel room), travelers have more choices for unique accommodations. What about Canva? Canva increased its market share vs. incumbents through low end disruption. Here are just a few examples of how Canva won me (and many other happy users) over: 🤝 Real-time collaboration: Building a presentation almost always requires input from multiple contributors. But trading versions over Slack or email is tedious, so collaborative features are essential. This is one of the primary advantages that cloud-based software like Canva initially had over locally installed incumbents, creating a disruptive effect that has been copied by competitors.   🔌 Integrations: Canva’s Enterprise offering makes it easy to connect with other mission critical business tools like Slack and Google Drive. 👩💻 Customer support: It’s nice to get help from a real person when you need it, rather than try to track down the answer in a forum or outdated knowledgebase. Disclaimer: This post is #sponsored by Canva, but I really am a passionate user. What are some disruptive products you’ve come to love?

The world does not reward people with the best ideas. It rewards people who are best at communicating them. Markets aren't meritocracies. They're echo chambers. Once enough people agree something is valuable, everyone else falls in line. Not because it is objectively best, but because disagreeing becomes expensive. Why? It takes a lot of effort to evaluate new ideas in isolation. So we crowdsource this task and rely heavily on social proof. The companies that win build something fundamentally different that reshapes what we all value: — Square didn't just market "simpler payments." They made a compact card reader that turned phones into registers. Every traditional POS suddenly looked like a fax machine. They created a new category where design was the differentiator. — Tesla realized that people simply weren’t excited about electric or hybrid vehicles. They were ugly and boring. So they created a v1 by repurposing an exotic sports car (Lotus Elise). They brought aura to a category that had none. — Stripe’s "7 lines of code" abstracted away the technical and regulatory hurdles of online payments. This developer-first approach, backed by clear documentation, made it incredibly easy for businesses to accept payments, reducing development time from weeks to minutes. Trap: Most founders compete by trying to be incrementally better than their competitors or the incumbent. Solution: Focus on being different instead. Reimagine the category and serve unmet needs. Attack the incumbent’s weakness by leveraging new technology or bringing a unique insight only you have. The way to win is to play your own game.

A Great Product Manager will always consider changing any setback into an opportunity. But how to tell an opportunity from a future flop? Listen, being "Agile" did not come out of any fundamental hate of the "Waterfall" (heavily planned) way of doing things. It came from the inherent unpredictability of tech and the market. Agile is about maximizing value and finding ways to win big, bet small, and maintain a low level of risk. Thus, as a PM, you are a predator hunting for an opportunity that can easily get you to your goals, in front of competition, or simply amaze your team and company with your results. Ok, but how to find those diamonds in the rough? 1) Improve on your competitors' work Your competitors already did the heavy lifting by testing what the market responds to. Instead of reinventing the wheel, make it smoother, faster, and more appealing. Apple built entire product lines on this principle: perfecting what others started. 2) Look for abandoned, proven MVPs in your company Many teams launch pilots or MVPs that show promise but get buried under shifting priorities. As a PM, you can resurrect these half-forgotten gems and carry them across the finish line. Sometimes the best opportunities are already lying in your company’s backyard. 3) Pick up complex ideas with easily proven fundamentals Big visions often scare stakeholders, but you don’t need to tackle them all at once. Focus on proving one small, undeniable piece that validates the larger direction. A single pebble of evidence can set the whole stone rolling. 4) Look for successful patterns in similar industries Innovation doesn’t always mean starting from zero. Sometimes it’s about borrowing proven tactics from another industry and applying them to yours. Gamification, loyalty mechanics, or community building can travel surprisingly well between markets. 5) Spend time reviewing comments and feedback User reviews, support tickets, and survey responses hide more opportunities than most dashboards. AI can now crunch tens of thousands of them and show you patterns in minutes. If you’re not mining feedback for product ideas, you’re sitting on gold and ignoring it. 6) From time to time, test a wild idea Not every bet should be rational or backed by data. Occasionally, you need to test something bold and unconventional that might just click. Steve Jobs once tossed a prototype iPod into an aquarium to show it could still be smaller, as it produced bubbles of air once underwater. But all those 6 approaches only work if you are willing to take things into your hands and not be forced into delivering management-ordered features. You need to be truly agile, meaning bold and willing to take risks. Those who play by the rules likely won't win. The house always wins. You want to win. Try harder. So... Did you ever take a risk? How did it end? Tell me your story in the comments :) #productmanagement #productmanager #agile  

I do dozens of interviews with top CMOs every year. I always ask what the best performing marketing channel is. And right now everyone is saying events. Post COVID events are back, but also now in an AI world, I think there's a stronger appetite to get out and connect with real people vs. just getting answers from ChatGPT. But: like anything in marketing, running events just because everyone else is doing them is a great way to set money on fire (and still not drive any incremental business). Whether it's a booth at a trade show. A VIP dinner. A 500-person conference. They can all work. They can all flop. The difference: having a real plan and strategy for that event going in. Why do it in the first place? (which continues to be the most important lesson in marketing - what's in it for me? what's the hook? why should people come to our thing?) We talked to two event experts on the Exit Five pod recently Stephanie Christensen and Kristina DeBrito — and here are 5 keys they shared for B2B event success: 1. Pick the right format. Not all events do the same job. Big splash? Go flagship. Want pipeline? Try VIP roundtables. Tiny budget? Host micro-events around existing conferences. Set real goals. 2. “Leads” are not enough anymore. Are you driving awareness? Accelerating deals? Generating pipeline? Define this upfront—or you’ll waste time measuring the wrong stuff. There are more metrics than just "did we get leads from this event" and in today's world leads are tablestalkes. 3. Align your team, bro. Sales and marketing must move in lockstep. Slack alerts for registrations. Sales meeting updates. Leaderboards. It all matters. This is a team effort. 4. Make it memorable. People forget panels. They remember custom pancakes and great venues. Was the food good? Did the WiFi work? Did Oprah show up? Just kidding. Making sure you'r reading. But think surprise and delight, not branded frisbees. 5. Put the work in on the follow up. Events don't close deals - follow-up does. Segment attendees. Create custom offers. Babysit the handoff to sales like your job depends on it. Because it does. You just went shopping and got all these fresh groceries - dont let them spoil. B2B buyers want real connection again. Events can create that. Are you feeling this desire for events? Are you doing events in your business right now? Let me know...

This is a pivotal time for business leaders to apply strategic foresight and systems thinking. Go beyond tariffs and stock market trends and consider the broader, longer-term impacts: 1. How might a trend toward AI deregulation in product safety affect the AI products my business relies on? 2. In what ways could shifts in immigration policy influence my workforce strategy for maintaining a competitive edge with emerging technologies? How could these policies reshape PhD talent pipelines? 3. How will evolving U.S. geopolitical relationships impact my third-party suppliers and global partnerships? 4. With the increasing influence of techno-politics, what new considerations emerge for my business strategy? Scenario planning is key in moments of change and uncertainty.