🟢 9 Strategic insights for 2025 - 6. Innovation centers are (mostly) done
The innovation lab seemed to be a great idea years ago. Intrapreneurs, infusing new energy in the system with startup-like energy and all that jazz. The most prominent labs are now all closed, mostly silently and without much to show for. The bean bags and pong table are in a closet. What now?
The core insight
Innovation centers embodying large, ambitious innovation programs based on entrepreneurial spirit and processes like design thinking or lean startup are closing down one after the other with little (if anything, really) to show for it. While they were all about pipelining "good ideas" and moonshot into business, industrials will have to face to innovation is not a linear workflow.
The discussion
For the last two decades, Forbes, Bloomberg, the Harvard Business Review, and many other business media have shared a simple truth: large corporations are too slow and risk-averse to produce innovation. The solution? Elegant and efficient: free your innovation spirit by creating an innovation center. An island of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit from where new energy will flow and rejuvenate your tired, old, incumbent business. Suffice it to say it didn't work as planned, and no demonstrable large-scale success stemmed from these initiatives.
Fine. What now?
