In Memoriam: Zeinab Ali

A group of white flowers, tulips.

Ali began her 20-plus year career in the food industry at Kraft Foods and Nabisco in various R&D capacities, including quality, operations, product and new technology development. She joined PepsiCo in 2005 as Sr. Manager to lead the new product & technology strategy development for Quaker US Foods Product & Process innovation. In 2007, she took a newly established breakthrough Innovation role, responsible for identifying and building technical capabilities in ingredients and delivery systems to create and deliver a tangible performance and nutrition benefits for athletes. This included the launch of G-series performance and G-Natural platforms for the Gatorade Brand.

In 2010, the role expanded to include leading PepsiCo Hydration brands product development – (SoBe brand, Propel & Aquafina) and was promoted to Sr. Director. In 2013, the role again expanded to include Fruits & Vegetable Platform (Tropicana/Naked Emerging Brands). In 2015, the role changed from regional to global, leading Global R&D Functional Capabilities Breakthrough Formulations & Culinary for Nutrition Category platforms (Fruits & Vegetables, Sports Nutrition, Dairy, Grains) supporting global initiatives and region breakthrough Innovation for Tropicana, Naked Juice, Quaker and Gatorade/Propel brands.

Later in her career, she joined Campbell’s Soup Company, also in research and development roles. After retirement, Ali served as chair of the Cornell AgriTech Advisory Council, bringing together food and agriculture businesses with entrepreneurs to succeed.

The Innovation Community Remembers Zeinab Ali

Here is a sampling of thoughts from the innovation community compiled by All Things Innovation, as well as posts that appeared on LinkedIn:

  • “I had the occasion to get to know Zeinab through interviews for a few of the reports I produced for All Things Innovation, the online home of the FEI conference. She was an important Advisory Board member for the long-running event and I finally met her in person when I produced FEI, last year. She was kind and thoughtful- her energy was so positive that I felt it, even in our virtual meetings. Her intelligence was superior. I know this based on her calm and collected approach to any point she made, which was almost always the most insightful point made on the subject at hand. That all adds up to a special and memorable person—someone that I’m so happy that I was able to know. I know that those of us who knew her, regardless of the length of time, already have her in our collective spirit. We’ll continue to spread her spirit as we go.” —Seth Adler, IMI Intelligence & Innovation
  • “As I return to #FEI2025 this week, I’m excited to connect with this community. But, I also find myself thinking about Zeinab Ali —my late mentor, former manager and a dear friend, who was one of the first to truly believe in me. It was Zeinab who first sent me to this very conference. I once told her, “Thank you, this feels like a spa retreat for my brain.” She never forgot that line. Zeinab recognized a deep curiosity within me that would later fuel my passion for uncovering insights and advocating for the voice of the consumer in innovation. She nurtured that spark, and encouraged me to grow into it. If you’ve had someone who believed in your potential before you did, be that person for someone else. Innovation begins with belief. Pass it on.”  —Michelle Wee, Food Trend Director, Global Strategy and Innovation, Ferrero
  • “This week we lost Zeinab Ali, a dear friend, mentor, and colleague. Zeinab was devoted to learning and development. In her last post on LinkedIn she encouraged her network to support Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell AgriTech. To honor her memory and to celebrate her passion for the food industry and for educating future generations, Cornell AgriTech has established a fund that will be used to support summer internships (through the summer scholars program) at AgriTech. Gifts can be made online and please notate on the form the gift is in memory of Zeinab Ali. Alternatively, you may make a gift by check made payable to Cornell University to PO Box 37334, Boone, IA 50037 and notate they are in memory of Zeinab Ali.”  —Mark Nisbet, Director of Product Development, Mars
  • “Last week was one where I found out just how fast bad news travels- the passing of Zeinab Ali took us all by surprise, and all of the comments have been the same. She was astounding, spoke her mind, showed what good leadership was, nurtured talent, and is a huge loss to this world for her family, friends and colleagues. She played a huge part in my journey and I am truly sad, still processing the news. [The scholars program] is a great way to keep her legacy in the industry going strong. She can continue to lead strong, and nurture talent!”  — Tammy Butterworth, Product Innovation Director, Welch’s
  • “Zeinab was always kind and supportive. I had the privilege of interviewing her for a series of blogs on All Things Innovation about best practices in innovation. She was the perfect choice with all her wonderful years of experience. As she liked to say, when it comes to innovation and brands, you only have one chance to make a good first impression. Thank you Zeinab, for all your years of passion in the innovation discipline.” —Matthew Kramer, Digital Editor, All Things Innovation
  • “I had the privilege of knowing Zeinab Ali as a colleague in product development for many years. We would often reconnect in person at the Front End of Innovation conference, where her warmth, insight, and boundless curiosity always stood out. Zeinab had a rare combination of deep technical expertise and genuine human connection — she brought heart to innovation. It’s hard to imagine FEI without her. It’s hard to imagine life without her. I’ll miss our conversations and her bright spirit. Her legacy will live on in the many people and products she touched.” —Gail Martino, Innovation Consultant
  • “She was smart, poised, thoughtful and reserved. I always wanted to hear more from her since her perspective was so well considered. She will be missed in our community.”  —Michele Sandoval, formerly Director of Innovation, Gallo
  • “What an incredible loss. Zeinab was an incredible person who shared her light with the world. Very honored to have worked with her at PepsiCo. My heart extends to her family during this difficult time.” —Allison Karay, Principal Project Manager, Amway
  • “So very sorry to hear of Zeinab’s passing. I had the privilege of working with her at Campbell’s. She was truly a wonderful person dedicated to the betterment of her craft.”  —Roma A. McCaig, Public Affairs & Communications Chief
  • “Huge loss of a wonderful leader, gone too soon. Condolences to all who were impacted by her.” — Meera Simha, Director, Regulatory, Ferrara Candy Company
  • “I am saddened by this news and will remember Zeinab as a terrific person and the consummate professional.” —Stephen Dus, Senior Research and Development Leader, formerly Sr. Director, Product Innovation and Enabling Technology R&D, Tyson Foods
  • “She was one of the good ones. I worked for her when I was part of Naked Juice. She had strong integrity, a sense of humor and a big heart. She will be missed.” —Greg Fry, Entrepreneur and Founder, SquareOne Food & Beverage Consulting
  • “Zeinab was truly an incredible person and an inspiration to me as I started my career with PepsiCo. May her memory be a blessing.” —Daniel Margulis, R&D Sr. Manager – Global Disruptive Innovation, Kraft Heinz
  • “She had a remarkable ability to inspire and lead.” —Santhosh Challa, Manager, R&D, Innovation, Sugar Reduction, Ingredion Incorporated
  • “I’m so stunned. I just spoke with her recently on the amazing accomplishments of her kids. Our daughters played together many years ago during Nabisco. My heart is with her family at this time of loss.”  —Jan Deihl, Owner, Enneajan
  • “I am so very sorry to hear this news. I worked with Zeinab Ali at PepsiCo and appreciated her transparency and partnership. Sending love and strength to her family and friends. Sorry to hear of the passing of such a talented, lovely person.” —Shari Matras, CEO/Founder and Managing Principal, BrandNext Partners
  • “This is terrible news. Zeinab was a wonderful person, a great leader and such an inspiration. I cannot believe she is gone.”  —Joanne Kennedy, East Coast Sales Director, Symrise AG
  • “So sorry to hear about Zeinab’s passing! The world has lost a very special person!”  —Andy Kieltyka, Senior Manager, Global Safety & Security, CDW

Zeinab Ali on Innovation (in her own words)

“A lot of people may focus on technical aspects and many other segments. For me, the key is very simple. It is the relationship between the business, especially marketing, and R&D. If that is not working, it’s a recipe for innovation failure. I always say that the marketer who knows as much about R&D is your best friend.”

“Be transparent to the business of your capabilities, your knowledge, your understanding about that particular innovation—and you could be wrong, and they can help you correct it. But if you’re very transparent and vulnerable with them, with marketing and vice versa, innovation will work.”

“I think listening to the people before you, listening to what worked, what did not work, and be curious. Ask why. Why did it not work? What happened? Why did it work this time? Children are actually the most creative and innovative in their thoughts. Why? Because they have no fear of failure. They don’t have self-doubt yet, and they ask questions. Just learn from them: Ask questions. Don’t have that fear of failure. Don’t have self-doubt, and innovation will follow.”

“It goes back to that stakeholder relationship. If we start together upfront and be together at the front end of innovation, we can see the need of that innovation together.”

“We’ve done innovations that failed six months into the market. Learn from it. You collect information. Let the consumer enlighten you. Develop organizational thinking and learn from it.”

“Whether technology or culture or people—I think it’s immersing yourself in your field. Let’s say if I make sodas. Immerse yourself in the soda world, everything that exists, not just the big guys but the small guys, even the adjacencies and products that are not quite soda. You’re always looking to adjacencies to adjacencies to adjacencies so at some point you grow your portfolio. Have that finger on the pulse of the consumer—what else are they doing with this soda? They’re consuming my soda with this other product, should I be making that other product as well?”

“You’re constantly trying to extend your brand and understanding. How much can you stretch the brand to the point that it’s not the product the consumer wants. When you get to that point, you have brand extensibility. How far can you push the brand before people say enough. You must understand how far your brand can stretch and then know that limitation. If you want to grow the business, what are the adjacencies that you should consider? You’re always looking for more of what else can the consumer consider me to deliver legitimately?”

“Maybe the product extension is not here yet. Maybe it’s five, six, seven, ten years down the road. Sometimes the organization is not there yet but as a product developer you must look ahead and anticipate.”

“The challenging piece that I see is more one of resources—the lack of resources. People don’t have the bandwidth to do a lot of things that they would love to do. It’s the background work that really fuels innovation because people need a safe space and given the freedom to play. I think that we’re losing that. When the initiative or project arrives, with very little notice, we end up starting from scratch. There was no forethought, which makes it very challenging. Where does most of the shortcuts take place? In my experience, it’s the front end of innovation.”

“Does the consumer want or need this? Can we make it? Can we make money? All those three questions should be answered upfront. My best practice advice is to spend as much time as possible on the front end because then from front end to the launch, it’s really a straight line.”

“I see reliance on technology, whether it be AI and social media, more than actually connecting with the end user. What’s disappearing is the connection with the end user of your product because we’re relying on the algorithm. Yes, use it, but don’t use it instead of the consumer. Technology is supplemental, not the other way around. Because within the corporation, we drink our own Kool Aid. We get excited about what we offer. We get excited about the technologies that we deliver. We get excited about it because we have a patent. But I think the human factor will keep you humble and keep you focused and make you deliver the project on time with less costs because you’re not adding things that they don’t want. Don’t take the consumer focus away from innovators.”

“As innovators, one must always ask the question, what’s in it for the consumer?”

“That is still a problem at organizations—not doing enough insight work to gain foresights. Breakthrough innovation can’t be done without foresights.”

“Innovation is sitting right in front of us. And what do you do? Watch the consumer.”

Zeinab Ali on Her Retirement

Of her retirement, about a year ago Ali wrote a note on LinkedIn, which All Things Innovation feels is pertinent to share here: Ali wrote, “I don’t post often, but I have some important news to share! After 25+ blessed years in the Food Industry, I am officially ‘kinda’ retiring. It has been a very fulfilling career with lots of twists and turns that have always propelled me to a better place. It was not what I thought I would do “when I grow up”. It was better!

If you can believe it, working in the food industry was not my first career choice. Coming from academia, I thought I would spend maybe 3-5 years in the industry and go back to my roots, but I stayed. I fell in love with the cross-functional/fast-based nature of being in this industry and the fact we make products that consumers want, need, and many times for their pure enjoyment.

I have touched many iconic brands and platforms that I am so proud of, and yes, my kids bragged about them and made some friends because of these brands. [Editor’s Note: Brands like Oreo, Chips Ahoy!, 100 calorie packs platforms, Tombstone, Quaker, Gatorade, Tropicana, Naked Juice, KaVita! and many more international brands].

These brands took me to five continents and greeted my team in six different languages. Best “TEAM” ever! I was able to be there for my teams in different time zones across the globe because just as I was raised by a village of aunts, uncles and grandparents, I too had brother-in-laws, sisters, brothers, cousins, grandparents and friends that were a short 2-hour flight or 8-hour drive away. They would show up to hold my own village together when needed, no questions asked because we were raised that way.

I appreciate my husband and my children for all their support throughout the years.

I thank my colleagues and mentors (you know who you are). You always kept it real with me. Cheers!!

So, what am I going to do with this newly found freedom? I have been given so much. It is only natural for me to give back what I have received. I plan to continue to mentor and consult professionally. Academia is calling me back, as well as volunteering.

Of course, I will continue to support other villages in need to give back. Because: I am a Sister, an Aunty, a Cousin, and a Friend. Until next time….”

Sparking the Spirit of Innovation in a New Era

A brain inside of a light bulb showing both human mindset and AI.

Strengthening the Rogue Mindset

In this time of uncertainty, whether you view it through a lens of the economy, politics or society at large, it’s still important to bring ideas to the table. Ideas are a choice, as Jamaar Smiley put it in his opening remarks to kick off the show. “Humanity is in motion and together we thrive. Embrace the spark,” says Smiley.

Certainly, a core focus of the innovation focused show was seen in the format, with day one highlighting human intelligence; day two exploring AI; and day three a look at the future. Throughout, there was a presence of the overall theme of collective intelligence—that together, minds with machines, can sow the seeds and harvest innovation, while sparking transformation.

Perhaps it was fitting that the first keynote panel of FEI25 highlighted “Actioning the Rogue Mindset,” which FEI and All Things Innovation developed as a special research report online along with a roundtable component at the show directly after the panel.

The keynote session included Tammy Butterworth, Product Innovation Director at Welch’s; Liza Sanchez, Vice President, Research & Development at Procter & Gamble; Scott Ehrlich, Chief Innovation Officer, Head of Corporate Strategy at Sinclair Broadcast Group; Brigette Wolf, CMO at MyMochi; and Craig Dubitsky, founder and CEO at Happy.

Bringing all of these panelists’ different job roles together, while exploring the rogue mindset, also helped put it all in perspective with an emphasis on collaboration. Conceived of by Butterworth at the 2024 Front End of Innovation, the rogue mindset is a way to champion an unconventional approach to decision-making and innovation. It emphasizes resilience, openness to unconventional ideas, grit, unwavering curiosity, empowerment and communication. The audience was encouraged to think outside the box yet fuel alignment with business strategy.

In some ways, the rogue mindset is an enhanced version of the innovation growth mindset that today’s innovators strive for in a corporate environment, while breaking down silos, removing roadblocks and connecting the dots.

For Butterworth, going rogue is a way as a leader to inspire teams, and make your innovations have an impact on the world and the organization. For Ehrlich, it’s about collaboration and enhancing your problem-solving capabilities. Dubitsky, meanwhile, pointed to how the diversity of thought in a team and a love of learning can help energize innovation.

Sanchez made a relevant point that the rogue mindset is not only about bringing more outside the box thinking inside the box—it’s also about making the overall box bigger for the innovation practitioner. “Bring skills and capabilities into it from the outside,” says Sanchez, which is one avenue to creating a safe environment and putting a diversity of voices into the mix.

Making sure the team has a safe environment was mentioned by several panelists, as is focusing on the customer. “This is about bringing ideas, and permission to get out of the box,” says Wolf.

Ultimately, as our panelists highlighted some advice for the audience from their unique perspectives, it was determined that even with a rogue mindset, it’s about making it easier to get to decision making. From stamping out biases to taking a leap of faith, to lessons learned, it’s about reducing the fear of not trying.

“Have the courage of conviction,” says Dubitsky.

AI Amplifies Impact on Innovation

If day one of FEI25 was all about the individual innovator and/or how a rogue mindset can enhance decision-making, day two was all about how to leverage AI in that decision-making process while remaining empathetic, differentiated, and keeping ourselves grounded in humanity.

The keynote, “No-Hype AI Impact on Organizational Efficiency, Value, Teams & The Bottom-Line,” featured Rick Robinson, VP, AgeTech Collaborative, VP Product Innovation at AARP; Shahid Azim, CEO, Managing Partner, Co-Founder at C10 Labs; Sanji Fernando, Operating Partner, Data & Artificial Intelligence at Frazier Healthcare Partners; and Anushka Nair, Rhodes Scholar, Researcher at MIT.

Our panelists agreed that AI has improved operations in a significant way, cutting out bureaucracy, enhancing personalization, saving operational costs and reducing fraud.

As Nair noted, we are now in a new era, a time of bringing research, AI and theory together into practice. Potential technology is moving fast and creating faster outcomes.

Yet, as AARP’s Robinson observed, we still have human creativity, decision-making and problem solving in the mix. Still, we are perhaps identifying and retaining the best capabilities of both humans and machines at this juncture moving forward, says Fernando.

The current rate of change related to AI is bringing new thinking to the often-closed loop of innovation. Humans need to be in on the rate of change. “Get your hands dirty and provide value for your team and organization. You are in control,” advises Nair.

While this panel was focused on downplaying the hype regarding AI, there is no question that companies are undergoing an “arms race” of sorts as they bolster their operations with AI systems, provide customers with new user experiences and enhance new ways of thinking for innovators.

“There is a core tension between humans and applications of AI,” says Fernando. But it is in this evolving, optimization environment that can unlock growth and productivity.

Whether you leverage AI as a thinking partner, or enhance your human side’s rogue mindset approach, it’s all about producing better decision-making in the innovation process. Azim coined the phrase that humans can use AI as a “cognitive amplifier.” In this way, brush off the hype and leverage AI to its fullest potential. Take advantage of this moment as an opportunity to spark innovation in a new era.

FEI25: Harnessing Innovation, Growth, and Human-AI Synergy

Seedling and soil in someone’s cupped hands, green background.

KEY QUOTES

  • “If we follow the rules we have today, we’re not ready for tomorrow. So we need to find where that space is… Where are those gray spaces that we can really push and challenge some assumptions and make a difference in the world with the work that we do.”
  • “If leading change is about saying, ‘I have a vision, follow me to the future,’ then leading innovation is about how do I create an environment in which people will be willing and able to co-create the future with me.”
  • “Innovation has to be a profit center. There’s no excuse. And to do this, you need to be systematic about incubation, because incubation is where everything happens, when you are turning ideas into proof of value.”
  • “Technology for the sake of technology doesn’t do anything for anyone. If I’m being very candid, this is one of the big things that Web3 screwed up. It was a lot of like cool tech that solved no needs for anybody and therefore nobody used it.”
  • “The real magic happens only when AI and the human brain work together, and they work at the right places.”

FULL SESSION SUMMARY

Day 1: Human Intelligence Day

FEI25’s Human Intelligence Day provided a comprehensive exploration of how human-centric approaches, strategic alignment, and organizational resilience are paramount for driving innovation and securing future growth. The sessions highlighted that successful innovation extends beyond technological prowess, emphasizing a deep understanding of human behavior. The “Actioning The Rogue Mindset” keynote and roundtable focused on the unconventional approaches required for breakthrough innovation, urging attendees to challenge existing rules and assumptions to find “gray spaces” for differentiation. Key themes included the power of cross-functional collaboration, fostering psychological safety for dissenting voices, and seeking inspiration from outside one’s immediate industry. Decision-making in innovation contexts was discussed as a balance of data and intuition, reframing failure as a learning opportunity.

The “FEI Honors” event paid tribute to innovation leaders like Linda Hill and Rita McGrath, who underscored a shift in innovation leadership from a vision-driven approach to one that fosters an environment for co-creation. Linda Hill emphasized creating psychological safety and embracing “disciplined deviance,” while Rita McGrath focused on strategic agility and continuous learning. Steve Blank advocated for a “two-speed organization” where innovation “future bets” are nurtured separately from core business operations.

The “Strategy & Transformation Track” explored the critical link between innovation and business success, moving beyond traditional product development to encompass broader strategic transformation. A central tenet was radical consumer-centricity, ensuring every innovation addresses a genuine consumer need aligned with business strategy. The track emphasized the power of emotional design and compelling storytelling in creating differentiated experiences. It also advocated for a “two-track innovation system” to manage both sustaining and disruptive innovations.

The “Innovation Excellence & Best Practices Track” focused on refining innovation processes by integrating advanced tools and fostering human-centered approaches. A key insight was that while AI can accelerate discovery, genuine human insights are crucial to prevent “model collapse,” where AI only reinforces existing patterns. Speakers emphasized the high failure rate of R&D and the need for inclusive design principles, incorporating diverse user perspectives from the outset..

The “Innovation Integration & Value Creation Track” underscored the necessity of systematically integrating innovation into the business, moving from mere ideation to predictable value creation. A core message was that “innovation has to be a profit center,” requiring a systematic approach to incubation where ideas are rigorously tested for proof of value. This track explored the transformative power of AI across the innovation funnel, emphasizing its role in mediating human labor, automating tasks, and fragmenting work. It also highlighted the importance of talent, emphasizing the need for HR to focus on cognitive traits like curiosity and problem-solving ability over pure knowledge.

Day 2: Artificial Intelligence Day

FEI25’s Artificial Intelligence Day explored the transformative power of AI in innovation, emphasizing that its true potential is realized through strategic integration with human intelligence and rigorous, data-driven approaches. The morning plenaries distinguished between “artificial intelligence” and “amplified intelligence,” advocating for a human-in-the-loop approach where human expertise guides and empowers AI. A central theme was that AI must solve real business problems and create tangible value, rather than being technology for technology’s sake. Challenges in scaling AI within large organizations were addressed, including the need for significant upfront investment in data protection, security, and continuous monitoring for “model drift. Leaders were urged to bridge a “management blind spot” by understanding AI’s exponential pace and fostering a culture of experimentation and risk-taking.

The “Collective Intelligence Startup Competition” showcased innovative startups leveraging AI combined with human intelligence to solve diverse business challenges. Key takeaways included the importance of strong foundational data, the ability of AI to scale human expertise, and the necessity of combining deep domain knowledge with technological innovation.

The “AI, Data, Analytics & Insights Track” emphasized the foundational role of data and analytics in driving successful AI-powered innovation. Trust in data partnerships, built through quality, strategic alignment, and data literacy, was a recurring theme. The track explored the challenges of scaling AI beyond initial proof-of-concepts, highlighting the “in-between moment” where companies must invest in transformational AI to avoid falling behind. Analytics was presented as essential across the entire innovation lifecycle.

The “R&D, Product Development, Experience & Design Track” explored how R&D and product development are transforming to align innovation directly with business strategy and drive revenue. Sessions stressed that innovation is no longer a cost center but a performance function, demanding measurable financial impact. The strategic integration of AI was a key topic, positioning AI as a “thinking partner” to expand perspectives. The importance of radical consumer empathy was highlighted, asserting that consumers buy experiences and feelings, not just products.

The “Future Trends to Customer 2030 Track” focused on de-risking innovation and cultivating sustainable growth by engaging with future trends and customer needs. Sessions covered novel approaches to market validation, such as “skin in the game” platforms where customers pre-commit to concepts. The strategic value of co-development with startups for accelerated R&D was highlighted, along with the importance of market fluidity and strategic partnerships. The track also explored leveraging AI for deep consumer insights and transforming industrial waste into profitable products.

Day 3: Collective Intelligence Day

FEI25’s “Collective Intelligence Day” explored diverse frontiers of innovation, emphasizing how strategic collaboration and foresight can drive business model transformation and sustainable growth. The “Solving Real Business Challenges with Collective Intelligence (HI+AI) Workshop” explored the synergy between human intelligence (HI) and artificial intelligence (AI) as collaborative partners. The core message was that true innovation “magic” happens when humans maintain critical thinking and strategic direction while leveraging AI for perspective expansion and efficiency.

The “Transformative Strategic Thinking: The Art of Disciplined Business Creativity Workshop” introduced a framework for challenging deeply held assumptions and reimagining business models in response to disruption. This session emphasized that transforming a business model requires disciplined creativity—a blend of fresh ideas, counterintuitive perspectives, and new points of view.

The workshop, “Silent Collaboration: Challenging Habitual Thinking, Constraints & Inefficiencies,” focused on fostering collaborative innovation, particularly highlighting the surprising effectiveness of working with strangers. Participants engaged in hands-on activities, and the hosts emphasized that collaborating with individuals unknown to each other often removes established power dynamics and preconceived notions, leading to more equal participation and breakthrough ideas.

The “Business Model Innovation: The Advanced and Urban Personal Air Travel Ecosystem” session explored the burgeoning flying vehicle industry as a rapidly developing ecosystem poised to transform urban mobility and logistics. Projections estimate this industry could reach $3 trillion by 2035, with a significant focus on sustainability benefits. The “Business Model Innovation: Space Economy Ecosystem” session provided a deep dive into the rapidly expanding space economy, projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. Panelists discussed challenges like space debris and the need for international governance, highlighting NASA’s openness to collaboration.

Finally, the “Unpacking Quantum For Innovation and Your Organization” session demystified quantum computing, explaining its fundamentals, current state, and critical business implications. Nokia’s Leslie Shannon stressed the immediate and critical security implications, particularly the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat, urging organizations to explore quantum-resistant encryption solutions now.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Innovation Requires a “Rogue Mindset”: True innovation necessitates challenging existing assumptions, seeking “gray spaces” beyond conventional rules, and fostering psychological safety for dissenting voices and diverse perspectives.
  • Human-AI Synergy is Paramount: The most effective innovation results from intentional collaboration between human intelligence and AI, with humans providing critical thinking and strategic direction, and AI expanding perspectives and enhancing efficiency.
  • Innovation Must Be a Profit Center: Organizations must shift their mindset from viewing innovation as a cost center to a performance function, explicitly linking all innovation activities to revenue generation and ensuring measurable business impact.
  • Radical Consumer-Centricity is Non-Negotiable: Every innovation must address a validated consumer need or intention, deeply understanding the emotional and experiential aspects of consumer desires to create truly differentiated and impactful products and services.
  • Emerging Technologies Demand Proactive Engagement: Industries like urban air mobility, the space economy, and quantum computing, while still evolving, offer significant future growth opportunities and require organizations to proactively monitor, analyze, and strategically engage with their development.

DELIVERY ON EVENT FOCUS: Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy

FEI25 robustly delivered on the focus of aligning innovation with business strategy through several key areas. The conference consistently emphasized the financial imperative of innovation, positioning it explicitly as a “profit center” and a “performance function” that must be directly linked to revenue growth and measurable ROI. Sessions highlighted the need for problem-centric AI deployment, ensuring that AI implementations are strategically aligned with core business challenges and desired outcomes rather than being technology for technology’s sake. Strategic foresight and opportunity identification were central, with discussions on future trends like quantum computing, urban air travel, and the space economy directly addressing how to strategically position organizations for future growth by identifying emerging markets and mitigating long-term risks. The importance of data-driven decision-making was underscored, with analytics and data quality presented as non-negotiable for informed strategic decisions throughout the innovation lifecycle.

Furthermore, the event stressed the strategic imperative of organizational resilience through business model innovation, adapting to AI’s exponential pace and transforming business models for competitive advantage. Finally, talent and ecosystem development were highlighted as strategic investments in continuous innovation, emphasizing the empowerment of employees as “AI teachers” and the cultivation of external partnerships.

DELIVERY ON EVENT THEME: Harvesting Innovation and Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth

The Human Intelligence Day effectively addressed the theme of “harvesting innovation and sowing the seeds of future growth” through a multifaceted approach. Harvesting innovation was exemplified by the emphasis on innovation as a “profit center” and the systematic incubation processes aimed at yielding tangible business value from ideas. Discussions also focused on optimizing existing processes through “rogue mindsets” and improved internal collaboration to efficiently harvest ideas from current resources. The event highlighted learning from past successes and failures to refine future strategies.

Sowing the seeds of future growth involved cultivating a culture of innovation that fosters psychological safety, co-creation, and risk-taking. Strategic investment in talent and capabilities, such as hiring for cognitive skills and developing internal collaboration, was presented as sowing seeds for a future-ready workforce. The focus on long-term portfolio thinking, including “future bets,” clearly aimed at planting seeds for sustainable growth. Proactive consumer empathy and the ethical integration of AI, ensuring continuous human data input, were also discussed as vital for anticipating future market demands and supporting long-term, human-led innovation.

ACTION ITEMS FOR INNOVATION EXPERTS & CORPORATE CHANGEMAKERS

To action the learnings from FEI25, innovation experts and corporate changemakers should:

  • Cultivate a “Rogue” Culture: Regularly schedule “assumption-busting” sessions to challenge deeply held beliefs. Implement practices that foster psychological safety for diverse opinions and critiques, such as anonymous feedback or dedicated “dissenting voice” roles. Create mechanisms for cross-industry learning, bringing in external speakers or consultants to spark new ideas and challenge internal echo chambers.
  • Transform Innovation Leadership to Enable Co-Creation: Redefine leadership roles from sole visionaries to “environment builders” who empower teams to co-create solutions. Invest in learning agility by encouraging rapid experimentation and learning from “valuable failures,” integrating reflection and adaptation into every project lifecycle. Build ecosystems by actively engaging with external partners like startups, academia, and non-profits to expand innovation reach.
  • Implement Radical Consumer-Centricity: Conduct qualitative research (e.g., ethnographic studies, direct observation) to deeply understand consumers’ emotional needs and pain points. Ensure every innovation concept explicitly addresses a validated consumer need and aligns with your organization’s business strategy. Prioritize the emotional and experiential aspects of products/services, mapping the entire customer journey for differentiation.
  • Structure for Dual Innovation: Establish distinct organizational structures, funding models, and metrics for managing core business extensions (sustaining innovation) and speculative, high-potential ventures (disruptive innovation). Safeguard emerging innovations from the short-term pressures and established processes of the core business.
  • Systematize Innovation Incubation and Value Creation: Implement rigorous incubation processes that focus on generating measurable proof of value for every idea. Ensure R&D, marketing, legal, and other critical functions are involved from the earliest stages of ideation. Develop comprehensive metrics that track both immediate impact and long-term value, moving beyond simple launch success to sustained growth and profitability.
  • Evolve Talent Strategy for Innovation: When recruiting for innovation roles, prioritize cognitive traits like curiosity, critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and adaptability over specific industry knowledge. Invest in training that fosters cross-functional collaboration, design thinking, and the ability to navigate uncertainty within your existing workforce.
  • Develop a Problem-First AI Strategy: Before implementing any AI solution, clearly define the specific business problem it will solve and the desired measurable outcomes. Conduct an “AI opportunity audit” to identify high-impact areas where AI can act as a “cognitive amplifier” for human teams.
  • Invest in AI Infrastructure, Data Quality, and Ethics: Advocate for significant upfront investment in robust data governance, data quality frameworks, and cybersecurity measures to support AI initiatives. Establish “human-in-the-loop” processes for critical AI applications, including continuous monitoring for “model drift” and bias. Develop an ethical AI framework, ensuring transparency, accountability, and fairness in your AI systems.
  • Bridge the “Management Blind Spot” and Foster AI Literacy: Educate senior leadership on the exponential pace of AI evolution and its strategic implications. Implement internal training programs that empower employees with “first principles” thinking and prompt engineering skills. Encourage grassroots experimentation with AI tools to build organizational confidence.
  • Embrace Hybrid Human-AI Innovation Processes: Design innovation sprints that explicitly combine AI-generated insights with human creativity, tracking the success of hybrid ideas. Integrate real-time, behavioral insights into your front-end innovation process to validate concepts and reduce the “say-do gap.” Shift innovation metrics to prioritize “sticky innovation” and long-term value creation.
  • Cultivate a Future-Focused Innovation Portfolio: Establish a dedicated strategic foresight function to monitor emerging technologies (e.g., quantum computing, urban air mobility, space economy) and assess their potential impact. Develop a phased roadmap for engaging with these future trends, including early research, partnership exploration, and pilot projects for long-term positioning. Proactively address long-term security threats, such as “harvest now, decrypt later,” by initiating research and implementation of quantum-resistant encryption.
  • Implement Hybrid Human-AI Collaboration: Audit current innovation processes to identify specific stages where AI can enhance, rather than replace, human creativity. Train teams on structured AI prompting techniques (e.g., Five Lenses) and encourage collaborative dialogue with AI. Establish clear validation protocols for AI-generated insights.
  • Drive Disciplined Business Model Transformation: Form cross-functional “transformation teams” tasked with applying the five transformational practices (shaping meaning, stretching experiential performance, sharing resources, switching roles, swapping value equations) to your organization’s core business model. Conduct regular “assumption-challenging” workshops to identify beliefs hindering innovation.
  • Foster Collaborative Innovation Beyond Silos: Create “power-neutral” collaboration spaces or workshops where traditional hierarchies are temporarily suspended. Implement “stretcher sessions” where external or unfamiliar individuals review and critique ideas. Actively seek out opportunities for collaboration with diverse external partners.
  • Develop a Strategic Foresight Framework for Emerging Technologies: For urban air mobility and the space economy, identify potential partnership opportunities and assess supply chain implications. For quantum computing, immediately identify critical data vulnerable to “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks and begin researching and implementing quantum-resistant encryption standards. Establish a system to monitor regulatory progress, technology milestones, and potential business model disruptions for these technologies.
  • Cultivate a Culture of Problem-Seeking and Productive Constraints: Shift from reactive brainstorming to proactive “problem-seeking,” systematically identifying customer pain points and market opportunities as the foundation for innovation. Experiment with imposing productive constraints (e.g., strict time limits, limited resources) in ideation sessions to force focus and simplicity in solutions.

Collective Intelligence: Driving Future Innovation at FEI25

Robot hand and human hand hover over screen with collective intelligence phrases.

KEY QUOTES

  • “The real magic happens only when AI and the human brain works together and they work at the right places.”
  • “Creatively transform a business model is not an easy task… We need fresh ideas, we need counterintuitive perspective, new points of view in order to design logics that radically depart from the current one.”
  • “It was almost easier to collaborate with people you don’t know than the people you work with… The four of us are strangers and we were all total equals.”
  • “The space economy is projected to reach $1.8 trillion in the next 10 years. That is nearly a triple increase from 630 billion… a 9% increase annually, significantly more than the global GDP increase.”
  • “The problem is that when RSA is breakable, and that’s called Q day, there are bad actors now who are playing a ‘harvest now decrypt later’ game. This is actually the main thing that I want to put into everyone’s heads.”

FULL SESSION SUMMARY

FEI25’s Workshop Day, “Collective Intelligence for the Future,” convened innovation experts and corporate changemakers to delve into advanced methodologies and emerging frontiers shaping the future of business. The sessions provided practical frameworks and forward-looking insights on leveraging collective intelligence, whether through human-AI collaboration, business model re-invention, or navigating the complexities of new technological and economic landscapes.

Solving Real Business Challenges with Collective Intelligence (HI+AI) Workshop

This workshop explored the synergy between human intelligence (HI) and artificial intelligence (AI) as collaborative partners in solving complex business challenges. The session introduced frameworks like ACT (Analyze, Collaborate, Test) and idea generation techniques such as Five Lenses and IDEA DJ. Participants first engaged in design thinking exercises without AI, then learned how to intentionally integrate AI to expand perspectives and enhance their innovation processes. The core message was that true innovation “magic” happens when humans maintain critical thinking and strategic direction while leveraging AI for perspective expansion and efficiency in tasks where it excels. The workshop emphasized that AI should be viewed as a “travel companion” that challenges assumptions and suggests new routes, rather than merely a “GPS” providing the fastest path. Practical exercises highlighted the importance of asking good, well-thought-out questions to AI models to elicit meaningful and nuanced insights.

Transformative Strategic Thinking: The Art of Disciplined Business Creativity Workshop

This workshop, led by authors of a book on transformative strategic thinking, introduced a framework for challenging deeply held assumptions and reimagining business models in response to disruption. Participants applied five “transformational practices” to a fictional company facing AI disruption: shaping meaning (redefining purpose), stretching experiential performance (reimagining customer experience), sharing resources (collaborating externally), switching roles (redefining competitive boundaries), and swapping value equations (reimagining revenue models). The session demonstrated that transforming a business model requires disciplined creativity—a blend of fresh ideas, counterintuitive perspectives, and new points of view to design logics that radically depart from the current ones. It emphasized that this “art” can be trained and cultivated within organizations, turning uncertainty into opportunities through systematic assumption-testing and creative problem-solving.

Silent Collaboration: Challenging Habitual Thinking, Constraints & Inefficiencies

This interactive workshop focused on fostering collaborative innovation, particularly highlighting the surprising effectiveness of working with strangers. Participants engaged in hands-on activities, such as building towers with popsicle sticks and developing creative solutions for travel pain points related to flight delays and cancellations. The hosts emphasized that collaborating with individuals unknown to each other often removes established power dynamics and preconceived notions, leading to more equal participation and breakthrough ideas. The session introduced the concept of “stretcher sessions,” where people unfamiliar with a project review and critique ideas, helping innovators simplify complex concepts and identify what truly matters to an external audience. The workshop underscored the value of embracing productive constraints, transforming pain points into opportunities, and leveraging diverse perspectives for more impactful and concise innovation.

Business Model Innovation: The Advanced and Urban Personal Air Travel Ecosystem

This session explored the burgeoning flying vehicle industry, presenting it as a rapidly developing ecosystem poised to transform urban mobility and logistics. The presenters highlighted that electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles are moving from concept to commercial reality, with passenger operations expected by 2026. The discussion covered infrastructure requirements (vertiports), regulatory progress (FAA certifications), and the evolving business models surrounding flying taxis and autonomous aerial transportation. Projections estimate this industry could reach $3 trillion by 2035. A significant focus was placed on the sustainability benefits, such as reducing urban congestion and pollution, as well as the potential for this technology to solve global problems like disaster relief and access to remote areas. The session encouraged participants to identify opportunities within this emerging ecosystem, whether as vehicle manufacturers, infrastructure developers, or service providers.

Business Model Innovation: Space Economy Ecosystem

This session provided a deep dive into the rapidly expanding space economy, projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, and its implications for terrestrial industries. Panelists from NASA, MIT Media Lab, and Aerospace Inc. discussed critical challenges such as space debris, the need for international governance, and fostering cross-industry collaboration. A key theme was making space data more accessible for broader innovation (e.g., through platforms like Kaggle) and applying insights derived from space technologies to solve Earth-based problems (e.g., in food packaging, waste management, and resource handling). The session highlighted NASA’s openness to collaboration and licensing its vast technology portfolio. It also emphasized the importance of developing sustainable governance models for space activities to ensure long-term viability. The panelists encouraged a mindset shift from viewing space as a distant frontier to recognizing its immediate relevance for business model innovation and societal problem-solving.

Unpacking Quantum For Innovation and Your Organization

Leslie Shannon, Nokia’s Head of Trend and Innovation Scouting, demystified quantum computing, explaining its fundamentals, current state, and critical business implications. She differentiated quantum computing from AI by highlighting its ability to perform complex calculations beyond classical computing capabilities, as exemplified by Google’s Willow computer solving a problem in five minutes that would take septillion years classically. While widespread quantum computing is still 8-30 years away, Shannon stressed the immediate and critical security implications, particularly the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat. Organizations must begin exploring quantum-resistant encryption solutions now to prepare for “Q-Day”—when quantum computers can break current RSA encryption standards. The session also touched on quantum sensing (e.g., ultra-sensitive magnetic sensors for medical imaging or geological surveys) and quantum networking, urging businesses to understand how these technologies could disrupt or create opportunities in their industries over various time horizons.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Human-AI Synergy is Paramount: The most effective innovation results from intentional collaboration between human intelligence and AI, with humans providing critical thinking and strategic direction, and AI expanding perspectives and enhancing efficiency.
  2. Disciplined Creativity Drives Business Model Transformation: Rethinking business models requires a structured yet creative approach that systematically challenges assumptions and explores alternative value propositions, resource models, and customer experiences.
  3. External Collaboration Fosters Breakthroughs: Working with diverse groups, including strangers and external experts, can break down internal biases and power dynamics, leading to fresh perspectives and more innovative solutions.
  4. Emerging Technologies Demand Proactive Engagement: Industries like urban air mobility, the space economy, and quantum computing, while still evolving, offer significant future growth opportunities and require organizations to proactively monitor, analyze, and strategically engage with their development.
  5. Future-Proofing Requires Anticipatory Security: For technologies like quantum computing, immediate action is necessary to address long-term security threats (e.g., “harvest now, decrypt later”) by investing in quantum-resistant encryption, even as widespread quantum computing capabilities are still years away.
  6. Insights from Constraints and Empathy: Productive constraints (e.g., time limits) can simplify complex problems, while deep empathy for user pain points and understanding “jobs to be done” are crucial for developing truly impactful innovations.

DELIVERY ON EVENT FOCUS: Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy

The Workshop Day consistently aligned innovation with business strategy by providing frameworks and insights directly applicable to strategic decision-making and long-term organizational health.

  • Strategic AI Integration: The HI+AI workshop demonstrated how to strategically leverage AI to enhance creative problem-solving and ideation, directly supporting strategic objectives for innovation.
  • Business Model Transformation: The “Transformative Strategic Thinking” workshop provided a disciplined methodology for reimagining core business models, a critical exercise for strategic resilience and growth in a disruptive environment.
  • Future-Focused Opportunity Identification: Sessions on the Space Economy and Urban Air Travel directly addressed emerging multi-trillion-dollar industries, providing strategic foresight on where future growth opportunities lie and how businesses can position themselves.
  • Risk Mitigation and Long-Term Planning: The Quantum Computing session highlighted a critical future security threat, underscoring the strategic imperative of investing in quantum-resistant encryption now to protect future assets and maintain competitive advantage.
  • Collaborative Strategy Execution: The “Silent Collaboration” workshop emphasized how to build internal capabilities for more effective, unbiased collaboration, which is essential for developing and executing complex innovation strategies.

Overall, the track underscored that effective innovation alignment with business strategy demands not only creative thinking but also systematic processes for identifying opportunities, mitigating risks, and building future capabilities across technological, market, and organizational dimensions.

DELIVERY ON EVENT THEME: Harvesting Innovation and Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth

The Workshop Day richly delivered on the theme of “Harvesting Innovation and Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth”:

  • Harvesting Innovation:
    • Optimizing Current Processes: The HI+AI workshop provided methods to immediately improve ideation and problem-solving within existing innovation processes, harvesting better ideas from current efforts.
    • Extracting Value from Collaboration: The “Silent Collaboration” workshop showcased how diverse collaboration can quickly yield novel solutions and refine existing ideas, effectively harvesting collective intelligence.
    • Monetizing New Ecosystems: The Space Economy and Urban Air Travel sessions highlighted how to identify and capture value from nascent, high-growth industries, representing opportunities to harvest new revenue streams as these ecosystems mature.
  • Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth:
    • Strategic Capability Building: The HI+AI workshop encouraged developing a deep human-AI partnership, sowing seeds for future enhanced creativity and problem-solving capacities.
    • Business Model Resilience: “Transformative Strategic Thinking” provided tools to proactively redesign business models, planting seeds for organizational resilience and adaptability in the face of future disruptions.
    • Talent and Collaboration Culture: “Silent Collaboration” promoted an organizational culture that embraces diverse, unbiased collaboration, sowing seeds for a continuously innovative workforce.
    • Future Market Entry: Discussions on the Space Economy and Urban Air Travel encouraged early engagement and strategic positioning within these sectors, sowing seeds for long-term market leadership and participation in future economic shifts.
    • Proactive Risk Management: The Quantum Computing session’s focus on “harvest now, decrypt later” security concerns compelled immediate action on quantum-resistant encryption, proactively sowing seeds for future data security and competitive integrity.

The track demonstrated a strong balance between extracting immediate value from improved processes and strategic foresight, with a clear emphasis on investing in foundational capabilities and exploring emerging frontiers to ensure long-term, sustainable growth.

ACTION ITEMS FOR INNOVATION EXPERTS & CORPORATE CHANGEMAKERS

To action the learnings from this track, innovation experts and corporate changemakers should:

  1. Implement Hybrid Human-AI Collaboration:
    • Audit your current innovation processes to identify specific stages where AI can enhance, rather than replace, human creativity (e.g., ideation, research, perspective expansion).
    • Train your teams on structured AI prompting techniques (e.g., Five Lenses) and encourage collaborative dialogue with AI, not just one-way prompting.
    • Establish clear validation protocols for AI-generated insights, using frameworks like Blind Spot Tester to maintain human oversight and critical thinking.
  2. Drive Disciplined Business Model Transformation:
    • Form cross-functional “transformation teams” tasked with applying the five transformational practices (shaping meaning, stretching experiential performance, sharing resources, switching roles, swapping value equations) to your organization’s core business model.
    • Conduct regular “assumption-challenging” workshops to identify deeply held beliefs that might be hindering innovation and explore radical departures from the current logic.
    • Develop a portfolio of alternative business model options and build capabilities for rapid experimentation to test these new models with minimal viable products.
  3. Foster Collaborative Innovation Beyond Silos:
    • Create “power-neutral” collaboration spaces or workshops where traditional hierarchies are temporarily suspended to encourage more open and equal participation.
    • Implement “stretcher sessions” where external or unfamiliar individuals review and critique your innovation concepts to ensure simplicity and relevance.
    • Actively seek out opportunities for collaboration with diverse external partners (e.g., startups, academic institutions, even other industries) to gain fresh perspectives.
  4. Develop a Strategic Foresight Framework for Emerging Technologies:
    • For urban air mobility and the space economy: Identify potential partnership opportunities within these emerging ecosystems (e.g., logistics, infrastructure, data services) and assess supply chain implications.
    • For quantum computing: Immediately identify critical data vulnerable to “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks and begin researching and implementing quantum-resistant encryption standards.
    • Establish a system to monitor regulatory progress, technology milestones, and potential business model disruptions for these technologies.
  5. Cultivate a Culture of Problem-Seeking and Productive Constraints:
    • Shift from reactive brainstorming to proactive “problem-seeking,” systematically identifying customer pain points and market opportunities as the foundation for innovation.
    • Experiment with imposing productive constraints (e.g., strict time limits, limited resources) in ideation sessions to force focus and simplicity in solutions.
    • Develop clear, simple elevator pitches for new concepts and regularly “stress test” them with external audiences for clarity and impact.

Innovation Reimagined: How Customer 2030 Is Reshaping Business Strategy

A futuristic cityscape in black and white (illustration).

KEY QUOTES

  • “Skin in the game makes innovation less risky.”
  • “You’ve transformed our innovation group from a cost center to an engine of growth.”
  • “Innovation culture is no longer optional. It’s actually essential.”

FULL SESSION SUMMARY

De-risking Innovation with “Skin in the Game”

The “How to Create Breakthrough Innovations Risk-Free” session introduced a novel approach to innovation validation through prelaunched.com, a platform that gathers authentic market validation by having potential customers place small deposits on early-stage concepts. This method provides stronger signals of genuine purchase intent than traditional surveys and helps companies make better innovation decisions by collecting real behavioral data. The session highlighted a decline in breakthrough innovation in the CPG sector, with many companies hesitant to pursue innovative products due to factors like risk aversion and a lack of trust in traditional market research data.

The presenter emphasized that paid respondents in traditional research often don’t translate their opinions into actual purchase behavior. The prelaunch.com platform addresses this by offering incentives for deposits and collecting rich qualitative and quantitative data from both those who place deposits and those who decline, including surveys, interviews, and AI-powered conversations. This data is analyzed using machine learning to create detailed customer personas and benchmark products, providing a “pre-launch score” based on 35 different metrics. The platform can be used at various stages, from comparing early-stage ideas to fine-tuning messaging before launch. The service is noted to be significantly more affordable than average market solutions and works across various price points for truly innovative products.

Co-Development: Accelerating R&D with Startups

The “Co-Development: Turbocharge Enterprise R&D” session focused on leveraging partnerships between corporations and startups to accelerate R&D, de-risk M&A, and drive tangible business results. Venture Fuel shared their 11 years of experience in helping large organizations commercialize innovation through structured, time-bound programs with clear success criteria. This approach has yielded impressive results, including $2 billion in incremental revenue for a materials science client and 45 simultaneous AI pilots for Comcast NBC Universal.

The presenters positioned partnering as a complementary strategy to traditional R&D (build) and M&A (buy), acting as “connective tissue” that accelerates internal innovation and de-risks acquisitions. They addressed common barriers like “not invented here” syndrome and rigid legal processes, suggesting that involving legal and procurement teams as allies can overcome these. Venture Fuel’s methodology begins with strategic alignment to broader business goals rather than predefined solutions, allowing for exploration of creative adjacencies from different industries. The methodology emphasizes structured evaluation, time-bound collaborations (typically 12 weeks), and clear success criteria aligned with business relevance and technical feasibility. The ultimate goal is commercialization, with clear end goals such as joint development agreements or acquisitions.

The High Noon Success Story: Embracing Fluidity in Innovation

The “Sowing the Seeds of End-to-End Innovation: The High Noon Success Story” session detailed how High Noon pivoted from a vodka product to a market-leading vodka seltzer by observing consumer trends and embracing agility. Michele Sandoval and Ron Wetklow of Gallo shared their circular innovation model, emphasizing that innovation is fluid and iterative, not linear. They stressed the importance of researching culture, category, and consumers through ethnographic research and cultural immersion, citing examples like visits to the Iowa State Fair to challenge assumptions.

The High Noon vodka, initially developed to compete in the premium vodka market, only performed moderately well. The pivotal moment came from “feet on the street” market visits in Denver and Chicago, where the team observed the rapid growth of seltzers, leading to a quick pivot to High Noon Seltzer within six months. Key differentiators included real juice and a vodka base. To overcome distribution challenges, they formed a strategic partnership with Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports, which significantly amplified the brand’s reach. The session also highlighted the importance of building a robust innovation pipeline, leading to new variety packs, spirit bases, and product categories for High Noon. The Pink Whitney case study further illustrated rapid innovation by capitalizing on social media trends and quickly launching a product in partnership with a hockey podcast.

Community & Conversational Intelligence: AI and Deep Listening

The “Community & Conversational Intelligence: How AI & Deep Listening Will Reshape Front End Innovation” session showcased how Pilot 44 and Glystn use AI-powered deep listening to extract valuable consumer insights from social media conversations. Their platform analyzes cross-platform social media data, including transcripts and imagery, to identify emerging trends, brand positioning, and product opportunities in real-time. This approach allows brands to innovate at the speed of culture by understanding authentic consumer needs and engaging with influential communities.

Mary Lague highlighted three trends reshaping brand building: the $250 billion creator economy, creator-fostered communities, and the rise of social commerce. She noted that culturally relevant brands grow significantly faster. Ethan Fassett demonstrated Glystn’s platform, which uses an AI agent to clarify research parameters and then analyzes social media data, including video transcripts and AI-generated image descriptions. The platform generates reports on product trends, brand sentiment, competitive landscapes, and white space opportunities, and identifies influential creators. Deep listening provides real-time, unfiltered insights into natural consumer language and behavioral truths from platforms like Reddit, often overlooked by traditional research.

Innovation ROI: Harnessing Emissions for Profitability

The “Innovation ROI: Harnessing Emissions To Drive Profitability” session explored how Carbon Negative Solutions transforms industrial waste and CO2 emissions into valuable products like cement replacements, demonstrating profitability from waste. Keith Crossland emphasized that climate innovation extends beyond traditional areas like EVs and renewable energy, highlighting Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) as a rapidly evolving area. He differentiated between carbon storage and carbon utilization, advocating for the latter as it creates revenue-sharing opportunities by converting captured CO2 into valuable products, such as synthetic diamonds, advanced materials, and construction materials. Carbon Negative Solutions specifically uses AI and advanced modeling to optimize blending CO2 with various waste streams (e.g., steel byproducts, coal waste) to create carbon-negative cement supplements, predicting material properties with 95% confidence and dramatically accelerating development. Crossland encouraged companies to explore their waste streams for upcycling opportunities, noting regulatory support and financing for such initiatives.

Establishing an Innovation Culture Roadmap

The “Establishing An Innovation Culture Roadmap” session, led by Ophelia Chiu of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, presented the “Kite” framework for cultivating innovation culture: Knowledge, Inspiration, Translation, and Engagement. Chiu emphasized that innovation culture is essential for organizations facing disruption. Her team defined core principles for innovation culture, including fostering community, thinking like an entrepreneur, and empowering everyone as an innovator. Research was conducted to understand MSK’s diverse staff and identify nine innovation personas based on their experience, preferred roles, support needs, and value creation focus.

The Kite framework provides accessible learning opportunities, sparks curiosity through immersive experiences, supports real-world application of skills, and builds a community of innovators. Chiu also identified organizational levers that either activate or hinder innovation, such as alignment with strategy, incentives, and a growth mindset versus conflicting goals and risk aversion. Despite initial mixed support, her team pivoted to start small with an eight-week pilot course on human-centered design, validating interest and refining their roadmap. She concluded that culture change doesn’t require a mandate but can begin by “sowing a few seeds” that can thrive with proper care.

AI Energy: Balancing Nuclear Risk with Business Need

The “AI Energy – Balancing Nuclear Risk with Business Need” session explored the complex relationship between expanding civil nuclear energy and managing proliferation risks. Speakers discussed how nuclear technology offers reliable, carbon-neutral energy for growing demands, including data centers, while stressing the need for robust safeguards and industry-government collaboration. The session began by highlighting the escalating global nuclear challenges, noting that “every single nuclear weapon challenge in the world is trending in the wrong direction”. The fundamental tension is what Eisenhower called “the promise and peril of nuclear technology,” where civil nuclear capacity can serve as a “nuclear weapons starter kit”.

An industry veteran shared insights from 40 years in nuclear power, emphasizing its safety record and robust security measures. The discussion also covered international security implications, such as the danger of nuclear facilities in conflict zones. The role of AI in nuclear operations was a key topic, with potential for AI to analyze vast data, diagnose issues, and provide solutions faster than human operators, enhancing safety and security. However, a cautionary note was raised about AI’s potential offensive use and the need for international norms. The session concluded by emphasizing that while nuclear waste management is improving, sustainable growth requires balancing innovation with safeguards, international cooperation, and public education.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Authentic Market Validation: Relying on “skin in the game” through small customer deposits provides significantly more reliable validation for early-stage product concepts than traditional surveys.
  • Strategic Co-Development: Partnering with startups through structured, time-bound programs can accelerate R&D, de-risk M&A, and generate substantial revenue, leveraging external innovation to achieve business objectives.
  • Agile Innovation and Market Immersion: Embracing fluidity in the innovation process, staying close to consumers and culture through ethnographic research, and being prepared to pivot quickly are crucial for responding to emerging market opportunities.
  • AI for Deep Consumer Insights: AI-powered deep listening tools can provide real-time, unfiltered insights from social media conversations, identifying emerging trends, white space opportunities, and influential communities, enabling brands to innovate at the speed of culture.
  • Monetizing Waste Streams: Companies can transform CO2 emissions and industrial waste into valuable products, creating new revenue streams and transforming sustainability from a cost center to a profit center with bipartisan support.
  • Cultivating Innovation Culture: Building an innovation culture requires a structured framework (like Kite), understanding diverse internal audiences, addressing organizational barriers, and starting with small, targeted pilot programs that can sow seeds for lasting transformation.
  • Balancing Innovation with Risk Management: In critical sectors like nuclear energy, expanding innovation must be balanced with robust safeguards, regulatory frameworks, international cooperation, and public education to manage inherent risks and ensure long-term sustainability.

DELIVERY ON EVENT FOCUS: Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy

The Future Trends to Customer 2030 track consistently highlighted the critical importance of aligning innovation with business strategy. The “skin in the game” validation approach ensures that innovation decisions are based on real purchase intent, directing resources towards concepts with the best market potential and avoiding costly failures. Co-development with startups directly links external innovation to strategic business objectives like accelerated R&D and de-risked M&A, transforming innovation groups from cost centers to growth engines. The High Noon case study exemplified strategic pivots based on deep consumer understanding, demonstrating how initial “failures” can inform successful new product launches that align with market demand and drive long-term growth. AI-powered deep listening provides real-time market intelligence, allowing brands to develop innovations that resonate with authentic consumer needs and identify white space opportunities for strategic focus. Carbon Negative Solutions showcased how climate innovation can directly contribute to profitability by transforming emissions into valuable products, aligning sustainability goals with financial returns. Finally, establishing an innovation culture roadmap, as presented by Memorial Sloan Kettering, emphasized connecting innovation efforts to core organizational values, addressing business challenges, and measuring strategic impact.

DELIVERY ON EVENT THEME: Harvesting Innovation and Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth

The track’s theme of “Harvesting Innovation and Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth” was central to each session. Prelaunch.com exemplifies harvesting by gathering insights directly from people ready to buy, effectively “harvesting” genuine purchase intent and enabling data-driven refinement of concepts before full market launch. Co-development with startups harvests external innovation and accelerates experiments, while also sowing seeds for future growth by building long-term ecosystem relationships and capabilities. The High Noon success story is a prime example of harvesting insights from an initial product launch—even a less successful one—to sow the seeds for a tremendously successful pivot into a new category, continuously identifying new growth opportunities through market observation and building robust innovation pipelines. AI-powered deep listening harvests insights from billions of existing social media conversations and consumer trends, while sowing seeds for future growth by identifying influential creators and enabling community engagement and co-creation for future products. Carbon Negative Solutions literally harvests existing emissions and waste streams, transforming them into valuable assets and sowing seeds for sustainable growth by creating new revenue streams and resilient business models for the future.

The innovation culture roadmap focused on “sowing seeds” of innovation culture through targeted pilot programs that can grow into lasting transformation, nurturing innovation capabilities and building a community to sustain long-term growth. Similarly, the AI Energy session discussed harvesting innovations in nuclear technology and AI to address current energy demands while sowing seeds for sustainable future growth through advanced reactor designs, waste recycling, and enhanced safety systems.

ACTION ITEMS FOR INNOVATION EXPERTS & CORPORATE CHANGEMAKERS

  • Reassess Validation Methods: Evaluate current market research for innovation and integrate “skin in the game” methodologies that require actual purchase intent, such as small deposits, to gain more reliable market validation.
  • Explore Co-Development Partnerships: Audit your innovation sourcing strategy to look beyond traditional sources and consider structured partnerships with startups, including those from adjacent industries, to accelerate R&D and de-risk M&A.
  • Implement Cultural Immersion: Schedule regular activities for your teams to immerse themselves in consumer environments and cultural trends, fostering deep insights that challenge assumptions and reveal new opportunities.
  • Invest in AI-Powered Deep Listening: Audit your social listening capabilities to ensure they provide deep insights beyond basic keywords, including transcript analysis and image recognition, and map your category’s communities to understand where authentic conversations are happening.
  • Audit Waste Streams and Emissions: Conduct a comprehensive inventory of all waste outputs and CO2 emissions to identify potential feedstocks for upcycling into valuable products and explore revenue-sharing models with technology providers.
  • Develop an Innovation Culture Roadmap: Conduct internal audience research to understand your organization’s innovation personas, then design a tailored framework (e.g., Kite) addressing knowledge, inspiration, translation, and engagement.
  • Engage with Regulatory Frameworks Proactively: For energy-intensive innovations, proactively collaborate with regulatory bodies to ensure compliance and help shape effective regulations, particularly for emerging technologies like nuclear energy and carbon capture.
  • Start Small and Iterate: When facing organizational resistance, identify innovation-minded leaders and implement small pilot programs to demonstrate value and refine your approach before scaling.
  • Define Clear Commercial Outcomes: Ensure all innovation projects and startup collaborations have defined potential commercial outcomes upfront (e.g., joint development, licensing, investment, acquisition) to avoid endless piloting and ensure tangible results.
  • Build Robust Innovation Pipelines: Develop systematic approaches to continuously generate and evaluate new product concepts across formats, flavors, and adjacent categories, fostering sustained growth. 

Building the Innovation Pipeline: Front-End Process Insights from FEI25

An illustration of a maze of pipes going off in all directions.

KEY QUOTES

  • “Innovation is expected now to be a performance function.”
  • “The real magic will happen when AI and human brain work together… we cannot either give everything to AI or totally keep AI outside of the picture and say we will do all the thinking because that’s not the world we are living in.”
  • “People really don’t buy products, right? They buy experiences. Really what they buy is they buy a feeling.”

FULL SESSION SUMMARY

The R&D, Product Development, Experience & Design Track at FEI25 provided a rich tapestry of insights for innovation experts and corporate changemakers, emphasizing the transformation of innovation from a siloed function into a core driver of business strategy and revenue growth. Sessions explored methodologies for front-end innovation, the strategic use of AI, cultivating future talent, and deeply understanding consumer needs.

The Rise of Growth Innovation: From Cost Center to Revenue Driver

This session asserted a fundamental shift in the corporate landscape: innovation is no longer merely a cost center or a tangential activity but must directly contribute to revenue growth. The speaker highlighted that executives are increasingly prioritizing new sources of revenue growth over digital transformation, underscoring the urgent need for innovation to become a “performance function.” The session introduced the concept of “Growth Innovation,” which demands explicit alignment of innovation activities with short, mid, and long-term revenue streams. A key takeaway was the critical importance of transparently linking innovation projections to actual financial outcomes, as many companies quietly admit a disconnect between their Wall Street projections and real-world results. This calls for innovation teams to share the same growth goals as business units and to develop robust strategies for capturing market value.

AI as a Thinking Partner: Enhancing Innovation and Creativity

This session explored the evolving role of Artificial Intelligence, urging attendees to view AI not merely as a tool for efficiency but as a collaborative thinking partner. The speaker introduced the ACT (Analyze, Collaborate, Test) framework and the Five Lenses Prompting Method to help innovators leverage AI to expand perspectives and enhance creativity. The distinction between AI as a GPS (tool) versus a travel companion (thinking partner) underscored the shift from rote assistance to nuanced, dialogue-driven collaboration. The session emphasized that the ability to ask good, well-thought-out questions is paramount for extracting meaningful insights from AI models. Furthermore, it highlighted the emerging trend of “agentic AI” and encouraged participants to proactively develop a mindset that embraces AI as a collaborative teammate while maintaining essential human oversight and critical evaluation. The ultimate message was about fostering a symbiotic relationship between human intelligence and AI for collective innovation.

Disrupting From Within: Vision, Strategy & Roadmap

Marci Ruman from Kimberly Clark shared her extensive experience in R&D, emphasizing that innovation requires a clear distinction between vision (the “why”), strategy (the “how”), and roadmap (the “what and when”). Her session underscored that consumers ultimately buy experiences and feelings, not just products, urging innovators to focus on understanding ideal consumer experiences rather than incremental improvements to existing offerings. This philosophy led her team to develop disruptive innovations, even in mature categories. The session highlighted the need for a balanced innovation portfolio that includes both sustaining existing businesses and pursuing disruptive opportunities. Overcoming organizational barriers and resource constraints was a recurring theme, with Marci advocating for a proactive mindset (“Why not?”) and encouraging individuals at all levels to take initiative to drive change.

Improving Innovation Impact: The Front-End Innovation Spiral

Milan Ivosevic presented the “Front End Innovation Spiral,” a structured, iterative methodology designed to maximize innovation impact by improving the efficiency of the front end of innovation. The core idea is to process a large number of ideas quickly through a series of rapid cycles, evaluating each concept against technical feasibility, customer desirability, business viability, and scalability. This lateral thinking approach encourages teams to combine, cross-pollinate, kill, or pivot ideas rapidly, rather than getting bogged down in analysis paralysis or over-investing in a few concepts prematurely. The session highlighted that no idea emerges from the front end in its original raw form; successful innovation is a result of continuous iteration and intelligent pivoting. The goal is to identify a few strong “bets” for further investment by holistically and iteratively refining ideas.

Revolutionizing Product Innovation through Radical Consumer Empathy

This session, featuring Johnsonville and Quester, showcased how deep consumer empathy, particularly through Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) theory, can lead to breakthrough innovations. Johnsonville discovered their summer sausage was only fulfilling a fraction of its potential jobs, leading to the breakthrough of sliced summer sausage, which became the fastest-growing brand in its category by expanding usage occasions. The partnership with Prodigy Works further illustrated how diverse thinking, including that of Mensa members, can unlock solutions to long-standing innovation challenges. The session emphasized that consumers “hire” products to do a job in their lives, and understanding these jobs—and the tensions surrounding them—is crucial for identifying unmet needs. It highlighted the power of asking “why” repeatedly to uncover the true motivations and desires behind consumer behavior.

Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth with Tomorrow’s Innovation Leaders

This panel discussion focused on building thriving innovation ecosystems through collaboration between universities, corporations, and nonprofits, exemplified by the Richmond, Virginia, ecosystem. Panelists from CarMax, Capital One, and UNOS discussed how programs like VCU’s Master of Product Innovation are creating a pipeline of talent skilled in design thinking, agile principles, and evidence-based product development. The session emphasized the mutual benefits of such partnerships: companies gain access to fresh perspectives and de-risked talent, while students gain real-world experience. Key strategies included hosting open design jams, creating clear access points for students, fostering multi-semester engagement, and encouraging skills-based volunteering. The discussion highlighted the importance of fostering a culture of shared talent and knowledge transfer to cultivate a sustainable innovation workforce.

Claimed vs. Real: Using Social Media to Close the Say-Do Gap

This session addressed the pervasive “say-do gap” in traditional market research, where consumers’ stated intentions often diverge from their actual behaviors. The speakers presented social media as a powerful behavioral research lab. By testing concepts in real-world social media environments, companies can gain authentic insights into how consumers truly engage with products and messages. The case study of the coffee brand Lore demonstrated how this approach helped successfully leverage French heritage in marketing, by measuring actual engagement (pauses, clicks, likes) rather than relying on hypothetical survey responses. The session underscored that social media offers a unique opportunity to gather behavioral metrics and gain media impressions simultaneously, providing a more accurate signal of consumer preference and closing the gap between what people say and what they do.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Innovation Must Drive Revenue: Innovation is fundamentally shifting from a cost center to a performance function, requiring direct alignment with revenue goals and transparent measurement of financial impact across short, mid, and long-term horizons.
  2. AI as a Collaborative Partner: Beyond efficiency tools, AI should be leveraged as a “thinking partner” to expand creative possibilities, demanding sophisticated questioning techniques and human oversight to unlock collective intelligence for innovation.
  3. Deep Consumer Empathy Fuels Disruption: True innovation stems from understanding consumers’ ideal experiences and the “jobs” they hire products to do, rather than just iterating on existing features, leading to disruptive breakthroughs.
  4. Agile Front-End Innovation is Crucial: Employing iterative methodologies like the “Front End Innovation Spiral” to rapidly process and refine numerous ideas based on feasibility, desirability, viability, and scalability significantly improves the innovation-to-market impact ratio.
  5. Cultivate an External Innovation Ecosystem: Building strong, multi-faceted partnerships with academic institutions and community organizations creates a vital pipeline of innovation talent and fosters knowledge transfer, de-risking future investments in human capital.
  6. Close the “Say-Do” Gap with Behavioral Insights: Traditional research often fails to predict real-world behavior; leveraging social media and other real-time, in-context methods provides authentic behavioral data to validate concepts and inform more effective innovation.

DELIVERY ON EVENT FOCUS: Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy

The R&D, Product Development, Experience & Design Track consistently reinforced the alignment of innovation with business strategy through multiple lenses:

  • Financial Imperative: The “Rise of Growth Innovation” session directly positioned innovation as a revenue driver, emphasizing the need for financial accountability and a strategic shift from cost center to performance function.
  • Strategic AI Integration: The “AI as a Thinking Partner” session highlighted how AI can be strategically deployed not just for efficiency but to enhance creative thinking and problem-solving, directly contributing to more robust and competitive innovation strategies.
  • Consumer-Centric Strategy: Sessions like “Disrupting From Within” and “Revolutionizing Product Innovation” demonstrated how deep consumer empathy and Jobs-to-be-Done theory lead to innovations that genuinely resonate with market needs, thereby ensuring strategic relevance and market success.
  • Systematic Approach to Front-End: The “Frontend Innovation Spiral” provided a structured methodology to ensure that early-stage ideas are rigorously evaluated against business viability, desirability, and feasibility, minimizing risk and maximizing strategic fit before significant investment.
  • Talent Pipeline as Strategy: “Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth” showcased how building an innovation-ready talent pipeline through academic and community partnerships is a long-term strategic investment, ensuring continuous capability for future growth.
  • Real-World Validation: “Claimed vs. Real” underscored the strategic importance of validating concepts with real behavioral data, mitigating the risk of launching products based on inaccurate stated preferences and ensuring market success.

Together, these sessions illustrated that aligning innovation with business strategy requires a holistic approach encompassing financial accountability, advanced technology, deep consumer understanding, rigorous methodology, and strategic talent development.

DELIVERY ON EVENT THEME: Harvesting Innovation and Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth

The track powerfully delivered on the theme of “Harvesting Innovation and Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth” through various aspects:

  • Harvesting Innovation:
    • Monetizing Innovation: “The Rise of Growth Innovation” explicitly focused on harvesting innovation by treating it as a revenue-generating function, demanding measurable financial returns from innovation efforts.
    • Optimizing Existing Products: “Revolutionizing Product Innovation” demonstrated how understanding jobs-to-be-done for existing products (like summer sausage) can unlock new consumption occasions and significantly expand market share, essentially harvesting more value from current offerings.
    • Refining Ideas: The “Frontend Innovation Spiral” emphasized efficiently processing and refining a large volume of ideas, ensuring that only the most promising ones are harvested for further development.
    • Real-World Validation: “Claimed vs. Real” highlighted how real-time behavioral data helps identify truly viable innovations, ensuring resources are allocated to concepts most likely to succeed in the market.

  • Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth:
    • Strategic AI Investment: “AI as a Thinking Partner” encouraged exploring emerging AI capabilities and fostering human-AI collaboration, sowing seeds for future creative breakthroughs and competitive advantage.
    • Long-Term Vision: “Disrupting From Within” emphasized the importance of a clear vision and a portfolio approach that includes disruptive innovation, actively planting seeds for future market leadership beyond sustaining current business.
    • Talent Development: “Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth with Tomorrow’s Innovation Leaders” explicitly detailed how investing in academic partnerships and talent pipelines cultivates the next generation of innovators, ensuring a continuous supply of creative capital.
    • Front-End Discipline: The “Frontend Innovation Spiral” focused on building a robust process for early-stage idea generation and selection, which is critical for establishing a sustainable pipeline of future innovations.
    • Deep Empathy for Future Needs: “Revolutionizing Product Innovation” highlighted how deep consumer empathy, including understanding latent needs, allows companies to anticipate and build products for future market demands.

The track collectively articulated a vision where immediate gains from innovation (harvesting) are carefully balanced with strategic investments in capabilities, talent, and future-oriented thinking (sowing seeds) to ensure sustainable and impactful growth.

ACTION ITEMS FOR INNOVATION EXPERTS & CORPORATE CHANGEMAKERS

To action the learnings from this track, innovation experts and corporate changemakers should:

  1. Reframe Innovation as a Revenue Function:
    • Explicitly link all innovation activities to current and future revenue streams in communications and planning.
    • Implement shared growth metrics between innovation teams and business units to foster joint accountability.
    • Conduct an honest assessment of past innovation performance, measuring actual returns against projections to identify areas for improvement.
    • Develop a revenue stream decay model for your industry to anticipate when new innovations need to be ready.
  2. Integrate AI as a Thinking Partner:
    • Implement the ACT (Analyze, Collaborate, Test) framework in your next innovation project, explicitly defining AI’s role.
    • Train your team on advanced AI questioning techniques, such as the Five Lenses Method, and encourage collaborative dialogue with AI.
    • Experiment with diverse AI platforms to understand their strengths for different types of thinking tasks and establish robust validation processes for AI-generated insights.
  3. Prioritize Deep Consumer Empathy and Jobs-to-be-Done:
    • Adopt a structured approach to innovation by clearly separating vision, strategy, and roadmap, focusing on understanding consumers’ ideal experiences and emotional desires.
    • Implement Jobs-to-be-Done research to map the full landscape of “jobs” your products are hired for, identifying unmet needs and opportunities for disruptive innovation.
    • Practice empathy by truly listening to consumers without predetermined questions and develop storytelling skills to communicate the desired consumer experience.
  4. Implement a Rigorous Front-End Innovation Process:
    • Adopt and adapt an iterative framework like the “Front End Innovation Spiral” to rapidly process and evaluate many ideas, focusing on technical feasibility, customer desirability, business viability, and scalability.
    • Replace lengthy evaluation processes with quick spiral cycles, encouraging pivoting and continuous learning rather than deep investment in few ideas prematurely.
    • Ensure business viability discussions happen alongside technical development, not as an afterthought.
  5. Cultivate an External Innovation Ecosystem:
    • Map your local innovation ecosystem to identify universities and educational programs focused on innovation, design thinking, and entrepreneurship.
    • Host open design jams and create clear access points for students to connect with your company, building a pipeline of future talent.
    • Move beyond one-off engagements to sustained, multi-semester collaborations through mentorships, sponsored projects, and advisory board participation.
  6. Close the “Say-Do” Gap with Behavioral Insights:
    • Audit current research methods for potential “say-do gaps” by comparing past predictions with actual market performance.
    • Pilot social media testing and other real-time, in-context research methodologies alongside traditional methods to gather authentic behavioral data.
    • Develop more engaging, realistic stimuli for concept testing that better represent how consumers will encounter products and messaging in real life.
    • Incorporate behavioral metrics into innovation evaluation processes, moving beyond stated preferences.

Data-Driven, Human-Centered: FEI25’s Vision for Sustainable Innovation

A very straight and architectural bridge moving down the center to horizon.

KEY QUOTES

  • “Trust became the underpinning of my work as a data leader, and I applied it to everything I did in that professional setting.” – June Dershowitz
  • “People confuse scaling with the in-between moment, and the challenge we face is you don’t want to be at the end of the in-between moment because then you’re gonna be behind or out of business because there are fundamentally transformational things going on in this period.” – Arvind Balasundaram
  • “I went from brainstorming, crossed that out to just problem seeking. And my goal was to just reframe my mindset… I’m gonna give myself three months, don’t do anything. Just search for problems and search for opportunities.” – Carley Hart
  • “The biggest call out is how analytics is embedded in every stage of innovation and execution, right from starting with your goals to strategy, to flawlessly executing your standard offerings, and then innovating.” – Anu Sundaram
  • “We’ve really gamified that approach. So all our projects, we keep track of the ideas that AI comes up with and the ideas that the team come up with. And then there’s the middle section, which is the hybrid… and guess which one always wins? It’s always the hybrid.” – Michael Ott

FULL TRACK SUMMARY

The AI, Data, Analytics & Insights Track at FEI25 presented a comprehensive exploration of how organizations can leverage data, analytics, and artificial intelligence to foster innovation and drive strategic growth. Across multiple sessions, experts shared frameworks, real-world examples, and actionable strategies for corporate changemakers to build resilient, data-driven innovation cultures.

Data Partnership for Innovation: Building Trust Through Quality, Alignment, and Literacy

June Dershewitz, a data leader with 25 years of experience, emphasized that trust is the bedrock of effective data partnerships. Her session, “Data Partnership for Innovation: Building Trust Through Quality, Alignment, and Literacy,” outlined three interconnected pillars: data quality, strategic alignment, and data literacy. Dershewitz highlighted that proactive data quality management, early integration of data teams into business initiatives, and targeted data literacy programs are crucial for fostering this trust. She stressed that data needs to have a “seat at the table” from the outset of any launch playbook, alongside design, PR, and legal, to ensure insights are embedded into decision-making. The core message was that effective data utilization is less about technical prowess and more about creating a foundation of trust that enables collaborative problem-solving and innovation.

Scaling AI Within Global Corporate Enterprise For Better Decision Making

The session “Scaling AI Within Global Corporate Enterprise For Better Decision Making” addressed the common challenges organizations face in moving AI beyond proof-of-concept stages. The speaker from Regeneron stressed the need for both technological and organizational readiness, emphasizing that scaling AI requires a clear strategic vision, not just project-based funding. A key concept introduced was the “in-between moment” – the critical period when emerging technologies are not yet mainstream but hold immense transformational potential. Companies that fail to invest during this phase risk falling behind. The presentation highlighted that AI should augment human decision-making, allowing for the separation of data processing from judgment-based decisions. This approach enables organizations to balance everyday efficiency gains with long-term transformational opportunities.

From Deep Tech to Picture Books: Innovation Strategies for AI Startups and Small Businesses

Carley Hart, in her session “From Deep Tech to Picture Books: Innovation Strategies for AI Startups and Small Businesses,” offered a unique perspective on applying robust innovation methodologies across diverse contexts. Drawing from her experience with deep tech startups at Cornell Tech and her venture into creating a children’s book business, Hart illustrated the universal applicability of design thinking. She advocated for “problem-seeking” as a foundational practice, moving beyond traditional brainstorming to continuously identify problems and opportunities. Hart’s process involved developing personal design criteria, embracing rapid, low-cost validation through minimal viable prototypes, and leveraging existing infrastructure. Her journey underscored that innovation principles can be scaled and adapted to drive solutions for a wide range of challenges, from complex technological problems to everyday consumer needs.

Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy Through Analytics

Anu Sundaram’s session, “Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy Through Analytics,” focused on how analytics can enable and accelerate the entire innovation lifecycle. He presented four constructs for using analytics in innovation: providing stage-specific analytics, ensuring early integration, allowing analytics to set the pace, and focusing on impact. Real-world examples from an e-commerce business demonstrated how data-driven decisions led to successful innovations, such as personalized emails and customer incentive programs that significantly improved customer lifetime value. The core takeaway was the imperative of embedding analytics at every stage of innovation—from initial goal setting and strategy development to flawless execution and ongoing iteration. Sundaram also emphasized the importance of developing “dual-horizon metrics” that track both immediate impact and long-term value, along with building alternate pathways to allow for agile pivots based on data feedback.

From Insight to Impact: How AI & People are Transforming Innovation at Clorox

Michael Ott’s session, “From Insight to Impact: How AI & People are Transforming Innovation at Clorox,” provided a compelling case study on revolutionizing an established company’s innovation process. Clorox implemented a hybrid model where AI-generated insights and human creativity work in concert. This approach dramatically accelerated the discovery process, reducing development time from nine months to three to four months, while simultaneously enhancing the quality of ideas. Fazio highlighted that the most successful innovations consistently emerged from this combined human-AI approach. Clorox also shifted its innovation metrics to measure success over a three-year period, promoting “sticky innovation” that ensures sustainable growth rather than short-term product launches. The session underscored the power of a synergistic relationship between technology and human ingenuity, alongside a leadership culture that actively drives, rather than delegates, innovation.

Driving Systemic Change: The Playbook to Reignite A Culture of Innovation

Erin Faulk and Sarah Stabelfeldt, in “Driving Systemic Change: The Playbook to Reignite A Culture of Innovation,” shared Schreiber Foods’ five-year journey to embed innovation into its organizational culture. Their approach centered on five key enablers: creating a dynamic shared vision, embracing non-linear change (the “snowball analogy”), demonstrating vulnerability, leveraging sprints for business challenges, and building post-sprint momentum. They treated the innovation adoption curve as a segmentation strategy, tailoring communication and engagement to different groups within the organization. This systemic transformation resulted in a significant number of activated solutions with measurable business impact, demonstrating how cultural shifts can directly translate into tangible business results. The session emphasized the importance of executive sponsorship, building an innovation champions network, and fostering a daily commitment to change and experimentation.

Introducing A Breakthrough Methodology to Fuel Front-End Innovation

The session “Introducing A Breakthrough Methodology to Fuel Front-End Innovation” introduced XMOT (Exact Moment of Truth), a novel approach using smart sensors to track real-time product usage and gather in-the-moment consumer feedback. This methodology directly addresses the “say-do gap” inherent in traditional research, where consumers’ stated intentions often differ from their actual behavior. By capturing authentic usage moments, XMOT provides transformative insights for product development, testing, and growth strategies. An example cited a cleaning product manufacturer achieving $600 million in incremental revenue through insights gained from this method. The session highlighted the power of real-time, in-context feedback for optimizing existing products and informing future innovations, including the application of A/B testing to physical product attributes.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Trust is Foundational for Data-Driven Innovation: Effective data partnerships and innovation efforts are built on trust, which requires proactive data quality management, early integration of data teams, and targeted data literacy across the organization.
  2. Strategic AI Adoption Augments Human Capabilities: Scaling AI successfully demands a clear vision that balances immediate efficiency gains with transformational opportunities, recognizing that AI should empower, not replace, human decision-making and creativity.
  3. Innovation Methodologies are Universally Applicable: Design thinking and problem-seeking approaches can be applied effectively across diverse scales, from large corporate initiatives to individual entrepreneurial ventures, by focusing on identifying problems and rapidly validating solutions.
  4. Analytics Must Be Integrated Throughout the Innovation Lifecycle: For innovation to align with business strategy, analytics must be embedded from ideation through execution, providing stage-specific insights, setting development pace, and informing decisions with both short-term and long-term impact metrics.
  5. Hybrid Human-AI Approaches Yield Superior Results: The most impactful innovations often emerge from a synergy between human creativity and AI-generated insights, highlighting the need for processes that deliberately combine these strengths to foster “sticky innovation.”

DELIVERY ON EVENT FOCUS:
Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy

The track consistently delivered on the focus of aligning innovation with business strategy by providing concrete examples and frameworks for connecting data, AI, and analytics directly to business outcomes. Sessions demonstrated how:

  • Data quality and trust enable more reliable strategic decisions.
  • AI strategies must balance efficiency with transformational opportunities to ensure future competitiveness.
  • Innovation methodologies can be applied to solve specific business problems, whether in deep tech or consumer products.
  • Analytics must be embedded at every stage of the innovation lifecycle, with dual-horizon metrics, to ensure initiatives contribute to both immediate and long-term strategic goals.
  • Hybrid human-AI approaches accelerate innovation and improve quality, leading to measurable business impact over multi-year periods.
  • Systemic cultural change drives activated solutions with measurable business impact, reinforcing organizational resilience.
  • Real-time consumer insights directly inform product development and growth strategies, leading to significant incremental revenue.

Each speaker tied their discussions back to how their insights and methods directly impact business value, from revenue generation and efficiency gains to cultural transformation and competitive advantage.

DELIVERY ON EVENT THEME:
Harvesting Innovation & Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth

The track effectively addressed the theme of “harvesting innovation and sowing the seeds of future growth” by:

  • Harvesting Innovation: Showcasing how organizations can extract immediate value from existing data through quality management and analytics, optimize current products using real-time consumer insights to unlock new revenue streams, and leverage existing knowledge and processes to create new ventures. The track also highlighted how systemic cultural transformation leads to “activated solutions” with measurable business impact, representing the harvesting of tangible results.
  • Sowing the Seeds of Future Growth: Emphasizing the importance of investing in foundational capabilities like data literacy and robust data partnerships to create fertile ground for future innovation. It underscored the necessity of exploring transformational AI applications like synthetic data and causal AI, even if full implementation is years away. The concept of “problem-seeking” and continuously planting seeds for future innovation was a core message. Furthermore, the focus on long-term metrics and “sticky innovation” that grows over multiple years, rather than short-term launches, explicitly addressed sowing seeds for sustained growth. The entire cultural transformation journey at Schreiber Foods exemplified sowing seeds by building innovation capabilities and fostering experimentation across the organization.

ACTION STEPS FOR INNOVATION EXPERTS AND CORPORATE CHANGEMAKERS

To action the learnings from this track, innovation experts and corporate changemakers should:

  1. Strengthen Data Foundations: Assess your organization’s data quality framework and identify specific data literacy gaps, implementing targeted training and proactively including data teams early in all business initiatives to build trust and ensure data has a foundational “seat at the table.”
  2. Develop a Holistic AI Strategy: Move beyond isolated AI projects by defining a comprehensive AI strategy that balances immediate efficiency gains with long-term transformational opportunities, and educate stakeholders about AI capabilities and limitations in accessible language. Begin exploring emerging AI applications like synthetic data and causal AI now to prepare for future competitive landscapes.
  3. Embed Analytics Across the Innovation Lifecycle: Audit how early and thoroughly analytics is integrated into your innovation process. Restructure approaches to include analytics experts from the ideation stage, implement dual-horizon metrics (short-term impact and long-term value), and establish structured testing cycles with alternative pathways for agile pivots.
  4. Embrace Hybrid Human-AI Collaboration: Actively foster processes that combine AI-generated insights with human creativity. Evaluate your innovation metrics to encourage sustainable, multi-year “sticky innovation” platforms rather than just one-off product launches, and transform innovation leaders into “player-coaches” who actively participate.
  5. Cultivate a Culture of Continuous Problem-Seeking and Experimentation: Implement practices that encourage ongoing identification of problems and opportunities beyond time-constrained brainstorming. Embrace rapid, low-cost validation through minimal viable prototypes and build structured opportunities to share work-in-progress to gain early feedback and build buy-in for systemic change.
  6. Leverage Real-Time Consumer Insights: Evaluate current research methods to identify “say-do gaps” and explore piloting sensor-based, real-time research methodologies for physical products to gather in-context feedback, optimize existing offerings, and inform future product development based on actual consumer behavior.

Beyond Ideation: How FEI25 Revealed the Blueprint for Innovation Value Creation

Architect with blueprint jumping for joy in front of a house.

KEY QUOTES

  • “Technology for the sake of technology doesn’t do anything for anyone. If I’m being very candid, this is one of the big things that Web3 screwed up. It was a lot of like cool tech that solved no needs for anybody and therefore nobody used it.”
  • “AI is a tool that mediates human labor. It fragments human labor, it breaks it up, it automates it, it de-skills it, and it categorizes it.”
  • “There’s a huge risk attached to AI. If you are successful, there’s a risk of transforming your business without even realizing it.”
  • “Innovation has to be a profit center. There’s no excuse. And to do this, you need to be systematic about incubation, because incubation is where everything happens, when you are turning ideas into proof of value.”
  • “99% of the interview process, especially upfront, is focus on that knowledge, and your HR people are not going to be able to assess on these other axes.”

FULL SUMMARY

The Innovation Integration & Value Creation Track at FEI25 provided in-depth insights into how organizations can effectively integrate innovation into their core operations to create predictable value and ensure future growth. The sessions covered diverse aspects, from leveraging AI and understanding human-technology relationships to overcoming organizational and legal barriers, and fostering an engaged, strengths-based workforce.

Innovation as a Differentiator: Looking Back To See The Future

Jonathan Stringfield from Microsoft Advertising explored how video games offer a cognitive framework for understanding AI innovation and human-technology relationships. He argued that successful AI innovation must prioritize human experience and needs over technology for its own sake, drawing parallels between emotional connections with game characters and interactions with AI assistants like Copilot. The session emphasized designing AI interactions that are non-intrusive, contextually relevant, and provide appropriate rewards, leading to a more “Agentic web” where AI works on behalf of users and brands.

AI: The New Innovation Engine

This session explored AI’s transformative impact across the entire innovation funnel, from early-stage R&D to commercialization. The speaker emphasized that AI is not just an automation tool but one that mediates human labor, offering capabilities like summarizing, searching, generating content, acting as an interface, and modeling complex systems. While AI accelerates processes, its implementation must be strategic, considering both value assessment (automation and knowledge value) and practical constraints (time to value, clear metrics). A key warning highlighted was that successful AI implementation can inadvertently transform business priorities through feedback loops, necessitating careful consideration of these second-order effects.

Overcoming IT & Legal Barriers to AI Outcomes for Your Organization

This session delved into the challenges of implementing AI solutions from a legal perspective, noting that lawyers are trained to identify risks rather than opportunities, often lack technical backgrounds, and operate within a traditional apprenticeship model that resists innovation. Key concerns for legal departments include data protection and confidentiality (e.g., proprietary knowledge, training data use), AI hallucinations, records management for eDiscovery, and compliance with evolving regulations. The advice for innovators was to proactively address these concerns with reasonable risk mitigation strategies, rather than promising zero risk, and to engage legal teams early in the process.

Catalyzing Innovation and Change Through Strengths-Based Engagement

Christine Minh Minh Garner highlighted the global workplace disengagement crisis, costing $9.6 trillion annually, with managers being a critical factor in 70% of team engagement variance. She presented a strengths-based approach to combat this, demonstrating how leveraging individual strengths dramatically improves productivity, job satisfaction, and business outcomes. Her company, Talent Alchemy, offers programs that help leaders transition from bosses to coaches by implementing five key habits of high-performing teams: Aiming, Reflecting, High Five, Coffee Sink, and Progress Huddle. This approach emphasizes consistent practice and technology integration to embed strengths-based practices in daily workflows.

Unlocking Innovation at the Intersections of Art, Science and Academia

This session introduced “DaVinci’s Cube,” a three-dimensional model for innovation that expands on traditional frameworks by adding “sentiment” alongside “knowledge” and “use” as key motivational dimensions. Research from a National Endowment for the Arts project revealed that while organizations and individuals value sentiment and use in their work, hiring practices still predominantly focus on knowledge, creating a disconnect in how innovation teams are built. The session advocated for interdisciplinary approaches, creating spaces for unstructured experimentation (like historical Bell Labs), and fostering collaborations between artists, scientists, and industry to drive breakthrough innovation.

Stronger Together: How Progressive Streamlined Crowdsourcing

Progressive Insurance transformed its crowdsourcing approach by partnering with Mind Sumo, moving from a frustrating, time-consuming process to an efficient, flexible system that saved over 150 hours across five challenges. The partnership enabled Progressive to conduct both internal and external challenges, gathering over 800 ideas and gaining valuable outside perspectives that complemented their internal expertise. Mind Sumo’s collaborative platform, responsiveness, and superior reporting capabilities helped Progressive create a self-service model, reduce administrative time, and improve the overall crowdsourcing experience.

How Juanita’s Used Trends-Led Exploration To Break Into New Categories

Juanita’s Foods partnered with DIG Insights to transform its innovation process by starting with trends exploration rather than traditional consumer insights, enabling them to identify new white space opportunities beyond Mexican food categories. This comprehensive program included trends investigation, qualitative research, an immersive field trip to Mexico City with cross-functional stakeholders, platform development, and co-creation workshops. This approach helped Juanita’s shift from a manufacturing-focused operation to an insights-led innovation strategy aimed at defining new product categories that express authenticity in the market.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • AI Accelerates, Human Insights Elevate: AI tools like Atlas and Charlie dramatically increase the speed and scale of innovation by synthesizing data and generating concepts, but continuous injection of fresh, non-conscious human behavioral data is crucial to prevent “model collapse” and ensure creativity and market relevance.
  • Inclusive Design Drives Broader Value: Designing with, not just for, diverse user groups, including those with disabilities, expands market reach and leads to more universally effective and impactful products, proving that inclusive approaches are a strategic business advantage.
  • Strategic Alignment and Economic Value are Paramount: Innovation efforts must be explicitly aligned with clear strategic objectives and driven by the economic value they create for customers (“dollars and cents”), moving beyond just features and benefits to ensure commercial viability and successful “harvesting” of ideas.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration and Rapid Iteration are Essential: Breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional collaboration from the earliest stages, combined with rapid prototyping and iterative testing, accelerates decision-making, uncovers blind spots, and builds organizational alignment and trust for innovation.
  • Organizational Adaptation is Key for Emerging Technologies: Successfully integrating emerging technologies like AI requires not just technological innovation but also significant cultural and organizational adaptation, including creating specialized agile units and building “coalitions of the willing” to overcome resistance and drive change.

Delivery on Event Focus:
Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy:

The Innovation Integration & Value Creation Track at FEI25 directly addressed aligning innovation with business strategy by showcasing how leading organizations are integrating innovation into their core business processes. Speakers demonstrated how AI-powered tools ensure innovations are grounded in consumer insights and market realities, aligning them with manufacturing capabilities and brand equities. The emphasis on understanding the economic value created for customers underscored that innovation must directly contribute to business outcomes. The sessions highlighted the strategic importance of dual innovation structures, balancing sustaining and transformational efforts to serve both immediate business needs and future growth opportunities. Inclusive design was also presented as a strategic advantage, tapping into underserved markets and creating universally better products. Finally, cross-functional collaboration within innovation teams was shown to be crucial for ensuring innovations remain relevant to business objectives.

Delivery on Event Theme:
Harvesting Innovation & Sowing Seeds of Future Growth:

The track consistently delivered on the theme of “harvesting innovation and sowing seeds of future growth.” It showed how companies are “harvesting” insights from vast consumer data pools through AI and from existing knowledge investments, while simultaneously “sowing seeds” for future growth by exploring white spaces, new brand development, and emerging distribution models. The agricultural metaphor of invention as “sowing the seed” and innovation as “harvesting the crop” was central. The focus on protecting resources for future-focused work, continuous human data injection to prevent AI model collapse, and Welch’s balanced portfolio approach all underscored the commitment to nurturing long-term growth alongside immediate returns.

Action Items for Innovation Experts and Corporate Changemakers:

  1. Pilot AI-Driven Innovation: Evaluate your current ideation processes and pilot AI-driven innovation tools in specific areas (e.g., product development, partnership identification) to demonstrate value and accelerate timelines. Ensure these tools integrate diverse consumer data and align with strategic priorities.
  2. Integrate Automated Behavioral Science: Implement automated behavioral science and implicit testing methodologies to capture non-conscious consumer insights. Establish continuous human data collection systems to regularly inject fresh behavioral and emotional insights into AI models, preventing “model collapse” and fostering true creativity.
  3. Embed Inclusive Design Principles: Audit your design process to ensure diverse user perspectives, particularly from individuals with disabilities, are incorporated from the earliest stages of development. Adopt rapid prototyping and customization options to quickly iterate based on user feedback.
  4. Strengthen Cross-Functional Collaboration: Establish cross-functional innovation teams that meet regularly, breaking down silos and bringing all stakeholders (including legal, regulatory, and finance) into the process early to build shared understanding, address roadblocks creatively, and accelerate decisions.
  5. Assess and Adapt Organizational Structure: Evaluate your allocation of resources between sustaining and transformational innovation, considering separate but connected organizational structures with distinct cultures, metrics, and leadership behaviors. Develop AI competencies now to begin implementing AI tools in non-critical areas to build familiarity and demonstrate value.

FEI25: Reinventing the Human-Centered Innovation Process

Human in center of circles surrounded by circles and gears like a machine or process.

KEY QUOTES

  • “We’re looking at thousands upon thousands of organic consumer pieces of information being fed in, so right there, obviously much more compelling, right? Really grounded in consumer insight and the organic information that consumers are offering up on these product reviews in different forums digitally.”
  • “The top 100 global innovators spend $720 billion on R&D every year, and a single digit percentage of those become commercial realities. It’s not just you. It’s hard. It’s really hard to do this.”
  • “Artificial intelligence is not just another technology. It’s not just another hype. This is going to change mankind society in ways like the light bulb, industrialization and so forth.”
  • “The work that we do in understanding humans and getting deeper insight into the true drivers of behavior is going to become increasingly important as AI accelerates a regression to the mean, we’re the champions of the future.”
  • “Inclusive design is not a limitation, not a setback, but really helps to create great and better innovation. It allows you to be more creative, helps you think outside the box, and collaborate with a great amount of people.”

FULL TRACK SUMMARY

The Innovation Excellence & Best Practices Track at FEI25 offered a comprehensive look into modern innovation strategies, emphasizing the integration of advanced technologies like AI, the critical role of human insights, and the power of collaborative organizational structures. The sessions provided practical frameworks and real-world examples for aligning innovation efforts with overarching business goals and ensuring long-term growth.

Reinventing Innovation and Re-Thinking Possible at the Front End

Erica Norton from Hershey Company detailed how Hershey transformed its innovation process using ZS Associates’ AI-driven “Atlas” tool. This approach leverages thousands of organic consumer data points from online marketplaces and social media to generate product ideas, brand concepts, and partnership opportunities. The AI provides transparency into idea generation and produces high-quality outputs that outperform traditional ideation methods. Hershey applies Atlas for innovation within existing product forms, exploring new pack types, identifying co-branding, and developing new brands. It also aids in M&A due diligence and market intelligence by quickly providing consumer perceptions and competitive positioning.

Harvesting Innovation Through Collective Intelligence

This session differentiated “invention” (sowing seeds—ideas) from “innovation” (harvesting crops—commercial reality). The speaker emphasized that successful innovation requires systematic selection processes driven by economic value creation for customers, focusing on “dollars and cents” over just features and benefits. Organizations must assess internal capabilities and build external innovation ecosystems to bridge gaps for successful commercialization. A sobering statistic was shared: top global innovators spend $720 billion annually on R&D, yet only a single-digit percentage becomes commercial reality.

Driving The Integration of Emerging Technologies

Miele, a 125-year-old premium appliance manufacturer, discussed how it balances technological innovation with organizational adaptation to address the accelerating pace of change. Miele uses a dual approach: transforming traditional R&D units while creating specialized entities like the Emerging Technologies Lab to bridge the gap between startups and corporate structures. Successful integration requires cultural adaptation, overcoming resistance, and securing both top-down and bottom-up support. AI is viewed as a transformative force requiring early adoption to avoid disruption, with practical applications already delivering value in areas like market intelligence and technology scouting.

Emotional Connection: Why Gen AI Needs Continuous Insight Into Real Human Behavior

This session emphasized the critical role of non-conscious human insights for effective innovation, warning that generative AI models trained on their own outputs can experience “model collapse,” losing creativity and regressing to the mean. The solution proposed is the continuous injection of fresh human data, particularly non-conscious emotional and behavioral insights. Automated behavioral science, by quantifying attention, emotion, and non-conscious thought processes, can significantly accelerate innovation cycles from weeks to days while improving market prediction accuracy.

Designing for Everyone: The Power of Inclusive Innovation

This session highlighted that inclusive design is a fundamental approach for all product development, not just assistive technology, benefiting the 25% of adults who identify as having a disability while creating better innovation for everyone. Tatum Robotics’ work on a robotic hand for tactile communication for the deaf-blind community exemplified how co-creation with diverse users, understanding varied needs, and rapid iteration based on direct feedback lead to more effective and impactful products. Inclusive design requires customization and involves users from the earliest stages of development to avoid costly redesigns later.

Igniting Always-On AI Innovation

Lauren Collier and John Ferrera presented “Charlie,” an AI-powered innovation engine that transforms traditional innovation processes into an always-on, adaptive system. Charlie integrates proprietary knowledge, public insights, and internal data to synthesize information, detect trends, generate concepts, and create testable assets in minutes. This approach helps organizations accelerate innovation timelines from months to days and “10x” their exploration capabilities by testing concepts at scale. The session emphasized that speed is a necessity in today’s rapidly changing market, where customer needs are evolving 50 times faster than ever before.

Transformational Innovation Through Collaboration

This session showcased Welch’s Greenhouse, an internal cross-functional incubator designed to drive transformational innovation through collaboration across departments. Unlike traditional isolated innovation teams, Welch’s intentionally built cross-functional teams with representatives from finance, HR, product development, and marketing to create a two-way learning stream and operational efficiencies. Successful innovation requires regular cross-functional meetings, rapid prototyping, and early involvement of all stakeholders (including legal and regulatory). The approach emphasizes building trust, embracing constraints creatively, and maintaining psychological safety while working through uncertainty. The Greenhouse manages innovations through launch and beyond, often balancing a portfolio with 70% focused on commercialization within three years and 30% on longer-term, higher-risk innovation.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • AI Accelerates, Human Insights Elevate: AI tools like Atlas and Charlie dramatically increase the speed and scale of innovation by synthesizing data and generating concepts, but continuous injection of fresh, non-conscious human behavioral data is crucial to prevent “model collapse” and ensure creativity and market relevance.
  • Inclusive Design Drives Broader Value: Designing with, not just for, diverse user groups, including those with disabilities, expands market reach and leads to more universally effective and impactful products, proving that inclusive approaches are a strategic business advantage.
  • Strategic Alignment and Economic Value are Paramount: Innovation efforts must be explicitly aligned with clear strategic objectives and driven by the economic value they create for customers (“dollars and cents”), moving beyond just features and benefits to ensure commercial viability and successful “harvesting” of ideas.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration and Rapid Iteration are Essential: Breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional collaboration from the earliest stages, combined with rapid prototyping and iterative testing, accelerates decision-making, uncovers blind spots, and builds organizational alignment and trust for innovation.
  • Organizational Adaptation is Key for Emerging Technologies: Successfully integrating emerging technologies like AI requires not just technological innovation but also significant cultural and organizational adaptation, including creating specialized agile units and building “coalitions of the willing” to overcome resistance and drive change.

Delivery on the Event Focus:
Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy:

This track directly addressed aligning innovation with business strategy by showcasing how leading organizations are integrating innovation into their core business processes. Speakers demonstrated how AI-powered tools ensure innovations are grounded in consumer insights and market realities, aligning them with manufacturing capabilities and brand equities. The emphasis on understanding the economic value created for customers underscored that innovation must directly contribute to business outcomes. The sessions highlighted the strategic importance of dual innovation structures, balancing sustaining and transformational efforts to serve both immediate business needs and future growth opportunities. Inclusive design was also presented as a strategic advantage, tapping into underserved markets and creating universally better products.

Delivery on the Event Theme: 

Harvesting Innovation & Sowing Seeds of Future Growth:

The track consistently delivered on the theme of “harvesting innovation and sowing seeds of future growth.” It showed how companies are “harvesting” insights from vast consumer data pools through AI and from existing knowledge investments, while simultaneously “sowing seeds” for future growth by exploring white spaces, new brand development, and emerging distribution models. The agricultural metaphor of invention as “sowing the seed” and innovation as “harvesting the crop” was central. The focus on protecting resources for future-focused work, continuous human data injection to prevent AI model collapse, and Welch’s balanced portfolio approach all underscored the commitment to nurturing long-term growth alongside immediate returns.

Action Items for Innovation Experts and Corporate Changemakers:

  1. Pilot AI-Driven Innovation: Evaluate your current ideation processes and pilot AI-driven innovation tools in specific areas (e.g., product development, partnership identification) to demonstrate value and accelerate timelines. Ensure these tools integrate diverse consumer data and align with strategic priorities.
  2. Integrate Automated Behavioral Science: Implement automated behavioral science and implicit testing methodologies to capture non-conscious consumer insights. Establish continuous human data collection systems to regularly inject fresh behavioral and emotional insights into AI models, preventing “model collapse” and fostering true creativity.
  3. Embed Inclusive Design Principles: Audit your design process to ensure diverse user perspectives, particularly from individuals with disabilities, are incorporated from the earliest stages of development. Adopt rapid prototyping and customization options to quickly iterate based on user feedback.
  4. Strengthen Cross-Functional Collaboration: Establish cross-functional innovation teams that meet regularly, breaking down silos and bringing all stakeholders (including legal, regulatory, and finance) into the process early to build shared understanding, address roadblocks creatively, and accelerate decisions.
  5. Assess and Adapt Organizational Structure: Evaluate your allocation of resources between sustaining and transformational innovation, considering separate but connected organizational structures with distinct cultures, metrics, and leadership behaviors. Develop AI competencies now to begin implementing AI tools in non-critical areas to build familiarity and demonstrate value.

FEI25: Aligning Business Success Through Strategic Transformation

KEY QUOTES

  • “This whole shift to consumer centricity means a few different things… every innovation that we put into our innovation pipeline has to have a consumer need or a consumer intention that it’s answering, and that consumer need or intention also has to align with our business strategy.”
  • “There’s no such thing as a boring category. There’s just boring execution.”
  • “Product communication doesn’t happen after the work—it is the work.”
  • “The only edge that your rivals can’t copy is an architected customer journey that compounds value and differentiation across moments.”
  • “Human obsession and understanding the real problem to solve is the only way that you’ll commercialize excellent product and product execution.”

Full Track Summary: Strategy & Transformation

The Strategy & Transformation Track at FEI25 provided a multifaceted exploration of how organizations can effectively align innovation with business strategy to drive sustainable growth. Across multiple sessions, speakers from leading companies like Lagunitas, PepsiCo, and Procter & Gamble, along with innovation experts, shared insights on consumer-centricity, emotional innovation, effective communication, and organizational design.

Delivering on an Integrated Innovation Strategy: A P&G Case Study

Procter & Gamble’s R&D strategy highlights the challenge of managing both sustaining innovation (optimizing current products) and disruptive/discontinuous innovation (new products, business models). Liza Sanchez explained that these require different organizational structures, leadership behaviors, and metrics. P&G allocates 70-80% of resources to sustaining innovation and 20-30% to transformational innovation, emphasizing the need to protect resources for future-focused work. Transformational innovation requires managing uncertainty and embracing experimentation, contrasting with sustaining innovation’s focus on risk management and process. P&G’s consumer-centric approach leverages core competencies across business units to create “irresistible superiority,” testing complete propositions early in the innovation funnel.

Designing Innovation with Human-Centered Approaches and AI

PepsiCo Design’s approach to innovation is deeply human-centered, focusing on defining the right problems to solve, embracing talent, and championing integration. Their methodology employs a “double diamond” approach with four key lenses: feasibility, viability, sustainability, and desirability, ensuring early connection with the broader organization to build trust. PepsiCo is also heavily leveraging AI to enhance design innovation, using tools like ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly for storyboarding, journey mapping, and customer engagement. Examples like the Bear snacks expansion and Wing drone delivery demonstrated how design drives both short-term and long-term innovation by exploring new categories and emerging distribution models.

Activating Emotional Innovation and Redefining Value

Another critical aspect of innovation discussed was the emphasis on “emotional innovation” over technical innovation alone. The speaker, who created successful brands like Method, EOS, Hello, and Happy Coffee, argued that “there’s no such thing as a boring category, just boring execution”. True innovation, he posited, comes from creating products that connect with people’s hearts and are “as endearing as they are enduring”—products people would genuinely miss if they disappeared. This approach shifts the focus from disruption to delighting consumers, with disruption being a byproduct of that delight. The concept of “responsibility” was highlighted as more meaningful than corporate “purpose” or “mission,” exemplified by Happy Coffee’s partnership with NAMI, which included giving NAMI an ownership stake in the company. This perspective encourages brands to focus on people, not just “consumers” or “targets,” and to recognize that “ideals are important and there’s margin in meaning.”

Why Stories, Not Just Science, Should Start in the Lab

The session “Why Stories, Not Just Science, Should Start in the Lab” emphasized that product communication should be developed simultaneously with product innovation, not as an afterthought. Most innovations fail due to poor storytelling rather than poor product quality, as “people don’t buy the best products; they buy the products that they understand the fastest”. The “Who, How, Wow” framework was introduced to help innovators distill complex scientific concepts into compelling, three-second “wow” moments. This framework encourages identifying the target audience and their problem (“Who”), explaining the science simply (“How”), and articulating the transformative result (“Wow”). Early cross-functional collaboration, termed “Wow Workshops,” brings together teams like marketing, R&D, and legal to develop the product story alongside the product itself, ensuring alignment and preventing “phantom work.”

Killing “Me Too” Innovation

To combat “me too” innovation, a four-move strategic framework was presented: developing critical insights, embracing iteration, mapping customer journeys, and enhancing value through experience. Critical insights go beyond surface-level trends and require personal engagement, listening to the right people, building trust, trading quantity for understanding, and including live observation. Iteration is crucial for refining these insights before scaling. Mapping the customer journey—identifying all touchpoints from awareness to repurchase—helps create a competitive advantage that rivals cannot easily copy by enabling unique business decisions and an integrated system. Finally, enhancing value by adding “Experience” alongside Price and Quality transforms transactions into loyalty and enables higher margins.

Navigating Disruption

The “Navigating Disruption” workshop introduced “constrained consumption” as a new economic context shaped by three emerging consumer trends: the Appetite Edit (GLP-1 drugs’ impact beyond food), Money Maxing (economic uncertainty driving value redefinition), and Buycott (values-based shopping). These trends fundamentally alter consumer behaviors, from reduced impulse purchasing to increased financial literacy and values-driven buying decisions. Businesses must pivot from promoting instant gratification to emphasizing purposeful pleasure, delayed gratification, and aligning with consumer values.

Brewing Innovation Through Consumer Centricity and Strategic Patience

Lagunitas has significantly transformed its innovation approach by becoming truly consumer-centric, ensuring every new product addresses a specific consumer need while aligning with their business strategy. The company categorizes innovations into “big bets” (within core beer expertise) and “future bets” (stretch products that may take up to 10 years to fully develop). Both categories undergo rigorous testing, but future bets are given extended time to develop and prove themselves in the market, recognizing that successful brands often require significant time to gain traction. Lagunitas uses its taproom as an initial testing ground, and successful offerings sometimes become commercial products. Despite being owned by Heineken, Lagunitas maintains its distinct brand identity by focusing on quality products and understanding different consumer demand moments, exploring growth areas like non-alcoholic beverages while staying true to their craft brewing roots. Quality is seen as a key differentiator in a crowded market.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Consumer-Centricity is Paramount: Every innovation must address a specific consumer need or intention and align with business strategy, moving beyond chasing trends to truly understanding and meeting consumer desires.
  • Emotional Connection Drives Success: True innovation stems from emotional resonance; products that delight and connect with people’s hearts are more likely to be endearing, enduring, and ultimately successful.
  • Communication is Integral to Innovation: Product communication should be developed alongside the product itself, distilling complex concepts into clear, compelling “three-second wow” moments that ensure rapid consumer understanding and market traction.
  • Strategic Differentiation via Experience & Iteration: To avoid “me too” innovation, companies must develop deep, critical insights, embrace iterative development, map comprehensive customer journeys, and enhance value through unique experiences beyond just price and quality.
  • Dual Innovation Structures are Essential: Organizations must adopt separate but connected structures for sustaining (incremental) and transformational (disruptive) innovation, with distinct cultures, metrics, and leadership behaviors, while deliberately protecting resources for future-focused initiatives.

How This Track Delivers on the Event Focus:
Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy:

The Strategy & Transformation Track at FEI25 directly addressed aligning innovation with business strategy by providing actionable frameworks and real-world examples. Sessions emphasized that effective innovation is not merely about creating new products but ensuring these products meet specific consumer needs while contributing to overarching business goals and growth. Speakers detailed how strategic patience, understanding demand moments, and leveraging core competencies are crucial for commercial viability. The track demonstrated how emotional innovation drives market success and how early product communication aligns R&D with marketing to create commercially viable products. Furthermore, it highlighted the necessity of organizational structures that support both sustaining and transformational innovation, linking R&D strategy to overall business objectives and long-term portfolio management.

How This Session Delivers on the Event Theme:
Harvesting Innovation & Sowing Seeds of Future Growth:

The track embodied the theme of “harvesting innovation and sowing seeds of future growth” by presenting strategies for both extracting immediate value from existing innovations and cultivating new opportunities for the future. Concepts like “big bets” (harvesting core expertise) and “future bets” (sowing seeds for long-term development) illustrated this duality. The emphasis on giving experimental products up to 10 years to develop demonstrated a commitment to nurturing innovation for sustainable growth rather than expecting immediate returns. The sessions showed how harvesting deep customer insights from current conditions can fuel differentiated innovations, while exploring emerging trends like “constrained consumption” and investing in new technologies like AI or drone delivery represent sowing seeds for future market relevance and growth. P&G’s model of allocating resources to both sustaining and transformational innovation further reinforced the importance of balancing immediate returns with long-term growth through deliberate portfolio management.

Action Items for Innovation Experts and Corporate Changemakers:

  1. Implement Consumer-Centric Filters: Create clear criteria for all innovation ideas, requiring them to address specific consumer needs and align with business strategy. Conduct deep, qualitative research and direct observation to gain critical insights beyond surface-level trends or AI-generated data.
  2. Develop a Two-Track Innovation System: Establish separate but connected organizational structures for “big bets” (sustaining, core business extensions) and “future bets” (experimental ventures), with distinct timelines, metrics, leadership behaviors, and protected resources for each.
  3. Integrate Product Communication Early: Conduct “Wow Workshops” early in the innovation process, bringing together cross-functional teams (R&D, marketing, legal) to align on the product story and develop the “Who, How, Wow” communication framework simultaneously with product development.
  4. Prioritize Emotional Design and Experience: Reframe innovation by asking how products make people feel, focusing on creating emotional connections and building enduring brands. Map the entire customer journey to identify and design differentiated experiences that transform transactions into loyalty, expanding the value equation beyond just price and quality.
  5. Embrace Iteration and Test Early: Restructure innovation processes to include multiple rounds of exploration, agile market learning, and agile product testing, allowing insights to evolve and deepen before scaling. Leverage existing assets like company taprooms or pilot programs for real-world testing of complete propositions (technical, commercial, organizational).