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FEI25: Reinventing the Human-Centered Innovation 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.

Contributor

  • Seth Adler heads up All Things Insights & All Things Innovation. He has spent his career bringing people together around content. He has a dynamic background producing events, podcasts, video, and the written word.

    View all posts
 
 

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Setting the Strategic Direction

A chief strategy officer (CSO) is increasingly becoming a more relevant element to a research and development team in an organization. An innovation t…

business innovation

Managing the Marketing of Innovation

Even some of the best new innovations might fail if there’s no effective marketing behind the product or service. With an emphasis on cross-collabor…

innovation culture

Playing Moneyball for the Win

In the popular baseball movie “Moneyball,” the character Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) highlights the “epic failure” of MLB leadership in managin…

innovation talent

Putting Together Your Innovation Team

As the community’s recent Innovation Spend & Trends Report indicated, innovation teams are not working in a bubble, or at least not as much as they…

hype cycle

The Progress of Innovation

Technology is shaping our society, taking us in new directions and playing a key role in our lives every day. These forces can disrupt, or delight, co…

product innovation

Sizing Up Your Innovation’s Impact

If your company has successfully developed an innovative product or service, you might be at the stage of the process known as scalability. Perhaps yo…

disruption

Leading with Product Innovation

At its core, in the consumer packaged goods world, an innovative product can make an impact in the marketplace and stand out with a focus on newness….

consumer insights

The Value of Insights for Innovation

Integrating insights into innovation is always a challenge but rewards the innovation team with a better understanding of their product or service and…

ideation

Generating Innovation Through Ideation

Ideation is often confused with innovation, along with other related terms regarding the creative process, such as brainstorming or design thinking. W…

talent

Managing Talent to Drive Innovation

With the economy producing mixed signals, and companies often in a state of flux, managing innovation talent has never been a more challenging and imp…

innovation culture

Balancing Innovation with Ambidexterity

Innovators have long been tasked with being a flexible part of an ambidextrous team, as part of an organizational cog that can easily pivot and manage…

disruptive innovation

Defining Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovation is often a phrase used to make a splash in the business world. Some may debate that the label has been applied carelessly at tim…

business innovation

Growing a Culture for Business Innovation

Whether it entails a large jump or a small step, the innovation pipeline for a business keeps it moving forward through a competitive landscape. Busin…

innovation strategy

Gaining True Value While Moving Forward

The All Things Innovation community came together in this Gathering on Innovation Strategy to drive immediate lessons learned through the first half o…

data science

Diving Into Humanity-Centric Innovation

With the continued emergence and evolving development of artificial intelligence, there rises a question of how humans and AI can work together more e…

innovation pipeline

Tapping Into the Innovation Talent Pipeline

In the last few years, the pandemic and a range of other economic factors have influenced the talent recruitment, development and retention practices…

human resources

Ignite a Culture of Innovation

From the successes to the failures, from the breakthroughs to the breaking points, the innovation community knows all too well that fostering a cultur…

innovation strategy

Innovation During A Downturn

Whether you believe the USA is headed toward or already in a recession, there are signs of a slowing or reversal of economic activity. Of the 15 metri…

ideation

Striving for Successful Innovation

In the quest for innovation, there is often a fine line between success and failure. The road to success is not always clear, easy or convenient. Howe…

web 3.0

Innovating Through the Metaverse

The Metaverse is a shifting, undefined topic, which is currently the center of much speculation and hype. However, at its center, the concept of the M…

start-ups

Perspectives On Corporate Venturing

The Rolling Stones might have famously sung, “Start Me Up,” back in the 1980s, and Microsoft later tapped the tune for its Windows 95 marketing ca…

technology

15 Second Workday

This morning I generated 40 new product ideas with concepts and ad copy to accompany each.  It took 15 seconds. This is just a small fraction of what…

diversity

Innovation Diversity

Black, Indigenous and People of Color have always been leaders in innovation and it’s time for us to put that at the forefront. DEI, or Diversity Eq…

human resources

Fostering Innovation

When you start to talk that way and lead that way, people do feel more psychologically safe to support change and support innovation that’s happenin…

breakthrough innovation

Breakthrough Innovation

While the rest of the industry relies on iterative change, Alex Moyes explains the breakthrough innovation happening at Dominion Energy. “So Dominio…

technology

Innovation Reality

When working remotely, the main challenge is bringing people into an office when they live across the country or around the world. The AES Corporation…

start-ups

Innovation Ventures

The movement for startups and corporate venturing is becoming more and more of a trend in organizations according to Chris Varley, Principal of Goodye…

innovation talent

Control The Sails

Although the world was affected heavily with change in the last few years, not much in the business world has changed as far as topics and issues go….

innovation culture

Innovation Culture

Innovation starts with the employees of an organization. As we know, the people that work for a business are some of its greatest assets. In today’s…

technology

Interaction Innovation

We are at a time in history of incredible change and technological innovations, such as the rise of machine intelligence, and companies who keep doing…

technology

Humanity-Centric Innovation

Humanity-centric innovation is the idea of solving the biggest problems facing humanity in an economically viable way. Pete Dulcamara, Chief Scientist…

measurement

Measurable Innovation

Each company has their own KPIs that are important to their specific business in place to progress and be successful. Are people at the forefront of i…

innovation talent

Certain Uncertainty

Life is uncertain in every way. It’s always interesting to meet new people and try new things. On the other hand, attackers may sometimes appear out o…

adaptation

Rolling Innovation

If you’ve done it once, you can do it again. Make sure to keep doing it, it’s rolling innovation. Amber Case sits down with us to discuss how impo…

transformation

Strategic Innovation

Any new concept or technological advancement will continue to change and advance. Landlines were commonplace before smartphones. Remember those? What…

Innovation Spend & Trends Report

The Innovation Spend & Trends Report has just been released onsite at FEI: Front End of Innovation. Be among the first to gain from this benchmarking…

innovation culture

Innovation Intelligence

It seems that innovation is one of the biggest buzzwords in business now. To sustain growth and be competitive in the marketplace, companies in every…

innovation culture

Innovation As Constant Change

The key strategy to a successful business is to know when they are being innovative or are just transforming their status quo according to market tren…

innovation strategy

Innovation versus Transformation

Many people think digital transformation and innovation are one in the same, but according to Hatrick, while they are closely related, there is a diff…