In many ways, you spearheaded our Rogue Mindset Report over the past few months and the related keynote presentation, a panel on, “Actioning the Rogue Mindset: Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy.” This followed last year’s FEI conference, where your comments on the Rogue Mindset really resonated with the audience. What are your thoughts now after this past year, helping us put together this report with all of these different executive perspectives on this innovation mindset? And what’s some of your takeaways from this morning’s keynote on the topic?
“I think it’s been a great journey during the past year,” says Butterworth. “To go from saying Rogue Mindset on stage [during FEI24] and having everybody engage with it to the great work that you’ve done kind of pulling in everybody’s perspective, it’s been great to see how varied the perspectives are. Rogue Mindset resonates with so many people, but they think about it so very differently.”
She adds, “But I think what everybody coalesces around is how we just make safe-to-try decisions. There’s some risk in there, but we can’t derisk everything entirely or we’re playing it too safe. And in the world of innovation where we want to make meaningful change, there’s got to be some level of risk. How do we find the level of risk we’re comfortable with, and go forward with great innovations? And the rogue mindset is one of pushing the boundaries, but staying within a framework of your corporation, obviously, aligned with business strategy.”
Collaborating on Innovation at the ‘Greenhouse’
You also held a session with members of the Welch’s team, which touched on rapid prototyping in part but also several other concepts as it related to innovation at Welch’s, in particular the focus on interdisciplinary collaboration.
Butterworth relates, “The panel that we had was a gathering of Welch’s cross functional partners. We have this really great initiative in the company called the Greenhouse, where we’re trying to be a bit more rogue. We’re trying to find those things that need to be experimented with, and it’s safe to try, put them into the market, and see how it does. You could say it’s a minimum viable product approach. But what really sets us apart is the way that we bring people together. They’re still part of the everyday business, but they’re coming together to collaborate on the projects within the Greenhouse.”
She adds, “So you’ll see marketing, insights, R&D, supply chain, everybody bringing their expertise, everybody pushing each other to remove the biases as Liza Sanchez was talking about this morning, to push the boundaries, make that box that we’re working in a little bit bigger, and for everybody to bring their A game and make sure that we get great innovations.”
Rogue Mindset Report
A key piece of inspiration during the FEI25 conference was FEI’s and All Things Innovation’s “Rogue Mindset Report 2025: A Collaborative Approach to Decision-Making” which set out to explore the topic of thinking differently and to examine just how this curiosity-infused and unique, unconventional mindset can unlock innovation, insights and creativity for an individual, a team and an organization.
We’d like to thank 16 thought leaders in innovation, insights, data science, and academia for exploring this out-of-the-box mindset with passion, creativity, and enthusiasm, and for helping to define just what makes it a perfect fit for innovation and insights.
Access the Rogue Mindset Report
