Driving Digital Transformation – Organizing, Changing Mindsets and Leveraging Human-Centric Technologies

Anneli Gunnarsson leads digital strategy at IKEA. She will discuss how the company leverages digital for customer-centric innovation. Anneli will also discuss how the company is transforming into a digital organization. She will share insights on:

• Bringing innovation to life through digital in retail – using digital to become more customer-centric in an originally analogue company
• Rearchitecting the company from both the mindset and the tech perspectives – the approach, key elements, and learnings
• Putting human-centric technologies at the center and leveraging data to deliver on value-driven solutions
  

Designing and Leading Adaptive Organizations

Designing for Sustainability and Becoming Carbon Neutral

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Leading for Sustainable Innovation: Building a Culture of Collaboration and Effective Innovation

The heart of innovation is the combination of two ideas that have never before combined. Thus, the notion of connecting diverse perspectives is essential. But how can leaders build a culture that encourages bringing ideas together? Building on extensive research and decades of experience, Professor Erickson will help you identify specific approaches with the greatest potential for improving collaboration within your organisation.

• Use a seven-part assessment to evaluate your organisation’s “Collaborative Capacity”
  
• Identify the greatest opportunities for improvement
  
• Gain specific suggestions for action
  

Fostering Innovation Culture and Leadership

The only sustainable advantage today is the ability to build organisations optimized for innovation. Professor Erickson will share her decades of experience working with leaders to shape innovative organisations, summarizing the approaches into a useful, four-part leadership model: disrupt, intrigue, connect, and engage. Learn why these four roles are essential to innovation and specific ideas of ways to strengthen each within your own organisation:

• Disrupt by ensuring an continual infusion of new perspectives
  
• Intrigue by asking “How Might We” questions that draw others in
  
• Connect by making it easy for individuals and teams to share ideas when appropriate
  
• Engage through meaning with a unique purpose and tangible delivery that exceeds expectations
  

Driving Change for Sustainability – Engaging the Organization and Building True Partnerships

Anna Celsing, Head of Sustainability for the Alfa Laval Group, will elaborate on the company’s journey. She will dig into how innovation and key technologies can support the sustainability transformation and share examples how Alfa Laval leverages data and collaborates externally to drive the transition forward.
Innovation – using the core of the company identity to accelerate the transformation of society together with partners. In the very beginning (1883), Alfa Laval introduced an innovative, efficient milk separator that revolutionized the industry. The company remains a frontrunner, driving the transformation towards a more sustainable living in the areas of energy supply, alternative proteins, water treatment and re-use, sustainable shipping etc.
Partnerships – Collaborating and co-creating within the ecosystem – transparency as a key factor to building true partnerships and achieving success. Giving examples of the work.
People – Engaging people throughout the company and at all levels – with sustainability at the core of the company purpose, clarifying roles and responsibilities and the follow up on targets.
Data – Tackling the big challenge of securing data quality to drive the change. To prove to “walk the talk”, an important competitive factor – and to encourage continuous engagement internally.

Leadership’s Role in Navigating the Innovator’s Dilemma and Driving Transformation

Vinod Philip will talk about the role of leadership in driving and encouraging corporate innovation. He will share how leadership can stifle but also encourage innovation and transformation.

• How the organization reflects the Boardroom – why leaders need to be innovative to enable innovation throughout the organization
• Taking the right perspective on innovation – innovation as essential before being risky
• Moving beyond the either-or of the innovation dilemma – how innovation can be the thread that connects the existing and the new business
• Demystifying leadership and transformation – transformation as organic and normal process that starts with leaders
• How leaders can manage the unpredictability of transformation by being in charge but not in control

Scaling a New Business for Impact – The Challenges of Combining Corporate and Scale-Up Worlds

Melanie Lane headed Shell Recharge for 3 years through a period of immense growth and change. She will talk about the journey of growing a scale-up business from 200 to 700 people and will detail what it takes to scale in the context of a rapidly growing ecosystem. She will share learnings and challenges on the journey, including on:

• Navigating the differences between what works well for startups and scaleups versus an enterprise
• The importance of “”systems thinking”” and horizontal (outcome driven) vs vertical (silo) ways of working in building an organisation capable of scale
• Building leadership capabilities beyond the C-Suite and making strategic appointments
• Harnessing the purpose of a start up and combining with the discipline of an enterprise
• Creating culture in the midst of rapid growth and onboarding without mature support systems
• Balancing integration and separation – the challenges of unlocking the value of strategic advantage of acquisitions

Taking a Practical Approach to Innovating for Sustainability – Partnering with the Ecosystem and Lessons Learned

• Simon Boas Hoffmeyer will talk about how Carlsberg innovates for sustainability. He will explain how the organization approached the projects, both in terms of identifying what to work on as well as the innovation process. Simon will introduce three of the projects to detail how the organization collaborated with the ecosystem to ensure success, as well as lessons learned on the journey.
• Carlsberg’s practical approach to sustainability-driven innovation:
  • Finding a project that has a concrete sustainability benefit but is also interesting for consumers – doing an assessment to see what is important for external and internal stakeholders
  • The green fiber bottle – finding partners early and going public to ensure success – a project initiated by a small company
  • Snap-pack – supplier-initiated partnership
  • Creating environmentally friendly inks in collaboration with a consultancy – being first to market and making the product available to others
  • Treating sustainable innovation as any other project and using traditional innovation process
• Lessons learned on the journey:
  • Don’t expect fast completion but allow a timeline
  • Have frequent joint updates with everyone involved to avoid sub-optimizing individual components
  • The importance of having the right people in the right functions

Driving a Culture of Innovation – Lessons Learned on Empowering Innovators and Overcoming Innovation Roadblocks

Jayshree Seth will talk about how to foster and preserve a culture of innovation in the face of adversity. She will draw on her experience to discuss how innovators can get unstuck on their innovation journey and the role of leadership in uplifting people. Jayshree will share insights on:

• The ERRORS framework – from overt Expectations and trifecta of Resources through Risk taking and Opportunities to Rewards and Socialization
• How to address the challenges in preserving the culture and course correctly – approach and strategies
• Overcoming the barriers on the innovation journey – leveraging the power of little factors to make headway
• 5 things leaders need to do uplift the people and empower innovators
• The Human in the human capital – reengaging people through Working your Way

Integrating Sustainability into Innovation Pipeline for Today and Tomorrow – Creating Sustainability Scorecards and Fostering Dual Mentality

Annette Stube will talk about how Stora Ensor interlinks strategy, sustainability, and innovation to drive sustainability at the right pace. She will discuss how the organization integrates circularity into all products and manages uncertainty with a dual mentality. Annette will share insights on:

• Creating innovation guidelines to include circularity into products and CapEx and OpEx
• Developing a scorecard for innovation units – measuring different sustainability aspects, market fit, and competitiveness to assess all products in the innovation pipeline
• Managing the portfolio – creating a dashboard overview of how regenerative products are, at any given time, and leveraging forecasting and back-casting informed by sustainability
• Engaging people with sustainability – involving people, managing the competences challenge, and building dual mentality to meet today’s and future sustainability requirements
• Working with key opinion leaders and organizations to drive circularity, achieve impact, and address uncertainty

Exploring Connected Solutions and Digital Services – Working with Businesses and Managing Barriers

Åsa Mohalland and Tommy Hansson Strand will share Volvo Group’s approach to creating digital services & ventures. They will detail what sets the Innovation Lab’s approach apart in exploring and driving transformation towards new growth. Åsa and Tommy will also discuss the barriers in creating digital services and share learnings on:

• Innovation Lab setup and way of working – making strategic but also realistic bets: driving agile and bringing in new people to mature faster and build a mix of capabilities
  
• Leveraging open innovation and venture clienting model and collaborating with startups to accelerate value creation
• Venture building through inhouse capabilities in multidisciplinary venture teams
• Interplay between explore and exploit through close collaboration within the Volvo Group and frameworks to support the collaboration
  – Involving the businesses early to get the buy-in and to quickly decide whether to scrap or pursue an opportunity
  – Working with businesses to understand their plans, opportunities, and barriers – managing the challenge in orchestrating the conversation and helping the business to lift barriers
• Lessons learned including starting small, getting business owners involved, and more
  

Future Frontiers: Generative AI as a Service

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5 Things You Need to Do Now to Augment Your Human Workforce with Automation

Augmented businesses perform better than their counterparts on multiple levels – including business, finance and employee engagement. By freeing people from the repetitive and mundane tasks, but also by enabling human-machine collaboration, augmented businesses further enhance innovation and creativity. This lab offers a framework for organizations to augment their workforce through optimizing work for people and machines, and encouraging collaboration between people and machines. Dr. Chris Brauer will start off the lab with a foundational presentation followed by group discussions, based on his making-work-human framework. Lab participants will:

• Get to know the five main challenges in augmenting work, and learn how organizations can tackle these to develop augmented services, data, and culture
• Work in groups to assess a real job description filtering the role’s tasks using the making-work-human framework in order to redefine the job for the purpose of increasing creativity and innovation via human-machine collaboration

Driving Strategic Impact With Startups – The Venture Client Model As The New Golden Standard In Corporate Venturing

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, corporations are increasingly recognizing the transformative innovation potential of startups. Yet, traditional corporate venturing approaches have failed to deliver on their strategic promise. Only one of ten investments generates strategic value. The emergence of the Venture Client Model resulted in a paradigm shift in corporate venturing, boosting the strategic impact on the competitiveness of corporations through top startups across the entire value
chain – at zero capital risk. Drawing on real-world case studies, best practices, and insights from the industry, the inventor of the Venture Client Model – Gregor Gimmy – and one of the early adopters – Grzegorz Ombach from Airbus – will elaborate:

• How the Venture Client Model surpasses traditional corporate venturing methods by positioning corporations as venture clients rather than venture investors of startups;
• How the Venture Client Model enables corporates to benefit strategically from the very best startups at scale, and fast – with no capital risk;
• How the Venture Client Model enables the transfer of top startup tech beyond product innovation, but also fosters competitive advantage through business and process transformation.

Building a Disruptive Innovation Capability – Enabling Ambidexterity, Fostering Culture Change, and Collaborating with Startups

Grzegorz Ombach will talk about Airbus’ approach to building disruptive R&T capabilities. He will discuss how the organization is creating innovation vehicles to apply internal and external technologies to new and existing businesses. Grzegorz will also share how the company balances autonomy and integration, fosters the culture and mindsets for disruptive innovation, and collaborates with startups.

• Setting up the disruptive innovation organization – and leveraging multiple vehicles such as Blue Sky teams working beyond the current portfolio and Zonal accelerators for technology and new business
  • Moving from proving technology readiness to exploring and accelerating its application or new business models – an example
• The balancing game of separation from, and integration with, the mothership; balancing new and existing in resource allocation; and building an ambidextrous organization
  • Empowering and aligning regional innovation centers across the world
  • Translating technology to vertical farming with carbon capture feed – an example
• Building a venture client unit and creating an interface that provides the right kind of support to external startups
• Fostering a culture for disruptive innovation – how the UpNext team brings together external and internal people to foster the right culture and mindsets

Creating Value with Data and AI at Scale and Ensuring ROI – The Journey and Lessons Learned

Tina Manoharan will talk about Philips’ AI transformation journey. She will share how the journey progressed from AI as part of digital to bringing the AI transformation to the forefront. Tina will discuss how the Center of Excellence drives company-wide transformation and collaborates with partners to create value at scale and speed. She will share learnings on:

• The central team set-up – creating the structured AI playbook and data strategy to raise momentum, and addressing barriers to deliver at scale
• Embracing agile ways of working – course correcting and co-creating with customers to learn fast with them
• Setting up the marketplace to collaborate with startups and integrate third-party solutions quickly
• Creating a companywide transformation program with a customer-centric approach – working with three businesses from end-to-end to create sustainable, profitable, and scalable solutions
• Moving to embed AI across the board and building capabilities – training all leaders to ensure AI is integrated into innovation roadmaps
• Creating job profiles to enable dedicated training and upskilling

Creating a New Business Based on Data – Incubating the Venture, Pivoting, and Overcoming Challenges

Philippe Armand will talk about Michelin’s approach to transitioning from products to services. He will share the journey of building a new digital business for a novel market. Philippe will discuss how the team pivoted and will share insights and challenges on:

• Leveraging data for the Mobility data program – incubating the venture and shielding it from the company
• Pivoting to new territory and changing customers – managing the lag effect and working to understand a very different customer for a very different business
• Lessons learned in building new digital businesses and operating in a new market
• Having the skills and the humility to learn from scratch anew
• Starting with what you have but acknowledging that you may need reinforcements
• Having the relevant solution ready at the right time
• Pros and cons of being a late mover vs a first mover educating the market

The Digital Transformation Journey – From Industry 4.0 to 5.0, Scaling Digital Initiatives, and Democratizing AI by Engaging People Internally

Jeff Kent will talk about the journey in leading the Smart Platforms group specifically formed to understand, exploit, and scale Industries 4.0 and 5.0. He will discuss how Procter & Gamble brings the technologies and value creation opportunities from industries 4.0 and 5.0 to life. Jeff will also detail how the organization leverages and nurtures internal capabilities to drive the transformation. Jeff will share challenges and learnings on:

• Translating Industry 4.0 and 5.0 into strategy, technology capabilities, people, and culture
• The approach to understanding, building, scaling, and adopting use cases around the Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies – successes, learnings, and watchouts illustrated with examples
• Navigating challenges on the journey and nurturing culture, mindsets, and capabilities to drive change and adoption
• The key principles to overcoming the paradox in operating at scale and leveraging corporate advantages in the process – and why it is essential to do things not only brilliantly, but brilliantly fast, and ensure adoption in products, services, or operations
• Democratizing and scaling AI and machine learning in operations and manufacturing – creating the Wise environment for people to participate, train, and upskill to citizen data scientists

A Practical Approach towards Digital Transformation – Organizing Teams, Building Capabilities, Leveraging AI, and Collaborating with Digital Startups

Dr. Qi Wang will talk about a practical and value-driven approach to PepsiCo’s digital transformation journey across it’s global R&D organization, a Billion dollar food and beverage company aiming to drive a positive impact on the planet and people. Qi will share insights on:

• Leveraging the core strength of its business models while adopting fit-for-purpose technologies to achieve both scale and speed
• A hybrid organization and operating model with strong leadership commitment, cultivating a community of diverse talent with digital expertise
• Start with the business problems to solve and build interoperable capabilities for predictive analytics, AI and human intelligence
• Follow a roadmap to think big and move towards the future with a series of value driven investments, avoiding the pitfalls with thinking big where the grand vision makes it hard to land
• Collaborating with external partners including digital startups.
  

The Futures of China – Leveraging Scenarios to Inform Corporate Innovation, Marketing and HR Strategies and Long-Term Plans

Björn Theis will lead a lab on leveraging scenarios to inform strategic involvement in China. He will briefly introduce the large-scope scenario study Evonik has conducted and share the main strategic findings. This will be followed by a group workshop.
The lab participants will learn and work on the following:

• Understand the scenarios and the most important strategic insights for each of the scenarios
• Work in groups on a selected research question focused on innovation, marketing, or HR
• Use the future wheel approach to identify the consequences of the main development with respect to the group’s research question
• Work as a group to determine how to respond to the challenges and opportunities the results of the future wheel present
• Harvest the workshop’s results

Exploring Connected Solutions and Digital Services – Working with Businesses and Managing Barriers

Åsa Mohalland and Tommy Hansson Strand will share Volvo Group’s approach to creating digital services & ventures. They will detail what sets the Innovation Lab’s approach apart in exploring and driving transformation towards new growth. Åsa and Tommy will also discuss the barriers in creating digital services and share learnings on:

• Innovation Lab setup and way of working – making strategic but also realistic bets: driving agile and bringing in new people to mature faster and build a mix of capabilities
  
• Leveraging open innovation and venture clienting model and collaborating with startups to accelerate value creation
• Venture building through inhouse capabilities in multidisciplinary venture teams
• Interplay between explore and exploit through close collaboration within the Volvo Group and frameworks to support the collaboration
  – Involving the businesses early to get the buy-in and to quickly decide whether to scrap or pursue an opportunity
  – Working with businesses to understand their plans, opportunities, and barriers – managing the challenge in orchestrating the conversation and helping the business to lift barriers
• Lessons learned including starting small, getting business owners involved, and more
  

Driving Sustainability – Reducing Scope 3 Emissions and Leveraging AI

Johan Hanekom will talk about Amazon’s thrust for sustainability. Johan will share insights on:

• Amazon’s strategy to achieving sustainability goals: the plan and approach to tracking against the objectives – from water positivity to net zero and investments in clean companies
• Collaborating with suppliers and customers to reduce the organization’s Scope 3 emissions
• Leveraging machine learning and data sets to identify trends, inform the strategy, and drive down carbon emissions

Amazon’s Culture of Innovation – Nurturing Day-One Mindsets at Scale and Onboarding Customers with Company Culture

Johan Hanekom will talk about how Amazon continually applies its culture of innovation at scale. He will also discuss why and how the organization onboards customers with the organization’ culture. Johan will share insights on the key elements of the organization’s tried and tested innovation culture, including on:

• Leadership principles – and why they conflict by design
  Mechanisms – the approach to reporting ideas through a press release, working backwards, and making decisions accordingly
• Architecture of the organization – how the organization enables employees to innovate quickly through the cloud
• Building teams – from hiring against leadership principles and culture fit through team set-up to standardizing deliverables
• Sharing the culture with customers – training them and establishing a common language

Founder Innovation Lab – The Scalable Open Innovation Framework to Create New Business Models

Abstract TBA

Experience Design – Creating End-to-End Customer Experience

Nina Warburton will lead a lab on leveraging experience design for an end-to-end customer experience. She will briefly introduce the approach and explain how it allows the organization to identify and address issues in customer experience. This will be followed by a group workshop.
The lab participants will learn and work on the following:

• Understand the benefits of experience design and learn how to leverage the ’living wall’ to identify issues in customer experience
  
• Work in groups on leveraging experience design
  
• Harvest the workshop’s results
  

Creating Safe Spaces and Fostering Brave, Focused, and Curious Behaviors

Maeve O’Sullivan will moderate a group discussion on how to leverage Campfires to create safe spaces and foster brave, focused, and curious behaviors to drive an innovation culture. She will introduce the tools for the subsequent group discussion session. The lab participants will learn and work on the following:

• Explore how to translate the Leadership Playground principles within own contexts
• Understand how to create safe spaces and involve people in safe conversations to drive a culture of innovation
• Learn and apply the tools to engage people in safe conversations and brave, curious, and focused behaviors
• Harvest the discussion results

Cross-cultural Collaboration and Agility – Porsche’s Digital Transformation

Jan Burchhardt and Johannes Hinsch will talk about how Porsche breaks silos to drive cross collaboration for digital transformation. They will discuss how the organization drives a culture of agility, psychological safety, and experimentation. Jan and Johannes will also share how the company leverages and integrates digital within the organization.

• Building connections between siloed departments – enabling collaboration and shifting ways of workings towards end-to-end processes and value streams
• Leveraging a set of approaches to drive collaboration – from communication to cultural initiatives
• Integrating digital within the structures of the company and vehicle development with the digital family as the epicenter of collaboration
• Reorganizing the company for digital – and rolling out the new model
• Building the virtual organization – bringing business and IT hand-in-hand to create the most exciting products for customers
• Setting up the right team for the right value stream with the right skills – and using agile and SAFe
• Driving experimentation and delivering at high speed – creating the right environment to enable people to deliver at their best
• Leveraging scenarios to set objectives – and integrating agile with digital transformation

Cross-cultural Collaboration and Agility – Porsche’s Digital Transformation

Jan Burchhardt and Johannes Hinsch will talk about how Porsche breaks silos to drive cross collaboration for digital transformation. They will discuss how the organization drives a culture of agility, psychological safety, and experimentation. Jan and Johannes will also share how the company leverages and integrates digital within the organization.

• Building connections between siloed departments – enabling collaboration and shifting ways of workings towards end-to-end processes and value streams
• Leveraging a set of approaches to drive collaboration – from communication to cultural initiatives
• Integrating digital within the structures of the company and vehicle development with the digital family as the epicenter of collaboration
• Reorganizing the company for digital – and rolling out the new model
• Building the virtual organization – bringing business and IT hand-in-hand to create the most exciting products for customers
• Setting up the right team for the right value stream with the right skills – and using agile and SAFe
• Driving experimentation and delivering at high speed – creating the right environment to enable people to deliver at their best
• Leveraging scenarios to set objectives – and integrating agile with digital transformation