The Chief Innovation Officer Thought Leadership Program
Welcome to our Guest Author Program!
Share your unique perspectives on innovation. Join a growing network of innovation, product and technology professionals.
A simple process:
Register to the program using the form listed below.
Wait for your enrollment confirmation - if your application is approved you will receive further instructions on how to submit your article.
Pick one of the questions below
Answer the question in the form of an article (between 500 and 1500 words)
Submit your content
What happens next:
If the content meets our quality standards it will be published (always under your name - you will be featured as a guest author/ Innovation Leader) in our blog and also on the Innovation Machine and 60 Leaders on medium.com. We will also support your article with social media posts.
Editor’s pick will be featured on the home page and promoted via newsletters and social channels.
Q1. What makes a company innovative?
What are the defining characteristics and the ‘inner drivers’ of truly innovative companies? What factors would identify as the most important for a company’s ability to innovate? What criteria would you use to classify a company as innovative? How would you design or architect a new organization with innovation at its core? How would you transform a ‘conventional’, established company into an innovative agile organization?
Q2. Do companies need a Chief Innovation Officer?
This is an exciting topic that sets the basis for a very interesting debate: does corporate innovation need a Chief and a dedicated team or is it everyone’s ‘responsibility’ to innovate? Even if the latter is true, do companies need an orchestrator of the innovation process? If so, do all companies need a Chief Innovation Officer, regardless of their size, maturity in terms of innovation processes, or organizational complexity?
Q3. What is the role of the C-Suite in empowering innovation?
Innovation in a corporate environment faces various challenges – related to culture, organizational silos, resistance to change, and slow pace when it comes to exploration of new ideas. There seems to be a consensus on the importance of strong leadership - to address these challenges and drive real innovation. But what exactly is the role of the leadership in shaping the ‘innovation agenda’ of the organization? How should leaders encourage innovation on a day-to-day basis? How could they inspire people and ‘lead by example’? Should corporate leaders engage with the innovation process?
Q4. What are the essential roles, and skills in a truly innovative environment?
A truly innovative environment requires a certain mindset, a great innovation culture. But it also needs certain skills and profiles to be there. Does corporate innovation needs special roles like the ‘Innovator’, the ‘Inventor’ or the ‘Innovation leader’? What are the essential skills for aspiring innovators?
Q5. How is innovation different in startups?
Startups are different in so many ways. Compared to established corporations, Startups tend to be more agile and innovative; they have more appetite for risk, and usually, they are more experimental in nature. What could big corporations learn from Startups when it comes to innovation? Do Startups innovate in different ways than typical, established companies? Do they follow a special innovation process, and do they need one? Are Startups really that innovative?
Q6. How do you spot innovation opportunities?
Opportunities for innovation may come from anywhere – random moments of inspiration, signals from the market and the competition, or challenging problems worth solving.
The key question is how to create an environment that increases the chances to spot these opportunities and how to optimize, to streamline the reaction of the organization to the identified opportunities. For instance, having identified an innovation opportunity – a promising solution to a real, massive problem – the organization must be able to react fast by leveraging the right validation methods and tools in order to make good decisions for further development of the concept.
Q7. Does corporate innovation need a methodology?
Innovation certainly needs creativity and inspiration. But does it need a specific methodology? For example, do companies need an innovation framework that provides a structured approach for innovation? There are at least two schools of thought here – the one that states that ‘pen and paper’ is more than enough for businesses to innovate and the one that states that a methodology is essential for corporate innovation. I would argue that both are true to some extent depending on the context. A good methodology and well-designed innovation framework can accelerate innovation within an organization – by improving communication, information sharing; by providing the tools to frame problems, test ideas, and experiment with business concepts at a fast pace.
Q8. What are the essential digital tools for innovation?
Innovation in a corporate environment can benefit from capabilities like idea management, digital collaboration environments, and prototyping tools. But is there an essential stack of digital technologies that helps companies accelerate the innovation process? And if so, what would be the key criteria for selecting such digital innovation tools? What technologies should a company use for managing the knowledge and insights produced through a streamlined innovation process in a corporate environment?
Q9. How do you measure innovation output & impact?
Measuring innovation is tough – as this depends on the viewpoint - the perspective and the actual definition of innovation. A good measurement framework should quantify both outputs and outcomes in the appropriate time frame. What would be the top three innovation KPIs that reflect the ‘health’ of a corporate innovation system/ program and to describe ways to make them actionable – to steer the innovation process depending on the levels of these KPIs?
Q10. How important is culture for corporate innovation?
Culture is considered a very important element for corporate innovation. But how would you define this special culture of innovation? What are the elements and the ingredients of this collective mindset? And how could a company accelerate the formation of the right culture? What is the importance of accepting failure and how could leaders encourage people to take calculated risks and adopt mechanisms for handling failure?
Q11. What are the most frequent innovation blockers?
Very often, innovation attempts fail, miserably. There seem to be various cultural, practical, or strategic reasons that prevent people from engaging with innovation and the leadership from creating value out of the innovation process. What are the most frequent blockers for innovation in a corporate environment? What prevents people from engaging with innovation activities? How could companies remove the cultural, political, and bureaucratic barriers to unblock innovation in complex corporate environments, and what ‘innovation acceleration’ techniques or methods are needed?
Q12. How would you establish an experimentation mindset?
Business experimentation is becoming one of those buzzwords – and hence it is worth defining it and explaining how it fits in a modern product development and a broader innovation context. I would define a business experiment as any structured, repeatable process to achieve objective measurements that help in either making more informed decisions or setting the direction for further exploration (of a product or a concept). How would you describe the context and the conditions under which such business experiments provide value? How could techniques like ‘rapid prototyping’ and methods like the ‘Design Sprint’ help the innovation process?
Q13. Do companies need a ‘community of innovators’?
I believe that a genuine culture of innovation can only grow organically – inspired by genuine leadership messages and a core of authentic innovators. This core of innovators can then evolve into a ‘community of innovators’ -- a self-organizing, loosely coupled group of people who believe in innovation as the means of achieving the organizational purpose and work together to achieve their goals and ambitions. How could leaders support the formation and growth of such a community? How could a company measure the impact of this community and balance between ‘normal’ work and informal ‘innovation activities’?
Q14. How does innovation blend with agile product development?
Innovation can be thought of as a standalone organizational entity or as a fully embedded process in the product development function. The latter raises various interesting questions, such as: How should product innovation be orchestrated after launching the MVP in the market? How can product innovation continue as part of the ongoing product development – through the fast iterations of the agile approach? What kind of innovation processes, methods, and tools do modern companies apply when building a digital product?
Q15. How would you define the truly agile organization?
Nearly every company claims to be agile (and innovative). But the reality is that most people don’t truly understand these terms. How could agile - a term that became popular through the agile engineering processes and the lean startup – can be used to describe a certain class of companies? What are the essential characteristics, behaviors, and cultural elements that make a company ‘agile?’ How ‘being agile’ brings impact to the business, employees, and teams?
Q16. Do public-sector companies innovate?
Public sector companies have special structures and organizational attributes that, in some cases, slow down or even block innovation. How is innovation different in public sector organizations? What factors can affect the velocity and pace of innovation efforts in public sector companies? What would be the most ‘innovative public sector companies out there?’ How could we accelerate public sector innovation and even rethink public sector companies with innovation at the core?
Q17. Digital Transformation – what is it all about?
Along with being agile and innovative, companies typically claim that they are also (being) digitally transformed. But, is Digital Transformation yet another business buzzword? What is Digital Transformation and how technology, processes, and culture are interlinked in this context? What are the conditions under which companies need such a program? How could business leaders set up a team to drive the efforts and what would be the role of the leadership? How could companies measure the success of digital transformation initiatives?
Q18. What is ‘Open Innovation’ and what is the value for the involved parties?
One could argue that some of the greatest achievements of our times are related to our ability to self-organize in groups and communities that work together to create value – having other than monetary drivers. This naturally extends to the organizational level, where companies become part of an ecosystem of knowledge exchange and co-creation. What are the most essential forms of Open Innovation? What are some real-world scenarios of Open Innovation? What are the societal benefits of Open Innovation?
Q19. To patent or not to patent? Do companies need an IP strategy?
Considering that a significant percentage of patents granted is not utilized commercially and that only a small minority provides protection for IP holders or generates revenue streams via licensing, it is worth answering questions like: When should a company consider filing a patent? How important is it for a company to have a patent strategy? How could this strategy generate value for the organization? On the practical side, how early in the innovation process should ideas be evaluated for patentability? When should companies keep a trade secret versus filing a patent? Also, to connect this with the previous question, how should companies align their patent portfolios and IP strategies to Open Innovation Programs?
Q20. What are the technologies that will drive innovation in the next few years?
Artificial Intelligence is already here and is transforming every aspect of human activity. Blockchain brings massive opportunities along with a new class of drastically different systems and services while Quantum Computing is expected to disrupt the current ‘state of the art’. What technologies are expected to drive disruption in the next few years? What are the advances that are considered to be instrumental for the next waves of innovation?
Q21. Goal 9 - How does innovation help to solve the most pressing global problems?
Innovative technologies have already transformed the ways we communicate, work, learn, and get entertained. But how about the global pressing problems such as climate change? How could innovation help in mitigating the ongoing damage and eventually help us handle the problem? What are the notable efforts in this direction? How could Innovation help with Goal 9, Sustainability & Social Innovation?
Q22. What is the future of work?
The lockdown enforced the adoption of digital technologies and impacted various aspects of modern life; most importantly the ways of working. Based on this massive, ongoing ‘experiment’, it seems that at least knowledge workers can work from anywhere. It seems that with the right setup the actual work can be done at least as effectively as with the ‘on-premise model’. But important questions are emerging for the post-COVID era: What is the impact of lockdown on the ways companies operate and what will be the ‘new’ work model? How should the current leadership models evolve in a ‘remote’ or ‘hybrid’ work world? How will companies be measuring people’s contribution and performance in the future?
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Content rules, terms and conditions
1. The length of an article should be at least 500 words — ideally 1000 or more.
2. We welcome thought-provoking views and unique perspectives — diversity of thought is appreciated.
3. Your content must be informative and valuable for the user. Your articles should read as short essays — with structure, continuity, and flow. You should be ‘talking’ to the reader — typically professionals or students eager to learn more about Innovation, Artificial Intelligence, Product Development.
4. Please keep it text-only. Unless it is necessary, do not use charts, graphics, or tables.
5. Please ensure your text is of high quality in terms of grammar, syntax, structure, and flow.
6. Keep images to a minimum. Always clearly state the source of every image you use.
7. Your content must not promote your products, services, or company. A reference to your company or personal website is allowed only at the closing part of your article through your short Bio.
8. Use hyperlinks for citations or references. Do not use hyperlinks to promote other websites, pages, or resources.
9. We don’t allow AI-generated content. We don’t allow reusing content from others. The articles you publish in our publications must be your own original work.
10. Cross-posting content you have created and published elsewhere is also welcome. In such case please state where the article first appeared.
11. If you are referring to work by others, please add the corresponding references.
12. To publish your content, we might need to perform corrections or small-scale modifications, for instance, spelling mistakes or formatting and styling. Images might be removed if not relevant or not in alignment with the style of our publication.
13. If an article doesn’t meet the quality standards or doesn’t follow these guidelines will not be published. In case of violations of our rules we may remove published articles.
