Once in a while you run into ideas which are refreshingly thought-provoking, while at the same time seeming to be resonating with your own view. This holds for the key statements in “Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries”, a worthwile new book by theoretical physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall. Since its launch, ...

In recent years, an increasing intensity in collaboration between incumbent companies and startups has been observed. Meanwhile, close to 80% of corporations and startups have already been or are collaborating. The mutual – actually complementary – benefits seem pretty obvious: Benefits for startups include availability of office space, hardware, networks, support and potential funding access to market and customer base ...

Dual approaches are evermore finding their way into corporate strategy, development and innovation. There are several manifestations at play, such as...

Recently, Match-Maker Ventures and Arthur D. Little have released an interesting report, titled “The Age of Collaboration“. The study does a good job in synthesizing the global state of play of corporate-startup collaboration and latest findings on success requirements for its implementation. More and more corporations seek to engage with startups by pursuing corresponding activities across dedicated ecosystems and incorporating them in exploration units along with ...

Research shows that growth fueled through organic innovation is more profitable than growth driven by acquisition, in part because the organizational capability required is vastly different. But the litmus test is...

Bain and Company has recently published a worthwile article, debating the question: What will the firm of the future look like? Among several characteristics, the authors also particularly anticipate future-proof companies to be required to manage two types of businesses by deploying distinct "engines".

Here is a chart, shown by Scott Anthony from Innosight during a worthwhile talk on Dual Transformation. It puts in a nutshell what he refers to as the "hardest challenge in business today". The chart greatly captures the fact that dual transformation involves three distinct playing fields...

Ralph Ohr explores the question: In order to increase agility, should organizations aim to become more nimble across their existing structures or should they capitalize on separated units/ventures - such as innovation or digital labs - being dedicated to initiate and develop explorative ideas and opportunities?

Proper management of the separation vs. integration tension has proven to be a vital, while underestimated ingredient to effective scaling of internal ventures and external startups in corporate settings.

As rightly pointed out by Tim Kastelle recently, it’s imperative to distinguish discovery from execution when it comes to startup and innovation activities – bearing in mind that both purposes are complementary and equally important. Along with the case made in my previous post, this suggests following a dual approach to balanced corporate innovation management. The main objective of dual approaches is to sufficiently separate exploration-/discovery-oriented initiatives from exploitation-/execution-oriented ones ...