Innovation Consultancy Insights

💎 60 UX Strategy Methods And Activities (Figma) (https://lnkd.in/eCDU-vhR), a large repository of UX methods, templates and activities for ideation sessions and product sprints, from storyboards and brainwriting to 6 thinking hats, journey mapping and concept testing. Neatly put together in one single place by fine folks at Merck. The team has also put together a very thorough overview of their UX Strategy Kit (https://lnkd.in/ek5dEYn4), broken down by categories for strategy, observation, ideation and warm-up, along with detailed video walkthroughs, examples and step-by-step guides. Frankly, most of these methods are unfamiliar to me. And by no means is the point to actually study and apply all of them. What works for you works for you. To strategize, I rely on How Might We but also think about metrics that should be moved once we implement some features or refine some user flows. For event storming and brainstorming, I tend to rely on Bono’s 6 thinking hats to align brainstorming, and (of course) journey mapping. For ideation, I love using storyboards to jump right into the user’s success story, but would also use card sorting with cut-out paper cards to understand user’s mental model. And for almost every project, I’d run concept testing with tree testing or Kano model, or low-fidelity/paper prototyping to understand if we are on the right track. Once you sprinkle a bit of critical thinking, early user testing and strategic planning across the design work, you gain confidence that you are moving in the right direction. And really that’s all you need. A few of my personal bookmarks with UX methods and activities: UX Tools For Better Thinking, by Adam Amran 👏🏽 https://untools.co/ Playbook For Universal Design (+ PDF/Powerpoint templates) https://lnkd.in/ernris4g UX Methods & Projects, by Vernon Fowler https://lnkd.in/eAHaiaSm 18F Method Cards https://methods.18f.gov/ Hyperisland UX Methods Resource Kit 👍 https://lnkd.in/eDTaci7T How To Design Better UX Workshops, by Slava Shestopalov https://lnkd.in/edxqCC-n How To Run UX Workshops With Users, by yours truly https://lnkd.in/ejm7_TsS Happy designing, everyone — I hope you’ll find these guides and resources helpful to get started. Just don’t feel like you have to try out all of them. It might be much more worthwhile to get early feedback from stakeholders and end users, even if your work isn’t really “good” enough. Good luck! #ux #design

10 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 Navigating uncertainty isn’t just a challenge—it’s an opportunity for visionary leaders. By leveraging foresight-driven sensemaking, you can anticipate change more effectively, develop highly adaptive and antifragile strategies, and unlock transformative innovations in an early stage. Here are 10 essential, field-proven instruments to enhance your foresight and ability to shape a thriving future for you and your organization: 1️⃣ 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 – Detect early signals of emerging trends, risks, and opportunities to stay ahead of the curve. 2️⃣ 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 – Identify ongoing trends, their drivers, and potential impacts on industries and societies. 3️⃣ 𝗖𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀-𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 – Evaluate how different trends, events, or factors influence each other over time. 4️⃣ 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀 & 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 – Recognize early indicators of change (weak signals) and prepare for high-impact, unexpected events (wild cards). 5️⃣ 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗹 – A visual brainstorming tool to map out direct and indirect consequences of a change or event. 6️⃣ 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗶 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱 – A structured forecasting technique that gathers expert consensus to enhance decision-making. 7️⃣ 𝗦𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗼 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 – Develop multiple plausible future scenarios to prepare for uncertainty and explore strategic options. 8️⃣ 𝗖𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 (𝗖𝗟𝗔) – A deep analysis framework that uncovers different layers of meaning, systemic causes, and underlying worldviews. 9️⃣ 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 – Helps decision-makers think about present and future simultaneously by categorizing innovation and change into three time-based horizons. 🔟 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 – Starts with a desirable future vision and works backward to identify necessary steps to achieve it. In an era of constant change and opportunity, these tools help you and your organization move beyond short-term thinking and develop long-term strategic foresight to drive imagination, innovation, and antifragility. 👉 Follow Ewa Lombard, PhD, and Sebastian Baumann for more insights on foresight, visionary leadership, and future-fit decision-making. Press 🔔 to stay updated on upcoming posts, articles, and our peer-reviewed papers on these topics. 👉 Find more info on our 2025 special 𝗙𝗨𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗨𝗡𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 - exclusive visionary leadership retreats and trainings - at Gravity & Grandeur

Should you try Google’s famous “20% time” experiment to encourage innovation? We tried this at Duolingo years ago. It didn’t work. It wasn’t enough time for people to start meaningful projects, and very few people took advantage of it because the framework was pretty vague. I knew there had to be other ways to drive innovation at the company. So, here are 3 other initiatives we’ve tried, what we’ve learned from each, and what we're going to try next. 💡 Innovation Awards: Annual recognition for those who move the needle with boundary-pushing projects. The upside: These awards make our commitment to innovation clear, and offer a well-deserved incentive to those who have done remarkable work. The downside: It’s given to individuals, but we want to incentivize team work. What’s more, it’s not necessarily a framework for coming up with the next big thing. 💻 Hackathon: This is a good framework, and lots of companies do it. Everyone (not just engineers) can take two days to collaborate on and present anything that excites them, as long as it advances our mission or addresses a key business need. The upside: Some of our biggest features grew out of hackathon projects, from the Duolingo English Test (born at our first hackathon in 2013) to our avatar builder. The downside: Other than the time/resource constraint, projects rarely align with our current priorities. The ones that take off hit the elusive combo of right time + a problem that no other team could tackle. 💥 Special Projects: Knowing that ideal equation, we started a new program for fostering innovation, playfully dubbed DARPA (Duolingo Advanced Research Project Agency). The idea: anyone can pitch an idea at any time. If they get consensus on it and if it’s not in the purview of another team, a cross-functional group is formed to bring the project to fruition. The most creative work tends to happen when a problem is not in the clear purview of a particular team; this program creates a path for bringing these kinds of interdisciplinary ideas to life. Our Duo and Lily mascot suits (featured often on our social accounts) came from this, as did our Duo plushie and the merch store. (And if this photo doesn't show why we needed to innovate for new suits, I don't know what will!) The biggest challenge: figuring out how to transition ownership of a successful project after the strike team’s work is done. 👀 What’s next? We’re working on a program that proactively identifies big picture, unassigned problems that we haven’t figured out yet and then incentivizes people to create proposals for solving them. How that will work is still to be determined, but we know there is a lot of fertile ground for it to take root. How does your company create an environment of creativity that encourages true innovation? I'm interested to hear what's worked for you, so please feel free to share in the comments! #duolingo #innovation #hackathon #creativity #bigideas

Big breakthrough: A few months my lab at MIT introduced SPARKS, our autonomous scientific discovery model. Since then we have demonstrated applicability to broad problem spaces across domains from proteins, bio-inspired materials to inorganic materials. SPARKS learns by doing, thinks by critiquing itself & creates knowledge through recursive interaction; not just with data, but with the physical & logical consequences of its own ideas. It closes the entire scientific loop - hypothesis generation, data retrieval, coding, simulation, critique, refinement, & detailed manuscript drafting - without prompts, manual tuning, or human oversight. SPARKS is fundamentally different from frontier models. While models like o3-pro and o3 deep research can produce summaries, they stop short of full discovery. SPARKS conducts the entire scientific process autonomously, generating & validating falsifiable hypotheses, interpreting results & refining its approach until a reproducible, fully validated evidence-based discovery emerges. This is the first time we've seen AI discover new science. SPARKS is orders of magnitude more capable than frontier models & even when comparing just the writing, SPARKS still outperforms: in our benchmark evaluation, it scored 1.6× higher than o3-pro and over 2.5× higher than o3 deep research - not because it writes more, but because it writes with purpose, grounded in original, validated compositional reasoning from start to finish. We benchmarked SPARKS on several case studies, where it uncovered two previously unknown protein design rules: 1⃣ Length-dependent mechanical crossover β-sheet-rich peptides outperform α-helices—but only once chains exceed ~80 amino acids. Below that, helices dominate. No prior systematic study had exposed this crossover, leaving protein designers without a quantitative rule for sizing sheet-rich materials. This discovery resolves a long-standing ambiguity in molecular design and provides a principle to guide the structural tuning of biomaterials and protein-based nanodevices based on mechanical strength. 2⃣ A stability “frustration zone” At intermediate lengths (~50- 70 residues) with balanced α/β content, peptide stability becomes highly variable. Sparks mapped this volatile region and explained its cause: competing folding nuclei and exposed edge strands that destabilize structure. This insight pinpoints a failure regime in protein design where instability arises not from randomness, but from well-defined physical constraints, giving designers new levers to avoid brittle configurations or engineer around them. This gives engineers and biologists a roadmap for avoiding stability traps in de novo design - especially when exploring hybrid motifs. Stay tuned for more updates & examples, papers and more details.

I am very happy and proud to announce this new article on “Focusing the ecosystem lens on innovation studies,” which I co-authored with Carliss Baldwin, Rahul Kapoor, and Joel West. There is a rising interest in "ecosystems" in innovation studies (and beyond), but the diversity of perspectives and definitions is causing confusion among researchers. We believe this hampers proper grounding of this work and thereby progress in this important domain. This is also what we noticed in managing the special issue on “Innovation Ecosystems and Ecosystem Innovation” to which this article is also an introduction. We therefore clarify the definition of (innovation) ecosystems and propose a framework that can be used to structure research and identify related streams of work. Below is more information about the editorial and special issue: Link to article: https://lnkd.in/e65myawm Link to special issue: https://lnkd.in/ebMN6HUu Articles in the special issue:  👉Another pathway to complementarity: How users and intermediaries identify and create new combinations in innovation ecosystems (Kathrin Borner, Hans Berends, Fleur Deken, Frans Feldberg) https://lnkd.in/eCBiXA-2 👉Ecosystem disruption and regulatory positioning: Entry strategies of digital health startup orchestrators and complementors (Alessio Cozzolino, Susi Geiger) https://lnkd.in/em9Sr25n 👉Externalities and complementarities in platforms and ecosystems: From structural solutions to endogenous failures (Michael Jacobides, Carmelo Cennamo, Annabelle Gawer) https://lnkd.in/eujbDRxS 👉Interfaces, modularity and ecosystem emergence: How DARPA modularized the semiconductor ecosystem (Jennifer Kuan, Joel West) https://lnkd.in/e8B-Y42A 👉How does competition influence innovative effort within a platform-based ecosystem? Contrasting paid and unpaid contributors (Milan Miric, Lars Bo Jeppesen) https://lnkd.in/eKmprhh9 👉The value and structuring role of web APIs in digital innovation ecosystems: The case of the online travel ecosystem (Roser Pujadas, Erika Valderrama, Will Venters) https://lnkd.in/e9HdkQnf 👉Managing multi-tiered innovation ecosystems European banking industry Comparison of five platform-based innovation ecosystems (Andreas Reiter, Joachim Stonig, Karolin Frankenberger) https://lnkd.in/e568EWwt 👉From early curiosity to space wide web: The emergence of the small satellite innovation ecosystem (Yue Song, Devi Gnyawali, Lihong Qian) https://lnkd.in/ec-EEiCd 👉From product to platform: How incumbents’ assumptions and choices shape their platform strategy (Marc Van Dyck, Dirk Lüttgens, Kathleen Diener, Frank Piller, Patrick Pollok) https://lnkd.in/eCevqXeS

Playing it safe is the riskiest move in FMCG today. That’s why industry giants are de-risking innovation by partnering with agile startups.               The FMCG landscape is evolving rapidly as consumers demand instant deliveries, eco-friendly products, and personalized experiences.  While traditional brands have the scale and resources, they often struggle to keep up with these fast-changing expectations. In contrast, startups built on agility and innovation, are seizing the opportunity to bridge this gap—reshaping the industry in the process. That’s why instead of resisting change, companies like Nestlé, Marico, and P&G are embracing it—by partnering with startups to drive innovation. To give you an example: 📍 Godrej Consumer Products Limited, Dabur, and Nestlé are rethinking supply chains to match the rise of quick commerce. 📍 Procter & Gamble launched a ₹300 Cr fund to co-develop cutting-edge supply chain solutions with startups.(Indianstartupnews) 📍 Eco-friendly brands like Bare Necessities Zero Waste Solutions , Beco and ORGANIC INDIA are finding a place in mainstream FMCG through strategic tie-ups. It’s the smartest strategy for one reason: survival. 📍 FMCG brands thrive on mass production and distribution, but they often move too slowly to adapt to emerging consumer demands.  📍 Startups, on the other hand, bring speed, fresh ideas, and niche expertise. By partnering instead of competing, legacy brands gain agility without the trial-and-error risks of building from scratch. This approach doesn’t just drive innovation—it de-risks it. Instead of making costly bets on untested trends, FMCG giants can leverage startups’ real-time consumer insights, experiment faster, and scale successful ideas seamlessly. In an era where consumer preferences shift overnight, playing it safe is the riskiest move. Have you seen any interesting FMCG-startup partnerships lately? #Innovation #Agility #FMCG

💡 Stop Starving Your Venture — But Don’t Feed It a Buffet. One of the biggest myths in corporate venture building is that you either: A) Throw chump change at a new idea (and watch it crawl), or B) Burn mountains of cash and hope for a miracle. Both miss the mark. The real play? Metered, milestone-based funding. 🔑 How it works: Fund the next riskiest assumption, not the whole roadmap. Release cash only when evidence proves traction (LOIs, paid pilots, usage metrics). If proof stalls, pause or pivot. If proof pops, double down. This isn’t “spend big.” It’s “spend right to learn fast.” Think of it like fuel stops in a race: too little and you sputter out, too much and you carry dead weight. The art is topping up just in time to stay in front. 👀 Questions to ask before writing the next cheque: - What’s the single learning we’ll unlock with this tranche? - How will we know (within weeks, not years) if it worked? - What’s the kill-switch if it doesn’t? Fund with intention, validate in sprints, scale what wins. That’s not reckless spending — that’s disciplined growth. #CorporateVenturing #Innovation #MilestoneFunding #GrowthStrategy

You can’t plan your way into effective AI strategy. AI is not plug-and-play. It’s unpredictable. It challenges habits, systems, and culture. You can’t rely on rigid plans or static roadmaps. You need ways to adapt, continuously and collaboratively. That’s why Agile PM frameworks are fundamental for AI adoption or any transformation. They help teams structure how they adapt. Combining frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe with traditional project management governance, they provide tools to: → manage complexity → foster collaboration → drive continuous improvement → engage stakeholders with a clear, evolving view Because Agile isn’t a process. It’s a mindset. A way of working that values learning, iteration, and responsiveness over rigid planning. → AI projects are complex and uncertain, and Agile helps teams iterate, learn, and pivot quickly. → AI success relies on cross-functional collaboration, and Agile fosters communication and shared ownership. → Rolling out AI often uncovers cultural resistance, and Agile frameworks create space for feedback, trust, and adaptation. It isn’t about moving fast. It’s about moving smart, especially when the path isn’t clear. If your business is exploring AI and strategy shifts, Agile might be the missing piece.

'Global Strategic Trends: Out to 2055' by UK Ministry of Defence offers foresight analysis from a thematic and geographic perspective, complemented by five scenarios which describe hypothetical pathways into a future world order. The publication identifies six global key drivers of change, connected in turn to 22 underlying trends that can be observed today, and which are likely to shape the coming decades. Taken together, these drivers represent a complex set of dynamics which serve to influence, counteract or accelerate each other, often in unexpected ways. By describing the key drivers of change and illustrating alternative outcomes, it helps you to test assumptions and prepare for an uncertain world. Without context, there is a risk that planners, policy makers and capability developers will assume a future that conforms to preconceived ideas and assumptions. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/dt_qqPxp #Scanarios #Futures #2055

10 Counterintuitive Habits Of Truly Innovative Thinkers (That often look like laziness to others): The gap between ordinary and extraordinary thinking is rarely what you expect. 1. "Strategic Idleness" ↳ Protects unstructured thinking time ↳ Walks away from problems (strategically) 2. "Idea Collecting" ↳ Pursues interests with no obvious connection to their work ↳ Stores fragments of inspiration without immediate application 3. "Precision Questioning" ↳ Asks basic questions others are afraid to voice ↳ Challenges fundamental assumptions everyone else accepts 4. "Productive Procrastination" ↳ Delays starting until internal processing is complete ↳ Uses time constraints as creative accelerators, not stressors 5. "Deliberate Amateurism" ↳ Regularly attempts skills outside their expertise ↳ Maintains beginner's curiosity in areas of mastery 6. "Intellectual Play" ↳ Tests ridiculous solutions to serious problems ↳ Explores thought experiments without practical constraints 7. "Connection Creation" ↳ Forces unrelated concepts together to see what emerges ↳ Builds bridges between disciplines others see as separate 8. "Constraint Embracing" ↳ Adds limitations to problems that don't have them ↳ Finds freedom in boundaries others find restrictive 9. "Intentional Disagreement" ↳ Takes opposing positions to test the strength of ideas ↳ Seeks out perspectives that contradict their thinking 10. "Slow Processing" ↳ Resists immediate solutions in favor of deeper understanding ↳ Values quality of thought over speed of decision Innovation isn't about working harder but thinking differently. The greatest breakthroughs often come from minds others misunderstand. ♻️ Share this with a misunderstood innovator in your network ➕ Follow Helene Guillaume Pabis for more insights on thinking differently