How do CEOs determine focus areas and allocate budget to R&amp;D initiatives?&nbsp;In this episode, Deborah Dunsire, four-time chief executive of public and private companies shares her experience. Dunsire has been the CEO of Lundbeck since 2018 — overseeing teams that discover new medicines in Copenhagen and California, as well as others who market and sell the company’s products around the world. Get her tips for innovators looking to improve their relationships with their CEOs.

Lundbeck's CEO on Developing Breakthrough Medications & Allocating Funding

Weddings in the COVID-era look a little different. Many couples staged “minimonies” to celebrate their big day, sometimes with a Zoom link as a substitute for in-person celebrations.&nbsp;Just as celebrations have adapted, the way people shop for wedding wear also had to shift. &nbsp;David’s Bridal CEO Jim Marcum discusses how he’s navigating the future of the wedding business. That includes building an omnichannel experience to help brides shop from anywhere and industry trends to look out for in 2022.

David’s Bridal CEO on Styling the COVID Wedding

Bringing designers in early can help companies execute on big ideas more successfully and create smoother customer experiences. But how do you get that right, especially if design isn’t baked into the culture, or if other functions tend to dominate the innovation process? Phil Duncan, the Global Design Officer at Procter and Gamble, discusses his experience. Brett Lovelady and Andy Goodman of PA Consulting also share.

Leveraging Design as a Competitive Advantage

You may know Mars Incorporated for the sweet and tasty treats you can find on store shelves – classic Twix candy bars, Juicy Fruit gum, and so much more.&nbsp; However, Mars is exploring much more than just candy and snack foods. With pet care brands such as Whiskas, Pedigree, and Temptations, Mars is pushing the innovation envelope in the world of pet care. Likewise, the &nbsp;program uses data, science, and technology to take human health and nutrition to new heights – and all of this is made possible by a strong commitment to innovation and the exploration of new ideas.&nbsp; Jean-Christophe Flatin, President of Innovation, Science, Technology, and Mars Edge at Mars, discusses the importance of connecting with the consumer, the top innovation misconceptions he’s seeing in the workplace, and new patterns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.&nbsp;

Mars President of Innovation on "innovation myth busting" and more

There’s a great quote in David Robertson and Bill Breen’s book Brick by Brick, a look inside The LEGO Group. They write, “The most difficult challenge in business is not to invent an innovative product; it’s to build an organization that can continually create innovative products.” How companies can become innovative and stay that way is the focus of a special series coming soon from Innovation Answered, the podcast for corporate innovators. We’ll be looking at big, established companies like LEGO, Apple, and Disney and asking what makes them so successful decade after decade and how they bounce back from challenges. Is it all about great leadership—or do these companies have a grasp on principles of persistent innovation that other companies can emulate? In today’s teaser episode, guest producer Wade Roush talks with InnoLead co-founder Scott Kirsner about where the idea for the miniseries came from and what hypotheses we’ll explore as we go along. Look for the first full episode on January 18, 2022. You can also listen to episodes of our Innovation Answered podcast on&nbsp;,&nbsp;,&nbsp;,&nbsp;, and&nbsp;.&nbsp;Special thanks to our friends at  and  for sponsoring this mini-series.

Sneak Preview: Our New Season on Persistently Innovative Companies

If you want to understand how some large organizations manage to keep innovating, decade after decade, you need to study the companies that actually do that. And Apple is at the top of the list. Thanks largely to sales of its world-conquering iPhone, it recently became the first company in the world to reach a $3 trillion market capitalization. But Apple’s journey toward “persistent innovator” status started long before the iPhone’s introduction in 2007. In this first episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush travels back to the 1980s and 1990s, to talk with people who worked alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and saw how leadership, culture, and technology came together to make Apple…Apple. The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by , the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site .

What Makes Apple a Persistent Innovator?

Disney isn’t the world’s largest media company—that title goes to Comcast. But it’s probably the one that has burrowed the deepest into our psyches. As it approaches its 100th birthday in 2023, The Walt Disney Co. not only dominates in its original field of feature animation, but also operates some of the world’s most famous film studios (Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, Searchlight), television and streaming networks (ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, Hulu, Disney+), and theme park resorts. And to generate the content and experiences that power all of those properties, it marries the latest media technologies with storytelling at a level few other companies can match. And yet Disney hasn’t delivered with perfect consistency. In the second episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush talks with former executives from Disney’s feature animation, Imagineering, and parks and resorts divisions, and digs into the company’s innovation secrets, as well as a few rare but illustrative moments when Disney stumbled—and rebounded. The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).

What Makes Disney a Persistent Innovator?

LEGO is one of the world’s most famous and admired brands. The company’s colorful plastic bricks are the literal building blocks of an empire that spans a $5 billion annual toy business, hundreds of retail stores, 10 theme parks, and a series of hit movies. But what LEGO actually sells isn’t just the bricks, it’s a whole system of play: an endlessly expandable way for children (and adults) to combine hand, eye, and imagination. It was when product developers drifted away from that system in the 1990s and early 2000s—introducing a blizzard of toy lines that didn’t use the bricks at all—that LEGO stumbled into serious trouble. The company had a close brush with bankruptcy in 2003, then grappled its way back to profitability by refocusing on its core customers and their passion for building things. For this third episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush sought out LEGO experts like journalist Bill Breen—co-author of the authoritative LEGO history Brick by Brick—as well as former LEGO executives Robert Rasmussen (developer of the LEGO Serious Play method) and David Gram (founder of the consulting firm Diplomatic Rebels). They explain what went wrong at LEGO, how the company rediscovered the spirit of play that make its toys so beloved, and what it does today to make sure that innovation doesn’t stray too far outside the brick. The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).

What Makes LEGO a Persistent Innovator?

How do big companies stay innovative across many decades, and in different industries? That’s been the driving question of our Persistent Innovators miniseries. In the fourth and final episode we turn to company in a very different kind of business: discovering and developing new drugs. And we focus on the global pharmaceutical giant Novartis, formed in 1996 from the merger of the venerable Swiss companies Sandoz and CIBA-Geigy. At its Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, opened in 2002, Novartis invented a new style of biology-centric drug discovery that has changed practices across the industry—and sparked a local biopharma boom that has utterly transformed the Kendall Square neighborhood of Cambridge. Compared to the other industries we’ve covered in the miniseries, namely digital devices (Apple), entertainment (Disney), and toys (LEGO), the pharmaceutical business is downright cutthroat. Product development is risky, time-consuming, and expensive; competition is incredibly fierce; and even a blockbuster drug can become a flop once the patent expires and a generic drug makers jumps in. On top of all that, drug makers have to operate outside the traditional world of consumer marketing: You take a Novartis medicine not out of any brand loyalty to Novartis, but because your doctor tells you to. The net effect is that to stay successful, a big drug company must keep their product pipelines full and churn out hit after hit—which, when you think about it, is the very definition of a persistent innovator. In this episode, former Novartis executive and drug hunter Tom Hughes explains how Novartis’s first CEO decided to rebuild the company’s drug discovery effort around a genomic and molecular understanding of disease. And current NIBR president Jay Bradner talks about the structures Novartis has set up to protect and promote high-output innovation. Finally, we speak with Sam Wiley, head of thought leadership and customer advocacy at PatSnap—our sponsor throughout the miniseries—about a few more companies he sees as persistent innovators. Special thanks to our friends at  and  for sponsoring this miniseries.

What Makes Novartis a Persistent Innovator?

In our Persistent Innovators miniseries, InnoLead and Wade Roush explored the cultures of four large companies that have pushed the innovation envelope for decades: Disney, Apple, Lego, and Novartis. But who else deserves recognition? From making pizza ever more convenient at Domino's, to finding new markets at FujiFilm, we dissect the practices and strategies at six more persistently-innovative companies, with input from guests like Bill Taylor, Braden Kelley, and Rita McGrath. Special thanks to our friends at&nbsp;&nbsp;and&nbsp;&nbsp;for sponsoring this miniseries.

Who are the Unsung Persistent Innovators?

The second season of our podcast starts on March 19th. Find out more about our show and catch up on bonus content at innovationleader.com/podcast.&nbsp;

Innovation Answered, Back by Popular Demand!

Innovation Leader is a media and events company laser focused on creating change at large, established companies. We make resources from corporate innovators including webcasts, live calls, case studies and reports. 

One of our resources is our podcast, Innovation Answered. In each episode, we explore one major roadblock to change at large organizations. We gather advice from experts — consultants, academics, reporters, and innovation executives like you — to help you move your industry forward. Join your host, Kaitlin Milliken, for a new episode every Tuesday at 6 a.m. ET.

Innovation Leader

Popular tracks