INNOVATE. VALIDATE. REPEAT.

In this season of Innovate, Validate, Repeat, we’ve explored industry-to-industry disruption and the innovative business models that are creating opportunities for leading companies to reestablish their competitive advantage within their own industry and adjacent sectors. And what we’ve learned is that business building and start-up ecosystem engagement is no longer a fringe function, operating at the edges of big corporate spheres—it has become a core function of every business. Yet, the learning curve is steep, and every organization faces its own specific set of challenges. In this episode, Lee Brailey speaks with Neal Hansch, CEO and managing partner of Silicon Foundry, and Michael Roemer, founder of FFWD, Kearney’s business builder and partner at Kearney, to discuss their perspectives on the latest tech trends impacting industry, how ecosystem collaborations are the only way to create impactful change, and why it is now more pressing than ever for leaders to double down on the need for speed. 

In the rapidly evolving landscape of business and technology, the hype cycle that followed ChatGPT’s launch (and its human-like conversational capabilities) in late 2022 caught business leaders everywhere on the back foot, and led to a boardroom scramble to jump onboard the AI bandwagon. Fast forward to today, and while many of the world's biggest and most ambitious organizations have deployed the technology, plateauing user demand and unmet expectations have left many leaders scratching their heads as they question the value of this technology for their business. FOMO (fear of missing out) is rapidly turning to FOBO (fear of becoming obsolete).    However, the fact remains, Generative AI represents the greatest disruption to business-as-we-know-it in our lifetimes, impacting every aspect of the value chain. And if done right, the potential for tectonic shifts for the organization is huge. In this episode, David Meszaros meets Steve Gotz, partner at Silicon Foundry, to unravel the tangled web of assumptions, separate fact from fiction when it comes to the real-world capabilities of generative AI, highlight the rise of cognitive twins, and discuss the expected strategic advantages at stake for first movers in the AI race to the top.

In this episode, David Meszaros speaks with Camille Manso, partner at Silicon Foundry, and Sebastian Drescher, partner at Kearney’s business builder FFWD, to discuss shifting business models in the consumer goods and retail sector, opportunities arising from a rapidly evolving circular shopping sector, and how customer data capture is creating new value pools for innovative industry leaders.

In this episode, Lee Brailey welcomes Erik Terjesen, partner at Silicon Foundry, and Pulakesh Mukherjee, co-founder and managing partner at Imperative Ventures, to discuss how business leaders should be thinking about their strategic investments and fit when it comes to decarbonization technologies, partnerships, and processes. The need to end our reliance on fossil fuels and invest in and integrate alternative sources of energy that are clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable in order to avoid the forecasted consequences of climate change is clear. The good news is that technologies in this domain are cheaper than ever. And we continue to see public policies and subsidies enacted around the globe that are expected to supercharge a long-term trend driven by rapid advances in technological innovation. For businesses ready to make the shift, the opportunities to move the needle on this existential crisis—and reap the financial rewards—are clear. However, while the decarbonization ambitions of industry leaders are well-stated, getting a tangible action plan out of the starting blocks is proving a challenge across all industries.

Over the past decade, traditional original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have struggled to adapt a digital mindset and techniques for their research and development in pursuit of a software-defined vision. Too often, progress stalls as inefficient, hardware-engineering-driven ways of working and outdated methods remain the status quo. But elsewhere in the market, challenger OEMs are proving very effectively just how to bring the vision of a software-defined vehicle to life. In this episode, FFWD’s David Meszaros chats with Sebastian Werner, CEO at BinaryCore, and Florian Rohde, managing partner at iProcess LLC, to identify the key enablers used to achieve end-to-end automotive software excellence, not just in terms of cost savings, but also in revenue growth, accelerated innovation, improved teamwork, and faster time to market.

With a potential $1 trillion value tag by 2030, the “space renaissance”—a period when technological innovation is significantly reducing costs, creating major scientific advances, and forging groundbreaking joint ventures—has well and truly taken off. But as distant as the space sector may seem, it’s not only a growth area in itself, but also a key enabler of growth and innovation in other sectors closer to home, driving major developments across diverse industries, including energy, telecommunications, aviation, and agriculture, among many others. Tech advances in the space domain have also reshaped our view of the world, providing greater transparency and an unparalleled view from above of everything from geopolitical conflicts to climate change. In this episode, FFWD’s Lee Brailey talks with Michele Scataglini, partner at Silicon Foundry and associate fellow at Said Business School at the University of Oxford, to discuss the latest “space for space” and “space for earth” tech trends, collaborations, and deployment tactics that are accelerating growth within the sector. They also highlight how these developments are transcending industry boundaries to create new business models that can be adopted by earth-bound organizations to advance their own innovation agenda. 

The podcast series helping industry leaders to get ahead of industry disruptors. As Joy’s Law rightly notes, there will always be more smart people outside your organization than inside it. That means you’re more likely to find the best ideas originating somewhere else. So how do you access those ideas and put them to work? And how can you sort the good from the bad to place the right bets for your company’s future? For this podcast series, experts from FFWD (Kearney’s business builder) and Silicon Foundry (a Kearney company) have come together to discuss how innovative business models are creating opportunities for leading companies to reestablish their competitive advantage within their own industry and adjacent sectors. You’ll hear firsthand case studies from six industry domains outlining how leaders are breaking down longstanding silos, creating new partnerships, and experimenting to re-fuel the innovation engine of their organizations. Plus, we provide insights from the bleeding edge of the start-up and investor ecosystem into big-tech investment trends and the impact and opportunity they will create. If you want to get ahead, it’s time to get involved.