"What? You too?” - The power of pairs in innovation

We tend to think that innovation comes either from a lonely genius or from a community. Yet, if we look at many stories of breakthrough ventures, we discover that at the core there often is a pair: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak; Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The magic number in innovation is 2.

Innovation of course requires people and resources. The more we are, the better it is. But there are key moments, in any innovation journey, where things move forward only through the close collaboration between two persons. The trusted protected environment of a pair enable us to dare sharing half backed and unorthodox ideas, before exposing them to a larger audience. It also creates frank dynamics of mutual challenges and growth, just like sparring partners in boxing: I challenge you because I want you to win. Finally, when we are committed to another specific person, we feel personally accountable to her: when the journey will be at risk, I will hardly step back. The intimate space between two people is therefore a source of protection, reflection, resilience, which is essential to create breakthroughs. How do you find your sparring partner for your innovation journey? How do you create and nurture the intimate space that enables the two of you to go where you would never go alone? How do you move between collaboration in a large community, and pair collaboration?

This speech will tell you the unveiled secrets of many innovation leaders: the capability to pick and work with an inspiring sparring partner.

Design-Driven Transformation

Leaders know how difficult it is to drive transformation in an organization. Traditional change management paradigms promoted a classic top-down approach, assuming that people is unwilling to change: they suggest the creation of a burning platform, the communication of a change program, and the extrinsic motivation of people. And they fail.

Design Thinking is offering leaders a totally new perspective on how do drive transformation: an engaging bottom up approach, pervasive, inspired by purpose and meaning, centred on users. With Design Thinking people drive change rather than being driven into change. This speech explains why Design Thinking is the next revolution in the theories of business transformation. It shows how it works and how you can use it to become a pioneer in leadership and growth.

Overcrowded - Designing Meaningful Innovations in a World Awash with Ideas

We live in a world awash with ideas. We have become more creative, and thanks to digital technologies, we have easy access to an unprecedented amount of novel opportunities. How to make sense of this overabundance of opportunities? How to envision the next big thing? How to avoid trying everything and fall into the paradox of ideas (the more ideas we create the less we innovate)? To succeed in an overcrowded world we need a meaningful direction. To focus our creativity and the creativity of others towards a new, shared purpose. The speech shows how to take the first crucial step in any innovation journey: the design of a meaningful direction. It provides the mindset, the process, and the tools. Leveraging on the experiences of firms such as Apple, Yankee Candle, Nest Labs, Philips, Gucci, Deloitte, it shows how we can nurture a new purpose that is actionable, and that people love.