Innovation is a cosmetic word for making change happen.

"Are you in or out? That's the ultimate question. You can't be half pregnant".
Sometimes, we use the term "innovation" too loosely, labeling things as the "innovation pipeline" when it's just a development pipeline.

Benji Coetzee, Chief Strategy & Development Officer at KPN, knows this all too well. She oversees KPN's innovation activities, including CVC (KPN Ventures) and Venture Client (Liaison Management), and understands that innovation teams are not decision-makers but rather the impartial voice of reason. They provide the tools for change but, in the end, are not accountable for it. However, if they can't convince executives to believe in the narrative, nothing will happen.

It's all or nothing.

And while it's almost impossible to measure the absolute impact of innovation (“There are so many dividends you can extract over time and are very difficult to measure: Product, Business, Time, Churn, Margins, Culture, Brand Value, ... "), KPIs are still important, even the "stupid" ones.
So let's not call it "innovation," let's call it "change projects”.

Join Benji as she delves deeper into this with Alberto Onetti in this new episode!