Innovation Leader

About InnoLead

How We Help

If you’re working to make change happen inside a large organization, InnoLead was created especially for you.

We create downloadable templates and tools; report on what the world’s best companies are doing; and convene your peers to share best practices, in conference calls, webcasts, and at live events. Everything we do is geared to helping you deliver impact in your organization, whether you work in strategy, R&D, new ventures, design, technology, or innovation.

• If you’re just getting a new initiative or lab started…
• If you oversee an existing department that needs to work differently…
• If you’re expanding your team and need to grow your budget…
• If you need to change the culture, and open up to the outside world…
• If you need benchmarks and comparables…
• If you are making the case for more resources, support, and investment…
• If you’re working to turn concepts into revenue-generating products…
• If your business is changing, and you need to keep upping your game…

InnoLead is the essential resource.

What Members Say

Our Editorial Advisory Board includes…

Our Editorial Advisory Board provides direction and input and ensures we remain true to our mission: helping corporate innovation and R&D executives deliver impact within their organizations. The group acts as a sounding board for editorial, weighs in on surveys and research, helps us design the best events on corporate innovation, and provides input on other ways InnoLead can be helpful to our membership. The complete list of advisory board members can be found here.

Who We Are

InnoLead is an unbiased, independent media and events company focused on helping change-makers in large organizations deliver real impact.

Our team of journalists, analysts, and media entrepreneurs has extensive experience in the worlds of innovation and business-to-business media, and we apply that experience to serve the needs of InnoLead’s network.

Co-founders Scott Kirsner, Frank Hertz, and Scott Cohen originally worked together at The Boston Globe, where in 1995 they launched a series of pioneering and award-winning Web sites, including the first regional news portal, Boston.com.

After Boston.com, Scott Kirsner, who serves as CEO and Editor-in-Chief of InnoLead, spent nearly two decades as a business journalist and contributing editor at the Globe, Wired Magazine, Fast Company, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, and other mainstream media outlets. His focus on how innovations that matter get introduced to the world has taken him to the White House, the Sundance Film Festival, the United Nations, and the innovation labs of Google, Walt Disney, General Motors, and many other companies.

Kirsner is the author of several books on innovation and technology, including a highly-acclaimed collaboration with George Lucas, “Inventing the Movies,” which explored the challenge of bringing new ideas to a century-old, change-resistant industry: Hollywood.

Frank Hertz and Scott Cohen, who also left Boston.com in the late ‘90s, went on to launch several successful digital media companies, all — like InnoLead — in the B2B space. Their first enterprise was an early-Internet directory business, which was acquired by CNET (now CBS Interactive). They then went on to launch a business information service for compliance executives at large public companies who were grappling with the complex post-Sarbanes-Oxley regulatory regime.

That information service, Compliance Week, was acquired by Haymarket Media in London. They then launched a digital company that tracked “sentiment” among sports fans online; that company was acquired by a division of Advance Publications in New York.

Chief Growth Officer Alex Slawsby has contributed articles, overseen research initiatives, and hosted webcasts for InnoLead before joining the company full-time in 2022. While a Director of Innovation at the aerospace company Embraer’s disruptive technologies division, he served on InnoLead’s editorial advisory board. Prior to Embraer, Alex was a Principal at the consulting firm Innosight and a Senior Analyst focused on mobile devices for IDC Corp. A graduate of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, he created a course there called “Corporate Innovation: How to Make It Happen Without Getting Fired.”

Alex works with InnoLead’s strategic partners to help them achieve their business objectives and connect with our audience of senior R&D, innovation, technology, and strategy executives.

Washington, DC-based Contributing Editor Kate Katz helps write, design, and copy edit InnoLead content, with a special focus on our research reports. She is an artist, writer, and editor who also runs Sapir Studio. She is a former policy manager at the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, and earned a Master’s in interactive journalism at American University.

Contributing to InnoLead

InnoLead regularly publishes opinion pieces and case studies from contributors who are currently in a corporate role, or who have left a corporate role recently. Leaders from Intel, Pfizer, Nike, Starbucks, Nestlé, Cambia Health, and Chick-fil-A have shared their insights and experiences recently on InnoLead. Guidelines for suggesting an idea or submitting a finished piece can be found here.

Speaking at an InnoLead Event

Interested in speaking at an upcoming InnoLead gathering? Check out our guidelines, along with sample session titles and examples of past speakers. Speakers at IL events are all involved in fostering innovation within large organizations. They may have roles in R&D, Strategy, Technology, Design, Marketing, HR, or other functions. You can learn more or propose a session you’d like to lead here.