Resources

Insights about how Nike pursues innovation, from a December 2025 member meeting with Jordan Rice, COO of Nike Innovation.

PowerPoint presentation delivered in 2022 by Alexandru Darie, a veteran of Schneider Electric, Signify, Sensata, and Phillips Lighting. Provides insights and best practices for digital transformation; lean startup; discovery-based planning; agile; and scrum teams.

Includes great content on making the case for open innovation; dealing with intellectual property concerns; and examples of challenges NASA has conducted and solutions/technologies it has found.

This one-page document provides a simple snapshot of the company’s focus areas, academic partnerships, and the national lab relationships driving R&D strategy.

Overview of a mobility innovation contest was by Ford in collaboration with the City of Austin to crowdsource innovative solutions that improve mobility — especially access to health services, food, education, and essential amenities.

2025 PDF on the PepsiCo Labs model for delivering End-to-End Program Pilots.

Enterprise Design Thinking is IBM’s approach to applying design thinking at the speed and scale the modern enterprise demands. It’s a framework for teaming and action. It helps teams not only form intent, but deliver outcomes.

This 33-slide PPT and related video tackle the question of innovating over the long-term, with lots of concrete examples, and references to the approaches of Thomas Edison, Clayton Christensen, and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, among others.

This 33-slide PPT and related video tackle the question of innovating over the long-term, with lots of concrete examples, and references to the approaches of Thomas Edison, Clayton Christensen, and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, among others.

Developed for use at a high-profile media company, this 29-page PDF playbook is “a reference to guide you through a repeatable end to end innovation approach.”

This deck, assembled by InnoLead, highlights the 14 most essential concepts in corporate innovation to help organizations foster creativity, agility, and leadership. We define each concept, provide a visual or framework that helps make it concrete, and recommend books, articles, or online resources to learn more.

End-to-end process for sourcing, piloting and scaling startup partnerships.

Define decision rights, funding gates and escalation paths for innovation work.

While not a policy, per se, InnoLead members might be interested in seeing Cigna’s publicly-posted “approach” to ethical AI. The brief statement from the $195 billion healthcare insurer disclosed that is has an AI Center of Enablement that governs AI “guardrails, systemic controls and processes” and ensures the responsible use of AI. The cross-functional Center includes individuals from technology, security, legal, compliance, marketing, and other departments.

Weighing in at 27-pages, the Microsoft AI Standard explains the operationalization of six AI principles related to accountability, transparency, fairness, and other topics.

As GenAI makes its way into product offerings, companies are providing addendums to their Terms of Use that coverage GenAI user guidelines. $19 billion software company Adobe, for example, has published a bulleted list of new guidelines that govern the use of Adobe’s GenAI features.

Orbit is a platform being developed by the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship to support new venture development, and they’re interested in giving early access to corporate leaders from the InnoLead community, to test it out and provide feedback.

This spreadsheet lays out the strengths and weakesses of different approaches to driving innovation. It’s excerpted from our 2024 report, “Driving Growth Through New Ventures and Corporate VC.”

Our latest PDF download offers help defining innovation spaces; understanding the pros and cons of virtual and physical spaces; and gives experts’ advice about setting up an innovation space.

Capture what worked, what didn't and the scale/kill recommendation after a pilot.

Lightweight proof-of-concept terms covering scope, IP, data and pricing.

Created inside publicly-traded companies, this PowerPoint deck lays out various options for setting up innovation organizations; defining roles; creating processes and pipelines for moving projects forward; and measuring outcomes.

In February 2022, we convened an InnoLead members’ meeting on Zoom to talk about how companies were using their physical innovation spaces, or experimenting with virtual ones.

This data visualization shows the methods in which innovative organizations look for and identify new emerging tech. 

Adapted from the Business Model Canvas to better fit the needs of the corporate world, this Idea Canvas allows you to follow a high-level scientific process when evaluating ideas and then use the criteria from the Idea Canvas when testing or validating that idea. Developed by a Senior Director working in the retail industry.

An exercise to do with colleagues: If you were given 100 pennies to invest in different open innovation partners, like small suppliers, universities, startups, etc., where are you investing resources and time today? Where is innovation actually coming from? What should you do differently? 

What resources do other corporates have in place for interacting with the startup ecosystem? What do they find most challenging? Explore the answers in these five data visualizations.

Reusable agenda and minutes format for portfolio and governance reviews.

Deck from 2019 providing a thorough overview of the lean startup methodology, along with many helpful templates. Used inside a manufacturing company to help guide the development of mobile apps, as well as hardware, IoT connected products, and research initiatives.

What metrics matter most right now? On a recent videoconference, InnoLead members shared a few…

Details how the investment management firm is applying design thinking.

Lots of definitions and templates related to the project management process at WD-40.

Created by the Google for Work Innovation Lab, which helps to train Google employees, this 19-slide deck lays out a set of principles that guide innovation at the company, including “be prototype-driven” and “focus on the user — and all else follows.”

Presentation from the German engineering and tech company Robert Bosch GmbH on some of the dynamics that make innovation challenging in established companies, and how the company created an accelerator program that enables employees to form teams and validate opportunities. The accelerator “enables evidence-based investment decisions” and has significantly reduced product development costs while increasing […]

This worksheet shows some of the common activities that executives responsible for innovation engage in, as well as the benefits and possible risks of each activity. 

The Design Sprint framework is a problem-solving methodology used to identify, understand, and validate business opportunities. Download this short presentation on Home Depot practices design thinking. 

This worksheet highlights the six steps of creating productive working relationships with your legal, compliance, and information security departments, and invites you to evaluate and continually update your status. Where do you stand on each step?

A single slide that provides a template for explaining to startups, venture capitalists, accelerators, etc. how your company wants to work with them and who the key point of contact is.

How the Pittsburgh-based natural gas producer is seeking value “through expanded relationships with innovators” outside the company.

What does progress look like when you’re the team tasked with doing the new stuff? It’s a question that comes up at most of our in-person gatherings. What are the characteristics of each stage of innovation, the things you ought to be focusing on, and the risks that you may not make it to the […]

An overview of Anthem’s innovation approach, team and process. Anthem, based in Indiana, is is the largest for-profit managed health care company in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

A one-slide document mapping out Armstrong’s processes around front-end and new product development. Armstrong is a manufacturer of flooring products.

A one-page flowchart describing how the company identifies, defines, and prioritizes problems & opportunities. ODL manufactures door glass, skylights, screen doors, and blind.

An overview of the insurance company’s enterprise-wide process to identify, execute and oversee strategic growth projects.

An overview of the company’s structured exercise to stimulate discussion and surface assumptions around topics like the strategic rationale, the business opportunity, or the development approach. Crown makes forklifts and other material handling equipment.

An article on client-centered service design written by the law firm’s chairman.

The medical device company’s reasoning behind customer-centered design, which it says allows teams to understand and deliver solutions to address unmet needs, hidden opportunities, and difficult problems.

A slide deck describing the innovation platform and processes of the tire and auto parts manufacturer.

A full overview of the Optum Garage training program, which helps teams build new products, establish new businesses and expand customer value through an immersion training program. Optum is a provider of healthcare services that is part of UnitedHealth Group.

Illustrated map laying out the key players inside the company, and outside it, who can contribute to (or sometimes inhibit) corporate innovation. Includes discussion questions useful in laying out innovation strategy and timeframe, and defusing some of the tensions that can occur. Useful guide for a management team discussing how to approach innovation with key […]