Resources

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

This Innovation Progress Report template is designed for heads of innovation or R&D to track and manage innovation programs, R&D, digital initiatives, and emerging technology projects specifically in the context of supply-chain fragility.

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.

Good PDF overview of the product pipeline at the publicly-held pharma company Alnylam, including an agenda for R&D Day; overview of current partnerships; and emphasis on future growth drivers for the company.

This 2024 “Innovation Day” presentation focuses on Minerals Technologies Inc., a $2.2 billion specialty minerals company, and how its technologies and product lines drive growth.

This 2024 deck explains how Nestlé is focusing on a “fewer, bigger, better” approach to innovation and marketing, prioritizing impactful projects, strategic investments, and consumer-centric value propositions.

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 research report dives into enterprise AI adoption trends, detailing how corporate leaders evaluate tools, allocate budgets, navigate purchasing hurdles, and select vendors based on a survey of nearly 100 executives.

This Innovation Progress Report template is designed for heads of innovation or R&D to track and manage innovation programs, R&D, digital initiatives, and emerging technology projects specifically in the context of supply-chain fragility.

This Innovation Progress Report template is designed for heads of innovation and R&D to track innovation, R&D, digital initiatives, and emerging technology programs under current inflationary and macroeconomic pressures.

This 2023 report details Nike’s commitment to accelerating the development and adoption of sustainable materials, integrating advanced manufacturing technologies, and leveraging digital transformation to drive efficiency and environmental impact.

How do you effectively communicate innovations to an employee base that spans 170,000 employees in 65 countries around the world? At Boeing, the answer lies in an internal innovation newsletter called “Innovation Quarterly.”

This five-page document released in 2023 provides an overview of the company’s strategic innovation framework, including priorities, methods and values.

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.

The $92 billion food and beverage giant PepsiCo created this fantastic, clear, concise format for describing specific areas of opportunity for innovation.

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 Excel spreadsheet provides a sample of large enterprises working with the top 25 AI “unicorn” startups, including ChatGPT, X.ai, Harvey, Hugging Face, and more.

In this PDF download created in June 2025, Curtis Michelson takes a deep dive into how people are using generative AI coding tools; the risks and potential return on investment; some of the most popular and powerful platforms; and a few of the open questions about where this all goes.

This 13-page PDF presents the outcomes of a session led by David Crean, Chief Innovation Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, at the 2024 Impact conference. It explores key success metrics that business leaders focus on; how those are different from the metrics innovation leaders focus on; attitudes of different roles like CEO, CFO, CIO, and business unit leader toward innovation; and how participants allocate resources across three types of innovation.

40 slides on the trajectory of AI, strategic questions companies should be asking in 2025, and case studies of deployments at companies like J.P. Morgan and Nissan.

Highlights from a February 2025 InnoLead members’ meeting on career paths, featuring veterans of Clorox, Fidelity Investments, Allstate, Whirlpool, HSBC, PA Consulting, and GM.

If corporate innovation can sometimes feel like a game, it’s one set to hard mode. Success requires relationship-building, resource-gathering, and constant learning to make it past the traps and pitfalls you’ll inevitably encounter. Download the large-format discussion document…

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.”

Eighteen helpful resources to keep you on the cutting edge of generative AI developments, recommended by other members of the InnoLead community.

The InnoLead team compiled this deck, available in PowerPoint and PDF form, as a resource for professionals helping to shape AI strategy and deployments.

We surveyed InnoLead corporate members, as well as vendor, advisory, and academic members, about the issues at the top for their agenda for 2025.

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.

This research report dives into the strategies large companies use to transform innovation into an enduring, high-impact capability rather than a short-lived annual initiative.

Ten key pieces of advice from a December 2024 InnoLead members’ meeting on “Sustainability, Social Impact + Innovation: Delivering Results,” with Jennifer Gootman, Global Head of Sustainability and ESG Strategy at the luxury lifestyle brand Tory Burch.

What are the best courses for someone looking to build their generative AI skills in 2025? We did the research for you, highlighting 20 courses that range from free to $25,000. Download the spreadsheet.

This 15-slide PowerPoint deck offers an overview of the venture incubator’s reason for existence; its areas of focus; and some of the projects it worked on during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

AI is going to become the default setting for 90 percent of professionals… and 10 more predictions about AI’s impact on innovation management.

This research report covers how established organizations benchmark their value creation strategies, navigate evolving C-suite roles, and leverage insights from leaders at companies such as CarMax, Ralph Lauren, and Microsoft.

This short slide deck summarizes an August 2024 discussion about the new ISO 56000 set of standards for innovation management.

Presented at an InnoLead event in May 2023, this short PDF preso puts AI into context, and looks at how it will transform layers of civilization, from fashion to culture to nature.

This research report covers emerging trends in corporate innovation management, drawing on survey data and executive interviews to detail changing team budgets, performance metrics, AI adoption, and strategic pressures.

Created in June 2024, here’s our curated list of software-as-a-service tools for innovation, insights, design, startup scouting, and other tasks.

Slides from a June 2024 LinkedIn Live discussion about the top 10 priorities for corporate innovators and changemakers, with representatives of InnoLead, Innosabi, Peer Insight, and Territory.

Short but specific slide deck from a June 2024 InnoLead members meeting. Covers what must be in place to build capability for strategic innovation, as well as key lessons from trying to ensure the capability survives and thrives over time.

Highlights and audio from a May 2024 InnoLead members’ meeting on the future of consulting in the innovation arena, featuring veterans Dan Ostrower, John Edson, and Abby Godee.

From May 2024: A look at the WINS framework, the law of computability, and the three phases of generative AI adoption: understanding, leverage, and transformation.

From May 2024: a look at AI software vendors targeting the enterprise; the enterprise AI development stack; emerging GenAI use cases; eight key GenAI capabilities enterprises are investing in; and more.

AT&T’s AI policy, created in 2021 and updated in 2023, applies to both employees and third-parties that might be involved in creating or using AI solutions. The document explains specific requirements for using GenAI, and outlines a number of principles to which the parties must adhere.

Customer relationship management firm Salesforce has deployed AI throughout its product set, and has codified a set of five “Trusted AI Principles” that are embedded in the business.

This 26-page PDF is a fascinating document, as it outlines the United States’ Department of Defense approach to improving organizational readiness to deploy AI. It explains the intended outcomes of using AI, the DoD’s approach to agile, and then explains what capabilities are needed for what purposes.

The $57 billion technology company has published more than most companies related to AI. First, it published a document outlining its six principles for responsible AI. Then, the company unveiled a more detailed AI framework that is intended to be applied to the development and use of AI by Cisco. Get access to both PDFs…

The $47 billion British telecom Vodafone published an excellent seven-page AI framework in 2019 that explained how the company intended to develop and employ AI technologies.

$58 billion pharma company Pfizer published a two-page “policy paper” that provided some greater detail than the three “Responsible AI Principles” that is has communicated publicly. The policy paper outlines the company’s position on AI development, use, regulation, governance, transparency, privacy, training, and other matters.

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.

This three-page document explains how employees are supposed to categorize the risk of particular AI solutions, and offers a list of 11 sample questions on topics from cyber security to health and safety (i.e., “Is there a risk to the health or safety of individuals, posed by use of the AI?”)

The $371 billion healthcare giant UHG included a new “responsible AI” policy in its 2022 sustainability report. The AI policy, while just a simple one-pager, includes details on governance, an internal ML Review Board, and outlined key components, and referenced an internal “Responsible Use of AI” program that was established with an external advisory board.

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

Like Adobe and other software firms that have incorporated GenAI into their core products, digital design tool Canva has unveiled special Terms of Use that govern their AI products.

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.

From the description: “Engage with business leadership and stakeholders to promote the AI vision, facilitate the design of processes for AI integration, champion AI initiatives across the organization, secure support, and drive adoption and change management.”

“We are seeking an innovative and experienced Chief AI Officer to join our corporate team in Los Angeles. In this role, you will be responsible for spearheading the development and implementation of AI solutions to elevate guest experiences, optimize operational efficiency and unlock new revenue streams across our hotels.”

From the description: “. In this role, you will join a highly innovative and entrepreneurial group with a focus on accelerating AI Use Cases in the US. With a deep expertise in AI, large language models (LLM), and natural language processing (NLP) you will help shape our AI Innovation Strategy and lead the experimentation of innovative AI-driven products and services aligned to Novartis US objectives.”

From the description: “As a Gen AI Analyst, you will be at the forefront of developing and implementing innovative artificial intelligence solutions for our organization.”

From the description: “This position will play a critical role in unlocking the next chapter of transformational growth for this over $60-billion-dollar global tech company.”

From the description: “We are seeking an experienced and forward-thinking Director of AI to spearhead the development and implementation of artificial intelligence strategies within our marketing area to gain increased productivity and overall effectiveness of our organization.”

From the description: “Capital One is searching for an enterprising Director of Generative AI capable of directing the development of the company’s generative AI platform. If selected, the chosen candidate will lead a team of AI experts focused on optimizing training pipelines, deploying large ML models, and building scalable infrastructure using advanced cloud technologies.”

The Chief Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) Officer will be a key partner with the Vice Chairs, Chief Digital Officer, and other key leaders in setting the strategy and related performance outcomes for the AI/ML portfolio of U.S. Bank. As a report to the Chief Digital Officer of U.S. Bank, this role will also be key part of the executive leadership of the digital organization, setting its strategic direction in partnership with the executive leadership team.

UCLA’s Chief Data & Artificial Intelligence Officer will be responsible for discovering opportunities to leverage advanced data, analytics, and artificial intelligence across the campus community, collaborating and enabling the organization to pursue innovations in data and AI, and advancing the university’s capabilities through internal and external partnerships.

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 research report covers corporate survey data on innovation management software, highlighting generative AI adoption, tool satisfaction compared to mainstream software, purchasing barriers, and funding strategies.

Five Gen AI workouts to boost your productivity and understanding. Each takes no more than twenty minutes.