Scott Kirsner
Scott Kirsner is the CEO and Co-Founder of Innovation Leader. He also has written a weekly column for the Boston Globe since 2000, and before that helped the Globe launch its digital publishing division with Scott Cohen and Frank Hertz, his co-founders at Innovation Leader.
Scott has also been a contributing writer for Wired Magazine, Fast Company, Variety, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, and other publications. He is the author of several books on innovation and technology, including “Inventing the Movies,” which explores the challenge of bringing new ideas to a century-old, change-resistant industry: Hollywood.
Scott has presented leadership strategies to corporate leaders, technologists and entrepreneurs at Harvard Business School, the MIT R&D Conference, South by Southwest, the Consumer Electronics Show, HubSpot Inbound, Tijuana Inovadora, the Connected Health Symposium, and the NAB Futures Summit. Scott has also appeared on NBC's Today Show, NPR's Science Friday, the Discovery Channel, and WBUR's Radio Boston.
ArticleHow One Corporate Innovator Assembled a Volunteer Team to Print Face Shields
Shashi Jain’s day job is Intel. But he’s working almost another full-time shift as an organizer of the Portland 3D Printing Lab, which has been producing face shields for healthcare workers…
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12 of the Best Tools for Real-Time Team Collaboration
What are you using to collaborate, run brainstorming sessions, and move projects forward at this moment of remote work? Here are some tools our community recommended.
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Overcoming Politics and Internal Resistance: Advice from Your Peers
At our Silicon Valley Deep Dive event in February, we asked a group of 30 innovation, emerging technology, and R&D leaders from industries like apparel, financial services, telecom, and manufacturing to discuss the things that can help overcome organizational resistance to innovation — as well as some of the things that can increase it. Here’s their list of do’s and don’ts…
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Six Ways to Integrate Startups Without Crushing Their Spirits
Raphael Guillet was a co-founder of the first startup that the $4 billion hospitality company Accor acquired. Since then, Accor has bought about a dozen other startups…
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‘Loonshots’: How to Support Crazy Ideas That Just Might Work
Ideas that have the potential to reshape industries may end up stuck in the corporate basement. So how can companies embrace risky ideas? Authors Safi Bahcall and Hugh Molotsi serve up answers in this video.
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How Disney’s Philosophy on Failure Drives Growth
“I have always tried to make everyone aware that failure is not a corporate death sentence,” says former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Here are some of the biggest failures Disney has experienced in the last 20 years — and how the entertainment giant has bounced back.
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Former LEGO Exec: 5 Habits of Successful Corporate Intrapreneurs
David Gram, formerly a leader at LEGO Ventures and LEGO Creative Play Lab, outlines five habits that set corporate intrapreneurs up for success. The first one: Accept that people will hate your project.
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How Innovators Can Prepare for Tough Times
To help you plan for (and survive) challenging times, we sought advice from seven people who have guided innovation, insights, and incubation groups through difficult stretches, at companies like Starbucks, Whirlpool, Intel, and Levi Strauss & Co. What can you be doing to put yourself and your team in the best possible position? Read on…
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Customer Focus, Culture, and Decision-Making at Amazon and Google
Faisal Masud has held senior roles in a range of organizations, from Staples to eBay to Amazon. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer at Wing, a drone aviation business that is part of Google. In several videos, he shares his perspective on attracting the best talent, and why a commitment to innovation at the top doesn’t always trickle down.
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Connecting Startups in a Portfolio with Business Units
Ayal Somech, Director of Portfolio Development, Boeing Horizonx Ventures, shares how his team executed a quick win.
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Getting Scientists Thinking More Like Businesspeople
Alex Byelashov, VP of Innovations & Brewing Solutions at John I. Haas, shares some insights on quick wins.
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15 Slide Presentations from Big Company Innovation Executives
These 15 slide presentations offer insights into innovation strategy at organizations like NASA, Google, Nike, Mastercard, and Procter & Gamble. Get them all here…
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What Can Go Wrong with Corporate Venture Capital Initiatives
Hunter Ashmore, co-founder of IndustrialML, laid out nine things that can go wrong when companies decide to set up a corporate venture capital group.
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How TeakOrigin Survived the Death of Two Innovation Labs
It’s rare that a project survives the death of the innovation lab that hatched it. But a handheld scanner that could analyze the freshness of a piece of fruit or fish created in the Hong Kong offices of the multinational grocer Tesco, survived not one but two near-death experiences.
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How Tiffany & Co. is Turning Prototypes into Products Faster
The legendary jewelry-maker Tiffany & Co. dates back to 1837. A new Jewelry Design & Innovation Workshop is changing how the company creates products…
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Inside Intel’s New VC Strategy: Fewer, Bigger Bets
Intel Capital has put over $12 billion into 1,500 startups since it was founded in 1991. Mark Rostick offers explains how it has endured.
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Five Truths about Amazon
No one there is going to tell you to stay in your lane, explains former Amazon program manager Jerry Gupta. He shares other insights about the corporate culture inside…
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Play the Game of Urgency Bingo
How much urgency is there surrounding innovation in your organization?
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Top 15 Global Hotspots for Corporate Innovation
For our list of the top cities for corporate innovation around the world, we examined an array of factors that create a constructive context for big companies that want to engage in ecosystems outside of their home turf.
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How Construction Giant Bechtel is Building the Future
David J. Wilson of Bechtel says, “It’s becoming…a necessity to find ways to improve construction productivity…” Wilson explains what Bechtel is doing, including its “Future Fund.”
