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.
ArticleScenario Planning in 2020: What You Should (and Shouldn’t) Be Doing
The business and societal impacts of the coronavirus pandemic will be “more like World War I or the Great Depression,” says Matthew Ranen, a scenario-planning consultant.
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Stop Trying to ‘Bounce Back’ to Normal
Rather than trying to restore all of the activities from February 2020 in the US, we should be thinking about how to “bounce forward” toward something new.
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The Three Crises Caused by COVID-19 — and How to Respond
Futurist Steve Brown sees the current pandemic as three overlapping crises — each requiring a different response. See how innovation plays into the solution…
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Moving Museums and Universities into the Digital Realm
At our Innovation Strategy for Nonprofits event, Arthur Daemmrich of the Smithsonian Institution and Panos Panay of Berklee College of Music discussed how their teams have been pivoting to offer educational experiences online.
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Ex-DreamWorks Animation CTO: How the C-Suite Can Foster Innovation
”In my experience, the most powerful motivator to encourage innovation was peer recognition,” says Ed Leonard, Co-Founder of Bred Ventures and former CTO at DreamWorks Animation. Leonard shares more on what senior leaders do at companies like DreamWorks Animation and Disney to shape a culture of innovation…
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At NASA, Introducing a New Openness to Innovation
In a safety-obsessed culture, how do you suggest new ways to innovate? Omar Hatamleh, the first Chief Innovation Officer for the engineering group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, shares.
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Every Online Event We’re Hosting
We have a really simple aim: to put on the best virtual events on the Internet. Here’s what is coming up, both for members and non-members.
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How 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.
