What Can Corporate Innovation Take from Startups? [Video]

Interview with Taylor Ryan.

If you are an active member of Copenhagen's tech and startup scene, you have probably met Taylor at the events like Techfestival and TechBBQ, attended one of his bi-monthly event series, “Growth Secrets” at Talent Garden.

Currently, Taylor is a CEO of a Digital Marketing and Growth Strategy Agency and a Saas start-up helping Architects win more projects.

I first attended one of Taylor's talks at the Techfestival2019. At the time, he was also a CMO of Valuer.io–a platform helping corporations engage with startups and fuel their innovation.

Shortly after, I visited Taylor at the Talent Garden to hear about his experience working with corporate innovation and some of the best practices he has witnessed during that time.

P.S. scroll down if you want to watch the full interview instead.

Is there such a thing as one-size-fits-all innovation?

While some of the best practices in innovation management can be shared across all industries, the process to manage your company's innovation will be different depending on the challenge you are facing.

Let's take an example of FinTech. What are the biggest corporate innovations in the FinTech scene in the last 50 years?

Should Companies Innovate for now or for the future?

The answer is both. It is important to look at your company's daily operations and ask, 'What can be improved?'. Can we do it faster? Cheaper? Better?

At the same time, every innovative company has to make decisions that will put them in a better place tomorrow, next year or the next five years.

What Are Some of the Best Practises in Innovation Management?

There are so many different techniques to better your innovation processes. Some of them can be very simple. Taylor gives us an example of one simple question you can ask your employees to immediately identify new opportunities for your innovation efforts.

Should You Choose Internal or External Innovation?

While startups and corporations working together might sound easy in theory, in practice simply inserting a startup in the corporate setting–never works.

The truth is– you can't ignore the innate cultural differences these two types of organizations have. "These two never mix"–says Taylor.

So, how do you find a model helping both entities do what they know best?

Three Tips to Increase Your Innovation

Taylor shares his top three tips with our followers to help improve innovation in their teams. He talks about the importance of a diverse team, radical thinking, identifying your core motivation and the importance of killing bad ideas fast.

Check out the full interview below:

Hungry for more?

This blog post is a part of our new interview series–Debunking Innovation, where we introduce our readers to the many faces of innovation, ideation and everything in between.

Debunking Innovation strives to get down to actionable tips and tricks that you can apply in your team and get better at bringing new ideas to life.