I’ll give it to you straight: Innovation labs are necessary to promote digital adoption in your company. Yes, I criticize them now and again, but that is solely intended to temper—to moderate—the attitude toward them. I am not a proponent of the over-hyped claims of digital nirvana that some consultants shill with a lab’s start-up. But I am even more skeptical of companies that cower from the digital challenges that lie in wait and as a consequence do nothing.
So you don’t like labs? Great, lets look at the options. In the video below, I take one big step back, and address how a company might address digital disruption without instituting a dedicated lab. In the end, you’ll see that innovation labs, while far from perfect, present the best option available for now. Maybe you’ll even learn to love them.
Artwork:
The Kiss (in German Liebespaar, Lovers) is an oil painting, with added silver and gold leaf by the Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, and was painted between 1907 and 1908 during the height of Klimt’s “Golden Period”. The painting depicts a couple embracing one another, their bodies entwined in elaborate beautiful robes decorated in a style influenced by the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement.
