/ Culture and Leadership

Nurturing and scaling a purposeful innovation culture.

Members only

/ Newsletter Featured

🟢 Layered learning in service of culture shift

Based on a programme we designed and have been running for a few years with a French administration facing critical changes, let's illustrate and share our approach to layered learning in implementing cultural change.

Members only

/ Culture and Leadership Featured

🟢 Adapting your innovation process to different team cultures

Today it's all about a more nuanced and practical discussion on how to apply innovation frameworks depending on which type of team culture you're dealing with. And because we never have much time in innovation, let's boil it down to three types of culture.

Members only

Featured

🟢⏮ [ Looking back at ] 15 years of mentoring

Mentoring is now a wide-spread practice that is more or less loosely understood, but that is always of great promise. After working on this subject for about 15 years and obtaining a PhD on the very subject in 2012, I thought it would interesting to look back and reflect.

Members only

/ Culture and Leadership Featured

🟢 Innovation, the feminine way

Some further comments (and reminders) on a recent webinar on feminine culture at work. And why integrating feminine culture elements is key for corporations facing innovation challenges.

/ Culture and Leadership

💼 How e-commerce is still confusing incumbent big retailers

I just read about an intriguing signal about incumbent big retailers. The TL;DR is that companies like Nordstrom or CVS are increasingly tweaking their C-suites structures by naming executives at specific roles to adjust to the explosive growth of e-commerce. Does it read like 2012 news? Kind of. Here's

/ Culture and Leadership

🤠 Facebook and Apple enter a bank...

Some stories read like a joke but also illustrate entirely different corporate cultures and innovation strategies. In 2019, Facebook (now Meta) announced the launch of Libra, a proprietary cryptocurrency to be launched in 2020. After the second or third rebranding (Novi), trying to package the whole project through different third-parties

/ Culture and Leadership

🦄 Can Porsche launch startups, and should they?

Porsche is doing something interesting in the market. While most automakers dabbed into startups with hackathons (#killmenow), mostly failed or underappreciated intrapreneurship programs, and plain venture investment, Porsche is getting to the next step. They aim to launch six real startups within the next three years in partnership with the

/ Culture and Leadership

😬 Next step in DEI

For many years we have seen many approaches to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, from unconscious biases training to evangelize about the benefits of diversity in the boardroom. Whilst understanding the benefits of DEI creates awareness and potentially motivates people, leaders, and organizations to initiate some changes in themselves, it is

/ Culture and Leadership

🧭 Stopping the auto-pilot leadership

Last week I was having a deep meaningful conversation with my dear friend Margreeth van der Oord about the “business as usual” state of the world: despite the many crisis, everyone is focused on maintaining life as it is and not many question or act differently. This lead me to

/ Culture and Leadership

🪷 How to introspect as a team

To go even further on the topic of team introspection, I thought I’d share some guidelines or tips to help you and your team. The challenges we want to overcome are: to create trust and dispel fears of negative consequences in order to allow an open and truthful sharing,

/ Culture and Leadership

❤️‍🩹 Why truth is difficult to share at work

Last week I started to share about the differences between team debriefing and team introspection [https://www.icopilots.com/team-debriefing-vs-team-introspection/]. The former being quite straightforward and directly connected to an observable performance as the latter being a deeper exploration of more relational issues in an organisation or team. Both are

/ Culture and Leadership

👩‍💻Team debriefing vs. Team introspection

I have been wanting for a long time to share about various team practices that I have found useful over the years working with different teams, from startup co-founders to senior corporate managers of large industrial companies. And my views have also evolved over the years, moving from very masculine

/ Culture and Leadership

🐥 37signals the mother of small-giant companies

37signals [https://37signals.com] is a software company founded 23 years ago in Chicago. It encountered a huge success with a team organization app named Basecamp (which they changed their company name to, before reverting recently to 37signals), made some splash with Hey! their web-based email, stirred the App Store

/ Culture and Leadership

☕️ Feminine innovation culture

On 6th of May 2022, Meaningful Design Agency [https://www.meaningful.fr/] has invited me to share my experience and tips (in French) about the feminine side of innovation [https://www.icopilots.com/feminine-values-in-uncertain-times/]. Here is the translation of what they shared in their newsletter to introduce the talk: > Empathy,

/ Culture and Leadership

👓 One intrapreneur team, one project? Bad idea.

I've helped design, worked with, visited, and oftentimes also rebooted many intrapreneurship programs since 2007. The most central and undiscussed design choice for these programs is that one employee (or a small team) will be their project's internal leader. With some common-sense rules and as light reporting as possible, they

/ Culture and Leadership

🤖 Solving autonomous vehicles legal responsibility

I often speak about the automotive market because it's in such turmoil that from an innovator's perspective, everything is exciting about it. Every part of the business model is changing (or should be), the underlying technologies and manufacturing processes are changing, what customers need is changing, and not to mention

/ Culture and Leadership

⚡️Norway, the EV canary in the coalmine

A few years ago, Norway decided that of the new 8,000 cars sold yearly, not a single one should be using fossil fuel by 2025. They might make it so. EV Sales Hit Record in Norway With Fossil Engines Soon GoneElectric car sales hit a new monthly record in

/ Culture and Leadership

📦 Amazon power move

Amazon is closing most of its physical stores to double down on Amazon Fresh and WholeFood brick and mortar locations. Amazon is closing all 68 of its Books, 4-Star, and Pop Up physical storesAmazon ends most of its retail experimentsThe VergeChaim Gartenberg [https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/2/22958745/

💎 Cracking the luxury market in China

Cracking the luxury market in China for western companies has always been an uphill battle. Hyundai Takes a Second Run at China With Luxury Genesis BrandHyundai Motor Co. is far from the top automobile brand of choice in China but its luxury-car division is seeking to change all that with

🎮 Google lost battles for diversification

Google is politely killing its gaming business known as Stadia. This is only one venture among many that Google had to switch off or ‘demote’ as corporate lingo would say. Report: Google Quietly Ditching StadiaThe service has been demoted within Google and will instead power experiences for other companiesKotakuThe A.

💪 Scaling culture change

Scaling culture change in the industry is a complex process. Everyone understands that this requires time until you need to come up with quick wins nonetheless. A few years ago I was already sharing about a few key ingredients to building a mentoring culture [https://innovation-copilots.ghost.io/what-it-takes-to-build-a-mentoring-culture-that-delivers] and

⚖️ Contributing to gender equality

I was recently interviewed by Karima Chibane [http://linkedin.com/in/karima-chibane] from “Elles font bouger les lignes” [https://youtube.com/channel/UClJ6twu5ykrZkLAaDd8sM4A], the youtube channel dedicated to sharing women’s stories and how they impact gender equality. The interview is in French, but you will find below the key

☕️ Being authentic at work

Back in December 2020, I recorded an interview with Ana who shares empowering stories on her youtube channel [https://youtube.com/channel/UCHEj1VncoizfeDhi_oEk2eQ]. Here is the full video where you can see me share about being authentic at work, and of course emotions with some tips about how to

Members only

Featured

🟢 Engaging men in women’s issues – Beyond the buzz 4/4

With International Men’s day just passed, the timing of this last short post in the “beyond the buzz” series is very lucky. The big trend of “engaging men in women’s issues”  is interesting and deserves a deeper look. But this subject deserves a reframe in 3 other key

Members only

Featured

🟢 More Diversity – Beyond the Buzz 3/4

In this 3rd post of the “Beyond the Buzz” series, I’d like to explore with you the diversity and inclusion (D&I) subject as it is very trendy but often seen as just a must do for ethical reasons. “There should be more diversity and inclusion in your organisation”