Venture studios, pioneered by organizations like Google, present a structured and methodical approach to in-house venture creation. These studios bring together ideas, talent, and resources to launch and nurture multiple ventures simultaneously, offering a distinct alternative to traditional corporate venture capital and accelerators by allowing corporations to act as cofounders from inception. Yet, they demand significant resources and face unique challenges including high capital needs, potential founder resistance due to equity stakes, and vulnerability to organizational priorities and governance changes. Successful venture studios leverage one or more core resources—talent, intellectual property, or unique market insights—and require strong governance, leadership commitment, and the ability to blend internal and external assets effectively. Cases like Google X’s Waymo, Philips’s HighTechXL, and Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures illustrate diverse motivations and strategies behind venture studios, ranging from addressing strategic gaps to exploiting proprietary resources. For such studios to thrive, organizations must undertake a rigorous assessment of their strategic fit and resource capabilities, commit to long-term investment, and embrace governance models that facilitate rapid experimentation and decision-making, ultimately fostering innovation and long-term organizational renewal.

Research collaboration with Innovation Research Interchange involved conducting over 640 interviews across three key phases to understand how leading companies build strategic innovation capabilities. This work emphasizes that while many companies start with innovative products or services, sustaining long-term growth requires deliberate strategic innovation practices, not just incremental improvements or external acquisitions.

Strategic innovation, defined as turning creative discoveries into new business platforms that offer substantial market and organizational value, demands a distinct and sustained approach. Companies often confuse innovation with minor product tweaks or one-off initiatives, but true strategic innovation requires establishing a dedicated function with clear intent, language, and leadership commitment.

The first set of principles urges building a shared language around innovation types, setting ambitious and well-researched domains of innovation intent through engaged leadership, and establishing strategic innovation as a permanent organizational function. This includes creating a senior innovation council and supporting structures to govern and resource the innovation efforts.

Further, effective strategic innovation demands developing portfolios of opportunities across multiple domains rather than isolated projects, and building three core organizational competencies: discovery (identifying and exploring opportunities), incubation (developing business concepts and validating models), and acceleration (scaling new businesses to sustain operations). Clear roles and career paths must be defined to support and retain talent specialized in these domains.

Managing strategic innovation also entails embracing uncertainty across technology, market, resources, and organizational dynamics, which requires proactive leadership involvement to navigate and mitigate risks. Maintaining a tuned innovation function during resource fluctuations is crucial to avoid disruptive stops and starts that harm long-term capabilities.

Together, these eight practices constitute a roadmap for companies aiming to transform innovation from sporadic efforts into a consistent engine for new growth, enabling organizations to thrive amid uncertainty and disruption by creating new business streams and strengthening organizational health.

Monica Caldas, EVP and Global CIO at Liberty Mutual Insurance, shares her dual approach to technology leadership focused on both safeguarding data and driving innovation. With a background at General Electric and recognized by the 2025 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award, Caldas emphasizes balancing offense and defense in IT to enable advanced AI capabilities while maintaining security, especially in regulated industries. Liberty Mutual’s strategy includes a responsible AI steering committee, employee training on AI risks, and GenAI applications like the internal help desk agent 'Libby' that automates workflows and improves support. They leverage AI to enhance their software development, noting varying impacts based on engineer experience. Caldas warns that effective modernization goes beyond code generation, requiring architectural upgrades and security to avoid inefficiencies. Her insights highlight the complexities and necessary precautions in adopting generative AI for sustainable business transformation.

Leaders aiming to harness innovation often turn to external hires to inject fresh knowledge into their organizations. However, recent studies reveal that bringing in talent from outside doesn’t guarantee effective knowledge absorption. Here are three essential insights to help organizations fully leverage their new hires' expertise:

1. The existing organizational knowledge framework impacts learning success. Companies with deeply interconnected processes often face challenges in integrating external knowledge. Employees may resist abandoning familiar methods, and in complex environments, aggressive hiring may confuse rather than clarify, especially when conflicting inputs come from multiple new hires. Leaders should be cautious about rapid hiring in such contexts.

2. Generalists play a pivotal role in spreading new knowledge. Talented outsiders' expertise stays isolated unless the organization has versatile employees who can connect different technological areas. Such generalists are invaluable when exploring new technological domains. Before expanding external recruitment, leaders should ensure enough generalists exist to bridge new knowledge across teams.

3. Hiring entrepreneurs can drive innovation if empowered properly. Former startup founders bring unique skills but deliver the most value when placed in middle-management roles with genuine decision-making power. This approach works best in smaller, younger companies already engaged in innovation. Leaders should offer these entrepreneurs autonomy and cross-functional influence to unlock their full potential.

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How should brands handle negative feedback from customers? Recent research published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology suggests that brands can sometimes benefit from embracing the very insults aimed at them. Researchers Katherine Du, Lingrui Zhou, and Keisha Cutright studied the strategy of "reappropriating" insults—deliberately adopting a negative label given by others. For example, when the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team were called "a bunch of jerks" by a commentator, they put the phrase on merchandise, which led to over $875,000 in sales.

Through three studies, the researchers found that reappropriating insults can increase customer interest. In one test, a fictional electronics store featured a Facebook ad that turned a one-star review into a proud slogan, resulting in a 7.12% click-through rate compared to 5.62% when the insult was denied. This approach works because consumers see the brand as more humorous and confident.

However, this tactic has limits. It fails when the insult targets a vulnerable person, when the criticism is legitimate (such as for a faulty product), or when it involves serious moral accusations. Essentially, reappropriation succeeds only with unjustified, harmless insults that do not mock the vulnerable.

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Implementing a data-centric method to gauge and enhance customer experience (CX) is essential for organizational success. However, the overwhelming number of CX metrics—often running into the hundreds—complicates management and application of insights across the customer journey. Modern customers frequently encounter CX surveys shortly after interactions like purchasing or service calls, yet businesses sometimes collect metrics without strong relevance to improving CX outcomes.

This challenge was highlighted through our collaboration with 14 subscription service companies, where we identified which CX metrics truly impact key outcomes like churn and net promoter score (NPS). By focusing on a selective set of metrics—spanning customer perceptions, operational efficiency, and financial impact—and aligning them carefully with the customer journey stages, companies can reduce redundant or low-value measures. This not only lowers costs but also combats survey fatigue among customers.

Our statistical analysis revealed that certain call center metrics, such as IVR deflection rate, strongly predict customer satisfaction, while others like service level and call transfer rates offer little insight and could be eliminated. Mapping these metrics to onboarding stages—from prepurchase through post-purchase—clarifies how customers’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors evolve, helping companies tailor CX efforts more precisely.

Ultimately, refining the CX metrics portfolio empowers companies to concentrate on meaningful data, optimize resource use, enhance employee understanding, and improve customer relationships through targeted strategies. This approach encourages a culture focused on customer needs rather than just operational efficiency, facilitating better business outcomes across industries.

As generative AI moves from novelty to necessity, startups are rapidly exploring how to harness this technology. Venture capitalists are urging these new companies to incorporate AI, creating a surge of activity across varied AI business models. Startups differ widely: some develop foundational AI models; others build infrastructure, apply AI to specific problems, enhance business operations, or experiment with AI use.

To help make sense of this diversity, six types of AI startups have been identified based on how they create and deliver value:

1. AI Originators: Build core AI models and foundational technology, often requiring heavy capital and top-tier AI expertise.
2. AI Explorers: Push scientific boundaries with high-risk, high-reward research in emerging AI fields.
3. AI Infrastructure Builders: Provide the platforms, tools, and frameworks that enable AI development and deployment.
4. AI Enhancers: Use existing AI models to create tailored products solving specific business or vertical problems.
5. AI Optimizers: Integrate AI to improve internal processes and operations but do not sell AI products directly.
6. AI Experimenters: Trial AI tools without strategic commitment, often a starting point before deciding how to scale AI adoption.

This typology helps founders clarify their current position and future path, assists investors in evaluating startup maturity and potential, and guides corporate customers in choosing suitable AI partners. Recognizing the type of AI startup is crucial for strategic decisions in building, investing in, or buying AI solutions.

In this insightful bonus episode of the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu discusses the future of artificial intelligence beyond common assumptions. Drawing on his book Power and Progress, Acemoglu argues that technology's impact is shaped by our choices, not predetermined outcomes. He highlights the importance of developing AI tools that complement human skills through new tasks, rather than merely replacing jobs through automation, which tends to benefit capital more than workers. Acemoglu also raises concerns about the current centralization of AI technology and calls for proactive regulation to guide AI toward socially beneficial directions. The conversation addresses productivity myths, the need for reliable domain-specific AI, and the vital role individuals and entrepreneurs play in steering AI development.

The story of Kraft Heinz's troubled merger, alongside examples like Microsoft/Nokia and Unilever/SlimFast, highlights the complex reasons why many mergers fail. Nearly half of all major U.S. M&A deals unravel within a decade, often due to poor strategic fit or cultural mismatch, compounded by market disruptions. Research tracking over 1,600 acquisitions reveals that 46% of these deals are ultimately reversed, often at significant financial and reputational cost. Failures are rarely random but stem from predictable behavioral biases and misjudgments. The Corporate Divorce Matrix, a new diagnostic tool, helps leaders assess risks along two dimensions: initial alignment and post-merger market stability. Importantly, cultural fit matters deeply—companies with strong cultural alignment are notably more resilient to setbacks. Leaders are urged to conduct rigorous due diligence, include cultural evaluation, stress-test scenarios, and predefine exit strategies to avoid costly breakdowns. However, many failed deals linger because CEOs hesitate to admit defeat amidst reputational risks, often delaying divestiture for years. Ultimately, mergers and acquisitions remain a risky but vital engine of growth, where knowing when to persevere or walk away is critical for long-term success.

In the investment world, risk-taking during volatile times can lead to significant rewards, as exemplified by Warren Buffett’s success with Berkshire Hathaway. However, corporate leaders often hesitate to adopt bold strategies when industries face heightened uncertainty. An analysis of nearly 6,000 companies over 15 years shows that only 10% increased their M&A activity during periods of elevated uncertainty, yet those who dared to take big risks experienced nearly double the revenue growth and 50% higher shareholder returns, without increased failure risk.

The research focused on 10 major disruptive events from 2010 to 2020 across various sectors and measured bold risk-taking by companies doubling their M&A spending. Despite the tendency of 90% of companies to cut back, the minority that increased spending thrived.

Common myths that hold back companies include the ideas that risks should only be taken from a position of strength or experience, or with a financial safety net. Data reveals that companies with weaker performance and first-time risk-takers often reap considerable benefits. Furthermore, focused companies without a broad portfolio also succeeded with bold moves.

Successful execution requires fostering a risk-taking culture, resisting herd mentality, and preparing to act decisively when opportunities arise. Examples from Ikea, Tata Group, Cisco, and others highlight practical ways to embed these principles into leadership and organizational behavior.

Ultimately, acting boldly in uncertain times can transform challenges into lasting competitive advantages.