Michael Kanazawa, Americas Enterprise Innovation Leader, Ernst & Young

The new disciplines of Innovative Transformers

In today’s environment, disruptive external forces are mandating that companies of all sizes and maturity gain the ability to self-disrupt their growth path and pivot to new directions as quickly as Silicon Valley start-ups. Every successful startup is a unique creation of new products, new markets and new ways of delivering value for customers where innovation, changes in direction and disruption can be weekly events. However, as companies grow, unwritten ways of ‘how things get done’, core competencies, leadership models, and high commitment investments all create a force of inertia, the tendency for things to stay the same. With the mandate to drive greater innovation, how are CEOs driving innovation into the core of their businesses?

Michael Stausholm, Founder & CEO, Sprout

It all started with an idea from a group of students at MIT in  Boston back in 2012. When they got the challenge of developing ”the sustainable office article of the future”, they came up with the idea of a plantable pencil with a capsule of seeds in the end. When the pencil is planted, the capsule dissolves and sprout into herbs, vegetables or flowers.