August 10, 2015

Building the Perpetually Innovative Company, with Kai Engel and Violetka Dirlea

On this week’s episode, we’ll be looking at how to build the perpetually innovative company – the five areas to focus on for improvement in innovation performance, the cornerstones of creating an innovative culture, and how to avoid the dreaded “not-invented-here syndrome.”

Kai Engel and Violetka Dirlea, two of the co-authors of Masters of Innovation: Building the Perpetually Innovative Company, join us this week to discuss those topics and more. Kai and Violetka are partners & Global Innovation Leaders at A.T. Kearney, a leading global management consulting firm committed to helping clients achieve immediate impact and growing advantage on their most mission-critical issues.

Kai Engel leads A.T. Kearney’s Innovation Practice for Europe and founded the annual Best Innovator Competition in 2003. Kai regularly chairs top executive roundtables and is a frequent presenter at business and industry conferences. Violetka Dirlea is an industrial manufacturing expert and head of A.T. Kearney’s Innovation Practice for the Americas. She has extensive consulting experience, with a focus on development competitive advantages, delivering tangible results, and improving overall business performance.

Episode Highlights

Some highlights from this week’s episode include:

  • The 3 cornerstones necessary to lay in order to build a culture where innovation thrives
  • What a typical innovation roadmap should look like and why it’s important to build a balanced innovation portfolio
  • The benefits of scenario planning and how it can be used to forecast future threats and opportunities
  • Why Kai founded the Best Innovator competition in 2003 and how the competition has evolved in the 12 years since being founded

Listen to the Episode

Interested in hearing more? Tune in to the full episode below:

About The Innovation Engine

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engine on Apple Podcasts. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Spotify to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

Show Notes