Innovation & Digital Transformation Briefs

Our current health and economic crises only accelerate the vital need for more innovation and faster digital transformation. Senior innovation leaders on the Advisory Board of The Conference Board Innovation & Digital Transformation Institute explore this means in terms of challenges and opportunities across multiple levels.

This blog is based on the April 22, 2020 webcast How COVID-19 Might Impact Consumers’ Attitudes about Sustainability, hosted by The Conference Board. Some responses have been edited and condensed for this format. To view the entirety of the webinar or download the presentation click here.

This blog is based on the April 23, 2020 webcast: How To Sustain The Focus On Customer Experience In Good AND Challenging Times, hosted by The Conference Board. Some responses have been edited for this format. To view the entirety of the webinar or download the presentation click here.

Strategic partnerships with nonprofits are increasingly important to companies that understand the business case for community engagement. For Atlanta-based Novelis, a decade-long collaboration with FIRST has helped the company innovate and advance its diversity and inclusion goals.

Trust is an important, but often neglected, intangible asset of the corporation. Trust is a value enhancer for corporate value, and conversely, a lack of trust can destroy market value in an instant.

I offer a Theory of Intangible Capital, a conceptual framework that includes brand as well as other internally grown unaccounted assets that don’t appear on the balance sheet but are reliable drivers of corporate value. Intangible capital is about understanding how intangible assets that you manage fit into the big picture of the total market value of the company.

We need a new conceptual model that incorporates the idea that intangible assets directly connect to business strategy. That way, they can financially impact both revenue growth and shareholder value. After all, a company develops its brand to improve its bottom line because consumers prefer to purchase from companies they know and favor. The same holds true for investors who buy the stock of companies they know and trust.

It is time to rethink brand write downs and for all managers to see their real value. Building intangible capital models for evaluating the accretive value and potential of brands is a logical way to understand whether the investment requested for marketing is worthwhile.

For innovation leaders, mandates for metrics from CEOs and CFOs are nothing new, but how do you measure the competencies that help companies become better innovators, such as creating an innovation culture, or being better prepared to work on diverse teams?