In our article, <a href='/complacency-to-irrelevance'>Complacency to Irrelevance</a>, we discussed 5 warning signs predicting your company’s impending disruption. The article had a doomsday vibe and with good reason, given all the recent store closings (4,300 announced in the first 2 months of 2019 from Gap, Victoria’s Secret and even Tesla) as well as the $15bn write down by Kraft Heinz. Without question, innovation can disrupt, but it also can differentiate and spark hypergrowth. In fact, since 2006, the companies perceived to be most innovative grew shareholder value by 237%, outperforming the S&P 500 by 2x. We studied these companies as well as our own clients to identify 5 actionable ways that you can inject innovation into your organization to avoid disruption and jump start your growth.

You’re hitting your quarterly objectives. Not growing spectacularly, but your investors, the board, The Street and your consumers seem to think you are doing just fine. So, you stay the course. Double down on the status quo. Welcome to the first sign of your company’s future irrelevance. We studied companies that have been erased from the S&P 500 since 2000 in order to identify 5 warning signs that signal the precipitous drop from corporate complacency to complete irrelevance. First, some stats:

Luxury is no longer defined by price, but rather by excellence in experience – as I discovered at Columbia Business School’s annual Retail & Luxury Goods Conference last week in New York City. This evolution is being led by advances within the luxury wellness, retail, and beauty sectors. Here are a few of the conference’s top takeaways and innovations: ‘Invisible Innovation’ in Retail At VentureFuel, we stress the importance of avoiding ‘innovation for innovation’s sake.’ Rather than starting with innovation, brands should begin with their customers’ ideal shopping experiences and reverse engineer what is possible from a tech perspective. This is especially important for luxury brands, where technology can feel inauthentic to their classic elegance. Here are a few luxury brands that are reimagining the shopping experience, with technology as an invisible partner to heighten their customer experiences:

Marshmello made headlines last weekend with a special live performance inside Fortnite that drew 10 million concurrent views plus millions more via streaming on YouTube, Twitch and encore performances. The event showed the potential of tapping into emerging platforms to connect with new consumers and the potential of experiential story-telling to forge new sales channels. I asked my 13-year-old brother to give us the inside scoop on why this was “lit” and outlined 5 take-aways brands can apply to their innovation strategies. I asked my 13 year-old brother, Leon, what he thought of the experience and his feedback points to Epic Games’ deep understanding of and trust earned from their fans – enviable characteristics for any brand marketer:

My worlds are colliding. Immersive Experiences and Innovation Labs are coming together to give corporations a way to experiment with lean startup methodologies to capture some of that D2C magic. In the past, Innovation Labs or Skunkworks, were hidden away from corporations and VERY far away from consumers. The wild laboratories where mad scientists could try new things without fear of harming the bread and butter of the corporate machine. But as the lean startup and agile methodologies have gained business momentum and D2C products have sliced away at market share, larger corporations are putting their test labs front and center for their consumers. We saw the power of immersive experiences when we helped to launch the Museum of Ice Cream and have been helping corporations build out their corporate innovation practices for years. To put them together enables corporations to test new products in iterative sprints and gauge real customer reaction. It also enables brands to provide unique experiences that lead to loyalty, new customer acquisition, and a monetizable test kitchen for taking chances. Here are a few of our favorites.