The Illusion of Innovation with Elliott Parker

What's Next! with Tiffani Bova

Welcome to the What's Next! Podcast with Tiffani Bova.

This week Elliott Parker joins the podcast. He is the founder and CEO of High Alpha Innovation, a venture builder that partners with corporations, universities, and entrepreneurs to co-create startups that solve compelling problems. He built his career in strategy consulting at Innosight, the firm founded by Clayton Christensen, in corporate venturing, and as an entrepreneur bringing new ideas to market. To date, he has launched over 40 venture-backed startups, and he has a new book called The Illusion of Innovation which came out earlier in 2024.

THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… business leaders and executives looking to understand the challenges of true innovation.

TODAY’S MAIN MESSAGE… in this thought-provoking episode, Tiffani sits down with innovation expert Elliott to discuss why innovation might be more illusion than reality in today’s organizations. Elliott argues that many innovative efforts are a charade and he challenges leaders to re-think their goals.

Key takeaways:

• We're really good at running large organizations, but the optimization for safety and predictability comes at the cost of innovation

• In nature, innovation happens chaotically and without control, something we should emulate in organizations

• We need more experiments that are fast, cheap, and maybe even a little weird

WHAT I LOVE MOST… what Elliott says we can learn from Steph Curry about running big companies, “Our companies need to be taking shots close to the net, but also making sure we're doing it beyond the three-point line, where the magnitude of correctness matters a lot.”

Running Time: 26:22

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Elliott’s Book:

The Illusion of Innovation