innovation happens here at cohnreznick

“Innovation distinguishes betweena leader and a follower.”

― Steve Jobs

INNOVATION Is Forward ThinkingCharacteristics of Successful Innovators

and Innovative Companies

Innovators have an authentic and insatiable curiosity that they are passionate about exploring.

“There are two types of innovation: incremental innovation and clean sheet, big innovation. At Amazon, 70% of the value the company has created for customers is from daily incrementalinnovation. That means making every process a little bit better, like finding defects and eliminating them.”

—Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder, on the most important traits of innovators. GeekWire, October 12, 2013.

Innovators are empathetic observers. They learn about their environment and create connections to find better ways of doing things.

“Vision is where entrepreneurship meets leadership ... innovation leads to growth, but growth hinders innovation, unless innovation is truly ingrained in the organization culture, which requires effective vision.”

Harvard Business Review. “The Five Characteristics ofSuccessful Innovators,” October 25, 2013.



Innovators think and do differently. They have the courage to push boundaries, challenge the status quo, and take calculated risk.

Futurist Jim Carroll indicates that 65% of current preschool students will work in a job that does not yet exist. Innovative companies have their heart in creating these jobs.



Innovators embrace change as the natural course of things.

Leaders embrace innovation as opportunity. Research from GE suggests that during recessions since the 70s, on average 60% of businesses survived, 30% died, and 10% became breakthrough performers who succeeded because they invested in world-class innovation while everyone else was retrenching.



Innovators consider collaboration and diversity to be as essential as food and water. If great minds think alike, diverse minds sharing freely creates opportunity.

The capacity to bend but never break is a vital skill that underpins real innovation. Ideas are important, but certainly not the most important thing. “Build a good team around you and they can pivot and roll with the punches better than any idea ever can.”

—Cameron Chell, CEO and Co-founder of Business Instincts Group, Virgin Disruptors Debate, May 23, 2014.



Innovators are committed to their cause, have the stamina to see it through, and the resiliency to bounce back. Innovation is rarely instantaneous.

“Resilience and persistence are necessary qualities for building something new, whether it’s a new culture of design inside a corporation or an attempt to produce an innovative solution before someone else does.”

—Mauro Porcini, SVP and Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo, “The Eight Qualities of the Innovator,” October 3, 2015.



CohnReznick’s INNOVATION Framework

1. Developing an innovation strategy and governance procedures so creativity is connected to execution and innovation is put to work

2. Providing tools to facilitate collaborate and break down barriers that inhibit transformation

3. Supporting creative learning to empower managers and employees as innovators during the process and as future innovation champions

4. Maximizing agility and speed to “market” are the fastest path to realizing value creation

We believe successful innovation requires four innovation principles to be managed throughout an innovation initiative:

The Four Steps to Innovation Development

DEPLOY: The solution is launched to the organization, but creative learning continues as real world refinements are implemented and value is transferred to the organization. New ideas for improvement are generated and trigger ongoing Innovation processes.

IDEATE: Ideation begins by discovering the business challenges, pain points, value drivers and key Performance indicators. Customer experiences and interactions are profiled and a business case is made for investing in the innovation process.

BUILD: The solution is developed in an agile and iterative process and then piloted on a limited basis to test execution and to verify that forecasted benefits arebeing realized.

DESIGN: Potential solutions aredefined and then exploredand evaluated with respectto their potential to drivevalue. Assumptions arevalidated and the solution isrefined accordingly.

CohnReznick’s INNOVATION Framework

The CohnReznick Innovation Lab