In our Persistent Innovators miniseries, InnoLead and Wade Roush explored the cultures of four large companies that have pushed the innovation envelope for decades: Disney, Apple, Lego, and Novartis. But who else deserves recognition? From making pizza ever more convenient at Domino's, to finding new markets at FujiFilm, we dissect the practices and strategies at six more persistently-innovative companies, with input from guests like Bill Taylor, Braden Kelley, and Rita McGrath. Special thanks to our friends at PatSnap and Innovation Academy for sponsoring this miniseries.

How do big companies stay innovative across many decades, and in different industries? That’s been the driving question of our Persistent Innovators miniseries. In the fourth and final episode we turn to company in a very different kind of business: discovering and developing new drugs. And we focus on the global pharmaceutical giant Novartis, formed in 1996 from the merger of the venerable Swiss companies Sandoz and CIBA-Geigy. At its Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, opened in 2002, Novartis invented a new style of biology-centric drug discovery that has changed practices across the industry—and sparked a local biopharma boom that has utterly transformed the Kendall Square neighborhood of Cambridge. Compared to the other industries we’ve covered in the miniseries, namely digital devices (Apple), entertainment (Disney), and toys (LEGO), the pharmaceutical business is downright cutthroat. Product development is risky, time-consuming, and expensive; competition is incredibly fierce; and even a blockbuster drug can become a flop once the patent expires and a generic drug makers jumps in. On top of all that, drug makers have to operate outside the traditional world of consumer marketing: You take a Novartis medicine not out of any brand loyalty to Novartis, but because your doctor tells you to. The net effect is that to stay successful, a big drug company must keep their product pipelines full and churn out hit after hit—which, when you think about it, is the very definition of a persistent innovator. In this episode, former Novartis executive and drug hunter Tom Hughes explains how Novartis’s first CEO decided to rebuild the company’s drug discovery effort around a genomic and molecular understanding of disease. And current NIBR president Jay Bradner talks about the structures Novartis has set up to protect and promote high-output innovation. Finally, we speak with Sam Wiley, head of thought leadership and customer advocacy at PatSnap—our sponsor throughout the miniseries—about a few more companies he sees as persistent innovators. Special thanks to our friends at PatSnap and Innovation Academy for sponsoring this miniseries.

LEGO is one of the world’s most famous and admired brands. The company’s colorful plastic bricks are the literal building blocks of an empire that spans a $5 billion annual toy business, hundreds of retail stores, 10 theme parks, and a series of hit movies. But what LEGO actually sells isn’t just the bricks, it’s a whole system of play: an endlessly expandable way for children (and adults) to combine hand, eye, and imagination. It was when product developers drifted away from that system in the 1990s and early 2000s—introducing a blizzard of toy lines that didn’t use the bricks at all—that LEGO stumbled into serious trouble. The company had a close brush with bankruptcy in 2003, then grappled its way back to profitability by refocusing on its core customers and their passion for building things. For this third episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush sought out LEGO experts like journalist Bill Breen—co-author of the authoritative LEGO history Brick by Brick—as well as former LEGO executives Robert Rasmussen (developer of the LEGO Serious Play method) and David Gram (founder of the consulting firm Diplomatic Rebels). They explain what went wrong at LEGO, how the company rediscovered the spirit of play that make its toys so beloved, and what it does today to make sure that innovation doesn’t stray too far outside the brick. The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (www.patsnap.com), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).

Disney isn’t the world’s largest media company—that title goes to Comcast. But it’s probably the one that has burrowed the deepest into our psyches. As it approaches its 100th birthday in 2023, The Walt Disney Co. not only dominates in its original field of feature animation, but also operates some of the world’s most famous film studios (Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, Searchlight), television and streaming networks (ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, Hulu, Disney+), and theme park resorts. And to generate the content and experiences that power all of those properties, it marries the latest media technologies with storytelling at a level few other companies can match. And yet Disney hasn’t delivered with perfect consistency. In the second episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush talks with former executives from Disney’s feature animation, Imagineering, and parks and resorts divisions, and digs into the company’s innovation secrets, as well as a few rare but illustrative moments when Disney stumbled—and rebounded. The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (www.patsnap.com), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).

If you want to understand how some large organizations manage to keep innovating, decade after decade, you need to study the companies that actually do that. And Apple is at the top of the list. Thanks largely to sales of its world-conquering iPhone, it recently became the first company in the world to reach a $3 trillion market capitalization. But Apple’s journey toward “persistent innovator” status started long before the iPhone’s introduction in 2007. In this first episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush travels back to the 1980s and 1990s, to talk with people who worked alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and saw how leadership, culture, and technology came together to make Apple…Apple. The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (www.patsnap.com), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).

There’s a great quote in David Robertson and Bill Breen’s book Brick by Brick, a look inside The LEGO Group. They write, “The most difficult challenge in business is not to invent an innovative product; it’s to build an organization that can continually create innovative products.” How companies can become innovative and stay that way is the focus of a special series coming soon from Innovation Answered, the podcast for corporate innovators. We’ll be looking at big, established companies like LEGO, Apple, and Disney and asking what makes them so successful decade after decade and how they bounce back from challenges. Is it all about great leadership—or do these companies have a grasp on principles of persistent innovation that other companies can emulate? In today’s teaser episode, guest producer Wade Roush talks with InnoLead co-founder Scott Kirsner about where the idea for the miniseries came from and what hypotheses we’ll explore as we go along. Look for the first full episode on January 18, 2022. You can also listen to episodes of our Innovation Answered podcast on Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Play Music, and our website. Special thanks to our friends at PatSnap and Innovation Academy for sponsoring this mini-series.

You may know Mars Incorporated for the sweet and tasty treats you can find on store shelves – classic Twix candy bars, Juicy Fruit gum, and so much more. However, Mars is exploring much more than just candy and snack foods. Jean-Christophe Flatin, President of Innovation, Science, Technology, and Mars Edge at Mars, talks about "innovation myth-busting," the importance of connecting with consumers, and new patterns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Venture capital funds provide the gasoline startups need to get from an initial sketch on a cocktail napkin to a global-scale giant like Uber, Amazon, or Airbnb. With so much change over the last year, we drove out to Los Altos Hills, California to sit down with Hemant Taneja, one of venture’s power players to understand what’s on his mind half way through this year. Marcus Daniels, Highline Beta’s Founding Partner & CEO, also shares his insights.

Bringing designers in early can help companies execute on big ideas more successfully and create smoother customer experiences. But how do you get that right, especially if design isn’t baked into the culture, or if other functions tend to dominate the innovation process? Phil Duncan, the Global Design Officer at Procter and Gamble, discusses his experience. Brett Lovelady and Andy Goodman of PA Consulting also share.

Weddings in the COVID-era look a little different. Many couples staged “minimonies” to celebrate their big day, sometimes with a Zoom link as a substitute for in-person celebrations. Just as celebrations have adapted, the way people shop for wedding wear also had to shift.  David’s Bridal CEO Jim Marcum discusses how he’s navigating the future of the wedding business. That includes building an omnichannel experience to help brides shop from anywhere and industry trends to look out for in 2022.