What is the Innovation Series?

We interview innovation leaders from around the world and share their insights on corporate innovation.

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Innovation Leader: Steven Lavado

Joining Enfoca in 2019, Steven has over 11 years of experience leading transformation and innovation processes in different industries (CPG, retail, services). Previously responsible of the Customer Experience Strategy at Rimac, he has also served as the founder and head of the Digital Innovation and Advanced Analytics Center for Inretail Pharma (part of Intercorp group). 

What has been your biggest learning as an innovation leader over the last 12 months?

My biggest learning would be that a situation that generates a high sense of urgency, really drives organizations to reflect deeply about their business models, how they are serving their customers and the way they operate. There is always room for improvement but not just for incremental but for exponential improvement. Being that said, how organizations are creating their own crisis to propel innovation throughout all their teams?. At the end of the day it is all about culture

Which technology are you most excited by and why?

Even though I try to be aware of everything that is going on around, it is very hard because of the speed that things are evolving. But everything related with genetics I would bet that will transform dramatically almost all industries. Being able to understand deeply each one of us is going to add a lot of information that will shape/transform our habits as consumers.

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What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you’ve encountered and how did or are you overcoming it? 

Information asymmetry. I have seen a lot of organizations that are trying to innovate just for the sake of innovation but it shouldn't be like that. Innovation is not the arrival point, it is the vehicle and it should always be serving the purpose and the strategy by creating value. People may argue that innovation will not always create economic value, but it will always create value and in the long term it also should be economic value. One way to overcome it is finding a common language in the organization about innovation and defining its role in relation with the strategy.

What will be the key trend in innovation over the next 12 months? 

Hopefully it will be Open Innovation. I think that all organizations have already realized how far they are from where they would like to be (and even further from where they say they are). If we want to create value in an exponential way, we should work as an ecosystem leveraging the advantages of getting together corporations, startups, government, academia, etc.