Reporting interesting comments made from cross-industry innovation leaders on day 1 of the Front End of Innovation Conference 2016 in Boston:

"If you are not partnering with other outside organizations in your innovation efforts, you really don't get what innovation is all about. Things are moving too fast, you need to work with other perspectives and capabilities outside your own firm." - Denise Fletcher, Xerox, Chief Innovation Officer

"Strategy is not about the past or present but about leadership in the future. Because an organization is a leader today, you cannot assume you will be a leader tomorrow. And earning that leadership is what strategy is all about. One thing we know is that all industries will change in the future. Therefore if you want to be a leader in the future you have to adapt to change. Anther word to adapting to change is innovation. Therefore I say strategy IS innovation. If you are not doing innovation in your company, you are not doing strategy, you are doing something else." - Vijay Govindarajan, author The Three Box Solution Strategy for Leading and Executing Innovation

" Lesson I learned is that there is a big difference between selling a new idea and influencing new ideas. Selling is transactional - idea is sold. Influencing is a big nuance. Instead of just convincing and persuading, you have to listen to have empathy and have willingness to accept your vision may have to be changed, room for improvement, to work to have a shared vision and purpose and common ground. Make it more about co-creation with them. " - Soon Yu, VF Corp, Global VP Innovation 

"I don't believe in the Voice of the Customer (VOC) for innovation, maybe good for minor linear innovation. Rather than asking directly, since many clients have developed a certain complacency, better to observe the customer in using your product or service to uncover true pain points and unmet needs... Customers never knew that all the different products they were carrying around was a problem and that they needed an iPhone till Steve Jobs uncovered pain points and unmet needs and offered them a new option. " - Sammy Munuswamy, Sr Engineer, Global Engineering & Innovation, The Manitowoc Company

"Exponential technologies have been a very consistent trend historically and has applied to every major industry that we have looked at. Also, its very deceptive. In linear versus exponential growth, when you are walking exponentially It starts with the 1 step to 2 steps to 4 steps to 8 steps, it seems really slow, you dont see the growth but when you get to 256 then 624 etc, etc, thats when it gets really powerful. So some of the teechnologies that have come out in last few years you may think that they may not be relevant to what you are doing but they are moving very quickly and will affect things it ways you cannot see yet. And they are very disruptive as well. 40% of the companies in the S&P 500 will probably no longer exist. Kodak great example that back in 1996 had 140,000 employees and $28billion [in market cap] and invented the digital camera which they shelved. You fast forward to 2012, they went bankrupt. Next year a small company with 8 employees created a new photo app called Instagram, a new digital product that replaces Kodak. We like to call that the new Kodak moment." - Kian Gohar, Executive Director Innovation, Singularity University

The Misfit Economy project and book "has done case studies you will never find on Harvard Business Review, we study and isolate the entrepreneurial mindset in the black market economy that has the potential to translate into the formal economy. Its not looking through the lens of good or evil but really trying to understand the real lessons that we can learn from people away from the mainstream economy and translate that hustle, the experiences that they have honed and develop an incubator for these people to be more connected to the formal economy and where we can isolate principles from speaking to con artists, hackers, gangsters, as to what were the things that they were doing that we may be able to apply to main stream institutions." - Alexa Clay, author The Misfit Economy: Lessons In Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, and Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs