Blog: Innovation Insights

Innovation is transforming our world—but too often, it’s being built without women in the room. Despite driving most consumer decisions and holding rising global wealth, women receive just 2.3% of VC funding and represent only 16% of patent holders. This isn’t a talent gap—it’s an access problem. From overlooked medical needs to products designed around male defaults, the absence of women in innovation isn’t just unjust—it’s inefficient. When women lead, we get smarter, more inclusive solutions. If we want innovation that truly serves everyone, we need to build it with everyone.

Innovation Management Assessments (IMAs), such as ISO 56004, help organizations identify gaps in their innovation capabilities and drive improvements in strategy, culture, and processes. Companies that use IMAs report faster time-to-market, higher revenue growth, and significant cost savings. Beyond organizational benefits, IMAs strengthen national competitiveness by boosting talent development and innovation ecosystems. They are essential tools for fostering agility, collaboration, and long-term growth in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

The Brill-IA-NT project by ILUNION Hotels exemplifies a structured and strategic approach to AI adoption, centered on building a data-driven culture and delivering both economic and social value. Through a five-phase methodology—competitive intelligence, data exploration, awareness and training, strategic planning, and results analysis—the organization has successfully integrated AI across business functions. Emphasis was placed on identifying relevant use cases, engaging internal AI champions, forming alliances with technology leaders, and ensuring continuous impact measurement.

For years, innovation followed a “fail fast, iterate quickly” mindset—effective in low-risk environments like UX design or consumer software. But as stakes rise, that approach falls short. Customers may not articulate the features they want, but they can tell us what they’re trying to achieve and where current solutions fall short.

This is the foundation of Lean JTBD OS™, a new framework that shifts innovation from trial-and-error to strategic precision. Instead of guessing the problem and solution, it starts by deeply understanding the customer’s job to be done, how they define success, and where they struggle—revealing unmet needs before any ideation or prototyping begins.

Innovation is often portrayed as the elusive force that propels organizations ahead of the curve. Yet, despite the buzz, many leaders continue to fall prey