Presented by: Elliott Parker

‍Hosted by: Innov8rs

Elliott delivered this presentation at Innov8rs on a deceptively simple question: What's an innovation team actually for in 2026? The answer challenges how most Fortune 500 companies think about innovation, metrics, and the role of corporate venture building. If your innovation team is measured on near-term revenue, this one's for you.

Watch the Recording

Key Takeaways

• Innovation teams gather knowledge, not wealth. The operating business is optimized to generate profit and grow revenue. Innovation teams exist to prepare the company for future problems by running experiments and surfacing insights.
• Playing the infinite game requires problem readiness, not problem avoidance. Companies endure by gathering both knowledge and wealth. Throughout history, civilizations and corporations fail when they lack the knowledge or capital to handle problems that inevitably arise.
• External validation is the best metric. If tier-one VCs and other corporations are fighting to invest in what you're building, you've uncovered a secret about the future. That's proof you're gathering real knowledge.
• Experiment at the margins, not at scale. The Amazon ecosystem doesn't innovate through centralized planning. It innovates through mutations at the cellular level. Similarly, corporations should push experimentation to the edges (like external startups) where failures are contained and successes can scale.
• Magnitude of correctness beats frequency of correctness. Operating businesses optimize for being right every time. Innovation teams should have permission to be wrong often, as long as when they're right, the outcomes are spectacular.

The Self-Assessment

Elliott shared a self-assessment tool during the presentation to help innovation leaders score how well their teams are oriented toward knowledge gathering versus wealth creation. Scores ranged from the teens (ouch) to the high 90s (you're crushing it).

The assessment asks questions like: Are your metrics focused on speed of learning? Do you experiment at the margins? Are you building things that external investors would value?

You can take the assessment here.

Download Elliott's Workbook

Get the full workbook that accompanies this presentation, including frameworks and the self-assessment.

Related Reading

Why Innovation Stalls (and How to Reboot Your Strategy)‍

The Illusion of Innovation (and Escaping the Efficiency Trap)‍

Corporate Venture Building: What It Is and Why It Matters