Larry Keeley

On October 29 at 19:30, Larry Keeley, one of the world’s leading experts on business innovations, gave a talk at Digital October. In his opinion, 96% of innovations are doomed to failure because the relationship of entrepreneurs to innovations and their adoption is not correct. In his lecture, Keeley talked about how to make innovations truly effective in business.

Larry Keeley is a partner of Monitor Group and president and cofounder of the Doblin innovative consulting company that is part of the Monitor Group. He has worked with the issue of innovative effectiveness since 1979. During his work, he has been a consultant to such companies as American Express, Apple, BP, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Ford, GE, McDonald’s, and Shell. Larry Keeley teaches at the Chicago Institute of Design and Kellogg School of Management. Business Week magazine has named him as one of seven “Innovation gurus” and included him and their list of the 27 most influential designers in the world.

Keeley is the author of a series of research works and the world-famous typology “The Ten Types of Innovation.” According to Larry Keeley, using his methodology in business management increases the chance that an innovation will be successfully adopted by 20-fold.

He notes that the majority of companies consider an innovation to have been realized when they create a fundamentally new product. However, in his view, development of a product is only one element among the various kinds of innovations that a company requires, an element that beings the company the smallest amount of profit. At the same time as they improve a product, entrepreneurs should also change its distribution channels, methods of interacting with clients, and positioning of the brand: only in this case can a company win a solid position on the market. To have advantages in business, Keeley believes, daring leaders who are ready to take adopting new things upon themselves are needed.

Keeley has dedicated his life and career to innovations, because “the best gift that we can give each other is the right to build the predictable and dependable future in which we want to live.” He maintains that he has “discovered the genetic code of innovations,” which makes using them possible not only for geniuses, but also for simple businesspeople. He disclosed this secret to everyone in his lecture.