CohnReznick’s Innovation Lab is part of the Firm’s continued strategic commitment to providing world-class client service. Today’s companies face a new normal that challenges traditional growth strategies. Using cutting edge collaboration and visualization tools to facilitate connections, CohnReznick designed and created this new workspace to help companies transform business models, improve customer engagement, and streamline operations via a significantly more efficient approach than traditional methods.

2. “Innovation distinguishes between
a leader and a follower.”
― Steve Jobs

3. INNOVATION Is Forward Thinking
Characteristics of Successful Innovators
and Innovative Companies
Innovators have an authentic and insatiable
curiosity that they are passionate about exploring.
“There are two types of innovation: incremental
innovation and clean sheet, big innovation. At
Amazon, 70% of the value the company has
created for customers is from daily incremental
innovation. That means making every process a
little bit better, like finding defects and eliminating
them.”
—Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder, on the most
important traits of innovators. GeekWire, October
12, 2013.

4. Innovators are empathetic observers. They
learn about their environment and create
connections to find better ways of doing things.
“Vision is where entrepreneurship meets
leadership ... innovation leads to growth, but
growth hinders innovation, unless innovation is
truly ingrained in the organization culture,
which requires effective vision.”
Harvard Business Review. “The Five
Characteristics of
Successful Innovators,” October 25, 2013.
INNOVATION Is Forward Thinking
Characteristics of Successful Innovators
and Innovative Companies

5. Innovators think and do differently. They
have the courage to push boundaries,
challenge the status quo, and take
calculated risk.
Futurist Jim Carroll indicates that 65% of
current preschool students will work in a
job that does not yet exist. Innovative
companies have their heart in creating
these jobs.
INNOVATION Is Forward Thinking
Characteristics of Successful Innovators
and Innovative Companies

6. Innovators embrace change as the
natural course of things.
Leaders embrace innovation as
opportunity. Research from GE suggests
that during recessions since the 70s, on
average 60% of businesses survived,
30% died, and 10% became
breakthrough performers who
succeeded because they invested in
world-class innovation while everyone
else was retrenching.
INNOVATION Is Forward Thinking
Characteristics of Successful Innovators
and Innovative Companies

7. Innovators consider collaboration and diversity to be
as essential as food and water. If great minds think
alike, diverse minds sharing freely creates
opportunity.
The capacity to bend but never break is a vital skill
that underpins real innovation. Ideas are important,
but certainly not the most important thing. “Build a
good team around you and they can pivot and roll
with the punches better than any idea ever can.”
—Cameron Chell, CEO and Co-founder of Business
Instincts Group, Virgin Disruptors Debate, May 23,
2014.
INNOVATION Is Forward Thinking
Characteristics of Successful Innovators
and Innovative Companies

8. Innovators are committed to their cause, have the
stamina to see it through, and the resiliency to
bounce back. Innovation is rarely instantaneous.
“Resilience and persistence are necessary
qualities for building something new, whether it’s a
new culture of design inside a corporation or an
attempt to produce an innovative solution before
someone else does.”
—Mauro Porcini, SVP and Chief Design Officer at
PepsiCo, “The Eight Qualities of the Innovator,”
October 3, 2015.
INNOVATION Is Forward Thinking
Characteristics of Successful Innovators
and Innovative Companies

9. CohnReznick’s INNOVATION Framework
1. Developing an innovation strategy and
governance procedures so creativity is connected
to execution and innovation is put to work
2. Providing tools to facilitate collaborate and
break down barriers that inhibit transformation
3. Supporting creative learning to empower
managers and employees as innovators during the
process and as future innovation champions
4. Maximizing agility and speed to “market” are
the fastest path to realizing value creation
We believe successful innovation requires four innovation
principles to be managed throughout an innovation initiative:
The Four Steps to Innovation Development

10. DEPLOY: The solution is launched to the
organization, but creative learning
continues as real world refinements are
implemented and value is transferred to
the organization. New ideas for
improvement are generated and trigger
ongoing Innovation processes.
IDEATE: Ideation begins by discovering
the business challenges, pain points,
value drivers and key Performance
indicators. Customer experiences and
interactions are profiled and a business
case is made for investing in the
innovation process.
BUILD: The solution is developed in an
agile and iterative process and then
piloted on a limited basis to test
execution and to verify that forecasted
benefits are
being realized.
DESIGN: Potential solutions are
defined and then explored
and evaluated with respect
to their potential to drive
value. Assumptions are
validated and the solution is
refined accordingly.
CohnReznick’s INNOVATION Framework

11. The CohnReznick
Innovation Lab