ALIGNING GOALS
For Lisa Costello, innovation is being tied back directly to the main goals of the business—or at least where the business wants to head in the future.
Lisa Costello, Director and Head of Platform, Prologis Ventures
Corporate innovation is in a state of flux—there’s a lot happening. Some organizations are shuttering their innovation labs, while other companies are starting shiny new corporate venture groups. Is corporate innovation still relevant? I think the answer is yes. More than ever, it’s being tied back directly to the main goals of the business, or more importantly, where the business wants to head in the future. I’ve seen the most success when innovation teams do not operate in a silo structure. In the past, many innovation teams were intentionally separated from a company’s internal business units, with the idea that this offers the innovation team a greater degree of operational autonomy to focus on future-oriented projects without getting swept up into day-to-day business operations.
Of course, there are pros and cons to each. But today, I’m seeing those innovation teams tied to their business goals being the ones that survive because executives can see the immediate value these teams drive to the metrics they care about. It’s not just us doing this in a vacuum anymore. This is why our team has been able to have a lot of impact. We have our hands in, essentially, everything that the company is working on. At Prologis Ventures, we’re very tied to the goals of internal business units to drive innovation for our company—especially with incubating new business units. For example, a few years ago, we started seeing many of our customers making commitments to reduce their carbon footprint and reach net-zero emissions by 2040. Transportation is one of the biggest offenders, and as their landlord, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to be part of solving the problem they faced. Our team incubated and helped launch Prologis Mobility, a new business unit that brings electrical vehicle infrastructure solutions to our customer’s fleets.
FEI 2024 & Key Innovation Perspectives
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