Innovation fuels thriving enterprises all over the world, and it’s good for business and people at all levels. But if innovation is so critical to success, why do so many organizations still struggle to reach their full innovation potential?
The challenges that businesses face fall into three core categories: macroeconomic, business, and human, as revealed in our latest global research. With this deeper understanding of what’s standing in the way of business innovation, we wanted to give the many thinkers, creators, and leaders who are part of the Miro community an opportunity to learn more about solutions and strategies for tackling the innovation crisis.
Enter the Innovation Imperative, a global summit bringing together industry leaders and Miro customers to explore better ways to build, iterate, and design the next big thing. While Miro is known as the visual workspace for innovation, we wanted to bring that innovative spirit to the physical world during an eight-city roadshow, stopping in some of the most innovative cities in the world.
Below are some of the highlights from each stop along the tour, with links to helpful resources (complete with a Talktrack on how to navigate each board!), popular templates for innovation from around the Miroverse, and more tools to ignite your own innovation goals.
Eight of the most innovative cities across the globe
📍San Francisco
Oct. 3 at City View at Metreon
Dozens joined us at the first stop of the Innovation Imperative Tour in San Francisco — the birthplace of some of the most innovative tech giants in the world, and an especially fitting locale for the topic at hand.
To kick things off, Sangeeta Chakraborty, Miro’s chief revenue officer, delivered an insightful keynote, Confronting the Innovation Crisis.
In it, Chakraborty presented some eye-opening takeaways from Miro’s global innovation research:
- 82% of leaders believe a company will become extinct within five years if it fails to innovate
- A majority of leaders and nearly half of all information workers agree that innovation feels more like a luxury than a necessity
- Nearly everyone (98% of leaders and 90% of information workers) agrees that innovation is urgent
Access all resources from San Francisco
📍New York City
Oct. 5 at Lavan 641 Midtown
And just like that, we’re on to stop number two: New York City. Home to countless cutting-edge startups and groundbreaking companies, the city that never sleeps seemed a natural fit for a summit about all things innovation.
This inspiring afternoon in the city featured a lively customer panel discussion with leaders from Sonos, Hearst, and PepsiCo, from discussions of their innovation journeys to a look at some of the biggest innovation challenges today:
- Leaders might see innovation as a luxury
- Organizations prioritize iterative improvements, not breakthrough innovation
- Outdated ways of working that lead to burnout
- Nor communicating innovation strategy
- Fear holds people back, and it’s personal
Jake Knapp also presented a tried and true way to get started on innovative projects with his custom Design Sprint Template. With this method and template, even small teams can build and test a prototype in just five days.
Access all resources from the New York event
📍Sydney
Oct. 10 at Yallamundi Room at the Sydney Opera House
The next destination on our Innovation Imperative tour took us to the vibrant city of Sydney, known for its many recognizable landmarks and as a hub of creativity and inspiration. And where better to host a gathering amongst innovators than at the iconic Sydney Opera House?
In addition to examining the many obstacles to innovation that modern enterprises face, leaders spent the afternoon spotlighting the ways successful companies such as NASA and Spanx use to overcome them. Four main strategies for confronting the innovation crisis:
- Communicate your innovation strategy clearly across the organization
- Keep up with customer needs to outpace your competition
- Prioritize breakthroughs — playing it safe is the riskiest bet
- Fearlessly break down cultural barriers to innovation
Access all resources from the Sydney event
📍London
Oct. 11 at The Gherkin
Steeped in history and culture, London made the perfect backdrop for the fourth leg of the tour. This session-packed afternoon featured more than twice the number of inspiring speakers than previous stops and included something for everyone, from interactive breakout sessions to thought-provoking leadership panels on building and leading innovative teams.
Our customer panel, Everyday Innovation Unlocked, included an active discussion on the ways teams rely on Miro in their day-to-day to empower distributed teams in today’s world of work, which include:
- Incorporating blended experiences to drive alignment faster
- Creating visibility for planning within and across teams to de-risk innovation
- Advanced diagramming lets teams collaborate better on complex system designs, and ship faster
- Innovation needs to be supported by a solid, secure, and scalable foundation that gives flexibility to choose how you want to protect strategic work in Miro
Access all resources from the London event
📍Tokyo
Oct. 12 at Kabuto One
A bustling epicenter of technology, food, fashion, and more, Tokyo is the epitome of ultra-modern innovation and culture. It comes as no surprise that we’d choose one of the most famous cities in the world for the fifth stop on our global innovation tour.
In addition to a sneak peek at Miro’s future product vision and learning new ways to use Miro for innovation, participants were also treated to a special guest lecture: a fireside chat between Sotaro Mizoguchi, Miro Japan’s head of marketing, and Yoshifumi Ito, Denso corporation’s head of office. Navigating Tomorrow with Miro also featured example case studies demonstrating how some of the world’s most recognizable and successful Japanese corporations leverage Miro:
Access all resources from the Tokyo event
📍Amsterdam
Nov. 2 at A’dam Tower: The Loft
With its rich history of innovation and creativity, the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam was an ideal sixth stop on our Innovation Imperative tour. The iconic A’dam Tower was packed with attendees eager to engage with other like-minded innovators and leaders.
“Innovation is about creating value. And in order to create value, we all need to understand what ‘value’ means to different people. With Miro we are able to create a common understanding of what we are trying to achieve across organizations, teams, and borders.” — Vincent Tedjakusuma, Lead Product Manager at ADP
During the product vision session, attendees were given a closer look at the product and Miro’s innovation workspace, including a preview of some exciting new features and an overview of more recent product releases, including six capabilities bundles:
- Workshops & Async Collaboration
- Content & Data Visualization
- AI-powered Miro Assist
- Product Development Workflows
- Visual Project Management
- Technical Diagramming
Access all resources from the Amsterdam event
📍Paris
Nov. 7 at We Are, Paris 8ème
Our second-to-last leg of the tour brought us to one of the most-visited cities in the entire world: Paris. A major global center for gastronomy, culture, business, and yes — innovation — it’s fitting that the event agenda was as full as the venue, with nearly a full day of sessions and even a waiting list to attend the event.
Attendees of the French tour enjoyed sessions featuring an all-star lineup of speakers from some of the world’s leading brands, including Adeo, Danone, and Dataiku alongside French executive leaders from Miro. And during the product spotlight, were given a closer look at three of Miro’s most innovative features:
- Talktrack: Record interactive and immersive video and audio walkthroughs that are embedded right on a Miro board.
- Miro Assist: Use AI to get help with everyday heavy-lifting tasks and enhance creativity, collaboration, and productivity.
- Google Integration: Bring tools together so your team can collaborate in any work environment, including the Google Workspace.
Access all resources from the Paris event
📍Frankfurt
Nov. 16 at Fifty Heights
The final stop on our global Innovation Imperative tour brought us to Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital. Wrapping up the tour on the 50th floor of Tower 185, it was the perfect spot to take our innovative thinking to new heights.
The German leg of our tour also featured a special session from Lars Behrendt, successful author, podcaster, and CEO of innovative agency Granny&Smith. Behrendt’s animated session — 90% Failure Rate. Really?: Why the traditional approach to innovation has failed spectacularly — offered attendees an inside look at his core innovation approach which includes starting development with the final product rather than a long list of features. This method offers a new perspective and strategies for thinking outside the metaphorical box.
Miro is here to help your teams dream, design, and build the future
Attendees also got a look at some of Miro’s focus areas to support breakthrough innovation from our product session Navigating Tomorrow with Miro. Here are some of the latest Miro features, releases, and integrations to fuel your team’s ability to innovate.
Talktrack Reactions
A new feature coming to Talktrack is ‘Shouts’ — a way for participants to comment and react while watching a Talktrack that gets recorded and shared at the relevant time stamp of the Talktrack. As each team member watches the Talktrack, they can see the questions and comments from everyone who watched it before them, leveling up the power of async collaboration without spending time recapping or wading multiple versions.
Miro Assist
Miro Assist is an AI-powered thought partner that uses the context of a board to help you bring breakthrough products to market, faster. Directly integrated into Miro boards, Miro Assist enables users to rapidly expand thinking, get instant insights for better decision-making, and reduce time spent on daily tasks. It’s an interactive chat-like module that can generate content in chat or visual formats.
AZURE DevOps integration with Planner & Dependencies
Azure DevOps plays a crucial role in helping modern product development teams deliver high-quality software more efficiently and effectively. Comprehensive updates to our integration with Azure DevOps, including the Planner and Dependencies app, make it faster and easier to search, import, and edit work items on Miro.
The Innovation Imperative global roadshow highlighted the vital role of innovation in today’s business landscape but equipped the Miro community with practical tools and strategies to overcome the challenges they face. This journey through the world’s most innovative cities has provided invaluable insights, from macroeconomic trends to human-centric solutions, fostering a vibrant ecosystem of thinkers, creators, and leaders.
