Three benefits of starting an innovation lab

From a cultural perspective, Google’s decision to build innovation labs was a brilliant one. 

Curious how innovation labs support business and culture? Below, we share some experiences of how innovation labs at Google and Accenture have helped us become successful.

  1. Deepen your skills and understanding

With every innovation lab that we start (such as those on healthcare, societal problems, quantum computing, and the A.I. labs that we run together), we usually start simple to get a basic understanding of the emerging technologies that we are diving into. 

In order to guide our clients through the ever-changing environment of tech, we need to build hands-on experience with new technology. By engaging and experimenting with new technologies, we develop these crucial skills. Innovation labs are an efficient structure that ensure a curious, startup-like mindset while at the same time powering your teams with a professional, corporate backbone. 

  1. Collaboration through competition

We openly share our failures and discoveries on numerous blogs that are ran by our Innovation Labs. This distinctive element of the industry that we work in (sharing our failures) is arguably a major reason of the high-paced growth of Google and Accenture. By working with innovation labs we’ve found an efficient instrument to keep this collaborative culture while our companies grow bigger. 

Being open and looking for collaboration and partnerships is crucial when it comes to discovering new ideas, or to developing products that one company simply cannot bring to the market alone. Collaborating with competitors in innovation labs also used to ‘test the waters’ it is an efficient method to validate collaborations for when ideas reach a more mature state.

  1. Boots on the ground

As the world of technology rapidly evolves and changes, we use innovation labs to gauge hypes surrounding new technological possibilities. We hope to be at the forefront of innovation, but we cannot put all our eggs in one basket. 

We, in collaboration with our customers, need to consider carefully which trends are real and demand our attention. Our innovation labs make sure that we are at the forefront of market developments and that we can quickly help our customers in adapting new technologies.