Category Archives: Innovation

How to Survive the Next Decade

The Not So Obvious or Easy Answer

How to Survive the Next Decade

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Last week, I shared that 74% of executives believe that their organizations will cease to exist in ten years. They believe that strategic transformation is required, but cite the obvious problem of organizational inertia and the easy scapegoat of people’s resistance to change.

Great. Now we know the problem. What’s the solution?

The Obvious: Put the Right People in Leadership Roles

Flipping through the report, the obvious answers (especially from an executive search firm) were front and center:

Build a top team with relevant experience, competencies, and diverse backgrounds
Develop the team and don’t be afraid to make changes along the way
Set a common purpose and clear objectives, then actively manage the team

The Easy: Do Your Job as a Leader

OK, these may not be easy but it’s not that hard, either:

Relentlessly and clearly communicate the why behind the change
Change one thing at a time
Align incentives to desired outcomes and behaviors
Be a role model
Understand and manage culture (remember, it’s reflected in the worst behaviors you tolerate)

The Not-Obvious-or-Easy-But-Still-Make-or-Break: Deputize the Next Generation

Buried amongst the obvious and easy was a rarely discussed, let alone implemented, choice – actively engaging the next generation of leaders.

But this isn’t the usual “invite a bunch of Hi-Pos (high potentials) to preview and upcoming announcement or participate in a focus group to share their opinions” performance most companies engage in.

This is something much different.

Step 1: Align on WHY an “extended leadership team” of Next Gen talent is mission critical

The C-Suite doesn’t see what happens on the front lines. It doesn’t know or understand the details of what’s working and what’s not. Instead, it receives information filtered through dozens of layers, all worried about positioning things just right.

Building a Next Gen extended leadership team puts the day-to-day realities front and center. It brings together capabilities that the C-Suite team may lack and creates the space for people to point out what looks good on paper but will be disastrous in practice.

Instead, leaders must commit to the purpose and value of engaging the next generation, not merely as “sensing mechanisms” (though that’s important, too) but as colleagues with different and equally valuable experiences and insights.

Step 2: Pick WHO is on the team without using the org chart

High-potentials are high potential because they know how to succeed in the current state. But transformation isn’t about replicating the current state. It requires creating a new state. For that, you need new perspectives:

Super connecters who have wide, diverse, and trusted relationships across the organization so they can tap into a range of perspectives and connect the dots that most can barely see
Credible experts who are trusted for their knowledge and experience and are known to be genuinely supportive of the changes being made
Influencers who can rally the troops at the beginning and keep them motivated throughout

Step 3: Give them a clear mandate (WHAT) but don’t dictate HOW to fulfill it

During times of great change, it’s normal to want to control everything possible, including a team of brilliant, creative, and committed leaders. Don’t involve them in the following steps and be open to being surprised by their approaches and insights:

At the beginning, involve them in understanding and defining the problem and opportunity.
Throughout, engage them as advisors and influencers in decision-making (
During and after implementation, empower them to continue to educate and motivate others and to make adaptations in real-time when needed.

Co-creation is the key to survival

Transforming your organization to survive, even thrive, in the future is hard work. Why not increase your odds of success by inviting the people who will inherit what you create to be part of the transformation?

Image credit: Pixabay

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Four Signs of an Industry Disruption

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Four Signs of an Industry Disruption

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman explained that there are two modes of thinking that we use to make decisions, which he calls “System 1” and “System 2.” The first is more instinctual and automatic, the second more rational and deliberative. We need to use both to make good decisions.

Businesses also have two systems, which can sometimes conflict. One is immediate and operational. It seeks to optimize processes, gain market share and maximize profitability. The second builds capacity for the long term, by investing in employees, building trustful partnerships and creating new markets to compete for the future.

Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive. Just as we can step back and think rationally about instinctual urges, we can invest for both the short and the long term. Yet given that every business eventually matures and needs to renew itself, many end up taking the wrong path. Here are four signs that your industry might be in the process of being disrupted.

1. Maturing Technology

Fifteen years ago hardly anyone had a smartphone. Social media was in its infancy. Artificial intelligence was still science fiction. Yet today all of those things are somewhat mature technologies that have become an integral part of everyday life. Anywhere you go you see people using them as a matter of habit.

It’s become conventional wisdom to look at these developments and say that technology is accelerating. It certainly seems that way. Nevertheless, look a little closer and it becomes clear that’s not really true. Buy a computer or smartphone today and its capabilities are not that different to those that came out five years ago.

The truth is that every major technology has a similar life cycle called an S-curve. It emerges weak, buggy and flawed. Adoption is slow. In time, it hits its stride and enters a period of rapid growth until maturity and an inevitable slowdown. That’s what’s happening now with digital technology and we can expect many areas to slow down in the years to come.

In the 1920s and 30s there was a time of explosive growth in the automobile industry and electronic appliances. The 1950s and 60s was a golden age for antibiotics, with a number of life-saving new drugs being discovered every year. The 1970s were considered the heyday for airlines and the past few decades have been focused on digital technology.

Yet every technology matures and every S-curve flattens, which is exactly what we’re seeing with digital technology today. Moore’s Law, the consistent doubling of transistors we can cram on a silicon wafer, is ending, and the digital era will end with it. Once opportunities to innovate narrow, firms look to other avenues to increase profits.

2. Consolidation

One of the key tools in any strategist’s toolbox is Michael Porter’s five forces analysis. The basic idea is that to compete effectively, you need to focus not just on the key competitors in your industry, but also customers, suppliers, new market entrants and substitutes. To build competitive advantage, you need to increase your bargaining power against all five.

Yet when an industry is in decline, the forces external to the industry get the upper hand. With new market entrants and substitutes becoming more attractive, customers and suppliers are in a position to negotiate better deals, margins get squeezed and profits come under pressure.

That’s why a lot of consolidation in an industry is usually a bad sign. It means that firms within the industry don’t see enough opportunities to improve their business by serving their customers more effectively, through innovating their products or their business models. To maintain margins, they need to combine with each other to control supply.

I think it’s clear that Silicon Valley is going through some version of this today. With Moore’s Law ending, the opportunities to innovate are narrowing and acquisitions are accelerating. The last breakthrough product, arguably, was the iPhone launched in 2007. Startups, don’t try to upend incumbents anymore, they sell to them.

3. Rent Seeking & Regulatory Capture

The goal of every business is to defy markets. Any firm at the mercy of supply and demand will find itself unable to make an economic profit—that is profit over and above its cost of capital. In other words, unless a firm can beat Adam’s Smith’s invisible hand, investors would essentially be better off putting their money in the bank.

That leaves entrepreneurs and managers with two viable strategies. The first is innovation. Firms can create new and better products that produce new value. The second, rent seeking, is associated with activities like lobbying and regulatory capture, which seeks to earn a profit without creating added value. In fact, rent seeking often makes industries less competitive.

There is abundant evidence that over the last 20 years, American firms have shifted from an innovation mindset to one that focuses more on rent seeking. First and foremost, has been the marked increase in lobbying expenditures, which have more than doubled since 1998, especially in the tech industry. Firms invest money for a reason. They expect a return.

It seems like they are getting their money’s worth. Corporate tax rates in the US have steadily decreased and are now among the lowest in the developed world. Occupational licensing, often the result of lobbying by trade associations, has increased five-fold since the 1950s. These restrictions have coincided with a decrease in the establishment of new firms.

If your industry is more focused on protecting existing markets than creating new ones, that is one sign that it is vulnerable to disruption.

4. The Inevitable Scandals

In the 1920s the Teapot Dome scandal rocked Washington. The Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall, was found to have corruptly leased Navy petroleum reserves to private companies. In response, Congress was given the right to subpoena any US citizen’s tax records as well as increased regulation of campaign finance.

In the century since, we have had continuous cycles of largesse and reform. The savings and loan crisis in the 1980s led to the FIRREA Act to increase oversight. Accounting scandals, like those involving Enron and WorldCom, led to Sarbanes Oxley. The Financial Crisis led to Dodd-Frank.

More recently, tens of billions of dollars were plowed into WeWork before it was exposed as little more than a Ponzi scheme. The Theranos fraud went on for more than a decade before its board realized that its product was an elaborate ruse. FTX was valued at $32 billion but turned out to be worthless. Yet there has been no reform.

As Bain pointed out a decade ago, the extreme measures taken after the Great Recession led to a superabundance of capital, which paved the way for the highest profit margins in half a century. Now it seems that the era of easy money and easy regulation is ending, making it a near certainty that more frauds will be exposed.

We need to learn the telltale signs that an industry is being disrupted. Once technology begins to mature, we can expect consolidation, rent-seeking and regulatory capture to follow. After that, it’s just a matter of how much time—and how big the bubble gets—before everything bursts.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Gemini

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The Unpredictability of Innovation is Predictable

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The Unpredictability of Innovation is Predictable

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

A culture that demands predictable results cannot innovate. No one will have the courage to do work with the requisite level of uncertainty and all the projects will build on what worked last time. The only predictable result – the recipe will be wildly successful right up until the wheels fall off.

You can’t do work in a new area and deliver predictable results on a predictable timetable. And if your boss asks you to do so, you’re working for the wrong person.

When it comes to innovation, “ecosystem,” as a word, is unskillful. It doesn’t bound or constrain, nor does it show the way. How about a map of the system as it is? How about defined boundaries? How about the system’s history? How about the interactions among the system elements? How about a fitness landscape and the system’s disposition? How about the system’s reason for being? The next evolution of the system is unpredictable, even if you call it an ecosystem.

If you can’t tolerate unpredictability, you can’t tolerate innovation.

Innovation isn’t about reducing risk. Innovation is about maximizing learning rate. And when all things go as predicted, the learning rate is zero. That’s right. Learning decreases when everything goes as planned. Are you sure you want predictable results?

Predictable growth in stock price can only come from smartly trying the right portfolio of unpredictable projects. That’s a wild notion.

Innovation runs on the thoughts, feelings, emotions and judgement of people and, therefore, cannot be predictable. And if you try to make it predictable, the best people, the people that know the drill, will leave.

The real question that connects innovation and predictability: How to set the causes and conditions for people to try things because the results are unpredictable?

With innovation, if you’re asking for predictability, you’re doing it wrong.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Why Amazon Paid $3.9 Billion to Get into the Healthcare Business

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Why Amazon Paid $3.9 Billion to Get into the Healthcare Business

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Amazon is known for its amazing customer experience, despite most customers never talking to an Amazon employee. How does this digital experience — with no human interaction—drive so much loyalty? The short answer is confidence. There is very little that goes wrong with an Amazon experience, and if by chance it does, its system takes care of almost all problems—again, without human interaction. That said, if a customer does need to talk to a human, which is very seldom, the customer support team is there.

But what happens if you combine technology with a high-touch business, like a doctor’s office? You get One Medical, which Amazon bought in 2023 for $3.9 billion. One Medical’s founder, Dr. Tom Lee, is a Harvard-trained primary care physician who then went on to Stanford to get an MBA. Before opening his first clinic, he asked himself, “Why do we do these in healthcare like we’ve always done them? Why does every waiting room look like some sterile IKEA? Why do I wait in a reception area and then wait again in the exam room?” It was questions like these that caused Lee to tinker with and disrupt the traditional medical visit model.

Starting with one clinic, Lee created a different experience. He built an app and charged patients an $89/year subscription that gave them access to doctors. He focused on simple things like getting an appointment without making a call. Those little things were the start of what turned out to be a stellar experience that allowed him to expand, ultimately catching the eye of Amazon.

When the Amazon deal was completed, HealthCare Dive reported that Amazon now had a network of more than 220 medical offices in 27 U.S. markets with more than 836,000 members plus 9,000 enterprise clients. Neil Lindsay, SVP of Amazon Health Services said, “We’re on a mission to make it dramatically easier for people to find, choose, afford and engage with the services, products and professionals they need to get and stay healthy, and coming together with One Medical is a big step on that journey.” That’s what Amazon does. They make it easy for customers.

Joseph Michelli, bestselling business author of numerous books that tell the stories of iconic brands like The Ritz-Carlton, Starbucks, Mercedes and others, recently released a new book, All Business Is Personal: One Medical’s Human-Centered, Technology-Powered Approach to Customer Engagement, that tells the One Medical story. I had a chance to interview him on Amazing Business Radio, and here are the highlights that will give you some insight into why Amazon became interested in acquiring this amazing company.

Question Everything

Just ask, “Why?” It doesn’t matter what type of business you are in, there are reasons for everything. Often the reason a company or person does something is because “We’ve always done it this way.” So, question everything. Maybe you’ll still do it the way you’ve always done it, but at least you will have tried to find a better way.

Create a Stellar Customer (Patient) Experience

As Lee created a Customer Experience (CX) that drove impressive ratings, he looked at the friction most patients experienced. He started with an obvious pain point, the waiting room, which is, as the name implies, a room for people to wait. Some patients in traditional medical practices are forced to wait for unreasonable amounts of time. But not at One Medical. In addition to being easy to get a same-day or next-day appointment, Michelli shared that 95% of patients are seen within three minutes of their scheduled times. As already mentioned, Lee questioned every aspect of the patient’s experience, and he found many ways to make it better.

Blend Technology with the Human Touch

Technology, like apps and AI, makes life more convenient for customers by allowing things like easy online scheduling or getting immediate answers from AI chatbots. Often, technology can feel cold and impersonal, especially in healthcare. The best use of technology is to make things faster and simpler, but smart businesses, like One Medical, know to offer human backup when a customer/patient needs it. Finding the right balance between tech and the human touch keeps your business from being a commodity—just “another faceless service.”

Convenience Is King

People love doing business with companies that create convenient experiences. For One Medical, this means offering same-day appointments, speedy callbacks or handling many issues online versus the phone, so the patient doesn’t have to wait on hold or wait for a callback. Research shows that 73% of customers will pay more for a convenient experience. The easier you make someone’s experience, the more likely they will come back as well as tell others about you.

Make It Personal, Not Just Personalized

It’s great to remember a customer’s name or recall past purchases. That’s personalization. To take it a step further, make it personal. Make the customer feel that you care about them. That means when the customer (or patient) talks to an employee, they feel cared for, listened to and valued. Personal connections build trust and confidence, which leads to repeat business and potential loyalty.

The Effort Is Worth It

These five reasons (and a few more) are what gave Amazon 3.9 billion reasons (as in dollars) to acquire One Medical. Even if you were to practice these reasons flawlessly, you may never catch Amazon’s attention, but you will catch your customers’ (and potential customers’) attention. And that will make the effort worthwhile.

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Eight Types of Innovation Executives

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Revisited

Eight Types of Innovation Executives

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

Over the past few decades working with corporate innovation, I’ve noticed recurring patterns especially when it comes to executive leadership.

True, we shouldn’t put leaders in boxes. But we also can’t afford to ignore the signs. That’s why I created this visual: an overview of eight (8) types of innovation executives.

It’s a simple ‘tool’ to help you recognize behaviors, traits, and (in)actions that influence your organization’s innovation capabilities.

By spotting these patterns, you can better understand where your executive team stands and how to move forward with initiatives that strengthen your ability to innovate.

I am curious: which of these types do you recognize in your organization? Or maybe even in yourself? Feel free to drop a comment.

1. No Problem

Best-case scenario: executives who understand innovation and get personally involved.

Hint: Leverage their support to upgrade other key leaders.

2. No Need

“We don’t need innovation.” If that’s the belief, you’ve got a deeper issue.

Hint: Understand the mindset. If change isn’t possible, consider walking away.

3. No Results

“We tried, it didn’t work.” Past failures lead to present resistance.

Hint: Deliver quick wins, back up with data, and rebuild credibility.

4. No Time

“Too busy.” Innovation gets pushed aside by daily demands.

Hint: Integrate with existing priorities—show how everyone wins without adding work.

5. No Money

There’s no budget for innovation, capabilities, or execution.

Hint: Shift the focus to people. Show impact. Demonstrate ROI.

6. No Walk

They say the right things, but take no real action.

Hint: Test for walk vs. talk. Use respectful confrontation to prompt real commitment.

7. No Responsibility

“Not my job. Go ask someone else.” Ownership is missing.

Hint: Innovation is everyone’s responsibility — starting at the top. Align ownership.

8. No Clue

“I’ve never been trained in this.” A lack of understanding, not resistance.

Hint: This is workable. Provide support, context, and practical tools.

Image Credit: Stefan Lindegaard

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74% of Companies Will Die in 10 Years Without Business Transformation

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According to Executives

74% of Companies Will Die in 10 Years Without Business Transformation

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

One day, an architect visited the building site of his latest project. There he saw three people all laying bricks. He asked each what they were doing. “I’m laying bricks,” the first responded. “I’m building a wall,” said the second. “I’m building a cathedral,” exclaimed the third.

The parable of the Three Bricklayers is a favorite amongst motivational speakers, urging their audiences to think beyond today’s tasks and this quarter’s goals to commit to a grandiose vision of eternal success and glory.

But there’s a problem.

The narrative changed

The person who had a vision of building a cathedral? They now believe they’re building ruins.

Is the C-Suite Quietly Quitting?

Recently published research found that three out of four executives believe that “without fundamental transformation* their organization will cease to exist” in ten years. That’s based on data from interviews with twenty-four “current or former CEOs who have led successful transformations” and 1,360 survey responses from C-Suite and next-generation leaders.

And, somehow, the news gets worse.

While 77% of C-suite executives report that they’re committed to their companies’ transformation efforts, but 57% believe their organization is taking the wrong approach to that transformation. But that’s still better than the 68% of Next-Gen executives who disagree with the approach.

So, it should come as no surprise that 71% of executives rate their companies’ transformation efforts as not at all to moderately successful. After all, it’s hard to lead people along a path you don’t agree with to a vision you don’t believe in.

Did they just realize that “change is hard in human systems?”

We all fall into the trap of believing that understanding something results in commitment and change.

But that’s not how humans work.

That’s definitely not how large groups of humans, known as organizations, work.

Companies’ operations are driven only loosely by the purpose, structures, and processes neatly outlined in HR documents. Instead, they are controlled by the power and influence afforded to individuals by virtue of the collective’s culture, beliefs, histories, myths, and informal ways of working.

And when these “opaque dimensions” are challenged, they don’t result in resistance,

They result in inertia.

“Organizational inertia kills transformations”

Organizations are “complex organisms” that evolve to do things better, faster, cheaper over time. They will continue doing so unless changed by an external force (yes, that’s Newton’s first law of motion).

That external force, the drive for transformation, must be strong enough to overcome:

Insight Inertia stops organizations from getting started because there is a lack of awareness or acceptance amongst leaders that change is needed.
Psychological Inertia emerges when change demands abandoning familiar success strategies. People embrace the idea of transformation but resist personal adaptation, defaulting to comfortable old behaviors.
Action Inertia sets in and gains power as the long and hard work of transformation drags on. Over time, people grow tired. Exhausted by continuous change, teams progressively disengage, becoming less responsive and decisive.

But is that possible when 74% of executives are simply biding their time and waiting for failure?

“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Did you see the crack in all the doom and gloom above?

43% of executives believe their organizations are taking the right approach to transformation.
29% believe that their organizations’ transformations have been successful.
26% believe their company will still be around in ten years.

The majority may not believe in transformation but only 33% of bricklayers believed they were building a cathedral, and the cathedral still got built.

Next week, we’ll explore how.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of October 2025

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of October 2025 Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are October’s ten most popular innovation posts:

AI, Cognitive Obesity and Arrested Development — by Pete Foley
Making Decisions in Uncertainty – This 25-Year-Old Tool Actually Works — by Robyn Bolton
The Marketing Guide for Humanity’s Next Chapter – How AI Changes Your Customers — by Braden Kelley
Don’t Make Customers Do These Seven Things They Hate — by Shep Hyken
Why Best Practices Fail – Five Questions with Ellen DiResta — by Robyn Bolton
The Need for Organizational Learning — by Mike Shipulski
You Must Accept That People Are Irrational — by Greg Satell
The AI Innovations We Really Need — by Art Inteligencia
Three Reasons You Are Not Happy at Work – And What to Do to Become as Happy as You Could Be — by Stefan Lindegaard
The Nuclear Fusion Accelerator – How AI is Commercializing Limitless Power — by Art Inteligencia

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in September that continue to resonate with people:

McKinsey is Wrong That 80% Companies Fail to Generate AI ROI — by Robyn Bolton
The Most Challenging Obstacles to Achieving Artificial General Intelligence — by Art Inteligencia
The Great American Contraction – Population, Scarcity, and the New Era of Human Value — by Art Inteligencia
Three Steps from Stuck to Success – Managing Uncertainty — by Robyn Bolton
Building a Learning Organization — by Stefan Lindegaard

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Cutting-Edge Ways to Decouple Data Growth from Power and Water Consumption

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The Sustainability Imperative

LAST UPDATED: November 1, 2025 at 8:59 AM

Cutting-Edge Ways to Decouple Data Growth from Power and Water Consumption

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The global digital economy runs on data, and data runs on power and water. As AI and machine learning rapidly accelerate our reliance on high-density compute, the energy and environmental footprint of data centers has become an existential challenge. This isn’t just an engineering problem; it’s a Human-Centered Change imperative. We cannot build a sustainable future on an unsustainable infrastructure. Leaders must pivot from viewing green metrics as mere compliance to seeing them as the ultimate measure of true operational innovation — the critical fuel for your Innovation Bonfire.

The single greatest drain on resources in any data center is cooling, often accounting for 30% to 50% of total energy use, and requiring massive volumes of water for evaporative systems. The cutting edge of sustainable data center design is focused on two complementary strategies: moving the cooling load outside the traditional data center envelope and radically reducing the energy consumed at the chip level. This fusion of architectural and silicon-level innovation is what will decouple data growth from environmental impact.

The Radical Shift: Immersive and Locational Cooling

Traditional air conditioning is inefficient and water-intensive. The next generation of data centers is moving toward direct-contact cooling systems that use non-conductive liquids or leverage natural environments.

Immersion Cooling: Direct-to-Chip Efficiency

Immersion Cooling involves submerging servers directly into a tank of dielectric (non-conductive) fluid. This is up to 1,000 times more efficient at transferring heat than air. There are two primary approaches: single-phase (fluid remains liquid, circulating to a heat exchanger) and two-phase (fluid boils off the server, condenses, and drips back down).

This method drastically reduces cooling energy and virtually eliminates water consumption, leading to Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratios approaching the ideal 1.05. Furthermore, the fluid maintains a more stable, higher operating temperature, making the waste heat easier to capture and reuse, which leads us to our first case study.

Case Study 1: China’s Undersea Data Center – Harnessing the Blue Economy

China’s deployment of a commercial Undersea Data Center (UDC) off the coast of Shanghai is perhaps the most audacious example of locational cooling. This project, developed by Highlander and supported by state entities, involves submerging sealed server modules onto the seabed, where the stable, low temperature of the ocean water is used as a natural, massive heat sink.

The energy benefits are staggering: developers claim UDCs can reduce electricity consumption for cooling by up to 90% compared to traditional land-based facilities. The accompanying Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) target is below 1.15 — a world-class benchmark. Crucially, by operating in a closed system, it eliminates the need for freshwater entirely. The UDC also draws nearly all its remaining power from nearby offshore wind farms, making it a near-zero carbon, near-zero water compute center. This bold move leverages the natural environment as a strategic asset, turning a logistical challenge (cooling) into a competitive advantage.

Case Study 2: The Heat Reuse Revolution at a Major Cloud Provider

Another powerful innovation is the shift from waste heat rejection to heat reuse. This is where true circular economy thinking enters data center design. A major cloud provider (Microsoft, with its various projects) has pioneered systems that capture the heat expelled from liquid-cooled servers and redirect it to local grids.

In one of their Nordic facilities, the waste heat recovered from the servers is fed directly into a local district heating system. The data center effectively acts as a boiler for the surrounding community, warming homes, offices, and water. This dramatically changes the entire PUE calculation. By utilizing the heat rather than simply venting it, the effective PUE dips well below the reported operational figure, transforming the data center from an energy consumer into an energy contributor. This demonstrates that the true goal is not just to lower consumption, but to create a symbiotic relationship where the output of one system (waste heat) becomes the valuable input for another (community heating).

“The most sustainable data center is the one that gives back more value to the community than it takes resources from the planet. This requires a shift from efficiency thinking to regenerative design.”

Innovators Driving the Sustainability Stack

Innovation is happening at every layer, from infrastructure to silicon:

Leading companies and startups are rapidly advancing sustainable data centers. In the cooling space, companies like Submer Technologies specialize in immersion cooling solutions, making it commercially viable for enterprises. Meanwhile, the power consumption challenge is being tackled at the chip level. AI chip startups like Cerebras Systems and Groq are designing new architectures (wafer-scale and Tensor Streaming Processors, respectively) that aim to deliver performance with vastly improved energy efficiency for AI workloads compared to general-purpose GPUs. Furthermore, cloud infrastructure provider Crusoe focuses on powering AI data centers exclusively with renewable or otherwise stranded, environmentally aligned power sources, such as converting flared natural gas into electricity for compute, tackling the emissions challenge head-on.

The Future of Decoupling Growth

To lead effectively in the next decade, organizations must recognize that the convergence of these technologies — immersion cooling, locational strategy, chip efficiency, and renewable power integration — is non-negotiable. Data center sustainability is the new frontier for strategic change. It requires empowered agency at the engineering level, allowing teams to move fast on Minimum Viable Actions (MVAs) — small, rapid tests of new cooling fluids or localized heat reuse concepts — without waiting for monolithic, years-long CapEx approval. By embedding sustainability into the very definition of performance, we don’t just reduce a footprint; we create a platform for perpetual, human-driven innovation.

You can learn more about how the industry is adapting to these challenges in the face of rising heat from AI in the video:

This video discusses the limitations of traditional cooling methods and the necessity of liquid cooling solutions for next-generation AI data centers.

Disclaimer: This article speculates on the potential future applications of cutting-edge scientific research. While based on current scientific understanding, the practical realization of these concepts may vary in timeline and feasibility and are subject to ongoing research and development.

UPDATE: Apparently, Microsoft has been experimenting with underwater data centers for years and you can learn more about them and progress in this area in this video here:

Image credit: Google Gemini

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Four Pillars of Innovation

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People, Learning, Judgment and Trust

Four Pillars of Innovation

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Innovation is a hot topic. Everyone wants to do it. And everyone wants a simple process that works step-wise – first this, then that, then success.

But Innovation isn’t like that. I think it’s more effective to think of innovation as a result. Innovation as something that emerges from a group of people who are trying to make a difference. In that way, Innovation is a people process. And like with all processes that depend on people, the Innovation process is fluid, dynamic, complex, and context-specific.

Innovation isn’t sequential, it’s not linear and cannot be scripted.. There is no best way to do it, no best tool, no best training, and no best outcome. There is no way to predict where the process will take you. The only predictable thing is you’re better off doing it than not.

The key to Innovation is good judgment. And the key to good judgment is bad judgment. You’ve got to get things wrong before you know how to get them right. In the end, innovation comes down to maximizing the learning rate. And the teams with the highest learning rates are the teams that try the most things and use good judgement to decide what to try.

I used to take offense to the idea that trying the most things is the most effective way. But now, I believe it is. That is not to say it’s best to try everything. It’s best to try the most things that are coherent with the situation as it is, the market conditions as they are, the competitive landscape as we know it, and the the facts as we know them.

And there are ways to try things that are more effective than others. Think small, focused experiments driven by a formal learning objective and supported by repeatable measurement systems and formalized decision criteria. The best teams define end implement the tightest, smallest experiment to learn what needs to be learned. With no excess resources and no wasted time, the team wins runs a tight experiment, measures the feedback, and takes immediate action based on the experimental results.

In short, the team that runs the most effective experiments learns the most, and the team that learns the most wins.

It all comes down to choosing what to learn. Or, another way to look at it is choosing the right problems to solve. If you solve new problems, you’ll learn new things. And if you have the sightedness to choose the right problems, you learn the right new things.

Sightedness is a difficult thing to define and a more difficult thing to hone and improve. If you were charged with creating a new business in a new commercial space and the survival of the company depended on the success of the project, who would you want to choose the things to try? That person has sightedness.

Innovation is about people, learning, judgement and trust.

And innovation is more about why than how and more about who than what.

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Reduce Innovation Risk with this Nobel Prize Winning Formula

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Reduce Innovation Risk with this Nobel Prize Winning Formula

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

As a kid, you’re taught that when you’re lost, stay put and wait for rescue. Most executives are following that advice right now—sitting tight amid uncertainty, hoping someone saves them from having to make hard choices and take innovation risk.

This year’s Nobel Prize winners in Economics have bad news: there is no rescue coming. Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt demonstrated that disruption happens whether you participate or not. Freezing innovation investments doesn’t reduce innovation risk. It guarantees competitors destroy you while you stand still.

They also have good news: innovation follows predictable patterns based on competitive dynamics, offering a framework for making smarter investment decisions.

How We Turned Stagnation into a System for Growth

For 99.9% of human history, economic growth was essentially zero. There were occasional bursts of innovation, like the printing press, windmills, and mechanical clocks, but growth always stopped.

200 years ago, that changed. Mokyr identified that the Industrial Revolution created systems connecting two types of knowledge: Propositional knowledge (understanding why things work) and Prescriptive knowledge (practical instructions for how to execute).

Before the Industrial Revolution, these existed separately. Philosophers theorized. Artisans tinkered. Neither could build on the other’s work. But the Enlightenment created feedback loops between theory and practice allowing countries like Britain to thrive because they had people who could translate theory into commercial products.

Innovation became a system, not an accident.

Why We Need Creative Destruction

Every year in the US, 10% of companies go out of business and nearly as many are created. This phenomenon of creative destruction, where companies and jobs constantly disappear and are replaced, was identified in 1942. Fifty years later, Aghion and Howitt built a mathematical model proving its required for growth.

Their research also lays bare some hard truths:

Creative destruction is constant and unavoidable. Cutting your innovation budget does not pause the game. It forfeits your position. Competitors are investing in R&D right now and their innovations will disrupt yours whether you participate or not.
Competitive position predicts innovation investments. Neck-to-neck competitors invest heavily in innovation because it’s their only path to the top. Market leaders cut back and coast while laggards don’t have the funds to catch-up. Both under-invest and lose.
Innovation creates winners and losers. Creative destruction leads to job destruction as work shifts from old products and skills to new ones. You can’t innovate and protect every job but you can (and should) help the people affected.

Ultimately, creative destruction drives sustained growth. It is painful and scary, but without it, economies and society stagnate. Ignore it at your peril. Work with it and prosper.

From Prize-winning to Revenue-generating

Even though you’re not collecting the one million Euro prize, these insights can still boost your bottom line if you:

Connect your Why teams with your How teams. Too often, Why teams like Strategy, Innovation, and R&D, chuck the ball over the wall to the How teams in Operations, Sales, Supply Chain, and front-line operations. Instead, connect them early and often and ensure the feedback loop that drives growth
Check your R&D and innovation investments. Are your R&D and innovation investments consistent with your strategic priorities or your competitive position? What are your investments communicating to your competitors? It’s likely that that “conserving cash” is actually coasting and ceding share.
Invest in your people and be honest with them. Your employees aren’t dumb. They know that new technologies are going to change and eliminate jobs. Pretending that won’t happen destroys trust and creates resistance that kills innovation. Tell employees the truth early, then support them generously through transitions.

What’s Your Choice?

Playing it safe guarantees the historical default: stagnation. The 2025 Nobel Prize winners proved sustained growth requires building innovation systems and embracing creative destruction.

The only question is whether you will participate or stagnate.

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