For the May edition of HRMagazine we spoke to Karen Lawson, the CEO of Slingshot, a corporate startup accelerator. In the digital age, the pressure to innovate is something all large companies feel. None of them want to be the next Blackberry or AOL, and get disrupted and left behind due to a failure to adapt.
Simultaneous to this pressure is the reality that most innovation no longer takes place inside larger corporations. Millennials might as well be called the startup generation – the most talented among them are more likely to see themselves as the next Zuckerberg rather than the next Edgar Frank Codd (the IBM computer scientist who invented the relational model for database management). That being the case, Lawson takes us through how her company, and others like it, have stepped in to provide companies with innovation by partnering them with startups.
(For insight into why HR needs a seat at the innovation table but can’t get it, read our article.)