Leah Guggenheimer

• How is your presentation relevant to the theme of this year’s BBC conference: Innovation in the Fast Lane?

Our panel is focused on what Executive Leadership can do to foster innovation and success in building out new business capabilities from the top down. My personal view is that businesses need to be focused on what I call “plug and play interoperability.” Systems cannot be so bespoke that new products or business acquisitions cannot easily fit, nor can development cycles take 2 years. To maintain a competitive edge, companies must be both fast and flexible.

• What are your top tips for companies or employees wishing to innovate?

Focus on standards first, business capabilities later. If you work in reverse, you may have pretty processes that don’t meet your business objectives. By staying ruthlessly focused on standards which can be infinitely expanded to encompass new products, services, industries, geographies, customer segments etc. whatever you do to execute those standards via process and business capabilities expansion will allow you to continue to drive growth without sacrificing core integrity or quality.