A bead of sweat runs down your brow. It’s the moment you’ve placed your bet at the casino table. Maybe it’s your first bet. Maybe you’re placing the biggest bet of your life. Maybe you’re folding on the raise. The moment that trail of stress squeezes from your pores is when you could use guidance, insight, or sage advice from a more experienced gambler who’s done it before.
This fall, Wellspring hosted a pair of events that brought innovation management (IM) and intellectual property (IP) professionals together in the same room. Some of the brightest and most experienced in their respective fields imparted that very guidance, insight, and sage advice for those looking to place their own innovation bets in the year ahead. These gatherings were Wellspring’s LEAP26 Innovation Summit.
For our colleagues across Europe and neighboring areas, LEAP26 took place at the glitzy nHow Amsterdam RAI. Meanwhile, those based in the Americas congregated at the esteemed Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center. The theme for LEAP26: Game Changers (take the quiz to find your innovation “spirit animal” here).
More than 150 attendees hailing from 70+ organizations spread across 14 counties shared their experiences, observations, and best practices — and cut loose for some serious networking. About half represented universities and research institutes. The other half were from companies such as BASF, DuPont, Honeywell, Hershey, and Mars.
Keynote Speaker and Innovation Whisperer
Keynote speaker Cris Beswick set the tone with a staggering stat: 84% of CEOs call innovation crucial, but only 6% are happy with how their organization performs at it. His challenge to the room was to name the impact you want to have over the next 10 years, as well as who is designing it. “If your transformation has an end date, it’s already obsolete.”
Fewer, Better Bets in Innovation Management
IM sessions kept circling the same ideas: start with the customer, stop weak projects early, and put people before the platform.
Angela Cooper of Huntsman Advanced Materials talked about growth innovation in action. Her team turned a commoditized product line around by treating “stop” as a success and putting the whole portfolio in one place. One customer program delivered several generations of material in a single year, work that once took four or five. How they got there was worth the trip on its own.
Other sessions echoed her sentiments. DuPont warned that new software on an old process will “digitize your dysfunction.” Owens Corning’s AI agents surfaced about twice as many key risks as before, and their lab leaders set the bar: “Don’t sell us on productivity. We want better decisions.”
Doing More With Less in IP and Tech Transfer
Tech transfer offices are getting more disclosures with fewer people, and every session spoke to that squeeze. Pratima Reddy and Kim Jones Ross of University of California Office of the President shared how they moved 10 campuses onto one system. Darren Fast of The University of Alberta explained why its ecosystem runs on community, not programs. University of Georgia’s Corey Acuff put it plainly: “Tech transfer is a contact sport.”
In between, peers traded what is working on translational funding, agreements, and patent renewals. Those conversations don’t happen on a webinar.
AI: Now, One Layer at a Time
AI came up in nearly every session. Wellspring’s Chief Product Officer Scot Delancey put it succinctly: expectations are sky-high, adoption is early, and bolt-on AI is a dead end. The winners will build AI into the work itself, keep people accountable for decisions, and get their data in order first.
Then came the sneak peeks. Our John Mooney shared the Evolve and Astria roadmap, which kept hands raised with excited queries along the lines of “How soon can I have this?” Attendees on the Accolade side got their own first look too. The details stayed in the room.
See You at LEAP27
The sessions were only part of it. The rest happened over coffee, at the roundtables, at the demo desk, and laying down bets at our swanky casino night.
As Cris eloquently put it, “You cannot build trust over Zoom or Teams.”
Our new CEO Chris Fanning closed with a simple wish: “I hope to see everyone back at LEAP in 2027.”
Join the waitlist for LEAP27 (for the US hub or for the EU hub) to get next year's information as soon as it's available.