☕️ Innovation Espresso #16
Davos 2025, Open Innovation Lookout by Mind the Bridge and the snack that keeps Taiwan’s tech running.
Welcome to Innovation Espresso, a quick yet powerful dose of curated news, articles, videos, reels, newsletters, and podcasts that I’ve found particularly interesting throughout the week. While I focus on Open Innovation and Corporate Venturing, you’ll find this quick yet potent dose covers more ground. Enjoy with your morning coffee!
💊 Innovation Pills
• 🥣 Whisk is a new Google Labs experiment that lets you prompt using images for a fast and fun creative process.
• 🧠 Meet an AI search engine with a twist: humans answering questions.
• 🚗 Coval evaluates AI voice and chat agents like self-driving cars.
• 📱 Perplexity has launched an assistant for Android.
• 🌍 Key highlights from Davos 2025.
• 🤖 OpenAI’s “Operator” is an AI agent for autonomous tasks.
• 📸 Samsung’s thin, big, boring AI phones.
• 🔋 Heat pumps in EVs are making a big difference in cold-weather driving.
☕️ Your weekly sip of Corporate Venturing News
📈 Open Innovation in 2025 by Mind The Bridge: Budgets Bounce Back, but KPIs Still Need Work
2024 marked a turning point for Open Innovation as economic pressures forced even the most forward-thinking companies to reassess their strategies. Despite setbacks, Open Innovation remains a cornerstone for businesses seeking to stay competitive in an increasingly complex global market.
Looking ahead to 2025, there’s cautious optimism. A staggering 86% of companies plan to maintain or increase their Open Innovation budgets, up from 73% in 2024 (though still shy of the 94% recorded in 2023). Of these, 25% plan to increase spending, with 5% expecting significant growth. On the flip side, only 14% foresee reductions, a significant improvement from 27% in 2024, with just 2% predicting major cuts.
What’s driving this shift? Companies are consolidating their budgets and honing in on strategic investments to weather economic uncertainties while preparing for future opportunities. As innovation leaders stress, Open Innovation is a transformative force across key areas:
• Strategy: 90% of respondents agree that Open Innovation reshapes their company’s long-term strategic trajectory.
• Sustainability: 78% recognize it as a catalyst for environmental sustainability and impact reduction.
• Financial Impact: 76% highlight benefits like new revenue streams, cost reductions, process efficiencies, and ROI.
• Technology Adoption: Another 76% focus on leveraging transformative technologies to gain a competitive edge.
However, the benefits of Open Innovation often remain elusive. While its value is widely acknowledged, many outcomes—like cultural shifts or strategic alignment—are intangible and hard to measure. This underscores the urgent need for better KPIs that can capture the true impact of these programs, ensuring they are not just buzzwords but deliver real results. Read the full analysis.
🚗 Startups Turn to CVCs Like InMotion Ventures Amid Shifting VC Dynamics
As traditional venture capital adapts to a changing economic landscape, corporate venture capital (CVC) arms like Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures are becoming increasingly attractive to startups. With their ability to offer strategic resources and patient capital, CVCs are playing a pivotal role in keeping innovation alive despite market uncertainty. Explore the details.
💰 Crypto Convict Zhao Turns Binance CVC into Private Wealth Fund
Controversial moves from Binance founder Changpeng Zhao have sparked debate as he appears to shift the company’s corporate venture capital arm into a private wealth fund. Critics are concerned about the blurred lines between corporate funds and personal enrichment, raising questions about governance in the crypto world. Learn more.
🧠 NVIDIA’s AI Empire: A Look at Its Top Startup Investments
NVIDIA continues to dominate the AI landscape, not just with its hardware but through strategic startup investments. From autonomous vehicles to generative AI platforms, this piece dives into the portfolio of startups backed by NVIDIA and explores how these investments bolster its industry leadership. Check it out.
🇺🇸 What the Trump Administration Means for Corporate Venturing
A provocative analysis of how policy changes in the U.S. under the Trump administration are influencing corporate venturing. From tax incentives to trade policy shifts, the implications for innovation funding and corporate strategies are profound. Read more.
📹 Something to watch
🤖 How close are we to super-powerful AI? Four experts weigh in
At Davos 2025, industry heavyweights like Andrew Ng, Yoshua Bengio, Yejin Choi, and Dario Amodei discussed the rapid acceleration of AI. Dario Amodei predicts that a century’s worth of scientific progress could be achieved in just 5–10 years with advanced AI systems. This is a must-watch for anyone curious about how close we really are to achieving super-powerful AI.
🎧 Something to listen
🗳️ Tech in 2025: Trump and the tech bros
With Donald Trump returning to power, how will his presidency impact technology? From a TikTok ban upheld by the Supreme Court to questions about Elon Musk’s influence, this podcast explores the potential ripple effects on social media, artificial intelligence, and the broader tech industry.
🛠️ Something to try
✍️ Serif.ai: The AI writing assistant you’ve been waiting for
Serif.ai is a sleek AI-powered tool designed to streamline your creative writing process. Whether you’re drafting blogs, brainstorming ideas, or refining professional documents, Serif.ai provides smart suggestions that keep you in the flow. Perfect for writers and innovators alike. Try it here.
🤔 Did you know?
🍿 The snack that keeps Taiwan’s tech running
In Taiwan, technicians believe that a particular brand of crisps, KuaiKuai (乖乖), in its coconut-butter flavor, acts as a good luck charm for technology. These snacks are thought to prevent computer failures, ensuring servers, ATMs, and even satellites work without glitches. In fact, packets of KuaiKuai were famously piled around a model of the Falcon 9 rocket that carried Taiwan’s first domestically developed satellite into orbit. A fascinating mix of superstition and tech savvy! Read more.
🥐 Espresso is not enough?
🎨 What comes after design thinking?
Design thinking has been a buzzword in innovation for years, but where does it go from here? This article explores how the framework is evolving, incorporating systems thinking, regenerative approaches, and other next-gen methodologies to address today’s complex challenges. If you’re curious about the future of creative problem-solving, this is a must-read. Dive in here.
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See you next week,
Davide