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
🥤 Coca-Cola refreshed its global design system, proving legacy giants must adapt to stay relevant.
✍️ This anti-AI font was made with AI, showing design irony is alive in modern tech.
💧 Google faces tough questions on water promises as AI data center growth strains local supplies.
📉 Patreon slashed 20% of its workforce in another reset for creator platforms.
🚗 Tesla door handles could trigger new US safety rules after concerns over emergency manual overrides.
🎙️ Claude voice mode got a major upgrade, pushing AI speech closer to natural conversation.
🤖 China’s Moonshot AI was accused of copying Anthropic, escalating international tensions around model distillation.
☕️ Your weekly sip of Corporate Venturing News
🎯 Inside the brutal VC deal funnel Stanford professor Ilya Strebulaev breaks down why venture capitalists reject 99 out of 100 pitch decks. Understanding this filtering mechanism helps corporate innovation teams source better deals and align expectations with venture partners. Read Ilya Strebulaev’s breakdown →
💡 Unlearning corporate certainty to innovate like founders Julia Stewart and McKinsey explore what happens when executives step into startup shoes. Large firms treat innovation like a budgeting exercise instead of a learning cycle. Moving from a pilot culture to a capability culture requires leaders to solve real operational friction rather than chase shiny tech. Read the full McKinsey article →
🧰 Corporates expand beyond traditional CVC checks Global Corporate Venturing reports that corporate investors expand their strategy. Direct equity checks alone no longer deliver enough strategic edge. Firms now combine venture clienting, corporate venture studios, and hybrid models to capture value from early stage tech. Explore the toolkit insights →
🤝 15 real-world case studies in venture clienting Thomas Van Halewyck shares a collection of 15 successful venture clienting projects. This approach lets established corporations buy from startups as commercial clients, bypassing the slow timelines and friction of equity investments. Check out the case studies on LinkedIn →
🧱 Why corporate innovation actually dies The Compass highlights why corporate innovation initiatives collapse before reaching customers. Market risk gets the blame, but internal politics, rigid governance, and incentive misalignment kill ventures at an early stage. Read the full analysis →
🔄 The serial builder advantage McKinsey research shows that companies treating venture building as a repeatable habit outperform one-off innovators. Serial builders build organizational muscles, embrace portfolio thinking, and leverage AI to launch ventures with higher success rates. Discover the serial builder advantage →
📹 Something to watch
Sanji Nai-Chien shows how to automate a full Vox-style motion graphic video using Claude Code and Higgsfield. A single prompt handles the script, voiceover, scene generation, and multi-language localization. Watch the video on YouTube.
🎧 Something to listen
Throwback to my episode with Dong-Su Kim, Founding CEO of LG Technology Ventures, where he shares how he built and scaled a $900M CVC portfolio with over 80 investments. He breaks down the balance between strategic value and financial returns, bridging corporate culture with startup speed, and backing deep tech.
🛠️ Something to try
Rize is an AI productivity tracker that runs quietly in the background. It measures focus time, tracks time spent on tasks, and alerts you when you need a break to avoid burnout. Try Rize out →
🤔 Did you know?
Adversarial clothing is moving out of counterculture and into mainstream fashion. Designers are integrating high-contrast patterns, asymmetrical cuts, and hood-mounted infrared LEDs into streetwear specifically to overwhelm AI facial recognition algorithms. As computer vision expands across public spaces, privacy is fast becoming the ultimate fashion statement. Explore how anti-surveillance fashion is going mainstream →
🥐 Espresso is not enough?
LinkedIn published a breakdown on how AI search engines extract, index, and cite content. AI tools now pull from LinkedIn posts and articles to answer professional queries. Front-loading key terms, structuring posts cleanly, and writing detailed long-form pieces can determine whether AI platforms surface your work or ignore it. Read the full guide on maximizing AI visibility →
☝️ The most clicked link from last time?
Is the most popular song played on Australian radio stations the product of generative AI?
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See you next week,
Davide
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