Anthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group, a world-leading strategic innovation consulting firm helping organizations all over the world tackle their biggest and most pressing growth challenges – and become relentless innovators – all so that they can ‘own their future’. Anthony is also the Executive Director of Global Innovation Institute (GInI – www.gini.org) – the world's foremost professional certification, business accreditation, and membership organization in the field of business innovation.
As such, Anthony is a globally sought-after thought leader on emerging markets, proactive growth strategies, corporate innovation, workplace experience, open innovation, the future of work, entrepreneurship, product design, and design thinking. His work has had a deeply profound and lasting impact on organizations all over the world.
Anthony ultimately has a passion for two things – 1) helping organizations reinvent themselves into engaging, human workplaces that can't help but unleash breakthrough innovation; and 2) connecting those organizations with a steady stream of opportunities to lead their markets. Anthony is himself an award-winning and internationally-recognized innovator, having brought numerous innovations to the organizations he has served. He is a deeply associative thinker with the classic ‘Innovator's DNA’ profile. His lifelong disdain for the status quo and his love for pursuing ‘what's next’ have garnered him a well-earned reputation as an agent of change.
Anthony's abilities in strategic innovation build on 30 years of leadership in business, where he has held leadership positions in disciplines such as strategy, design, marketing, product management, engineering, manufacturing, and quality. This has given him a broad and holistic perspective on innovation that is quite rare among leaders. He remains deeply embedded in each of these disciplines, and knows how to bridge them to deliver innovations that have a lasting impact on organizations, their markets, and the world.
Anthony holds graduate degrees in both Engineering and Management, and received training in executive leadership at Ashridge Business School (London) and in international business at the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad). Anthony has lived and worked in numerous urban centers – New York City, Dubai, Detroit, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, and Raleigh/Durham, while his business travels have taken him throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Anthony is the author, co-author, or executive editor of the following works: * 60 Leaders on Innovation: 22 Challenging Innovation Questions Answered by 60 World-Class Thought Leaders (Innovation Mode, 2021). * The Future Fit Manifesto (Future Fit, 2021). * The Other Side of Growth: An Innovator's Responsibilities In An Emerging World (GInI, 2020). * The GInI Applied Innovation Master Book (GInI, 2017). * Collaborative Engineering and the Internet: Linking Product Development Partners Via the Web (SME, 1998).
Executive Director
Anthony Mills
Legacy Innovation Group
Does corporate innovation need a methodology?
If you ask people about their perceptions of their organization’s corporate innovation program, you will find yourself getting very polarized answers. On the one hand, some will swear it is the most wonderful thing their organization has ever done; on the other hand, others will swear it is an utter waste of time and a complete failure. Either way, people tend to be very passionate about their answers. This polarization stems from the fact that members of the organization – often including its own leaders – are unsure of what constitutes success for such a program. In other words, the program is not well-governed, and consequently the results it produces – and the impacts those results have – may or may not be what the organization needs.
As a result, there is a wide spectrum of perspectives on how people from across different organizations perceive corporate innovation in general. On one side, it can be recognized as the true lifeblood of the organization’s future, making significant head roads into defining the path of that future. On the other side, it can be seen as merely a play-ground where the organization’s inventors and tinkerers go to play around, but which no self-respecting professional would ever be caught in. The truth is that the success or failure of corporate innovation lies very much on the shoulders of those executives who must cast its vision, sponsor its endeavours, and lead its activities. The right leader-ship – using the right framework and methods – will determine whether the program is a success or a failure [ ... ]
"
Read the complete answer and 122 more responses from 60 leaders on 22 questions: download the free eBook
