Global Innovation - Together

Roni Michael asks guests on her own podcast to travel to 2040 and report back. The destination is imagined, and they are asked to describe the future they would like to see. What interests her is the return journey: how might that view change what someone chooses to do today?

In this episode of Innovation Rockstars, KPMG's Global Head of Innovation brings that question into the organization. Looking widely at technology, society and new ways of working should help a business choose a direction. It should also lead to focused initiatives. Her account connects strategy with experimentation and describes a global hackathon that progressed beyond collecting ideas. The underlying challenge is to keep the ambition broad enough to discover possibilities and the work specific enough to act on them.

Make innovation visible in the strategy

Michael describes KPMG's effort as building on innovation already happening across the organization. Part of the task was to tell a clearer story about that work, making activities and learning more visible to colleagues, clients and the wider ecosystem.

That communication matters, but it sits alongside a more demanding question: has innovation shaped the strategy itself? Michael argues that separating innovation too sharply from core activity can weaken the connection between the business's ambition and its experiments.

“Innovation is always connected to strategy.”

She proposes looking at the organization through different time horizons: improving what it does today, considering what it could become in several years and exploring its longer-term purpose. Moving between those views can help leaders reconsider current choices.

For R&D and innovation teams, that creates a more specific starting point than a general request for new ideas. What future position is the business trying to reach, and which assumptions or capabilities need work to get there? An initiative then has a reason to exist beyond its novelty.

Decide how much uncertainty the organization will accept

Michael sees value in experiments that temporarily sit apart from the core business. They can create space to test a different approach or business model. But she wants them assessed for how they connect back to the organization's direction.

The level of experimentation should also reflect an explicit appetite for uncertainty. She warns against an ambition that sounds attractive but quietly discourages exploration.

“Never intend to succeed 100% of the time.”

In her argument, insisting on universal success pushes teams toward safe bets. The alternative is to decide what level of experimentation the organization can support and to adjust quickly when evidence shows something is not working.

This is a leadership decision as much as a project-management habit. Teams need to understand the boundaries within which they can explore. A statement that experimentation is welcome means little if every unsuccessful test is later treated as an unacceptable surprise.

Measure progress against the ambition

When asked about innovation measurement, Michael returns to strategy. If the organization has genuinely challenged its assumptions and set a direction that requires innovation, its measures of execution should reflect progress toward that direction.

She also describes tracking activities such as co-innovation with clients and partners. Those measures can show whether the organization is engaging in the intended ways. They serve a different purpose from demonstrating that a new solution has delivered a business outcome.

The discussion encourages leaders to examine both the ambition and the work supporting it. A busy innovation program can still be poorly connected to strategy. Equally, a strategy can be measured carefully without having asked enough of the organization in the first place. Michael's emphasis is on resolving that connection before searching for a separate scorecard to explain innovation's value.

Design the challenge with the people who understand it

The digital future of work provided a practical focus for a KPMG challenge and hackathon. Michael describes involving clients, academic and technology partners, and KPMG leaders in identifying the problems worth addressing before the event began.

The topic itself required more precision than a broad prediction about remote work. She frames it around what organizations need and what individuals want from work. People differ in the meaning, choices and experiences they seek; a single employee model cannot capture all of that.

The innovation platform helped connect participants across countries and organizations. Teams submitted ideas, received assessment and then worked through a two-day hackathon with sessions on developing solutions and support from subject-matter experts.

Michael reports that three ideas received investment, with some funded jointly with ecosystem partners. They addressed areas including matching people's capabilities with workplace needs and making virtual work more engaging. This is a concrete continuation beyond the event, rather than a claim that the proposed solutions had already proved their commercial impact.

She also describes bringing teams together afterward to share lessons about what worked and what could improve. The collaboration process itself remained something to learn from.

Bring the future back into a present decision

The 2040 exercise captures Michael's interest in shaping a future instead of only reacting to one. The hackathon shows a more immediate version of the same movement: explore a challenge with different perspectives, develop possible responses and decide which ones merit further commitment.

Her enthusiasm is especially visible when recalling KPMG's first Global Innovation Summit, with contributors joining from around the world. A remote event, she notes, still involved an elaborate stage and studios, and brought its own complexity.

Behind both the event and the experiments is a consistent concern with people working together. Innovation becomes easier to sustain when colleagues understand what the organization wants to become, have room to test ways of getting there and can see what happens after they contribute an idea.