I’m curious to hear from strategists who shifted from advertising into more innovation / consulting roles, and how it’s going. I’d love to get out of campaign work and more into solving business/product problems.

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Yo! From someone in the field, here’s my perspective. I started with a slightly non-traditional path vs others in the typical agency world. First real job was in small business sales AT&T. Then moved to a couple agencies (brand strategy & software development), then client (brand management/New Ventures at P&G). Now I’m consulting in Innovation and Corporate Ventures.

My current day-to-day consists of leading intrapreneur teams through the process of discovering, prototyping, testing, validating, and de-risking new business opportunities.

Despite being in the field, I would strongly advise against working in corporate innovation (either client or agency) lol. With two exceptions, either working at a highly respected and prestigious innovation agency, like Ideo, or a large autonomous internal innovation studios, like Nike Valiant Labs or GV. Working at Ideo would be great work; but it’s lower pay (vs industry), highly competitive, and they a have a preference to hiring designers with business/strategy knowledge vs traditional strategist.

From the client side, Innovation is approached in three main ways:

1 Traditional R&D - build a solution and look for a market. These are going to be highly technical/scientific or reserved for PhD candidates.q

2 Corporate Venture Capital - use market expertise to build a portfolio of strategic investments and M&As. These roles are highly analytical and are only reserved for Legal and Finance. Plus one portfolio manager (usually a VP in Finance or Innovation).

3 Innovation Studios - test and build solutions within a strategic opportunity area. Based on your other responses, it sounds like this is the area you’d be looking. Corporate innovation is a chimera and almost always structured to fail. Often because or lack of larger internal buy-in or resources, bad talent/skill fit, no sense of urgency, and/or, strong opposition to any risk. So, must of the job is moving the needle just enough to develop excitement and buzz around initial business ideas/innovations to make the Executive (who funded the effort) look good. Leaving the new business to fizzle out and never fully launch/staff.

Here are some of my recommendations for other areas to explore. [upstream] If you’re really interested in Design Thinking consider roles in Market Research, Insights, or consumer behavior. [downstream] if you’re interested in GTM consider New Business Agencies: Product Development focused (e.g. Box Clever or Doris Day), or, Brand Development focused (e.g. Red Antler or Bullish).

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Awesome! I’m happy to answer any questions you might have too. Best of luck!

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Not exactly innovation consulting but temporarily shifted to Customer Experience Strategy a few years ago because of a change of scope on a big client. Really loved it. Now back to 50/50 between campaign and CX, great having the opportunity to cultivate both sides. At a digital agency so there's that too.

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Yes, I love (and do) CX strategy more than traditional brand strategy. Glad you’re enjoying it.

I do some of what you’re looking for in addition to campaign strategy. I’m in an in-house team. I did LUMA institute training (level 1) which was helpful. There’s a bunch of design thinking books to read too. Then you just need to start trying to find ways to put it into practice to show you can do it. I started by running lots of brainstorms and workshops within the agencies I worked at. Usually around brand positioning and things like that. Then you just start to build up credibility

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Thank you! I have a Design Thinking cred and do CX strategy but will definitely check out LUMA. Thanks for the rec.

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I shifted from VP Group Strat Director on agency side to Consumer Planning Director on the corporate side earlier this year and I wish I would have done it sooner. You have creative agency exposure and participate in steering campaign ideas, while penning category strategies based on a more intimate view of actual consumer behavior (eg purchase data) to help brand managers focus their creative. I’m over the moon. Best of both worlds. Feels like I’m getting run over by a steamroller at the moment, but the challenge is pretty amazing.

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In most places, it’s likely an insights role. I was pretty resistant to the thought of moving into an insights department because I’m stronger at creative strategy than research design (but I love digging deep in qual discussions). I’ve found in my company, most brand managers haven’t had in depth exposure to creative development the way you would have on the agency side (duh). So you’re able to make a big impact quickly, while making sense of consumer data. The learning curve on the data side has been steep because it’s like learning a new language. But it’s been worth it. I’m in a CPG org.

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Pivoted in the innovation consulting earlier this year. Not as sexy as you think; so much of it is “migration to the cloud” and helping companies navigate “change management” as they develop new products/services because that’s where the $$$ is. Curious to see if there’s anyone in the Corporate Venture Building space and if their experience is any different.

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Interesting. Do you think this is because of the nature of your client/category, or would it be the same if you were in retail, CPG, DTC etc?

Why? What is prompting you to want to do this? And do you have the appropriate training?

I have a Design Thinking cred, and I do a lot of go to market strategies for start-ups now. For context, I left my full-time agency job a year and a half ago and do a combo of agency freelancing and direct-to-brand consulting. I’m becoming less and less passionate about campaign/execution agency stuff. I’d love to find more opportunities that are in the innovation/product planning space.

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