- FFWD will support business leaders across the globe to scale assets and establish innovative venture client models to drive post-pandemic growth
7th April 2022 – Global management consulting firm Kearney has today announced the launch of FFWD, its business building accelerator supporting organisations in addressing the key challenges associated with establishing venture client units, incubating and scaling deep-tech and software assets, and integrating innovative new business models and solutions into the core of organizations in a bid to deliver faster returns on investments and drive sustainable long-term growth.
Business leaders are emerging from the pandemic and seeing the previous status quo overthrown in light of new challenges and opportunities. The IDC has reported that investment in direct digital transformation will reach $6.3 trillion by 2024, yet Kearney’s own research shows that around 80 percent of technology investments are failing to fulfil their promised potential – an industry-wide challenge.
Kearney’s recent Innovation Dilemma Global Study found that while innovation has increasingly become a core component of the strategic agenda for global organisations during the pandemic, traditional innovation models are failing to deliver the expected returns due to a lack of focus, an inability to define what success looks like – and set a comprehensive strategy to achieve this – internal governance issues, a lack of proven returns and organisation-wide scepticism around impactful value creation.
The survey also highlighted the inability to integrate start-ups and tech solution providers successfully in their quest to build out their innovation ecosystems, with respondents noting that determining the right model (35%), establishing commercial agreements (35%), and evaluating the true value contribution in day-to-day business (34%) proved to be a major challenge.
Operating in this context, FFWD adopts an investor-focused approach to helping companies pin their strategic innovation investment to tangible and measurable business outcomes. With the start and end point mapped out, FFWD works alongside leaders to chart the journey together. FFWD collaborates with clients to build robust risk-weighted investment cases, leverages ecosystem partners and venture capital advisors to scan the markets and set the foundations for successful start-up selection and integration, establishes a clear governance model to enable bold decision making, sets up agile pilot programs tracked against clear KPIs, and supports asset scaling and seamless integration into the core of the organization. As the business builder arm of Kearney, FFWD taps into 90+ years of hands-on experience and cross-industry best practice working with global organisations on their transformation agendas.
FFWD is also incubating and launching several of its own deep tech-domain assets, including the recently launched venture, BinaryCore, a software engineering and cloud migration company, which is helping organisations to transform into deep technology- and platform-led businesses.
Michael Roemer, Founder, FFWD commented:
“FFWD is working with leaders to solve their most pressing challenges in the most complex environments. We are building on the traditional accelerator model of good idea incubation and venturing support with a 100% focus on tangible and measurable outcomes. Our investor approach achieves results through defining success at the start and working backwards. We are able to bring to the table forward-looking industry insights and best practice, an extended ecosystem of technology pioneers and startups, and the right toolkit to build a solid investment case, enable iterative pilot programming, shape capability uplift, and guarantee seamless asset integration to the core of your organisation.”
“We’ve seen a direct correlation between disruption and innovation in our research, making 2022 the ideal time to embrace change. Real growth requires real momentum and focused, business-wide innovation strategies have proven time and again to be the solution to hedge disruption and create long-term value.”
“FFWD is not about iterative change. It requires bold leaders able to make bold decisions to trigger transformational change that will guarantee the long-term success and survival of their organisations. For this reason, our unique co-creation approach to shaping venture client units and scale hypergrowth assets means we commit skin to the game from the outset. We work side by side with our clients at every stage of the journey, and our only measure of success is their success.”
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