While innovation and agility are qualities that have become the core of good business in the 21st century, the speed of developments across every industry over the past 18 months has put their necessity in sharp relief. Speaking with MPI recently, innovation strategist Lital Marom argued that we should now consider innovation an absolute core aspect of business moving forward. She’ll be speaking at the MPI World Education Congress this coming June, and will share her insights on why dedication to innovation should be a takeaway for all leaders from the pandemic.
“The biggest thing that we’ve learned is that operational excellence or running your business really, really well, is not enough,” she said. “My biggest message is always telling companies you constantly need to explore setting the foundation of your future business.
“Before the pandemic, innovation would be like this nice to have thing that if you have a little bit of budget and you have a little bit of time, you might delve into it. Today, we understand that innovation is not an option, It’s a must. It should be an integral part of your business and I tell all leaders I talk to, your job as a leader is to spend 50 or 60 percent of your time on the future of your business, not just on your existing business, because we live in a world where everything is changing so fast.”
Lital also spoke about how an innovative spirit has imbued her career from the get-go, and has driven her to continuously explore and take on new challenges:
“My career path was not very linear,” she said. “Like every entrepreneur, it’s been a lot of up and down, to the side and around, and it’s not that I woke up and said, ‘This is what’s happening, and this is what happened.’”
Marom earned computer science and business degrees from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, eventually moving to roles in research and development, marketing and sales. She later managed a global sales team for an American company and then started to do professional speaking. She also studied investment banking at NYU’s Stern School of Business, transformative strategies and artificial intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and is a fellow of the THNK School of Creative Leadership.
“I started when I was 26, where you hardly saw any women on stage talking about technology,” she said. “It was very, very new. I literally tried everything and nothing excited me. I don’t want to be the product person, I don’t want to be the engineer, I don’t want to be the salesperson, I want to do different things all the time. I need diversity. I need to know what I’m bringing to the world. So, this is my life. It’s constantly embracing change in the sense that I never do the same job all the time. I do so many different things, and I feel that that’s how I stay interested. I’m just wired that way.”
Wrapping up her interview, Lital pointed to the importance of an innovative, modern mindset for businesses starting from the top down:
“A lot of leaders say that they are very digital savvy and that it’s very important for leaders to be digital savvy,” Marom said. “But in reality, I think it’s something like 48 percent of companies actually develop digital-savvy teams and 31 percent of companies actually assess and improve their leaders’ digital skills. So, yes, we might have been talking about those things, but in reality, we’re not doing it. There’s a lot of lip service to a lot of those things.”
She said leaders need to understand that if they want to transform their companies, they need to transform themselves, and the same goes for event management companies and leaders.
“If you want to transform your industry and you want to make sure that your industry is on the cutting edge of technology, using everything that’s available to it, then start with yourself, because you are the one that’s leading the change,” she said. “It sounds obvious, but you’ll be surprised how not obvious it is in reality. A lot of people don’t spend the time, don’t invest, don’t really understand how to use a lot of tools that we have today in their events.”
A thought leader on agile business processes, digital transformation, and the future of work, Lital Marom is an expert at helping organizations unlock the potential of their business by leveraging emerging technologies and new economic models. In her practical and engaging talks, she inspires business leaders to “disrupt themselves” and push beyond their limitations to future proof their businesses.
If you are interested in booking Lital or another speaker for a virtual presentation, please contact us for more information.