Costas Papaikonomou - Rethinking Innovation In The Real World

Disruption sounds exciting until it wrecks your margins and burns your runway. With innovation veteran Costas Papaikonomou, we get practical about what actually works: protecting your core with calendar-driven updates, growing into real openings, and saving transformation for when the house is truly on fire. We unpack how to make change feel inevitable by aligning ideas with the line you already have, the retailers you must persuade, and the way buyers really shop.

Costas reframes factories as kitchens, where small, thoughtful tweaks produce a surprising range of new “recipes” that run on day one. We explore pace layering—why fast-moving trends fade, infrastructure moves slowly, culture moves slower, and nature barely moves at all—and how ignoring these layers creates five-years-away fantasies. From S-curve convergence in phones to the folly of biscuit brands building apps, we separate theatre from throughput and show how to launch products that stick.

We also go deep on TRIZ and the Ideal Final Result: four vectors that predict the next right move—more perfect, more instant, more autonomous, cheaper. This lens helps you spot inevitable shifts (think wireless over mechanical) and invest ahead of the curve. Finally, we step into the circular economy thesis: cutting material and energy inputs to reduce pollution while improving cost and performance. As digital growth collides with energy limits, cleaner power, better materials, and smarter manufacturing will define the next decade.

If you’re ready to trade slogans for shipped value, this conversation will reset how you think about innovation. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs a reality check, and leave a review to tell us which pace layer you’re building for.

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