Innovation Under Pressure: How Leaders Protect the Future While Delivering Today

Most leaders say innovation matters. Then a supply chain breaks, a market shifts, and innovation becomes “next quarter.”
Ivanka Visnjic lives in the gap between what companies promise and what they can actually execute under pressure.
She is a full-time Professor of Innovation at ESADE Business School, advises global leadership teams, and serves as a Board Member.
In our interview, she explains what it takes to keep innovation viable while making sustainability real, not just measurable.
If you’re trying to protect long-term bets without losing the numbers fight, this conversation will land.

1. You are a Professor of Innovation at ESADE, a supervisory board member at public and private companies, as well as a senior advisor to C-suite execs and public sector leadership. What value does someone who sits between academia and the C-suite bring to how large organizations strategize and innovate?

Ivanka: Thanks to my experience across a variety of industries, I’m able to zoom out and see the bigger picture through comparison across sectors. Protecting long-term value and making the company resilient and future-proof requires foresight, and that foresight often comes from cross-industry pattern recognition—from seeing how other industries went through similar turbulence and what they learned.

Furthermore, as a researcher, I benefit from independence and the ability to investigate what is really going on inside the company. That independence often inspires confidence across different levels of the organization, which gives me access to a clearer understanding of the real issues behind the formal narrative.

My second advantage, as an academic focused on strategy and innovation, is that I can structure ambiguity and help turn it into decisions. My core expertise is decision making under uncertainty and navigating transformation processes in large and mid-sized enterprises. Further to that, I leverage facilitation and teaching skills to orchestrate diverse senior decision makers, build consensus around a common vision, and make practical decisions about what that vision means in implementation.

So in short, I practice the “art” of driving foresight and supporting transformation processes. That complements what former CEOs, finance leaders, compliance experts, or pure tech experts typically bring—deep subject matter expertise based on past experience. Mine is more versatile and future-oriented: it helps organizations make sense of change and navigate change with resilience.

2. Tell us more about your subject matter expertise. What problem are leaders calling you about most right now?

Ivanka: Right now, the calls cluster around one overarching problem: how to renew growth when the old playbook still pays the bills, but the future is arriving fast.

That shows up in three very practical questions.

First, customer-centric growth: leaders are asking how to move beyond optimizing the current product portfolio and instead uncover new sources of value by getting much closer to what customers actually need—especially as expectations shift toward outcomes, services, and better experiences.

Second, business model transformation: many feel pressure from two directions at once—new technologies, especially AI, and new requirements, especially sustainability. The question is how to adapt the business model so the company remains competitive and credible in a greener, more digital economy, without destabilizing the core.

Third, turning innovation into measurable impact: executives are tired of “great inventions” and scattered pilots. They want a clear line from technology and innovation investment to commercial impact—growth, margins, resilience—and to ROI that stands up in the executive committee and the boardroom.

So in short, they’re not calling about innovation as creativity. They’re calling about innovation as execution under constraints—how to build what’s next while still delivering this quarter.

3. You started in consulting at McKinsey. What did that experience teach you about how big companies actually change, not how they say they change?

Ivanka: In large organizations, there’s often a real gap between the story of change and the mechanicsof change. And the biggest driver of that gap is almost always at the top: either the leadership team isn’t aligned, or there is a leadership vacuum.

When the top team isn’t truly aligned on why change is needed, what it means, and whoowns it, the organization senses the ambiguity. In that situation, the gap between what the company says and what it actually does tends to widen.

What I learned is that closing that narrative–implementation gap requires three things.

First, future orientation. Top teams need to look beyond quarterly KPIs and use forward-looking indicators that show whether the company is responding to changes in the environment and in customer requirements.

Second, outcome orientation. It’s not enough to talk about ideas or run early prototypes. Leaders need to choose a few concrete opportunities—market opportunities, big bets, and also quick wins—and track them closely as evidence that the transformation and future-proofing is actually happening.

Third, openness to collaboration with the right governance. Companies need to be willing to set up governance that allows them to collaborate safely—but also freely—with startups and with large partners that have capabilities and experience they don’t have internally, especially in areas like AI and technology-enabled transformation.

That combination—alignment at the top, a future and outcome orientation, and governed openness to collaboration—is what separates “change as a narrative” from “change as execution.”

4. Your work focuses on discontinuous technological shifts and radical innovation. What’s the earliest sign a legacy company is about to miss the next wave?

Ivanka: There are a few recurring innovation dysfunctions that are early warning signs a company is about to miss the next wave.

The first is incrementalism. This is when a company keeps refining and optimizing the existing product portfolio while largely ignoring emerging trends, technologies, new business models, or changing customer expectations. It feels safe, but it’s often a sign the company is not really engaging with what’s coming next.

The second is innovation activism. You see a lot of activity—dozens of small pilots, for example in AI—but they are fragmented, disconnected, and often driven at lower levels of the organization. There is energy and effort, but not enough clear strategic focus or alignment, for results to be generated.

The third is innovation theatre. Externally, the company looks innovative: startup partnerships, innovation labs, events. But internally, those activities are disconnected from the core business and decision-making, so they don’t translate into real change.

If you see one of these patterns, it’s already a warning sign. If you see two or three at the same time, it’s usually a strong indication that the company is not set up to transform—and is likely to miss the next wave.

5. You’ve spent years studying how established firms deal with uncertainty. When trade, supply chains, and geopolitics get messy, what keeps innovation viable?

Ivanka: Innovation must deliver value. That doesn’t mean focusing only on incremental improvements, but managing a portfolio of transformational innovation—combining quick wins with bigger bets. Quick wins help demonstrate value early and build confidence. Big bets are what ultimately generate meaningful returns and future growth. You need both.

Second, companies need to translate vision into clear kill criteria and decision rights. A vision on its own isn’t enough. Leaders need clarity on what types of opportunities they are pursuing, how opportunities are sourced and prioritized, which ones are deliberately left behind, and who has the decision rights to make those trade-offs. This is what allows organizations to make tough choices when resources are constrained.

Finally, innovation needs to be supported by governance, not just ambition. The way innovation is governed—through processes, incentives, structures, and resource allocation—is what truly signals to the organization that innovation matters. That is what shapes culture in practice.

Culture doesn’t change through slogans or website statements. It changes when the organization consistently sees that innovation is funded, governed, and rewarded, even when the environment becomes uncertain.

6. A big thread in your research is the shift from product to service business models and selling outcomes. Where do most teams get servitization wrong?

Ivanka: There are a few recurring mistakes.

First, many companies miss the opportunity entirely. They don’t systematically think about how services can add value to their products, deepen customer relationships, protect the product business over time, and open up new sources of growth. As a result, services remain peripheral instead of strategic.

Second, companies often underestimate how different services really are. They assume servitization will be relatively easy because they already know the product. But services are a different business. You have to identify real sources of customer value, and that is not always obvious. Teams frequently assume customers want highly sophisticated, top-end services, when in reality value often comes from facilitation, reliability, and convenience rather than complexity.

Third, servitization requires a shift in mindset—from selling tangibles to selling intangibles, and from transactional relationships to long-term ones. That means learning how to price, sell, and deliver outcomes over time, not just products at the point of sale.

Finally, many companies struggle with the organizational side. Once you have both product and service businesses, how you organize and govern the relationship between them becomes critical. If that interface isn’t well designed, services either get starved or end up in conflict with the core product business.

Most servitization efforts fail not because the idea is wrong, but because companies underestimate the strategic, commercial, and organizational changes it requires.

7. You’ve worked closely with companies like Atlas Copco, Enel, FC Barcelona, Holcim, IBM, Lego, Telefonica and many others. What separates the firms that scale innovation from the ones that run pilots forever?

Ivanka: The main difference is strategic clarity at the top.

When the top management team is clear and aligned on what innovation is actually solving for, they are willing to commit real resources and, just as importantly, give innovation access to the core of the business—business lines, customers, and operational capabilities.

That strong connection between core strategy and innovation, and between innovation and the business units, is what allows companies to connect all the dots needed to move from a pilot to a scaled solution.

When that clarity is missing, pilots may look promising, but the moment larger investments are required to push the offering to market—bottlenecks appear. At that point, innovation stalls.

So it’s rarely a technology problem. It’s a leadership and alignment problem.

8. Many corporate leaders now frame ESG as non-negotiable, but budgets still get cut. In the boardroom, what’s the best way to protect long-term bets while staying honest about near-term numbers?

Ivanka: The best way is to treat ESG with purpose and pragmatism—meaning: make it business as usual, not a side agenda.

In the boardroom, I would push three things.

First, anchor ESG in materiality and strategy. Is this truly material to the core business and the value chain? If yes, then it’s not “nice to have.” It becomes part of how the company competes. And the strongest protection for long-term bets is to show where ESG can be a source of differentiation and growth, not only cost or compliance.

Second, translate ambition into a concrete path and an innovation portfolio. In our research, we saw that companies make progress when they don’t just set long-term targets, but structure investment across a portfolio—some initiatives that can scale with acceptable ROI time frames, some new growth opportunities, and some longer-term transformative bets. That lets you stay honest on near-term numbers while still funding the future.

Third, govern it like the core business. Clear decision rights, clear metrics, and clear review cadence—so leaders can make tough choices without killing the strategic intent. In other words: integrate ESG into operating and investment decisions the same way you would any strategic transformation.

9. Many firms have public sustainability targets. In your work, what’s the gap between the press release and the operating model?

Ivanka: The gap is the use of innovation.

My research collaborators and I found that many companies announce ambitious sustainability targets, but their operating model assumes those goals can be delivered with the same technologies, processes, and decision rules they already have. In practice, sustainability goals often require solutions that don’t yet exist, or solutions that are not yet economically and technically viable at scale.

That creates a very practical execution problem. Teams are asked to incorporate sustainability criteria without compromising cost, quality, and performance, and many goals—especially across the value chain—require changes beyond the firm’s direct control. If the company doesn’t explicitly treat sustainability as an innovation agenda, it ends up with bold ambition on paper and a system designed for efficiency, not transformation.

So the real difference between the press release and the operating model is whether the company uses innovation—through how it frames priorities, invests, collaborates, and governs trade-offs—as the engine that turns sustainability ambition into measurable progress.

10. You’re originally from Serbia, and you also sit on the board of a company based in the Balkans. From that inside view, how do you see innovation evolving in the region, and what challenges and opportunities stand out most?

Ivanka: From what I see from the inside, the Balkans have a real innovation advantage in one place: talent. The talent pool is growing, especially in tech, and it’s highly motivated. There’s also a strong entrepreneurial culture—people are used to moving fast, being resourceful, and pushing through constraints. That agility is a real asset.

The main gaps are on the scaling side. One is limited access to growth capital, which makes it harder for companies to move from strong execution to building larger platforms and international reach. The other is managerial know-how for scaling—how to build governance, processes, and leadership systems that can take a company from a regional base to a global level.

There’s also a structural issue: the region still has relatively few large companies that were born in the Balkans and have become global references. That matters because role models and repeatable playbooks are powerful. Without them, many firms are learning from scratch how to run a headquarters-to-delivery model that works with local constraints and resources, but also meets the expectations of Western clients, partners, and investors.

So the opportunity is clearly there—talent and entrepreneurial energy. The challenge is building the financing, governance, and scaling capability that can turn that energy into durable, internationally competitive businesses.

11. Looking ahead, what’s next for you, both professionally and as a mother?

Ivanka: As a mother, my number one job—and the one that gives me the most purpose—is to see my son thrive with happiness and fulfilment of his full human potential. That’s an everyday investment. And, honestly, I use many of the same tools I use in my strategy and innovation work: a bit of foresight about what he might need next, a lot of experimentation to see what works, and close attention to what genuinely interests him, what he enjoys, and what captivates his attention. Last but not least, lots of love and patience.

Professionally, I want to keep working at the intersection of innovation and positive change. I’m looking to support companies that are using innovation in a serious way—through advising and board work—and then translate what I learn from industry back into research and into the classroom. The goal is to keep closing the loop: practice informs research, research informs teaching, and through publishing and teaching I can help more leaders build the capabilities to deliver value in their own contexts.