Dr. Linda Hill and InnovationForce Partner to Launch AI-enabled SaaS Platform to Accelerate the Fight Against Climate Change

InnovationForce, a leading SaaS company using AI to accelerate the process of innovating, today launched their InnovationWorks platform through a collaboration with Paradox Strategies, an innovation consulting firm started by Harvard Business School professor Dr. Linda Hill, who joins as a co-founder. The launch comes on the heels of successful deployment of the platform in the energy industry where InnovationForce, using Microsoft technology, including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Azure, and advisory support from EPRI, are enabling utilities like Portland General Electric (PGE) to optimize their innovation programs to reach decarbonization goals faster.

RALEIGH, N.C. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 25, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- InnovationForce, a leading SaaS company using AI to accelerate the process of innovating, today launched their InnovationWorks platform through a collaboration with Paradox Strategies, an innovation consulting firm started by Harvard Business School professor Dr. Linda Hill, who joins as a co-founder. The launch comes on the heels of successful deployment of the platform in the energy industry where InnovationForce, using Microsoft technology, including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Azure, and advisory support from EPRI, are enabling utilities like Portland General Electric (PGE) to optimize their innovation programs to reach decarbonization goals faster.

Working in an exclusive partnership with Paradox Strategies, the InnovationWorks platform will incorporate 30 years of data insights gathered from over 100 organizations to create AI capable of measuring and predicting successful innovation, based on cultural factors such as inclusivity, creative abrasion and psychological safety. For the first time in the innovation process, organizations can have a real-time pulse on the state of their innovation program providing visibility of the entire portfolio to frontline innovation teams to see how they are performing. This data and transparency helps organizations to increase the amount of innovation they are able to tackle by democratizing and decentralizing the process. It improves team performance through visibility into engagement and collaboration metrics providing the first innovation ecosystem in the energy industry.

"By empowering, scaling and democratizing innovation in the energy industry, we can help more frontline innovators address the severity of our global climate challenges much faster," says Linda Hill, founding partner of Paradox Strategies, and Harvard Business School professor and faculty chair. "We understood that to scale the genius of these innovators, it would take the power of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms. We chose InnovationForce due to their momentum in the energy industry and wanted to bring our decades of data and metrics to enable the kind of inclusive innovation utilities need to transform faster – which feels more urgent than ever on this Earth Day."

InnovationForce was founded by innovation managers in the utility space who saw an opportunity to empower innovators to mitigate climate change with SaaS. It is helping utilities make decisions up to 85% faster and delivering 100-fold returns on their innovation programs. Inspired by Linda Hill's book "Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation'' which she co-authored and shared in her popular TED Talk viewed nearly 2.8 million times, InnovationForce identified "Collective Genius" as a framework that could create the global gold standard for innovation. By scaling the methodology in their SaaS platform, they could reach a movement of frontline innovators capable of creating network effects for global transformation.

"At Portland General Electric, our mission is to lead the clean energy future without sacrificing reliability," said Larry Bekkedahl, SVP of Advanced Energy Delivery at PGE. "Working with InnovationForce we are building our innovation program on a global best practice that can transform and scale our learnings and lead the clean energy transition for our customers and industry partners much faster."

"Microsoft is committed to helping utilities leverage digital technology to advance the clean energy transition," says Darryl Willis, Corporate Vice President, Energy & Resources Industry at Microsoft. "Working with Dr. Hill, Paradox and InnovationForce will help deliver impactful, collaboration-centric data insights to accelerate the innovation needed to address climate change."

"The Incubatenergy Labs program provides unique opportunities for companies like InnovationForce to engage with EPRI and energy companies to demonstrate innovative technologies and services," said Dan Killoren, Program Manager for EPRI's Global Innovation Hub. "Our goal is to facilitate the scaling of new approaches to help companies like InnovationForce drive innovative approaches that can advance electrification, decarbonization, and grid modernization."

"We've assembled the dream team in technology, innovation, and collaboration to drive an urgent need for industry-wide transformation to more rapidly address climate change," says Kim Getgen, CEO of InnovationForce. "With the Collective Genius framework incorporated into our AI-enabled SaaS platform, our goal is to create the equivalent of a Net Promoter Score (NPS) for innovation that becomes a global industry standard. We are immensely grateful for Dr. Hill, Paradox, Microsoft, and EPRI who have all chosen to work with InnovationForce as an early-stage company. We especially want to thank our first utility customers like PGE who opened up their innovation process to us so that together, we could find ways to mitigate climate change faster."

For more information and to schedule a demo of InnovationWorks, visit http://innovationforce.io.

About InnovationForce

InnovationForce™ is simplifying the often complicated innovation process with a revolutionary technology platform that helps enterprises innovate faster while reducing the number of hours per person. Through the use of our patent-pending Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology platform, innovator ecosystems can leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to innovate faster by bringing in the right people at the right time to scale innovation rapidly. With this data, innovation workflows can be measured through dashboards that optimize team performance. Our mission is to automate the innovation process for industries solving the world's most complex energy, defense, and logistics problems. InnovationForce was named a "Most Innovative Company of 2023" by Fast Company; learn more at InnovationForce.io.

About Paradox Strategies

Paradox Strategies is a leading-edge boutique consulting firm focused on helping leaders unlock and lead innovation within their organizations. Founded by Linda Hill, Greg Brandeau, and Emily Truelove, Paradox Strategies leverages decades of cutting-edge thought leadership and innovation-led operating experience to help the C-suite, corporate boards, and senior executives of large organizations around the world to assess their innovation potential and guide them in developing the capabilities necessary for sparking sustained innovation. For more information visit http://www.paradoxstrategies.com.

Media Contact

Amy Jackson, TaleSplash for InnovationForce, 1 4156092435, [email protected]

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