Innovation Labs — Intro!

I have spent 8 great years working for two consumer anti virus Brands AVG & Avast both merged on 2016 as part of the declining of the consumer antivirus business and the consolidation in that market. During my time there I served as the Company Chief Scientist officer, where I was responsible for setting the innovation agenda, support the M&A team for new technology buyouts and Investments in startups.

But the most inspiriting thing to me was to lead and be part of the companies Innovation lab. Where we had the luckiest job for technology & business enthusiastic people to actually get paid while starting new innovative disruptive business & technology initiatives (sometime to the company itself). As a serial entrepreneur that was great opportunity and the freedom was more presence in the risk we have taken with the different projects.

While setting up the team and managing the company’s Agenda, the Innovation labs team have produced an enormous number of new initiatives that have generated Important IP, strong PR, New Business lines, new features to the existing products new revenue models and always performing at the far front of technology while the company that hosted Innovation labs was mostly milking an existing older market.

The success of the team was driven by few unique factors; the structure of the teams (HR), the distance from the company’s daily operations (Freedom), the strong focus on measurable success (Discipline) and involvement in the company’s objectives, the major market trends and VC activities in innovative technologies (Responsibility).

I will try to put my perspective on the projects we have put out the success stories, the advantage of the group structure and the impact we got to the hosting company, while analyzing what did or didn’t work and my perspective of this experience