or Senior Head of Innovation today than they were five years ago – and yet more innovation activity is alive and growing at lower levels of the org chart. • At one large US-based insurance company, after their Chief Innovation Officer departed, the Chief Digital Officer took over the function, and eventually saw his title change to Chief Digital and Innovation Officer. The vast majority of innovation leaders at large firms rely on existing functional leaders to shape the innovation agenda, and to supply or approve innovation projects. • One innovation leader at a large food and beverage company explained: “I don’t try to sell anything internally.” • A lead innovation executive at SAP shared: “We don’t have appetite for radical or step-change innovation. SAP doesn’t need it…we call [the function] innovation, but it’s more like let’s quickly assess what should be the first proof points and applications of LLMs, as an example.” for innovation leaders across industries, quite dramatically. Understanding and deploying newly maturing technologies – AI and LLMs in particular – has replaced business-model innovation as the top agenda item. , in most of the large organizations we studied. • At a large financial-services firm, the VP of Innovation Development shared: “We are really careful to build a culture that avoids the spotlight and is service oriented. We don’t want to take 12 weeks for a product that’s killed because the interest beyond our team isn’t there.”