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Cohen: Isolating innovation projects risks alienating employees driving core daily operations

Stephanie Cohen · a16z Podcast | M&A and Innovation, Inside Out · Jan 2, 2019 · at 40:12

Stephanie Cohen, Chief Strategy Officer at Goldman Sachs, discusses the organizational risk of treating corporate innovation as a separate fun activity away from core business execution.

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“You could get to a place where you actually distract the whole organization because in an organization of tens of thousands of people, there's a lot of people every day who just have to be with their clients, execute, and they need to have fun doing that and not feel like they're not doing the fun stuff, that all the fun stuff is the cool innovation. In the corner.”

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