Issue 3 2021

30 CEO MONTHLY / ISSUE 3 2021 , Nov20727 On Your Marks LMarks is a firmof global specialists in corporate innovation. Using collaboration as an accelerant for purposeful change in the world’s leading businesses, LMarks leverages a culture of innovation, pioneering technologies, and entrepreneurial ideas of early and growth-stage businesses to empower the market. LMarks today boasts the UK’s largest network of corporate innovation labs and is recognised as a leader inmaking change happen. CEODaniel Saunders tells us more. Specialists in corporate innovation, L Marks has launched almost seventy innovation programmes across the UK, Europe, Israel, Asia, and the US since its inception as one of the first corporate accelerators in the UK in 2014. Consequently, the firm has created the country’s largest global network of corporate innovation labs, working with their clients – or corporate partners, as they are better known – to establish value-driven and cultural change within organisations through embedding innovation. L Marks was born from the belief that collaboration is the most powerful way of affecting purposeful change. As such, through its international network, the firm seeks to enable and incorporate innovation between partners to develop and reach strategic goals for businesses, such as driving new products or services, increasing efficiency, improving customer experiences, saving costs, and ultimately promoting successful growth. L Marks discovers more than 10,000 early and growth-stage companies each year, who meet the specific needs of their corporate partners and working the firm’s innovation programmes to achieve business goals. With a staggering 72% of businesses continuing to work with their corporate partners once L Marks completes the programme, the value of these partnerships is clear to see. Moreover, the importance of innovation to businesses in all verticals and of all sizes across the world is becoming increasingly clear, and L Marks’ corporate partners are those businesses who recognise not only how innovation can drive their own businesses forward, but also how they can contribute to the wider innovation eco-system. However, many organisations are reluctant to let go of the business mentalities that have worked for them for so long, preferring to sacrifice the future for the sake of the present when faced with financial adversity. In addition, many of the other organisations in corporate innovation that have appeared since L Marks began are often guilty of promising a great deal, without delivering on commercial outcomes. Whilst the impacts of these empty promises are detrimental to the innovation industry, L Marks’ continued commitment to delivering value and results for their partners keeps its business and the industry thriving, in financially unstable times. Moreover, L Marks recognises that innovation is not always about looking ahead five, ten or fifty years, but also deploying solutions that will have long term and sustainable effects that will also impact the bottom line to drive new business opportunities and efficiencies rapidly. The businesses that L Marks works with are called partners instead of clients because across their many innovation