Corporations across value chains make annual promises of future returns from innovation, and yet these promises often come up short.

In the Balliol Online Lecture for February 2024, Steven Freilich (Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellow 2023-24) discusses how wishful thinking that leads to poor results can be overcome with a fresh view of innovation in a corporate setting. At the heart of this new thinking is the concept of minimizing expenditure of Stupid Money. Meeting a goal of spending as little Stupid Money as possible requires companies to rethink the objectives of research and development and to follow 5 rules for innovation that help leaders avoid falling into a Stupid Money trap.

Dr Steven Freilich, Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellow at Balliol in 2023-24 is Executive-in-Residence at the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA) at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and formerly Director of Materials Science and Engineering at DuPont Central Research and Development.

Dr Freilich’s career has included developing and implementing growth strategies at the interface between technology and markets, and between academic research and corporate strategy, in areas such as materials for energy, displays, printing, engineering polymers, and biomedical applications. His board positions have included the Advisory Committee for the US Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Manufacturing Analysis Center, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the National Research Council of Canada.