Innovation Portfolio Management: Linking Strategy to Execution

70% of technology transformations fail. Not because of the technology, but because of the gap between a strategy set in the boardroom and the work that actually gets executed.

In this episode, Donna P. Mitchell sits down with Noel Sobelman, Partner at Accel Management Group and author of Innovation Portfolio Management: Linking Strategy to Execution. For more than two decades, Noel has helped the world's largest enterprises, including Medtronic, BD, Siemens, Kimberly Clark, Honeywell, and Whirlpool, turn innovation strategy into real execution.

Most leaders think the adoption gap shows up at implementation. Noel sees it forming earlier, in the boardroom, when strategy fragments and the wrong projects get funded. Together they unpack where innovation really breaks: funding the technology before the customer problem, the difference between a project leader and a coordinator, why killing the right project should be rewarded, and the question almost no one can answer, who actually owns adoption.

TOPICS COVERED:

- Why "fall in love with the problem, not the solution" is the discipline most teams skip

- How portfolio management connects strategy to execution

- What separates a true cross-functional leader from a coordinator

- How to reframe a killed project as learning, not failure

- Why the regulatory function, not engineering, is often the real bottleneck in healthcare

- Who should own adoption, and why it is the million dollar question

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Cold Open