How a Culture of Innovation Fuels Growth | What’s Your Edge?

In this episode of What’s Your Edge? we’re focusing on a foundational driver of sustainable growth: innovation. Research from McKinsey suggests that companies that prioritize innovation generate significantly higher growth than their peers. In one study, “innovation leaders” achieved 2.4 times higher total shareholder returns than laggards over a 10-year period, underscoring that innovation is not a “nice to have,” but a core driver of long-term value.

As everyone listening knows, true innovation isn’t a one-time event or the product of a lone genius. It’s a disciplined, iterative effort, woven into the culture and operations of high-performing organizations. You may have read our article “Massive Action Leads to Business Growth, Innovation, and Operational Excellence,” where we explored how companies that operationalize innovation, where it is everyone’s responsibility, are the ones that consistently outpace their peers.  Today, we’re talking with Ed Trevis, President and CEO of Corvalent, an industrial computing manufacturing company, whose leadership journey offers a compelling blueprint for transforming a legacy business through innovation.

Welcome Ed!

Thank you, Laura, for inviting me to this episode. You’re absolutely right that induced innovation can drive profound transformation. In my 32 years of leading the company, we’ve experienced multiple moments where we had to break from the norm and pivot, whether for technological advancement, shifting markets, or economic and financial pressures. As CEOs, we must maintain a healthy paranoia about the possibility of becoming obsolete, and it’s often in those moments that real action and breakthrough innovation occur.

Innovation Cannot Be Exclusive to Products and Services

Ed, I’m so glad you mentioned that innovation starts at the top. And that Leaders must set expectations, model curiosity, and foster accountability. Ed, you’ve led Corvalent since its founding in 1993. Can you share the pivotal moment when you realized Corvalent needed to embrace a culture of innovation? What was the catalyst for this shift?

Purchase Your Growth Plan

There were several moments in the life of our organization where we had to be more than innovative, but there was one that I even wrote in my Portuguese book about innovation. The chapter is called “The dangerous silence and how demotivation threatened our future”. We faced a silent, but devastating problem: employee demotivation. A widespread feeling of stagnatio