Innovation Strategy Awards Winners 2025

At Future Festival World Summit, Trend Hunter recognized six leaders turning breakthrough ideas into everyday practice across six frameworks: Ability to Change, Culture of Innovation, Opportunity Hunting, Adaptive Innovation, Infectious Messaging, and Sustainability Impact. Winners took home 2025 Innovation Strategy Awards, then joined CEO Jeremy Gutsche and Chief Growth Officer Jonathan Brown on stage to share what's working.

This Year’s Winners

• Ability to Change — Holly Sharp, Instinct (Innovation Sr. Manager)
  Holly’s team runs focused offsite sessions to generate and align on ideas quickly. They blend consumer panels, desk research, and e-commerce/social scans to find what matters to shoppers. An always-on innovation office keeps improvements moving so good ideas don’t stall.

• Culture of Innovation — Michelle Cochrane, Interac (Innovation Lead)
  Interac uses immersive studio-style workshops to solve tough problems fast. An internal incubator coaches employees from concept to pitch. Company-wide challenges have produced 150+ ideas and multiple pilots, making innovation part of everyday work.

• Opportunity Hunting — Chris Gurr, Newell Brands (Senior Director, Industrial Design, L&D)
  Newell puts makers and GenAI in the same room to explore more options, then cycles rapidly to narrow to the best few. AI personas keep the consumer perspective “in the room” so concepts improve with each pass.

• Adaptive Innovation — Leslie Fink & Jagdish Yadav, City of Toronto
  The team brings together industry, academia, government, and even competitors to work on shared challenges. They build networks that make partnerships easier, and they use small pilots in real city environments to prove what works before scaling.

• Infectious Messaging — Garnet McElree, LMNO (Chief Inspiration Officer & Creative Strategist)
  LMNO starts with quantity-first brainstorming so every voice is heard. Structured play makes it safe to experiment and find bolder ideas. Short, focused work sprints followed by cool-off time help the strongest stories rise to the top.

• Sustainability Impact — Austin Headley, ShopBroker (CEO & Founder)
  ShopBroker maps pain points for different types of users to see where trust breaks and transactions fail. They add verification, secure payments, and proof-of-condition to existing platforms to reduce waste and improve outcomes. Early on, leadership stays closely involved to set a high quality bar before scaling.

Highlights from the Stage

During the panel discussion, a few themes stood out. Teams made faster progress when they treated innovation as a routine with clear programs—labs, incubators, and pilot paths—instead of one-off efforts. They made better decisions by testing with real people earlier, whether through panels or realistic AI personas. Cross-functional and cross-industry collaboration produced options that single teams would have missed. Finally, small, well-structured pilots built evidence and confidence before anyone pushed to scale.

Get Involved

If your team has a tactic worth sharing, nominations for the 2026 Innovation Strategy Awards are now open ahead of next year’s Future Festival World Summit on September 29, 2026. Winners are recognized on stage and featured across Trend Hunter channels. Reach out to our team to learn more.