Highlights from our archive of insights for the future-ready executive.
Luminary Labs was founded in 2009, and the Lab Report, our email newsletter, launched in 2011. Six years ago, we began publishing weekly. Now this week, we’re marking an important milestone: our 300th issue. To celebrate, we’re looking back at the archive of weekly newsletters and sharing highlights.
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We like to describe the Lab Report as a publication that delivers “exclusive insights for the future-ready executive.” These are just a few of our greatest hits and personal favorites from recent years.
2017
Emerging technology and enterprise value: We explored the potential for voice technology with a voice-first reading list and a look at the paradigm shift across industries.
Automation, education, and the future of work: One of our most popular reading lists of all time looked at how new technologies and ways of working — including AI — are dramatically reshaping modern industries, and what humans should be doing now to prepare for an unpredictable future.
2018
Tech ethics: We interviewed health tech ethicists, encouraged technologists to learn from sci-fi, and offered new frameworks for tech’s “seatbelt moment.”
Researching open innovation: We surveyed 60 prize recipients of 14 large-scale, multistage challenges for insights into open innovation outcomes. We also surveyed nearly 100 private sector, government, and nonprofit organizations to find out how they were using open innovation; this landmark survey yielded the inaugural State of Open Innovation report.
2019
Problem spotlights: We went deep on important issues, with problem spotlights on the opioid crisis, upskilling and reskilling, building a thoughtful space economy, the aging of America, and algorithmic bias and health.
Accelerating innovation: Innovation is a short and long game, and success often depends on things money can’t buy. We looked at how different types of accelerators and thoughtful approaches to prototyping and piloting can help an organization validate its investment thesis and avoid expensive mistakes.
Crowdsourcing and curation: We surveyed readers and sifted through hundreds of links for our first crowdsourced list of conferences and list of 200+ email newsletters.
2020
Pandemic response: We published our COVID-19 reading list on the first Thursday in March and started tracking the open innovation response to the pandemic. Before the end of March, our efforts had translated into a new initiative and spinoff publication called CovidX.
Imagining the future: Times of disruption and uncertainty can be frustrating, but offer opportunities to question norms and change what’s not working. We tracked fundamental shifts accelerated by the pandemic and interviewed pragmatic futurists about the forces impacting business and society.
2021
Open innovation for public health: We reviewed more than 300 open innovation initiatives that launched around the world in 2020 to identify themes and develop recommendations for using open innovation to address a crisis. As a follow-up, we collaborated with experts and advocated for open innovation’s potential to help solve 21st-century public health problems.
Exploration and experimentation: To update our perennially popular crowdsourced list of must-read email newsletters, we asked our extended network about their favorite newsletters, the places they go for information and inspiration, and what’s missing from their inboxes. We discussed the list during a Clubhouse event as part of our experimentation with the new platform.
2022
People, places, and possibilities: As organizations considered how to return to the office, we embraced a hybrid model. For our in-depth report on new value propositions for the future of work, we reviewed nearly 100 resources, outlining mid-range and longer-term considerations, as well as competitive implications, for attracting and retaining talent, enhancing productivity, and accelerating innovation.
Perspectives on design: Design is integral to our work, and every team — from Strategy and Communications to Business Operations — engages in design on a daily basis. We shared our thoughts on design’s role in strategy and innovation consulting and explained why we believe every decision is a design decision.
Sharing our values and how we work: We calibrated our shared compass and co-created a set of values that continue to guide our work. Through virtual “ask me anything” conversations with Luminary Labs CEO Sara Holoubek, President Janna Gilbert, and a panel of Senior Associates, we shared what it’s like to work at Luminary Labs and how we put those values into action.
2023
In-depth reports: For our Health 2025 report, we asked healthcare decision-makers about the investments they’re making in people, technology, and real systemic change. And we surveyed 100+ leading organizations for our new State of Open Innovation report, which examines open innovation’s current role in organizations, identifies shifts and trends, and looks at what the future might hold.
Conference insights: In-person events were back in a big way, and our team was on site to synthesize takeaways from conferences, including SXSW EDU, SynBioBeta, and HLTH.
2024
We’re just getting started: We’ve already announced a growing team, and we’ll have more big announcements to come. Our sixth annual list of must-attend events includes some of the places we’ll be this winter and spring. We look forward to sharing insights across our focus areas, while exploring intersections with important themes that transcend topics and industries.
