• 
  Article
• 
  1 April 2025
• 
  4 minute read
• 
  Mark Ogden

Business isn’t fair, especially when you’re trying to lead change from the inside.

But what if you could tilt the odds in your favour?

From Protection to Possibility

Disruptors move with speed and laser focus. Incumbents? They’re built for stability, not agility. And in a market that rewards bold moves, many corporates find themselves stuck between protecting what works and exploring what’s next.

Incumbents have the advantage of scale, trust, and mature systems. But those same strengths often create inertia.

Success breeds a protection mindset. Processes get rigid. Teams focus on what’s defensible, not what’s possible. The result? Innovation that’s cautious, slow, and ultimately incremental.

Sure, there are exceptions organisations that rewrote their playbooks to stay ahead:

Microsoft rebuilt its foundation around the cloud.
Adobe ditched boxed software and bet everything on subscriptions.
Toyota made hybrids mainstream before anyone else took them seriously.

These weren’t surface-level innovations. They were bold, business-model-level shifts made possible by combining incumbent strength with a disruptor’s mindset.

The Real Challenge Isn’t Capability. It’s Mindset

Disruptors operate like they’ve got nothing to lose. They move quickly, test relentlessly, and pivot without red tape. That freedom gives them a clear edge.

Incumbents, on the other hand, have everything to lose – and act like it. Which is exactly why most internal innovation efforts fall short. You can’t transform by simply asking corporate teams to “act like a startup.” It’s a fundamentally different operating model.

The Innovation Difference

At 11point2, we help large corporations build an unfair advantage by fusing their existing strengths with the entrepreneurial speed, methods, and momentum of true disruptors.

We call it dual-speed innovation.

Thinking Fast: We bring entrepreneurial velocity to rapidly explore and validate new opportunities.
Thinking Slow: We layer in the right governance to manage risk and align with corporate realities.

This combination gives organisations the confidence to move boldly without compromising their core business or reputation.

It’s not just theory. It works.

One of our partners in the energy sector used this approach to validate a new circular economy model in just 10 weeks, an initiative their internal teams had been circling for over a year.

Why It Matters Now

Markets are shifting faster than most corporates can adapt. The traditional models innovation labs, internal R&D, accelerators aren’t delivering consistent, transformational outcomes. They’re often too slow, too siloed, or too disconnected from real commercial momentum.

A dual-speed approach changes that by:

Enabling rapid exploration while managing enterprise risk
Combining startup agility with incumbent scale
Transforming “everything to lose” into “everything to win”
Unlocking potential for 10x returns on innovation investment

The Path Forward

We’ve spent years building and refining a model that delivers real results not just once, but repeatedly. One that helps corporates shift from reactive to proactive. From protection to possibility.

The future of innovation in large organisations isn’t about choosing between stability and speed. It’s about building both into your operating model.

Because when you can bring the mindset of a disruptor into the engine of an incumbent? That’s where transformation happens.

Curious what this could look like inside your business?

Let’s talk.