Lead Innovation Day 2026

Yes. Lead Innovation Day 2026 is free of charge for selected participants. The event is funded by advisory partners (sponsors). There is no ticket price, but attendance is by application only — each participant is selected based on seniority and relevance to the themes.

The event is designed for innovators (Director-level and above) who lead AI, digital, or innovation transformation at large organizations (5,000+ employees). This includes Innovation Directors, Chief Digital Officers, AI & Data Officers, and Strategy & Transformation Directors. Consultants, advisors, and service providers are not eligible.

Lead Innovation Day 2026 takes place on May 12, 2026, from 9:00 to 19:00, at EDHEC Business School, Paris Campus (France). The venue includes an auditorium for keynotes and multiple breakout rooms for parallel workshops and facilitated discussions.

The 2026 edition focuses on "Leading with AI" across four strategic themes: (1) Business Model & Value Creation, (2) Strategy & Execution, (3) Resistance & Relevance, and (4) Culture & Leadership. The day includes keynotes, company stories from organizations like ENGIE, Decathlon, and Allianz Partners, hands-on workshops, and facilitated peer discussions.

Apply by clicking "Request to Join" on this page. You'll be directed to a short application form. The organizing team reviews each application and selects participants based on seniority, role relevance, and organizational profile. There are 80 seats available.

Lead Innovation Day is not a traditional conference. There are no vendor pitches, no expo booths, and no product demos. Instead, 80 senior practitioners spend a full day in facilitated peer discussions, company stories (real situations, not success stories), and hands-on workshops. Every participant is vetted. The format is designed for honest exchange, not broadcasting.

AI transformation in 2026 is defined by three shifts. First, the move from experimentation to operational integration — McKinsey reports that 72% of organizations now deploy AI in at least one business function, up from 55% in 2023. Second, the leadership challenge is no longer whether to use AI but who owns the AI P&L impact and how to govern it. Third, the skills gap is misunderstood: the scarcest capability is not prompt engineering but the ability to redesign workflows around AI. Innovation leaders attending Lead Innovation Day work on these exact challenges through facilitated peer exchanges with practitioners from ENGIE, Decathlon, Allianz, and Givaudan.

Large organizations are deploying AI across the innovation lifecycle — from trend scanning and ideation to portfolio prioritization and go-to-market testing. ENGIE's Digital Innovation team runs a 21-day behavioral change program to embed AI adoption at scale. Givaudan's Digital Factory stress-tests AI inside real innovation workshops to see what accelerates ideation and what breaks facilitation. Companies like Decathlon use AI for skills intelligence, identifying capability gaps before they become strategic risks. The pattern is consistent: AI compresses cycle times and surfaces hidden patterns, but only when adoption is designed around real workflows, not theoretical use cases.

Technical AI fluency is table stakes. The differentiating skills for innovation leaders in 2026 are strategic framing (knowing which problems AI should solve and which it should not), cross-functional orchestration (aligning data teams, business units, and governance), and change architecture (designing adoption paths that work for middle managers and frontline teams, not just executives). BCG's 2024 research found that organizations where leaders combine AI literacy with organizational design skills are 1.5x more likely to scale AI beyond pilot phase. Lead Innovation Day is structured around these capabilities — every session focuses on the leadership and organizational dimensions.

Traditional conferences broadcast knowledge from stage to audience. Peer learning inverts that model: participants are the primary source of insight, and the format surfaces real experience rather than polished narratives. At Lead Innovation Day, facilitated peer exchanges use structured protocols — each participant shares a specific challenge, receives direct input from peers facing similar situations, and co-creates actionable takeaways. Research from the Center for Creative Leadership shows that peer learning among senior executives produces 2-3x higher application rates than passive formats like keynotes. With only 80 participants (all Director-level or above from organizations with 5,000+ employees), the density of relevant experience is deliberately high.