Ramon Vullings
Most innovation programmes recycle the same playbook the rest of the sector is already running. Pilots multiply, budgets grow, and yet the new ideas look suspiciously like the old ones with a fresh interface. The harder question is how to import a working answer from outside your industry without breaking what already works inside it.
Ramon Vullings helps organisations turn cross-industry analogies into commercial innovation, using a published methodology built around remixing proven ideas from other sectors rather than inventing from scratch.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ramon Vullings
- A named, written methodology for cross-industry innovation, set out in Not Invented Here (BIS Publishers, with Marc Heleven), that gives innovation teams a shared language and a repeatable process rather than a one-off creativity session.
- The ideaDJ framework: a specific operating model for combining and adapting external ideas across silos, used in executive programmes at Antwerp Management School, Fontys and IE Business School.
- A working bridge between corporate and academic practice. Former PwC Consulting and IBM operations leader, now executive professor at three European business schools, with material that holds up in front of senior practitioners.
- Chair of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation, with access to a peer network of innovation specialists across Europe and a long view on what is actually working in the field.
- A clear position on failure tolerance, framed through “nearlings” rather than abstract permission to experiment, that gives leadership teams something concrete to take into governance and incentive design.
Biography highlights
- Author of four management books, including Not Invented Here: Cross-Industry Innovation (BIS Publishers, with Marc Heleven) and Creativity in Business.
- Executive Professor at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Antwerp Management School, and IE Executive Education at IE Business School in Madrid.
- Chairman of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation (EACI).
- Advisor to the Global Innovation Institute (GInI).
- Former Global CRM Operations Manager at PwC Consulting and EMEA CRM Learning and Knowledge Lead at IBM Business Consulting Services.
- Founder of innovation consultancy Twinkeling and co-founder of innovation network 21 Lobsterstreet.
Biography
Most original ideas are not original. The strongest commercial innovations of the last twenty years are recombinations of methods, business models and design patterns lifted from one industry and reapplied in another. Ramon Vullings built a career arguing this point and turning it into a method that innovation teams can actually run.
The argument is set out in Not Invented Here: Cross-Industry Innovation, co-authored with Marc Heleven and published by BIS Publishers. The book gives leaders a structured way to find working answers in adjacent sectors and translate them into their own context, and it has been translated into five languages and sold over 60,000 copies. Three further books, including Creativity in Business and Great Leaders Mix and Match, extend the same logic into idea generation, leadership behaviour and complex problem-solving.
The credibility behind the method is operational, not only academic. Before founding his consultancy Twinkeling, Vullings ran global CRM operations at PwC Consulting and led EMEA CRM learning and knowledge at IBM Business Consulting Services after the IBM acquisition. That background shows up in the work: the focus is on processes leaders can sponsor, governance models that tolerate productive failure, and innovation as a managed discipline rather than a creativity workshop.
He now teaches the method as Executive Professor at Fontys, Antwerp Management School and IE Business School, chairs the European Association for Creativity and Innovation, and advises the Global Innovation Institute. For senior teams trying to break a sector-bound innovation pattern, his contribution is a vocabulary, a framework, and a network that have all been pressure-tested on practitioners.
Key speaking topics
- Cross-industry innovation
- The ideaDJ framework and remix strategy
- Innovation methodology and idea management
- Cross-silo leadership
- Creativity in business
- Risk tolerance and productive failure
- Ecosystems and innovation partnerships
Ideal for
- Chief innovation officers, CSOs and corporate strategy leads running innovation portfolios that have plateaued.
- R&D and product leadership teams in mature industries seeking analogies from outside their sector.
- Executive education cohorts and leadership programmes in regulated or engineering-heavy industries.
- Heads of transformation looking to embed innovation as a managed discipline rather than an event series.
Audience outcomes
- A working vocabulary for cross-industry innovation, including ideaDJ, copy-adapt-paste, and “nearlings”.
- Examples of analogies transferred between sectors that audiences can map onto their own portfolio.
- A clearer test for which external ideas are worth importing and which break on contact with the operating model.
- Concrete governance and incentive moves to raise tolerance for productive failure without losing discipline.
- A method audiences can run inside their teams without external facilitation.
Talks
A working session on how to import proven ideas from other sectors into your own innovation pipeline.
Key takeaways:
- Where cross-industry analogies tend to outperform internal best-practice optimisation
- A copy-adapt-paste process for translating an external idea into your operating context
- Conditions under which cross-sector transfer fails and how to spot them early
A keynote on leading innovation as a discipline of combination rather than invention.
Key takeaways:
- The ideaDJ operating model and where it fits alongside existing innovation processes
- How to set up cross-silo combinations that actually ship
- Leadership behaviours that turn remixing from a slogan into a routine
A talk on what comes after benchmarking, when every competitor has copied the same playbook.
Key takeaways:
- Why best-practice optimisation collapses returns at sector level
- How to identify next practices from outside the industry
- Practical steps for a leadership team to commission and govern next-practice work