Filip Hurda & Michal Valko (Kogi): How do you deliver real innovation in 2025?

Most companies want to innovate, but few actually know what that means in practice. Innovation isn't just about great ideas and smart people — it's mainly about the room a company creates for them. In this episode of the no-holds-barred Kogi podcast, Filip Hurda and Michal Valko take a clear-eyed look at innovation: why most attempts end in frustration, what sets real change apart from empty slogans, and why motivation alone isn't enough — you also have to reset the environment, leadership, and how decisions get made. For anyone who wants more than a nice innovation slogan in a slide deck.

What sets a company that “talks about innovation” apart from one that actually delivers it? According to Hurda and Valko, the difference starts right at the brief: without a clear ambition, goal, and room to execute, all you get are dead ends. Anyone who's serious about innovation has to build an environment where people have not just ideas, but the capacity, budget, and authority to test them. And above all: leadership that leads by example — not just by shouting “innovate!”

You'll learn:

• why innovation is more the result of a systematic approach than a random hackathon,
• how to tell that innovation at your company only “works on paper,”
• what the I-can – I-want-to – I'm-allowed-to model means, and why real change won't happen without it,
• how even a traditional manufacturing company can deliver innovation without a single Post-it board,
• why an innovative culture, among other things, means the ability to accept mistakes — and learn from them fast.

Practical, free of buzzwords, and delivered with the perspective of two people who don't just advise on innovation, but deliver it themselves at companies.