07/01/2025
Your morning routine could be pivotal to a successful career. Let us explain.
Innovation isn’t just a buzzword. In fact, 84% of executives agree it’s critical to growth. But the difficulty lies in knowing how to form innovation strategies. We recently spoke with Salesforce SVP and IE University associate professor, Ana Alonso, for expert insights into tech trends, our Executive Master in Digital Transformation and Innovation Leadership, and how growing a pair of antennae is vital for survival. Read on to see how literal we are about that last point.
What does it take to be a leader in innovation?
Ana Alonso holds over 20 years of international experience in various tech companies, implementing studies from institutions like the University of Valladolid, IE Business School and London Business School. Currently SVP & GM of Public Sector South EMEA with Salesforce, Ana combines a high-flying professional career with an academic role on the Executive Master in Digital Transformation and Innovation Leadership. Her expertise has shaped team transformations across markets.
To follow in her footsteps, Ana emphasized an understanding of leadership qualities: “After more than 30 years working at various tech companies, I’ve learned that good leaders must be courageous,” Ana told us.
“Leaders need to be able to take a stand, stick to their position and make choices. And making choices requires knowledge. The broader your knowledge, the better those choices are.”
According to Ana, the Executive Master in Digital Transformation and Innovation Leadership is the perfect environment to pick up these skills: “You have to know that sometimes you could be wrong, but you have to be able to make a choice, defend that choice and execute it. After that, you can’t go back. That’s what I’m trying to teach in the course. Because in the end, those two factors of being able to expand your knowledge and have the courage to make choices—they’re what make leaders. At least in my experience.”
The necessity of life-long learning when forming innovation strategies
When it comes to forming innovation strategies, Ana is a firm believer in life-long learning: “For me, you need to be continuously learning. You can’t stop. It’s what keeps you up to speed and allows you to adapt to changing environments. That’s the key to maintaining a career.”
We asked how formal education has changed with these new trends. “The most impactful difference is the combination of how real-life experience now relates to academic topics. When I think of courses or teachers that have most impacted me, they fulfil those criteria. It was the case when I did my first degree and the same when I studied the Executive MBA at IE Business School.”
Ana now holds a position on IE University’s faculty for five years. She’s seen many successful candidates pass through the program. “The Executive Master in Digital Transformation and Innovation Leadership is great because most of the teachers, like myself, come with professional experience in the public sector through various enterprises,” said Ana.
“My own experience reaches across more than 25-years-worth of knowledge gained from working in tech companies. I’ve handled all types of clients. I’ve spoken with many governments. So the students learn from my experience and how to implement topics in the real world.”
And it’s not just the students learning: “Teaching forces me to be up to speed on current topics,” said Ana. “I’m privileged to teach people from the Middle East, South Africa, Europe, the US, Japan… It’s amazing to learn from their perspectives. They offer insight into the maturity of the markets, or how different cultures approach different problems. I get older, they stay the same age. That’s invaluable for me—to learn firsthand how new generations are thinking.”
The need to be aware of technology trends
Throughout our conversation, Ana emphasized the central role technology will continue to play across industries: “The development of transformation and innovation will continue to be extremely relevant for companies in the future. That won’t change. Most of our life revolves around technology. Imagine a world without it—impossible.”
Ana’s solution lies in a trained awareness of market innovations: “When teaching, I want you to leave the class with a broader vision of the world,” said Ana. “You should be able to wake up in the morning, read a newspaper and identify something that could potentially impact your personal and professional life.”
“The speed of change is so fast right now that you must develop antennae to help you detect what’s coming. You have to be ready change.”
That’s where the ability to recognize context is vital. “I share a lot of topics in the forums,” Ana explained. “There is no right and wrong response for each situation. There are strategies and the decisions you make in any given moment. What you do correctly one week could be wrong the next. It all depends on context. I simply create a scenario for them and challenge them to take a critical perspective that relates to their professional lives.”
The four pillars for creating innovation strategies
Ana took the time to outline four pillars that are key to defining a successful innovation strategy. “First: how is this going to change the way you relate to or communicate with your customers. Second: how will this allow you put new services and products on the market. Third: how will this help your processes be more efficient? Fourth: how will this change the way your employees are working. By answering these four questions, companies can understand how technology will have an impact on their practices.”
Taking her theory further, Ana pointed out that for leaders to expand their knowledge on new technologies, they need to reference good use cases. “Take AI, for example. How do you now relate to customers? There are changes through Generative AI. Are you developing new services? Yes, some companies are making new services based on Artificial Intelligence. Are you changing your operations? Yes—for example, Artificial Intelligence now allows Amazon to suggest new products and does reset scoring for banks. Are you changing the way your employees are working? Now, when writing emails or doing a presentation, Generative AI is likely having an impact. So, in every use case, we take these four pillars into account.”
Companies like Amazon are leading change when it comes to innovating with new technology.
And Ana is finding use cases during her professional life as both associate professor of IE University and Senior Vice President in Salesforce: “In September, Salesforce launched a platform agent force. It creates agents which are a combination between Generative AI and automated processes. We’re already using it to communicate with our customers. As for education, new technologies are certainly changing how we relate to pupils through digital learning. Education generally adopts new technologies quickly because academics are prone to learning new things. Internally adopting these tools is easier than in other industries. And IE University makes it possible for students to experiment with these new technologies.”
The importance of understanding the tech hype curve when forming innovation strategies
There’s more excitement than ever surrounding the release of innovative technologies. But Ana warns to understand the tech hype curve before investing resources in new tools. “It’s not about whether new tech has general use. It’s about whether it’s useful for you.”
“I remember, a few years ago, having conversations with students of the Executive Master in Digital Transformation and Innovation Leadership. We spoke about Artificial Intelligence before it was relevant. But I no longer speak about Artificial Intelligence when discussing tech innovations—I talk about blockchains. Why? Because whenever there’s a new technology, there’s a moment of hype. And that hype causes pressure to innovate.”
“Three years ago, cryptocurrency, NFTs, Metaverse were all anyone spoke about. Now, nobody’s talking about them. They’re still relevant in some contexts, but irrelevant in many.”
Ana outlined that it’s as simple as understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing: “The point is that technology lacks value if there are no good use cases. You have to take a step back and question why a certain technology is useful for your company. If it’s a hype technology, that’s especially important. Because it may not actually make sense. For example, trends in sustainability. It’s so important, but if you’re a big oil company, what are you going to do? Are you going to change all your P&L because of the complex investment you have in OpEx? What you need is a balanced approach to the topic. I want students to think about potentially controversial topics like this to open their minds for the future.”
The future tech trends that we should look out for in strategies and innovation
The Executive Master in Digital Transformation & Innovation Leadership instills students with a future-proof skill set. By partnering with industry leaders, you’ll be able to connect the latest innovations with real industry practice. Ana Alonso is just one member of a tech-savvy team that will guide you in integrating smart practices in your business.
With one eye on the future, we finished the interview with Ana by asking what tech trends will soon disrupt industry. “Quantum computing will change or eliminate other forms of computing,” Ana replied. “Current computation is great for certain things, like problem-solving, which requires one step followed by another followed by another. Quantum computing will be used to approach projects in a more generalist way with lots of different data sets in lots of different contexts. We understand the physics behind quantum computing but we don’t yet have the hardware.”
“IBM and Google are working on the first pure quantum computer. They know how to do it, but the problem is that it doesn’t scale. Google announced they are closer to reducing errors and being able to scale.”
Ana concluded by circling back to the difference between usefulness and hype: “Quantum computing won’t be for every company and every problem, but it will help change how we investigate new proteins or new chemical reactions. What’s important for you is to know how—and why—you use it.”
