Daniel Zapfl

About the Expert

Daniel Zapfl is the General Manager of Lead Innovation, an internationally recognized innovation consultancy based in Vienna, Austria. With over a decade of experience helping global companies and public sector organizations shape their innovation strategies, Daniel specializes in combining foresight, agile innovation management, and emerging technologies to build sustainable competitive advantage.

The Future of Innovation: Where AI Guides Human Creativity

In the world of innovation, the biggest challenge isn't coming up with ideas—it's deciding which ones to bring to life. Daniel Zapfl, General Manager of Lead Innovation, explains how companies can transform their approach to innovation by combining human creativity with the power of AI.

Today's organizations are full of ideas, but many struggle to empower their teams to make bold, strategic decisions. The true test of innovation isn't the quantity of ideas generated, but the ability to recognize and execute the ones that matter. For most companies, the missing piece is a system that supports faster, smarter decision-making.

This is where AI-powered foresight changes the game. Traditional foresight processes—manually collecting trends and insights—were slow and limited in scope. Now, artificial intelligence enables continuous monitoring of global trends, analyzing megatrends and market signals in real-time. AI acts as a digital expert, helping leaders make better long-term decisions by identifying patterns and opportunities faster than ever before.

According to Daniel, the future of innovation management will be radically different. In the next five to ten years, innovation cycles will shift from slow and reactive to fast and proactive. AI will help organizations not only gather ideas but also prioritize, test, and scale them more efficiently.

Perhaps the most exciting shift is yet to come. While today, humans use AI to support innovation, tomorrow, AI will play a guiding role—helping people make better strategic choices and uncover opportunities they couldn't see on their own.