Learn to innovate from start-ups

For the past four years, Wieden+Kennedy has been working with brand-friendly start-ups through its Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) - an iterative collaboration built to explore a number of themes.

Learn to innovate from start-ups

Renny GleesonWieden+Kennedy

Wieden+Kennedy's Renny Gleeson says its Portland Incubator Experiment collaboration with start-ups offers both agencies and brands valuable lessons for innovation in a connected age.

A start-up is an organisation in a race for its life to innovate a value-generating customer proposition before the cash runs out. Start-ups test the health of legacy systems like viruses probing for weakness and opportunity.

While start-ups may have limited resources, underestimating them is a mistake: unencumbered by legacy organisational structures, risk-averse shareholders and existing customer relationships that inhibit dynamic decision-making, start-ups can pivot, or reinvent their...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands