Innovation Answered (InnoLead)

After planning for hybrid classes all summer, this month the team at Barnard College pivoted suddenly to another semester of online learning. What goes into making these decisions? And how will today’s pivots affect the future of higher education?  We gathered an online panel of higher education experts to share. This episode features Barnard President Sian Beliock, Len Schlesinger of Harvard Business School, and the co-CEO of edX, Adam Medros. 

In this episode, we connect with Dr. Sokwoo Rhee, EVP of Innovation at LG Electronics and Head of the LG Nova Innovation Center in Silicon Valley. 

We talk about Dr. Rhee's past as an entrepreneur and Presidential Innovation Fellow, and also the goals of LG Nova — collaborating with startups and new partners, and making investments. Two areas of interest: healthcare and cleantech.

Dr. Rhee also serves up advice about getting (and keeping) the backing of senior leaders.

Innovators are always encouraged to move faster and avoid disruption. But can a big, slow company really move fast? And is faster necessarily better? We sat down with Rachael Schwartz, formerly of Keurig, to find out. This episode also features insights from TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer and Innovation Leader’s Kelsey Alpaio.

How do chief innovation officers they set priorities? And, what do they do to influence culture? Debbie Brackeen, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at CSAA, explores how  she approaches the insurance company’s innovation portfolio, the metrics that matter, and disruption in the insurance space. Frazer Bennet, Chief Innovation Officer of PA Consulting, also shares insights.

Clay Christensen seems larger than life to corporate innovators. His book, The Innovator’s Dilemma is still considered a business leader must-read. We wanted to know how Christensen's ideas apply in 2019. To find out, we sat down with Innovation Leader's Scott Kirsner to discuss his interviews with the acclaimed professor.

"Invention is a flower. Innovation is a weed," innovator Bob Metcalfe explains his famous quote during in this special bonus episode. Metcalfe also shares his experiences as a founder at 3Com, the company culture that allowed him to invent Ethernet, and why big companies should work with startups.

How can AI help turn restaurant customers into regulars? We sat down with Sherif Mityas, TGI Friday's Chief Experience Officer to find out. Other topics of discussion include personalization, catering to millennials, and best practices for innovation. 

Ideas that have the potential to shape industries may end up stuck in the corporate basement. So how can companies embrace risky — but potentially revolutionary — ideas? Authors Safi Bahcall and Hugh Molotsi tackle this question in a main stage session at Innovation Leader’s 2019 Impact event. Bahcall also discusses learnings from his time as the CEO of Synta Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on developing new cancer treatments. Molotsi shares his experiences as a CEO of a startup and Vice President at Intuit. This session is moderated by Innovation Leader CEO Scott Kirsner. 

With increased traffic and decreased parking, many urbanites have opted out of owning a car. So what will the future of mobility look like? We talked to Jon McNeill, COO of Lyft, about what consumers can expect moving forward. In this interview, Jon also discussed his experience at Tesla and his move to the ride sharing industry.

We're back and better than ever. This season, we took our show on the road to Miami, Philadelphia, and New York to Learn from Innovators in those ecosystems. We also talked to innovators at Ahold Delhaize, Bose, Panera, and more. Subscribe for new episodes starting next week on Tuesday morning. 

What does it mean to practice empathy? Teams need to think about end-users as real live human beings — not just a rectangle on a PowerPoint slide labeled “the customer.” To learn more, we sat down with Irina Kozlovskaya, Director of Industrial Design at Fitbit. Kozlovskaya shares how the team at Fitbit listens to customers and pairs the process with design thinking to build better products. Lisa Somogyi, Director of Business Development at Cooper Perkins, shares tips for practicing empathy in a remote world. Cooper Perkins is also a sponsor of this podcast.  

Silicon Valley and Seattle have created a number of startup unicorns turned trillion dollar companies — like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG). In order to find out what makes FAANG more innovative than other companies, we sat down with Faisal Masud, Chief Operating Officer of Wing at Alphabet Inc. Innovation Leader CEO Scott Kirsner also shares insights from his interviews with FAANG founders. This episode also features Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder of Apple.

Getting innovation started at an established company can be fraught with challenges. So how can teams build the right foundation for new initiatives? To find out, we sat down with Executive Chef Robert Price, who founded Philadelphia Downtown Marriott’s 1201 Innovation Lab. Danielle Cohn, Vice President for Entrepreneurial Engagement for Comcast NBCUniversal, discusses launching LIFT Labs. Natalie Painchaud also shares best practices from the consulting company, Innosight.

Over the summer, we gathered listener questions about corporate innovation. Hari Nair, a current fellow at Harvard University and a former Global Managing Director at Kimberly Clark, shares best practices from his 25 years of experience in the innovation space. Innovation Leader’s Managing Editor Kelsey Alpaio shares tips that’s she’s learned in her reporting. 

Have questions for future episodes? Email podcast@innovationleader.com.

How should teams pursue business model innovation? Why should companies “professionalize” innovation? Alex Osterwalder, creator of the Business Model Canvas and co-founder of Strategyzer, explains. Osterwalder also shares insights from his recently published book, Testing Business Ideas. His next book, The Invincible Company, will be out in the spring of 2020.  

How do Chief Strategy Officers balance the core business with new opportunities? And, what can teams do to build the right portfolio of activities? Megan Lyon, Chief Strategy Officer of Herman Miller, explains how she approaches crafting strategy for the furniture company. George White, Chief Innovation Officer of Cantina, also shares best practices for setting strategy. 

While drones present a world of opportunities, these unmanned aerial vehicles face regulations across different levels of government. Chris Anderson — CEO of 3DR, a drone software company — shared his experience building and deploying drones at Innovation Leader’s 2019 Impact event. During the conversation, Anderson also discusses use cases for autonomous vehicles and the problems with corporate innovation in Silicon Valley.

This session is moderated by Harvard Business Publishing’s Chief Product and Innovation Officer Josh Macht.   

In this episode, we talk to Laura Northridge, Senior Director of the AI Innovation Lab — previously just the "innovation lab" — at Harvard Business Publishing.

As is the case with many corporate innovators, she’s helping shape AI strategy and policy for the Boston-based nonprofit, an affiliate of Harvard Business School. It’s one of small number of organizations we’ve been tracking where the innovation lab shifted its focus entirely to AI earlier in 2024. 

Harvard Business Publishing is best known for the Harvard Business Review — in print and online — but it also publishes business books, learning materials, and the famous Harvard Business School case studies. 

The supply chain can sometimes be regarded as a function far removed from the corporate headquarters. However, it's an essential part of most businesses, and it offers a massive opportunity for innovation to create new value. To learn more about supply chain innovation, we interviewed Aisha Nabiyeva from Retail Business Services, a logistics provider for Ahold Delhaize US. Gerry Collins from J&J and Josué Velázquez Martínez from MIT also share insights.

You may know Mars Incorporated for the sweet and tasty treats you can find on store shelves – classic Twix candy bars, Juicy Fruit gum, and so much more. However, Mars is exploring much more than just candy and snack foods. Jean-Christophe Flatin, President of Innovation, Science, Technology, and Mars Edge at Mars, talks about "innovation myth-busting," the importance of connecting with consumers, and new patterns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"For too long," says Todd Dunn, "many organizations have not developed innovation as a strategic and ongoing source of competitive advantage. Instead, some organizations have used it for reputational points in the public eye, but not to deliver measurable value to consumers, customers and the company."

That's a big problem, argues Dunn, who was most recently the Vice President of Enterprise Innovation at Advocate Health. Advocate is headquartered in Charlotte, NC, and it’s the fifth biggest nonprofit health system in the US. 

In this episode, we talk with Dunn about what went wrong in Act 1 of corporate innovation — and what needs to change in Act 2. Our discussion was sparked by Dunn's recent LinkedIn piece, "Innovation: The Driving Force of Competitive Advantage."

You can subscribe to our podcast, “Innovation Answered,” on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.

Scott Kirsner hosted this episode, and Hadley Thompson produced.

Innovators often repeat the mantra, “Fail fast, fail cheap.” But is that the right approach to projects that flop? To find out, we sat down with Rita McGrath, a professor of strategy at Columbia Business School. We also called Shaun Stewart, CEO of New Lab, to discuss how startups and entrepreneurs in the space approach failure.

For the latest episode of our Innovation Answered podcast, we decided to do something experimental. We’re leveraging all of the AI tools that can possibly help us create a podcast episode — and using them to summarize some of our best content from 2024, and also hone in on some of the important dynamics that will impact corporate innovation work in 2025. 

We deployed ChatGPT, of course, but also Suno, Google’s NotebookLM, and ElevenLabs to clone the voices of episode co-hosts Scott Kirsner and Alex Slawsby. (And we comment on and criticize their outputs as we go.) 

Last week, we discussed best practices for tech scouting. In order to see advice in action, we went to Miami to visit Royal Caribbean’s ship, Navigator of the Seas. We also take a look inside the company’s innovation lab and hear about the company’s digital transformation strategy. Guests include Joey Hasty, Head of Innovation and Transformation at Royal Caribbean, and Josh Nakaya, Creative Director and Lead Designer at the innovation lab.

What’s changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic? What’s likely to come back? And when? Innovation Leader’s What the Future Looks Like report seeks to answer that question. Kaitlin Milliken, Multimedia Editor at the publication, shares data from the report. Stephan Chase, a futurist and founder of the consultancy Chase Intel, discusses how the pandemic has affected life downtown and the hospitality space. Peter Berger, Director of Innovation for the aircraft manufacturer EmbraerX, explains why drastic innovation cuts are short-sighted. 

In this episode, we talk with Steve Blank about why celebrating innovation heroes is symptomatic of a problem in large organizations. Steve is a serial entrepreneur, author, and educator and leading advocate for the methodology of customer development and the lean startup approach.

In a recent Substack piece, Blank writes about an innovation awards ceremony he attended at a government agency:

"I'm constantly puzzled why thoughtful and astute CEOs and agency directors never asked, why is it that innovations require heroics to occur in our organization? Why don't we have a repeatable process for innovation? What are the obstacles in the way of delivering needed innovation with speed and urgency in our organization? And why is it that after each one of these [innovation] awards we give out, we don't go back and fix the parts of the system that made creating something new so difficult?"

Blank talks about the role of senior leaders, and the concept of an innovation doctrine. And he touches on the significance of AI: "I think this is as important as anything we've seen in tech in probably the last 50 years," he says.

2020 has been a year of racial reckoning — with discussions about police brutality and systematic racism stretching from the streets to the dinner table to the virtual conference room. To take a deeper dive, we gathered a panel to discuss how to make DEI initiatives at big companies more effective. Our panelists include: Irina Kozlovskaya, a Director of Industrial Design at Fitbit; Alfred Jones, Head of Mechanical Engineering at Lyft Level Five; Jessica Hansen, Executive Director of the Alliance for Smiles; and Simone Hadley Wilson, a marketing strategist, formerly of Lyft.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into the world of data and how Experian’s DataLabs spread innovative data solutions across the company. Originally focused on credit reporting, Experian now works with all types of data, software, and decision analytics. The company also runs four DataLabs in San Diego, London, São Paulo, and Singapore. Eric Haller, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Experian DataLabs, discusses the mandate of the DataLabs and the talent that drives the program.

Innovation teams have no shortage of ideas, but scaling initiatives requires a different set of skills. So, how do you turn a promising but fragile idea into something really big? To get best practices, Innovation Leader traveled to Shell TechWorks in Cambridge, Mass. Experts from ESPN and KPMG also share their advice. 

For more best practices on scaling, read our Benchmarking Innovation Impact 2020 Report.

How can AI and machine learning provide patients with personal, preemptive healthcare? Rajeev Ronanki, the Chief Digital Officer of Anthem, shares his experience. He also discusses how his team works with large data sets, the skills he looks for in employees, and how AI can improve telehealth.  

The second season of our podcast starts on March 19th. Find out more about our show and catch up on bonus content at innovationleader.com/podcast. 

We introduce a new segment of the show — Innovation Answered: Essentials. Designed for innovators on the go, we break down one of our articles and read it aloud for you. In this episode, we take you inside innovation at The Nature Conservancy. Innovation Leader’s Managing Editor Kelsey Alpaio shares her takeaways and the reporting process. Want to read along? Get the latest issue of our magazine or visit our website.

Innovators in the public and private sectors face many of the same challenges: There’s resistance to change and internal politics that can bog down progress. However, teams in the government may have tighter budgets that come directly from tax payer dollars. These teams also face demands from both supervisors and constituents. To gather best practices for changemakers in government, we sat down with Tanya Hannah, the former Chief Information Officer of King’s County Washington. Steve Rader, Deputy Manager of NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, also shares insights. 

When it comes to consumer packaged goods, the Kellogg Company is a big player, with about $13.5 billion in revenue. But the company's best-known breakfast items face a tougher landscape as more people choose to skip the most important meal of the day. To find out how the company is reimagining their business through R&D, we sat down with Nigel Hughes, Senior Vice President of Global Research and Development at Kellogg's. 

Startups are viewed as innovative utopias, filled with a dedicated workforce of entrepreneurs. So can big companies behave like startups and capture their culture? To find out, we sat down with Steve Blank, a key player in the lean startup movement. This episode also features insights from Lyft COO Jon McNeill and Innovation Leader’s Kelsey Alpaio.

Avoiding disruption is often central to innovation teams. But can changing your business model make your company an innovation powerhouse? We sit down with Rick Paster of Walmart Global eCommerce and Mark Johnson of Innosight to find out.

Millennials are murderers. At least according to the headlines, where the generation is blamed for killing all sorts of industries. But are millennials really killing established brands? Nondini Naqui, a millennial engagement consultant and former CEO of Society of Grownups, discusses how companies can connect with the age group. Innovation Leader's Kelsey Alpaio also explains how brands like Cadillac, L'Oreal, and Denny's are staying relevant with the kids.

Who’s leading the charge on generative AI in big organizations? How are they managing the tension between moving quickly and not making major missteps? And what use cases are they moving forward with? 

In this episode, we dive into the rapidly-evolving world of generative AI with Paul Baier, the CEO and co-founder of GAI Insights. 

Baier talks about the vendor landscape and shares several examples of first-mover companies, including McDonald's and Walmart, that are making strides in deploying generative AI.

You can subscribe to our podcast, “Innovation Answered,” on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.

Scott Kirsner hosts this episode; Hadley Thompson produced it.

How can organizations build a culture of innovation and effectively create buy-in for change? Sarah Chavarria, the Chief People Officer of Delta Dental, explains. Chavarria also shares how the dental insurance company developed its core values, the importance of gathering feedback from employees, and how the company responded to challenges caused by COVID-19.

What are corporate innovators thinking about in the first quarter of 2019? We sat down with Professor Gary Pisano at Harvard Business School to find out. In this interview, Pisano discussed last years innovation wins and his new book, Creative Construction. We also talked to our Editor and CEO Scott Kirsner to find out what Innovation Leader members are thinking about in the new year.

Venture capital funds provide the gasoline startups need to get from an initial sketch on a cocktail napkin to a global-scale giant like Uber, Amazon, or Airbnb. With so much change over the last year, we drove out to Los Altos Hills, California to sit down with Hemant Taneja, one of venture’s power players to understand what’s on his mind half way through this year. Marcus Daniels, Highline Beta’s Founding Partner & CEO, also shares his insights.

LEGO is one of the world’s most famous and admired brands. The company’s colorful plastic bricks are the literal building blocks of an empire that spans a $5 billion annual toy business, hundreds of retail stores, 10 theme parks, and a series of hit movies. But what LEGO actually sells isn’t just the bricks, it’s a whole system of play: an endlessly expandable way for children (and adults) to combine hand, eye, and imagination.

It was when product developers drifted away from that system in the 1990s and early 2000s—introducing a blizzard of toy lines that didn’t use the bricks at all—that LEGO stumbled into serious trouble. The company had a close brush with bankruptcy in 2003, then grappled its way back to profitability by refocusing on its core customers and their passion for building things.

For this third episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush sought out LEGO experts like journalist Bill Breen—co-author of the authoritative LEGO history Brick by Brick—as well as former LEGO executives Robert Rasmussen (developer of the LEGO Serious Play method) and David Gram (founder of the consulting firm Diplomatic Rebels). They explain what went wrong at LEGO, how the company rediscovered the spirit of play that make its toys so beloved, and what it does today to make sure that innovation doesn’t stray too far outside the brick.

The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (www.patsnap.com), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).

In this installment of Innovation Answered: Essentials, we break down our article on co-creation at Revera Senior Living. Innovation Leader’s Producer, Kaitlin Milliken, shares what she learned from the company’s president of innovation. Want to read along? Get the latest issue of the magazine or visit our website. 

While innovation can be difficult at any company, highly regulated industries with a thick rule book — both internally and from the government — face more roadblocks along the innovation journey. To find out how highly regulated companies can chalk up innovation wins, we sat down with Mohan Nair, Chief Innovation Officer at Cambia Health Solutions. Guests include Steve Faktor, host of the McFuture Podcast and the former Vice President of Business Growth and Innovation at American Express, and Ludwig Melik, CEO of the agile innovation company Planbox.

COVID-19 has transformed the way teams across the globe work. Stock markets have been in turmoil, and companies across industries have announced layoffs and furloughs. 

In this episode of Innovation Answered, experts share best practices for teams as they navigate uncertainty. Topics of discussion include shifting innovation teams’ priorities, switching over to remote work, and cultivating a “service oriented” mindset. Russell Rogers, former Vice President of Global Innovations at Blue Shield of California; Christian Ponce, Director of Operational Transformation at LogMeIn; and Nancy Tennant, author and former Chief Innovation Officer at Whirlpool share insights. 

And yet Disney hasn’t delivered with perfect consistency. In the second episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush talks with former executives from Disney’s feature animation, Imagineering, and parks and resorts divisions, and digs into the company’s innovation secrets, as well as a few rare but illustrative moments when Disney stumbled—and rebounded.

The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (www.patsnap.com), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) describes any product that requires routine replacement — from personal care to food. Companies in this space have to create new offerings that shoppers will buy again and again. To find out how big R&D bets empower the process, we talked to Ranjani Varadan, VP of R&D at the meat alternative company, Impossible Foods. Jodi Benson of General Mills discusses how her team used customer insights to refresh the yogurt category. Jeff George of Hain Celestial Group also shares how his team has shifted to respond to COVID-19.

How did Sonesta grow from 58 hotels in November of 2020 to 1,200 locations today? Vera Manoukian, Chief Operating Officer at Sonesta International Hotels Incorporated, explains. Manoukian also shares how the team pivoted to meet guest concerns and keep rooms booked during the pandemic. 

What are the risks when large companies dive into the venture capital game? To answer that question and more, we sat down with Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures. Amish Parashar, Co-founder of the Yamaha Motor Exploratory Fund, also explains why corporate venture is like a two-tiered cake and how the venture capital world has responded to COVID-19.

In this episode, we’ll dive into four questions: what is an innovation space? What are the pros and cons of physical versus virtual spaces, what are the qualities great spaces possess... and what common mistakes do people make in setting them up and running them. For expert perspective, we consult Michelle Cohen of CME Group, Andy Miller of AARP, and Michael Cross of Entergy.

Our "beginner's guide" podcast episodes take on important topics at the 101 level, without jargon or complexity, assuming that you may be new to the job of making innovation and change happen inside a big organization. We want to make things crystal clear, so you can get down to business. 

This episode is hosted and produced by InnoLead's Tyler Smith.

What kills innovation initiatives at large companies? And what can you do to survive? Innovation Leader's Scott Kirsner and Kelsey Alpaio share their tips that can help innovation initiatives stay afloat and create organizational change. 

Every company knows that responding to technological change is important. But scouting for emerging technology can be really overwhelming. To gather best practices, we visited The New York Times’ headquarters and talked to Marc Lavallee, the paper’s Head of R&D. Other guests include Mona Vernon of Fidelity Labs and John Woods of Kalypso. 

Creating an innovative culture involves much more than fun activities and idea challenges. Building a healthy culture involves deliberate choices that create space for experimentation and risk. Wayfair Co-founder Steve Conine discusses how the online furniture retailer maintained its culture as it grew from a two person idea to a company with 16,000 employees. He also shares advancements in augmented reality and virtual reality at the company.

There’s a great quote in David Robertson and Bill Breen’s book Brick by Brick, a look inside The LEGO Group. They write, “The most difficult challenge in business is not to invent an innovative product; it’s to build an organization that can continually create innovative products.” How companies can become innovative and stay that way is the focus of a special series coming soon from Innovation Answered, the podcast for corporate innovators. We’ll be looking at big, established companies like LEGO, Apple, and Disney and asking what makes them so successful decade after decade and how they bounce back from challenges. Is it all about great leadership—or do these companies have a grasp on principles of persistent innovation that other companies can emulate? In today’s teaser episode, guest producer Wade Roush talks with InnoLead co-founder Scott Kirsner about where the idea for the miniseries came from and what hypotheses we’ll explore as we go along. Look for the first full episode on January 18, 2022.

You can also listen to episodes of our Innovation Answered podcast on Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Play Music, and our website. Special thanks to our friends at PatSnap and Innovation Academy for sponsoring this mini-series.

Weddings in the COVID-era look a little different. Many couples staged “minimonies” to celebrate their big day, sometimes with a Zoom link as a substitute for in-person celebrations. Just as celebrations have adapted, the way people shop for wedding wear also had to shift.  David’s Bridal CEO Jim Marcum discusses how he’s navigating the future of the wedding business. That includes building an omnichannel experience to help brides shop from anywhere and industry trends to look out for in 2022.

While demand for shipping to office spaces is down, the team at UPS has seen an increased in customers shipping purchases to their homes. In this installment of Innovation Answered: Essentials, David Lee shares how his team has adapted to these new needs. He also discusses how his team has changed their approach to storage and gives best practices for innovators in 2020. After the conversation, Lee reads “The Biggest Barriers to Innovation”, an article he contributed to Innovation Leader’s magazine, aloud.

Our Essentials segment is designed for busy innovators in big organizations. In each episode, we discuss a recent article from our site or magazine, and read a portion aloud. Want to read along? See the full article.  

COVID-19 has changed the way people get around. Instead of public transportation, cycling has become a preferred mode of mobility, as well as a way to safely exercise outdoors. A spike in demand might seem like a clear win for bike makers. But, more sales means greater stress on supply chains and longer wait times. To find out how the bike sector is dealing with the unexpected surge of interest, we talked to Chad Manuell, Director of Engineering at Trek Bicycle. Manuell also discusses how his team approaches early innovation and R&D project.

How does AARP use innovation to empower people as they age? During a conversation with Innovation Leader, VP of Product and Startup Engagement Rick Robinson explains how his team uses design thinking to solve unmet needs in the 50-years-and-older community. He also discusses the importance of testing products with end users and the dangers of over relying on data.

Design thinking is a well-known concept in the innovation sphere — it often comes up in conversation, at conferences, or in passing. But for as much as people talk about design thinking, not everyone understands its full scope — and even fewer people use it in their day-to-day work. To help bridge the gaps, we created this "beginner's guide" podcast.

For this episode, we wanted to ask some basic questions about what design thinking is, how non-experts can get up to speed, the challenges experts have seen when introducing it to others, and how it can help come to viable solutions. We chatted with Prapti Jha, a Strategist and Researcher at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Scott Wolfson, Senior Strategy Director at BCG BrightHouse; and Craig Damlo, Senior Manager at Blue Origin, to get the answers.

You can subscribe to our podcast, “Innovation Answered,” on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.

Tyler Smith hosted and produced this episode. 

From six years spent at Starbucks to designing a new countertop coffeemaker that cranks out cold brew, Mesh Gelman has been working at the cutting edge of coffee.

During his time at Starbucks, he witnessed the rising popularity of cold beverages, a trend that his new startup, Cumulus Coffee Company, aims to capitalize on.

In this podcast episode, we talk with Gelman about coffee trends; developing a new product from scratch; the difference between big organizations and start-ups; and his past work as an innovation consultant.

In our recent Benchmarking Innovation Impact 2020 Report, 75 percent of respondents cited leadership support from CEOs, business unit leaders, and others as their top enabler. But how do you find innovation allies? To find out, we went to the Bose headquarters in Framingham, Mass. to talk to NB Patil, Head of the Bose Corporate Concept Group. We also spoke with Bill Gaussa of Philips Healthcare and Fiona Grandi of KPMG to get their insights. 

For more best practices on building allies, read our Benchmarking Innovation Impact 2020 Report.

Special thanks to our friends at PatSnap and Innovation Academy for sponsoring this miniseries.

Bringing designers in early can help companies execute on big ideas more successfully and create smoother customer experiences. But how do you get that right, especially if design isn’t baked into the culture, or if other functions tend to dominate the innovation process? Phil Duncan, the Global Design Officer at Procter and Gamble, discusses his experience. Brett Lovelady and Andy Goodman of PA Consulting also share.

What is it really like to head innovation at a large company? We talked to former innovation executives to find out the good, the bad, and the ugly. Welcome to the Ex-Files. Guests include Rick Waldron, former Vice President of Innovation Strategy & Partnerships at Nike, and Ace Moghimi, former Global Head of Innovation Strategy at Manulife/John Hancock.

Yellow boxes with CD-ROMs made Rosetta Stone an iconic brand in the 2000s. Since then, the company has transformed itself into an educational technology powerhouse. Matthew Hulett, President of Language at the company, discusses how Rosetta Stone pivoted from a physical product to a subscription service. He also discusses the company’s approach to digital innovation and how his team is working through the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Pursuing new ideas can be difficult when employees bogged down with day-to-day business. To foster new processes, many companies created separate innovation teams and labs. But how have these labs shifted during this period of remote work? What sets labs up for success? Linda Elkins, Chief Technical Officer of W.L. Gore’s Silicon Valley Innovation Center, shares. Other guests include Frankie James from General Motors, Jeffrey Welser from IBM, and Sara Husk of Planbox.

Innovation Answered, the podcast for corporate innovators, is back for its fifth season. And this season of our podcast is very special: We’re going to take you inside of the C-Suite of some very well-known, well-established organizations. In each episode, we’ll interview a different C-level leader to talk about their innovation priorities. That includes how to secure their support and how to push projects across the finish line. Subscribe for updates. New episodes debut starting February 23. 

What’s disrupting the world of sports, and how are teams adapting? We asked sports innovators how teams and franchises can knock innovation out of the park. Guests include Angela Ruggiero, CEO of the Sports Innovation Lab, and Jack Elkins, Director of Innovation at the Orlando Magic.

In this episode, we talk about the challenges of innovating in biopharma with a veteran of that industry, Dan Seewald. Seewald is the former Head of Worldwide Innovation at Pfizer, the $100 billion pharma giant headquartered in Manhattan, and now the founder and CEO of the consulting and training firm Deliberate Innovation. Among the questions that InnoLead CEO Scott Kirsner covers with Seewald:

• How do you create space for new ideas in a regulated industry?
• What's your advice on exploring the potential of AI? 
• How do you effectively communicate an internal innovation initiative?
• How do you deal with all of the legal and compliance colleagues who are very good at saying "no" to new ideas?
• What he'd do differently if he was starting over at Pfizer.

This episode was hosted by Scott Kirsner and edited by David Swope.

Innovation at large, established companies is hard. So we made a podcast to help you overcome obstacles and create change at your organization. Welcome to Innovation Answered, the podcast for corporate innovators. 

Innovation Answered is created by the media and events company Innovation Leader. For more information visit innovationleader.com/podcast.

How do big companies stay innovative across many decades, and in different industries? That’s been the driving question of our Persistent Innovators miniseries. In the fourth and final episode we turn to company in a very different kind of business: discovering and developing new drugs. And we focus on the global pharmaceutical giant Novartis, formed in 1996 from the merger of the venerable Swiss companies Sandoz and CIBA-Geigy. At its Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, opened in 2002, Novartis invented a new style of biology-centric drug discovery that has changed practices across the industry—and sparked a local biopharma boom that has utterly transformed the Kendall Square neighborhood of Cambridge.

Compared to the other industries we’ve covered in the miniseries, namely digital devices (Apple), entertainment (Disney), and toys (LEGO), the pharmaceutical business is downright cutthroat. Product development is risky, time-consuming, and expensive; competition is incredibly fierce; and even a blockbuster drug can become a flop once the patent expires and a generic drug makers jumps in. On top of all that, drug makers have to operate outside the traditional world of consumer marketing: You take a Novartis medicine not out of any brand loyalty to Novartis, but because your doctor tells you to.

The net effect is that to stay successful, a big drug company must keep their product pipelines full and churn out hit after hit—which, when you think about it, is the very definition of a persistent innovator. In this episode, former Novartis executive and drug hunter Tom Hughes explains how Novartis’s first CEO decided to rebuild the company’s drug discovery effort around a genomic and molecular understanding of disease. And current NIBR president Jay Bradner talks about the structures Novartis has set up to protect and promote high-output innovation. Finally, we speak with Sam Wiley, head of thought leadership and customer advocacy at PatSnap—our sponsor throughout the miniseries—about a few more companies he sees as persistent innovators.

Special thanks to our friends at PatSnap and Innovation Academy for sponsoring this miniseries.

Dewayne Hankins, the Chief Commercial Officer of the Portland Trail Blazers, shares how the basketball team shifted the fan experience in response to challenges created by COVID-19. During the conversation, he covers how the team kept fans connected to players in the NBA’s 2020 bubble, how the team is approaching empty seats this season, and storytelling tips. He also shares his past experiences at Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at the organization.

While everyone knows Star Wars and Indiana Jones, not everyone is familiar with ILMxLAB, Lucasfilm’s immersive entertainment division. In this episode, we sit down with Vicki Dobbs Beck, the Executive in Charge of ILMxLAB, to find out how her team uses new technology to bring stories to life. Topics of discussion include, virtual reality, augmented reality, tech scouting, and testing new ideas with end users. 

How do Chief Technology Officers build roadmaps to implement new technologies? Leo Barella, Chief Technology Officer at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, explains. He also discusses best practices for working with data and using data to inform digital strategy. 

In this episode, we talk about generative AI, speech interfaces, and evolving the customer experience for one of the world’s top luxury car brands: Mercedes-Benz. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Mercedes made a major splash with a new virtual assistant that leverages advanced software and generative AI — along with on-screen visuals — to provide more proactive support and a more intuitive way of interacting with the vehicle. One of the people behind that project is James Liu, the head of customer experience for the Mercedes-Benz operating system.

"I always joke with my team that we're the last layer of light and sound waves between all of our technologies and the customer," Liu says. "Practically speaking, my teams are responsible for HMI concept, UX design, front-end engineering, speech, and the AI platform." 

Digital transformation has become a buzzword. However, the perfect formula — and even the definition — are a mystery at most companies. So what's the right strategy for making digital transformation happen inside a big organization? To find out, we went to Chicago. Guests include Patrick Bass, the CEO at thyssenkrupp North America, and Marcelo De Santis, former Chief Information Officer at Mondelez International and Pirelli.

Innovation Answered returns for a fourth season on May 5, 2020. Producer Kaitlin Milliken and Intern Molli DeRosa share what listeners can expect in upcoming episodes. Upcoming topics include the future of food, inside Wayfair’s culture of innovation, innovation labs in Silicon Valley, and more. 

In so many ways, 2020 has been defined by sudden, dramatic change — from the shift to remote work, to redesigning brick and mortar locations, to changing buying habits, to the national dialogue around racial reckoning, to the aftermath of the presidential election. To find out how big companies have been responding to it all, Innovation Leader’s Editorial Team released four research reports this fall.

This episode of Innovation Answered explores the most important data points from that research that can help teams finish the year strong. Scott Kirsner, CEO and Co-founder of Innovation Leader, and Alex Slawsby, a Senior Researcher at IL, join for the conversation.

How do CEOs determine focus areas and allocate budget to R&D initiatives? In this episode, Deborah Dunsire, four-time chief executive of public and private companies shares her experience. Dunsire has been the CEO of Lundbeck since 2018 — overseeing teams that discover new medicines in Copenhagen and California, as well as others who market and sell the company’s products around the world. Get her tips for innovators looking to improve their relationships with their CEOs.

This bonus episode of "Innovation Answered" features Matt Baker, Head of Corporate Strategy at Dell Technologies. AI has generated so much interest with the release of ChatGPT; the announcements from Google, Baidu, Microsoft, and Alibaba about chatbots and generative AI; and increased adoption of art-focused AI platforms like DALL-E and Midjourney. So we decided to explore the basics and background of the technology — and what happens next.

This episode focuses on what AI is; generative AI; how it could affect jobs going forward; and how large companies' adoption of AI may create competitive advantage or disadvantage. 

Our "beginner's guide" podcast episodes take on important topics at the 101 level, without jargon or complexity, assuming that you may be new to the job of making innovation and change happen inside a big organization. We want to make things crystal clear, so you can get down to business. 

This episode is hosted and produced by InnoLead's Tyler Smith.

The sudden onset of a global pandemic shifted priorities at many large companies. Innovation teams have been tasked with facing new challenges that can help save lives and keep people safe. Colleen Hau of Carhartt discussed how her team worked quickly to make PPE for frontline workers. Firdaus Bhathena of CVS talks about how the company’s COVID-19 testing efforts and acceleration in digital health care. Rhett Alden, Chief Technology Officer of Health and Commercial Markets at Elsevier, shares how his team created a COVID-19 Resource Center in four weeks. 

Steve Jobs once said it’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy. Pirates refer to startups, built by nimble teams. Large organizations, which are slower to innovate, are compared to the bureaucratic Navy. But how do corporate innovators fall into this metaphor? In this installment of Innovation Answered: Essentials, Tendayi Viki explains. Molli DeRosa from Innovation Leader also reads a passage from Viki’s most recent book, Pirates in the Navy. 

In this episode, we talk with Bob Weis, the former President of the legendary Imagineering division at Disney and author of the new book, Dream Chasing: My Four Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering. 

If you've been to a Disney theme park, resort, or cruise ship recently, you've experienced Weis' work. He has helped design theme parks in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Orlando, and he also had a hand in rethinking the California Adventure theme park in Anaheim after it got off to a rough start. We talk about the origins of Imagineering under Walt Disney; why it's important that it's not located at Disney's HQ campus; how they've worked with different Disney CEOs; how Weis views competition; his work outside Disney as a consultant; and a whole lot more.

Weis will be sharing his perspective on creativity and innovation at InnoLead's Impact conference in Boston this October. 

Corporate teams know they should be tapping into the startup ecosystem somehow, but they don’t always know how to get started. In this episode, we explore different ways innovators engage with startups and how they forge more meaningful relationships. Guests include Arvind Purushotham, the Head of Venture Investing at Citi Ventures, Northwestern Professor Mohan Sawhney, and Jenny Lawton, COO of Techstars.

What can we expect from Quick Service Restaurants of the future? We sat down with Jessica Anselmi, Panera’s Director of Innovation and Category Growth, to find out what her team is working on. We also explore innovation inside Chick-fil-A’s Hatch Innovation Center in Atlanta and get tips from a former Vice President of Innovation for Starbucks.

In the age of Amazon, how are retailers staying relevant with customers? We went to the National Retail Federation's annual Big Show to find out. Guests include Kambiz Hemati, Footlocker's Vice President of Global Store Design; Nicole Leinbach Reyhle, founder of the publication Retail Minded; and Joe Pine, author of The Experience Economy.

We talk AI, employment disruption, UBI, corporate innovation, and the future of the automotive industry with Evangelos Simoudis, an author, investor, and advisor based in Silicon Valley. 

At Synapse Partners, he invests in early-stage startups that develop enterprise software and AI applications and also advises big companies and governments on the use of data and AI to address strategic problems. 

"This is not the first time that we've seen this bringing together of both anxiety and excitement" around AI, Simoudis says. "My perspective is colored by the fact that I've seen three other AI springs, as I call them. ...I will say that the optimist in me sees advancements in every one of these AI springs."

Simoudis is also the author of several books, including Transportation Transformation and The Flagship Experience, published in late 2023. He is also a close observer of the corporate innovation and startup ecosystems in Silicon Valley, and he writes a blog called “Re-Imagining Corporate Innovation with a Silicon Valley Perspective.”

If you want to understand how some large organizations manage to keep innovating, decade after decade, you need to study the companies that actually do that. And Apple is at the top of the list. Thanks largely to sales of its world-conquering iPhone, it recently became the first company in the world to reach a $3 trillion market capitalization. But Apple’s journey toward “persistent innovator” status started long before the iPhone’s introduction in 2007. In this first episode of our Persistent Innovators miniseries, guest host and producer Wade Roush travels back to the 1980s and 1990s, to talk with people who worked alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and saw how leadership, culture, and technology came together to make Apple…Apple.

The Persistent Innovators is sponsored by Patsnap (www.patsnap.com), the Connected Innovation Intelligence company, and by Patsnap’s online courseware site Innovation Academy (academy.patsnap.com).