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 Al...
Dec 09, 2024•30 min•Season 8Ep. 12
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 r...
Sep 20, 2024•31 min•Season 8Ep. 11
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.
Aug 05, 2024•38 min•Season 8Ep. 10
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 know...
Jul 08, 2024•25 min•Season 8Ep. 9
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...
Jul 01, 2024•27 min•Season 8Ep. 8
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,...
Jun 10, 2024•31 min•Season 8Ep. 7
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" a...
May 06, 2024•36 min•Season 8Ep. 6
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 w...
Apr 15, 2024•22 min•Season 8Ep. 5
In this episode, we catch up with Geoffrey Moore, the best-selling author, consultant, and venture capitalist whose groundbreaking work has shaped how we think about innovation strategy. If you’ve ever talked about a technology "crossing the chasm" from the realm of early adopters into the early majority, or your company has put a high potential project into the incubation zone, you’ve been using language given to us by Moore. His best-selling books including Zone to Win, Inside the Tornado, and...
Feb 20, 2024•25 min•Season 8Ep. 4
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 po...
Feb 07, 2024•25 min•Season 8Ep. 3
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 gene...
Jan 29, 2024•12 min•Season 8Ep. 2
"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 nonp...
Jan 09, 2024•19 min•Season 8Ep. 1
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 ...
Mar 27, 2023•14 min•Season 7Ep. 3
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 ...
Feb 13, 2023•28 min•Season 7Ep. 2
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...
Jan 24, 2023•22 min•Season 7Ep. 1
In our Persistent Innovators miniseries, InnoLead and Wade Roush explored the cultures of four large companies that have pushed the innovation envelope for decades: Disney, Apple, Lego, and Novartis. But who else deserves recognition? From making pizza ever more convenient at Domino's, to finding new markets at FujiFilm, we dissect the practices and strategies at six more persistently-innovative companies, with input from guests like Bill Taylor, Braden Kelley, and Rita McGrath. Special thanks t...
Mar 22, 2022•25 min•Season 6Ep. 6
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,...
Feb 28, 2022•57 min•Season 6Ep. 5
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 ...
Feb 14, 2022•52 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Disney isn’t the world’s largest media company—that title goes to Comcast. But it’s probably the one that has burrowed the deepest into our psyches. As it approaches its 100th birthday in 2023, The Walt Disney Co. not only dominates in its original field of feature animation, but also operates some of the world’s most famous film studios (Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, Searchlight), television and streaming networks (ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, Hulu, Disney+), and theme park resorts...
Jan 31, 2022•52 min•Season 6Ep. 3
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 I...
Jan 18, 2022•51 min•Season 6Ep. 2
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 LE...
Dec 20, 2021•16 min•Season 6Ep. 1
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.
Oct 19, 2021•23 min
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.
Jul 27, 2021•35 min
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.
Jul 20, 2021•31 min
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....
Jun 08, 2021•23 min
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.
Apr 27, 2021•27 min•Season 5Ep. 8
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.
Apr 20, 2021•30 min•Season 5Ep. 7
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.
Apr 13, 2021•25 min•Season 5Ep. 6
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.
Apr 06, 2021•25 min•Season 5Ep. 5
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.
Mar 16, 2021•31 min•Season 5Ep. 4
