Simone Ahuja, Author of Disrupt-It-Yourself: Eight Ways to Hack a Better Business---Before the Competition Does and founder of Blood Orange, researches barriers that are preventing large companies from innovating internally. Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside Innovation talks with Simone about these innovation barriers and what managers and leaders can do to support innovators. Highlights from the discussion: Why is it so hard to innovate? - Lack of alignment - Disconnect between senior l...
Feb 26, 2019•20 min•Ep. 136
Jana Eggers, CEO of Nara Logics, is an expert on Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside Innovation, talks with Jana about the evolution, promises, and risks of Artificial Intelligence. Jana will be speaking at the E.N. Thompson Forum, in Lincoln, NE, on Feb 26, 2019. Highlights from the discussion: - Jana trained as a mathematician and has worked at organizations like the National Science Foundation, Los Alamos, and a search engine company where she’s...
Feb 19, 2019•19 min•Ep. 135
Ted Schilowitz serves as Paramount Pictures' Futurist, as well as an advisor to the University of Nebraska’s Johnny Carson School of Emerging Media Arts. He sees himself as an explorer, with an eye toward storytelling and creativity. His modern lab rat approach, allows him to experiment with all types of technology and determine what makes it valuable for the future. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside founder, and Ted discuss the intersection between storytelling and human behavior. Specifically, th...
Feb 12, 2019•29 min•Ep. 134
If you don’t like disruption, you are going to HATE irrelevance. Chris Olsen of Drive Capital talks about investing in world-class companies located in the Midwest. Drive Capital, a venture firm based in Columbus, OH, developed a $550 million fund with this aim. Chris believes the Midwest will see more billion-dollar companies in the next five years, and based on GDP, the Midwest is the 4th largest economy in the world. If there are more Venture Firms in the Midwest, we’ll see faster growth with...
Feb 05, 2019•17 min•Ep. 133
Why do some people have innovative, creative ideas that change the game for everyone and challenge the way life is, and others don’t? Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside talks with Arjuna Ardagh about how brilliance and innovation can become more of a predictable outcome and less of an accident. They discuss his new book, Radical Brilliance - The Anatomy of How and Why People Have Original Life-changing ideas and the four phases of the Brilliance Cycle. Brilliance Cycle Defined 12:00 - Mom...
Jan 29, 2019•20 min•Ep. 132
Sean Moffitt is Managing Director of WikiBrands and Author of WikiBrands: How to Reinvent Your Business in a Customer Connected Marketplace. He focuses on helping people develop a transformational arsenal, including skills in culture and talent, innovation and future proofing, technology and digital, and leadership/pivoting business models. Highlights of Sean's conversation with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Founder, include: What’s changing the corporate landscape: - Speed at which things are ...
Jan 22, 2019•12 min•Ep. 131
Dr. Victoria Gerstman is the Assistant Director at Canopy Insight, a cultural insight and innovation consultancy. She helps companies and brands understand the cultural significance of different phenomena. Using semiotics, a method to interpret signs and symbols of culture which brands operate in, Victoria helps companies learn what’s important to people. Canopy Insight works with many large brands around the world, to help them understand culturally specific meanings and the way meanings change...
Jan 15, 2019•17 min•Ep. 130
Paul Jarrett is co-founder/CEO of Bulu and a former Inside Outside podcast co-host. Bulu creates private label subscription box programs for large companies like Disney, GNC, Lululemon, and Crayola. In this episode, Brian Ardinger and Paul discuss new trends in big brand marketing, including getting in front of specific customer segments in new ways. Paul believes that in this changing marketplace, big companies are willing to collaborate and “horse trade,” but are also focusing on key metrics l...
Jan 08, 2019•20 min•Ep. 129
Creating environments where innovation can thrive Aaron Proietti is author of the new book, Today’s Innovator. He’s spent 17 years working in the innovation space, including leading initiatives at Transamerica and Capital One. Aaron believes everyone wants innovation to happen, but the traits that make the company successful are the very things that are standing in the way of innovation. In his new book, Today’s Innovator, Aaron focuses on how to create an environment where innovation can thrive...
Dec 18, 2018•19 min•Ep. 128
John Buhl spent the last 13 years at Vanguard, innovating at all levels. He loved applying Lean Startup principles at scale and discovering what elements needed to change. Unfortunately, he hit many brick walls and found friction to make changes throughout the organization. The system of annual funding, with specific deliverables, was well entrenched. John wanted to understand, how do you shift a large company to be outcome-oriented and realize that old systems can be detrimental. Recently, John...
Dec 11, 2018•18 min•Ep. 127
Individuals get disrupted, not companies Barry O’Reilly is the Author of Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results and Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale. In this episode, Barry and Brian Ardinger discuss creating a culture of experimentation in enterprises and seeing everything as an assumption. Barry came to the U.S. from Ireland and worked at City Search “putting people on the Internet.” He then joined a mobile games development compan...
Dec 04, 2018•20 min•Ep. 126
Innovation is No Longer Optional Doug Hall has been in the innovation space for more than 30 years. His new book, Driving Eureka!, is about finding, filtering and fast-tracking to market and includes an update on what is continuously being learned about creating, communicating, and commercializing ideas. In 1986, Doug started Eureka Ranch, an early "accelerator" program focused on commercializing products. He took a system-driven approach to innovation to enable businesses to increase speed and ...
Nov 27, 2018•20 min•Ep. 125
Amy Radin is the author of The Change Maker's Playbook: How to Seek, Seed and Scale Innovation in Any Company. She was previously a Senior Executive at American Express, Citi, and ETrade. Amy's experience includes leading the digital transformation of Citi’s credit card business ($5b bottom line). Today, Amy enjoys being on the outside of big companies and startups, to help connect the dots between growth aspirations and outcomes. Key Takeaways in Brian Ardinger's Interview with Amy: - The human...
Nov 20, 2018•18 min•Ep. 124
There’s no way to innovate if you only stay in your court Xavi Cortadellas is the Head of Innovation and Design at Gatorade. He focuses on innovating in the newest spaces, like tech and services, rather than incremental innovation. Gatorade invented sports drinks 50 years ago and now has an 80% market share. With little room to expand, they actively look for new spaces to grow. Because Gatorade is a huge part of sports in America, when entering a new market, they are careful to examine what’s th...
Nov 13, 2018•14 min•Ep. 123
Jeff Rohrs is the CMO of Yext and Author of Audience: Marketing in the age of subscribers, fans and followers, and The Everywhere Brand ebook. He’s also a former VP at Salesforce and ExactTarget. In this episode, Brian Ardinger and Jeff talk about managing content and brands across the web and how hard it is to put perfect information into consumer’s hands everywhere. Yext uses a digital knowledge management (dkm) platform to automate this process. With consumer behavior changing, 73% of a busin...
Nov 06, 2018•23 min•Ep. 122
Melissa Steach is an ergonomic specialist with Herman Miller. She works to educate various communities about ergonomics in the workplace while valuing and focusing on the importance of the human for design innovation. Brian Ardinger and Melissa take a look at innovation from a design perspective and how that can impact the workplace and home environments. The built environment helps human growth, relationships and caring for the health of people. New healthcare research is reflecting this idea. ...
Oct 30, 2018•14 min•Ep. 121
After years of working in startups, Sean Johnson and his team began getting approached by enterprises. These companies needed help moving on ideas, accessing specialists and understanding how to be iterative. Today, Sean's company Digital Intent works with venture-backed startups and Fortune 1000 companies wanting to be tech-enabled businesses. He is also a general partner at Founder Equity. Brian and Sean discuss a variety of corporate innovation strategies. Here are a few highlights: - Compani...
Oct 23, 2018•23 min•Ep. 120
In this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Brian Ardinger talks with Christopher Bailey and Kim Bullock with ExxonMobil. They discuss successes and challenges of innovating in a large corporation. Christopher and Kim will also be speaking at the Back End of Innovation Conference in Phoenix, AZ on Oct 17-19, 2018. Key strategies and lessons learned include: - Create space for idea creation and tools to process. - Protect people and their time from their existing roles. - Train the manag...
Oct 09, 2018•23 min•Ep. 118
In this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Brian Ardinger has a great conversation with Nicole Rufuku, author of Hiring for the Innovation Economy: Three steps to improve performance and diversity. They discuss how to hire for innovation in a world that’s changing. In her book, Nicole gives teams a set of innovation principals to use in the hiring process. They are: 1. Collaboration 2. Continuous improvement 3. Focusing on the user Nicole also provides three specific tools. They are: 1...
Oct 02, 2018•21 min•Ep. 117
Jeremy Lockhorn is VP, Experience Strategy, Mobile + Emerging Technology at SapientRazorfish and has served a wide variety of roles during his 20-year tenure. The common thread is on a focus of what’s next. In this podcast, Jeremy and Brian Ardinger discuss technology changes over the past 10 years and the implications for the future. They know each other from their days in the digital signage space. When the iPhone was launched more than 11 years ago, it was immediately breakthrough technology....
Sep 25, 2018•15 min•Ep. 116
In this episode, Brian Ardinger talks with Doug Branson about his new book The Future of Tech is Women: How to Achieve Gender Diversity. Brian and Doug start the conversation by looking at trends in the market. Doug outlines the history of women in senior corporate positions. Of the 70 women that have been CEOs of publicly held companies, 70% have MBAs. Of the 27 women that have held exec positions in IT companies (out of 600), two have STEM backgrounds and 25 have business or law backgrounds. D...
Sep 18, 2018•21 min•Ep. 115
Canva, an easy graphic-design tool website, started six years ago, after two of its founders found success making customizable school yearbooks. Through this process they discovered the power of putting easy-to-use tools in the hands of their customers. Cameron Adams, Canva’s Co-founder and Chief product officer joined the team with his design and tech experience, and Canva was born. Today, Canva, an Australian-based company, has over 10 million users and is valued at $1 billion. In this episode...
Sep 11, 2018•17 min•Ep. 114
Growth, Pricing and SaaS Patrick Campbell is the CEO of ProfitWell (formerly Price Intelligently), the software for helping subscription companies with their monetization and retention strategies. ProfitWell also provides free turnkey subscription financial metrics for over 8,000 companies. Prior to ProfitWell, Patrick lead was an Economist at Google and the NSA, an experience he thought was surprisingly similar. With 50 employees in Boston and Argentina, ProfitWell has been funded by bootstrapp...
Sep 05, 2018•24 min•Ep. 113
Corporate Innovation, Mid-Level Managers and the New 20% Ralph Welborn has spent over 25 years providing business and technology advisory services to both private and public sector organizations globally. He has held a variety of leadership positions, including CEO of Imaginatik, the market-leading innovation advisory and platform company; leader of IBM's Strategy & Transformation business in the Middle East and Africa; senior vice president at KPMG Consulting; and a cofounder of an e-commer...
Aug 29, 2018•20 min•Ep. 112
Peter Gardner worked for 20 years as a venture capitalist with Allegis Capital before switching to consulting and eventually launching Startgrid. Peter and Startgrid’s mission is to use software to intensify the density of resources in ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley so that innovation can continue to happen no matter where.
Aug 22, 2018•14 min•Ep. 55
Shaina Stigler is chief empathy officer at the startup, Betwixt, that’s focused on enhancing communication and trust between coworkers. She shared some insight they’ve gained on how to jumpstart and measure this growth as well as how improvisation is integral to startups. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Aug 11, 2018•22 min•Ep. 54
Greg Larkin is the author of "This Might Get Me Fired: A Manual for Surviving in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Underground." He talked with Brian about the impetus for his book as well as practical tactics and bits of advice for people forging ahead in new innovation waters. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Aug 03, 2018•24 min•Ep. 53
Taylor Dawson is a founding member of GE Appliances’ FirstBuild Microfactory. In addition to his conversation with Brian, he spoke at the Inside Outside Innovation Summit in May. He had some great stories to tell about FirstBuild’s origins and the obstacles they’ve conquered the challenges they’re still solving. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Jul 26, 2018•23 min•Ep. 52
Azeem Azhar is the author of Exponential View, a weekly newsletter about innovation. He talked with Brian about broad perspectives, geography of innovation, corporate venture capital, and why you shouldn’t take a golf club to a tennis match. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Jul 04, 2018•19 min•Ep. 51
Amy Jo Kim is a longtime innovation consultant and author of “Game Thinking.” With a wealth of knowledge that she is eager to share, she talked to Brian about the concept of superfans, mainstream majority, and early majority and why identifying these demographics is crucial for success. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Jun 28, 2018•18 min•Ep. 50
