The first in a new project on The Innovation Show. Hire For Neurosignature, Train for Skill: The Brain is Like a Waterbed "Autists are not just square pegs in the round hole of society. The real problem isn't the challenge of fitting them in, it's that in trying to do so we risk destroying their unique shape." — Paul Collins The parents of an autistic young man approached a local convenience store, hoping to secure a job for their son. The retail chain manager, hesitant due to his team's lack of...
Aug 02, 2023•20 min
In The Hidden Spring, our guest Mark Solms does not dive too deeply into Karl Friston’s mathematics. As you will discover, he summarises its implications, describing Friston’s free energy as a quantifiable measure of how a system models the world and how it behaves. This notion leads to a very different idea of consciousness from Descartes’s reason-centric version that set up the puzzling dualism of “mind” and “matter”, a la Damasio's Descartes Error. Mark explores the “cortical fallacy,” which ...
Aug 01, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 21Ep. 464
Why does it feel like something to be alive? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now, at last, Mark Solms, who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming, has arrived at his answer. More than just a philosophical argument, the Free Energy theory will profoundly change how you understand your existence. The very idea that a breakthrough is possible may seem outrageous. Isn't consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of empirical meth...
Jul 30, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 21Ep. 463
Part 1 of a 9-part series with the brilliant Mark Solms. Why does it feel like something to be alive? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now, at last, Mark Solms, who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming, has arrived at his answer. More than just a philosophical argument, the Free Energy theory will profoundly change how you understand your existence. The very idea that a breakthrough is possible may seem outrageous. Isn't con...
Jul 28, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 21Ep. 462
If you could make a change—any change you wanted—what would it be? Would it be something in your organization or your industry? Maybe something it’s in your community or throughout society as a whole? Creating true change is never easy. Most startups don’t survive. Most community groups never get beyond small local actions. Even when a spark catches fire and protesters swarm the streets, it often seems to fizzle out almost as fast as it started. The status quo is, almost by definition, well entr...
Jul 21, 2023•38 min•Season 30Ep. 460
I was MC for the tech stage at the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz, Austria. I had the pleasure of meeting the brilliant Phaedra Boinodiris. A fellow with the London-based Royal Society of Arts, Phaedra has focused on inclusion in technology since 1999. She is the business transformation leader for IBM’s Responsible AI consulting group and serves on the leadership team of IBM’s Academy of Technology. She is the author of the book “AI for the Rest of Us”, and is a co-founder of the Future World ...
Jul 20, 2023•31 min•Season 30Ep. 459
Helen Edwards joins us for part 2 of a 2-part episode on her book, "From Marginal to Mainstream Why Tomorrow’s brand growth will come from the Fringes – and How to get there first.” Her book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their 'mainstream inhibition' and turn their attention to the margins - to confront, evaluate and embrace the 'strangeness' of behaviours, ideas and ways of life at the fringes. Using original research and analysis of the brands that h...
Jul 13, 2023•47 min•Season 29Ep. 458
Helen Edwards joins us for part 1 of a 2-part episode on her book, "From Marginal to Mainstream Why Tomorrow’s brand growth will come from the Fringes – and How to get there first.” Her book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their 'mainstream inhibition' and turn their attention to the margins - to confront, evaluate and embrace the 'strangeness' of behaviours, ideas and ways of life at the fringes. Using original research and analysis of the brands that h...
Jul 09, 2023•58 min•Season 29Ep. 457
Our guest is the author of 15 books, over 160 practitioner articles, and over 60 Darden cases, etc. dealing with innovation and learning. Every time I catch up, he goes and writes another book. He has become a dear friend, thought partner and mentor. He honoured me by asking me to pre-read the manuscript and offer an endorsement, and this is what I wrote: “A life-changing book written by an old soul. Old souls are wise beyond their years, humble, and curious. They see the big picture, feel conne...
Jul 05, 2023•1 hr•Season 29Ep. 456
Metaphors show people how to look beyond the surface levels of life, to an enlightened truth. This book attempts to point to something deep, spiritual, and powerful. Metaphors, stories, and musings speak to the heart, not to the brain. Listen with your heart; that is where we all find inner truth. It is a great pleasure to welcome the author of “Life is a Metaphor: Metaphors, Stories and Musings for the Heart”, George Pransky, joined by his wife and long-time business partner Linda Pransky, guys...
Jun 30, 2023•19 min•Season 29Ep. 455
The aim of mind-wandering, odd as it might sound, is to improve the efficiency of your generative model. As ordained by the Free Energy Principle, a model is only efficient if it uses the minimum resources necessary to perform the work of self-organisation. That boils down to finding the simplest model that successfully predicts sensory samples of the world. The simplest model does not arise naturally from voluntary action. Voluntary action is a haphazard process. Simplicity is increased by prun...
Jun 27, 2023•5 min•Season 28Ep. 454
We caught up with Dr Robert Hogan during his 2023 worldwide tour. Robert challenged decades of academic tradition to demonstrate personality’s impact on organisational success. He pioneered the use of personality assessment to improve workplace performance. One of his key findings is that organisations should look for humility in a leader rather than charisma. A humble leader channels energy into the improvement of an organisation, whereas charismatic leaders leave a trail of chaos and ruin. Hog...
Jun 26, 2023•23 min
Today’s book offers a comprehensive approach to extraordinary problem-solving. Conceived by a super-creative quartet of top-tier business consultants, the book builds upon a novel premise: What if you framed problems as if they were games of profound significance? How might you design something new or reimagine the old, particularly when competition increases, technology disrupts, change accelerates, money tightens, and the rules of success are constantly evolving? The book then shares a flexibl...
Jun 22, 2023•52 min•Season 28Ep. 452
Today’s book draws on a decade of research and 50 case studies to present six mindsets that help business leaders and nonprofit equivalents be more confident and creative about strategic problem-solving and be successful where others are afraid to act (or act recklessly). The concept is modelled after innovative companies such as Patagonia which are not afraid to step out into risk using small moves that build capabilities, assets and understanding. The imperfectionist strategy creates opportuni...
Jun 14, 2023•52 min•Season 27Ep. 451
Today’s guest discovered that over 10 years, just 1 in 12 companies managed to jump from the middle tier of corporate performance—where 60% of companies reside, making very little economic profit—to the top quintile, where 90% of global economic profit is made. This movement does not happen by magic—it depends on your company’s current position, the trends it faces, and the big moves you make to give it the strongest chance of vaulting over the competition. This is not another strategy framework...
Jun 08, 2023•50 min•Season 26Ep. 450
What is it about the top tech product companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix and Tesla that enables their record of consistent innovation? Most people think it’s because these companies are somehow able to find and attract a level of talent that makes this innovation possible. But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products. Today’s guest has long ...
May 31, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 25Ep. 449
Disciplined Entrepreneurship will change the way you think about starting a company. Many believe that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but great entrepreneurs aren’t born with something special – they simply make great products. This book will show you how to create a successful startup through developing an innovative product. It breaks down the necessary processes into an integrated, comprehensive, and proven 24-step framework that any industrious person can learn and apply. You will learn:...
May 26, 2023•46 min•Season 25Ep. 448
Does this sound familiar? * Are you always one prototype away from a solution but never seem to get there? * Do you spend most of your time fixing problems you did not anticipate? * Does it seem like everything is going well until launch when it all falls apart? * Are you getting very little return on the resources you deploy? * Does the performance of your product in the market rarely meet the predicted targets? Intrigued? So was I. If you answered yes, then you are like a young version of our ...
May 20, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 26Ep. 447
Very few large companies manage to avoid stalls in revenue growth. These stalls are not attributable to the natural business cycle. Our guest's careful analysis reveals that most such stalls directly result from strategic choices made by corporate leaders. In short, stoppages in growth are almost always avoidable. This extensively researched book analyses the growth experiences of more than 600 Fortune 100 companies over the past fifty years to identify why growth stalls and to discover how to r...
May 14, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 26Ep. 446
C.S. Lewis once said, “Good and evil increase at compound interest. That’s why the little decisions we make every day are of infinite importance. the smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may go on to victories you never dreamed of” This quote came to mind as I pondered today's book. Just as the good things we do compound over time, so too do the not-so-good things, it was jinn Dryden who wrote first we make our habits then our habits mak...
May 08, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 25Ep. 445
This is my guest appearance on The Disruptive Voice Podcast. Exploring the theories of disruptive innovation across a broad set of industries and circumstances with academics, researchers, and practitioners who have been inspired and taught by Professor Clayton M. Christensen. In his book, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organizations, and Life, Aidan McCullen writes about how, centuries ago, sailors would set out to sea with maps labelled with the Latin words ...
May 04, 2023•51 min•Season 25Ep. 444
Today’s book offers over eighty assignments, countless ideas, and memorable stories collected throughout The Stanford d.school’s decade-plus history. Today’s guest painstakingly curated this collection from some of the world's most inventive minds, including d.school and IDEO founder David Kelley amongst others. She is with us today to share some of those assignments to spark our creativity because a common characteristic of our audience is - without a doubt - curiosity. It is a pleasure to welc...
May 01, 2023•55 min•Season 25Ep. 443
In Chapter 5 of Tushman and O’Reilly’s "Lead and Disrupt", the authors share how Cypress Semiconductor used a similar venture funding model, complete with a one-page business plan, for initial funding to grow $40 million in businesses. With their approach called a “Federation of Entrepreneurs”, Cypress is a great case study in ambidextrous leadership. In June 2019, Infineon Technologies announced it would acquire Cypress for $9.4 billion. The deal closed in April 2020, making Infineon one of the...
Apr 29, 2023•52 min•Season 24Ep. 442
In Chapter 5 of the Corporate Explorer, Binns, Tushman, and O’Reilly share how a Corporate Explorer created a new business inside the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte. His new unit, Deloitte Pixel, uses the “wisdom of crowds” to solve complex management problems. His first experience of the power of crowds came when he was part of a self-organised community that came together to provide relief for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. This taught him that communities of people could s...
Apr 26, 2023•49 min•Season 24Ep. 441
There is no formula for immunity to disruption. Invincibility is an illusion. However, one factor explains why some succeed at corporate venture building. Our experience working with midsize and large legacy firms has shown us that innovation is as much about leadership as it is about the method, strategy, organization, and culture. Leaders who ignite and sustain an exploration spirit are more likely to succeed than those who rely on past strengths or success formulas to carry them through. Corp...
Apr 22, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Season 24Ep. 440
Why do successful firms find it so difficult to adapt in the face of change – to innovate? In the past ten years, the importance of this question has increased as more industries and firms confront disruptive change. The pandemic has accelerated this crisis, collapsing the structures of industries from airlines and medicine to online retail and commercial real estate. Today, business leaders are obligated to investors, their employees, and communities. At the core of this challenge is helping th...
Apr 20, 2023•57 min•Season 24Ep. 439
In part 2 of our Tushman and O'Reilly series, Charles O'Reilly III explores the importance of cultural alignment in encouraging change. We focus on the cases of DaVita, Microsoft and AGC. 00:01:17 Origin Story 00:05:20 Ideate, Incubate, Scale 00:07:37 Culture 00:10:50 The Tyranny of Success: Gunfire At Sea 00:24:20 The L.E.A.S.H. Model 00:21:45 Organisational Culture Change: How Microsoft Transformed Its Culture 00:26:58 DaVita: A Community First, A Company Second 00:31:51 The Importance of Lang...
Apr 17, 2023•46 min•Season 24Ep. 438
In part 1 of our Tushman and O'Reilly series, Michael Tushman examines how leadership, culture, and organizational architectures can be both critical facilitators of innovation and, not uncommonly, formidable obstacles. They demonstrate how to clarify today's critical managerial problems, use culture and commitment to promote innovation and implement strategy, and deal with changing innovation requirements as organizations evolve.
Apr 10, 2023•59 min•Season 24Ep. 437
Our guest is an American scholar, educator, and religious leader who has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since April 2015 and was the church's seventeenth Commissioner of Church Education from 2015 to 2019. He served previously as the 15th president of Brigham Young University–Idaho from 2005 to 2015 and as the Harvard Business School (HBS) dean from 1995 to 2005. He was also the George F. Baker Professor of Business Administration. He published an imp...
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 23Ep. 436
Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, and infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Today’s guest reveals a paradox at the heart of our approach to solving poverty. While noble, our current solutions are not producing consistent results and in some cases, have exacerbat...
Apr 01, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 23Ep. 435
