Shift: Recent Episodes
Moves The Needle
"The only way you survive is you continuously transform into something else. It's this idea of continuous transformation that makes you an innovation company.” -Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM.
Organizations that understand this thrive. Those that don’t, quickly become obsolete. In this podcast we’ll interview leaders responsible for igniting and scaling entrepreneurial action within their organizations so that you can drive the change your organization wants and needs.
In this episode, Jocelyn Mangan, CEO of Him for Her, joins us to discuss how her social impact enterprise is building the boardroom of the future by addressing the gender gap in for-profit boardrooms to increase diversity. Him for Her’s unique approach overcomes the networking gap responsible for the sparsity of women in the boardroom by engaging business luminaries such as Stacy Brown-Philpot, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Weiner, Eric Yuan, and many more to connect the world’s most talented “hers” to board service. Since its founding in 2018, Him For Her has built a referral-only talent network of over 2,000 board-ready women and delivered free board-referral lists to over 300 companies ranging from start-ups to S&P 100s.
Brad D. Smith, Executive Chairman of the Board of Intuit shares his lessons in leadership and the role of a CEO in nurturing innovation. He talks about authentic leadership, serially disrupting yourself, the importance of creating a learning environment where people treat success and failure the same way, and how to deliver the numbers today and reimagine the company for the future.
Stephen Ranjan, Vice President of New Product Development at Roche Diabetes Care shares how leaders and teams there are overcoming the unique challenges of innovating in healthcare despite the global pandemic. He shares how they built new capabilities to explore the needs of underserved customer segments and develop solutions at speed in a regulated environment. Stephen talks candidly about how leaders need to exercise new skills and behaviors to focus intently on customers and their problems while encouraging teams to move quickly and get their ideas funded and sponsored by executives.
Bennett Blank, Innovation & Transformation Leader at Intuit, shares his observations on the creativity of small businesses during hard times. He also discussed the grass-roots activation of Innovation tools at Intuit to help small businesses get through this pandemic.
In this episode, we are joined by Michelle Brigman, Director of Customer Experience at 7-Eleven. Michelle shares how, in the face of the global pandemic, 7-Eleven quickly shifted to ensure their over 68,000 store owners and franchisees could continue to meet their customers’ needs. She also provides insight into 7-Eleven’s COVID19 Command Center and how they use this to rapidly collect and respond to insights gained from all parts of their business. She discusses their digital transformation journey using Lean Innovation techniques. Michelle also explains how she is encouraging her team to bring their “whole self” to work and balance competing priorities (along with a few insights into fried pies, frogs, and the gift of time).
Steve Portigal, Author, Speaker, and Customer Research Expert, shares how to drive innovation using the power of strategic customer insights. He reminds us that learning from customers is “messy” because we are complex beings. In order to go deep while interviewing customers, you should have clarity about what is uncomfortable for you versus what is uncomfortable for customers and not conflate the two. His provocation, “No One Cares,” highlights the risk of magnifying the significance of our solutions in a customer’s life and missing the opportunity to focus on things that customers care about.
Katie Hanson, Director of Product Management at Benefitfocus, shares how her company quickly adapted to help their customers find affordable benefits during this global pandemic, and how it led to the creation of a new offering. She also talks about the importance of supporting her team during these stressful times by understanding how they are “really” doing.
Katie is a consumer experience thought leader and trained innovation catalyst. For almost two decades, she has helped consumers navigate big financial decisions using technology. Her passion for using data to uncover insights and foster innovation has contributed to the advancement of consumer-centric solutions at market-leading companies including Wells Fargo, Renovate America, Intuit, and Global Analytics.
Learn how Roche Diabetes Care used Agile, Lean Startup and Design Thinking to reinvent themselves to better address disruptive forces in Diabetes Care. Moritz Hartmann, head of the commercialization for EMEA/LATAM shares his leadership lessons learned throughout this journey driving transformation in the highly regulated medical devices industry.
Key take-aways
- When creating a new innovation program, beware of too much planning up-front. You will have a strong desire to do it “right”, but Moritz advises: “Don’t try to get it all right”.
- Empowering teams to make decisions based on evidence increases their engagement and has a very similar effect for leaders. The team taking on some of their own decisions can be a huge relief for a leader after a day of back-to-back meetings and non-stop decision-making.
To transform your organization you must quickly re-shape one of the foundational capabilities of your interdependent system, Portfolio management.
Key take-aways
- Must keep our innovation initiatives tied to the corporate strategy through our portfolio management processes
- A portfolio review is NOT a place for project status updates and your annual budgeting process should not be a stand-in for portfolio management. Markets, customers, and competitors are moving too quickly.
- Don’t wait, creating an evidence-based portfolio management process takes time. Start right away.
Innovation as an Interdependent System by Noel Sobelman - https://medium.com/@nsobelman/innovation-as-an-interdependent-system-cbd4b298acbe
In this episode of Shift, we link up with Arthur Daemmrich, Director of the Lemelson Center for the study of invention and innovation at the Smithsonian Institution, to discuss the differences between innovation and invention, and whether or not we have truly entered the fourth industrial revolution.
World class companies are winning...and they are losing. By now, we’ve all heard all of the buzzwords: Product Experience, Marketing Experience, User Experience, but what about Customer Experience? Understanding Customer Experience and how to create delightful experiences for your customers still remains a mystery in most large organizations.
The most successful companies are continuously developing three customer-centric disciplines: Designing for Delight, Delivering for Delight, and Engaging Customers, Talent, and Partners for Delight. Mike Kendall, Managing Director of the Customer Lab and former Director of Customer Experience for Capital One, helps corporations deliver for delight and build loyal champions, not just followers.
In the latest episode, Mike shares critical insights and learnings you need to put to delight your customers to achieve maximum growth potential.
- Why do organizations NEED to change?
- How to Design, Deliver and Create Winning Customer Experience?
- What are key factors behind Customer Experience?
- How you create a human, customer-centered culture?
- How can YOU Design for Delight?
Award-winning lean innovation coach and entrepreneur George Ankomah keeps his teams motivated through all obstacles and inspires them to consistently raise the bar for performance and success. Like all coaches, he must also keep growing personally and professionally and make sure his techniques and approach continue to be relevant and effective. How does he do it? In the latest episode of our Innovation Coach Spotlight series podcast, George shares his coaching experience and tenets for personal and team success.
Topics covered include:
- The key elements of successful lean innovation coaching
- The most common coaching pitfalls and how can you avoid them
- How you as a coach can anticipate potential roadblocks and set yourself and your team up for success
- George’s three-word mantra for keeping his coaching skills sharp and his contribution dynamic
George Ankomah is an active member of the Dutch lean startup scene and a former founder and alum of Startupbootcamp. These days he helps corporates in the Netherlands and abroad accelerate their innovation teams, design innovation ecosystems and set up global innovation training programs. His clients include Rabobank Group, Liberty Global and De Volksbank.
Understanding the key to finding the next growth opportunity for your company means you need to start with the right people. However; knowing how to build an inclusive team that best represents your customer takes time, energy and expertise. As the Vice President, Brand & Culinary Innovation at Dunkin' Brands, Dan has world class teams creating breakthrough innovation. But how did he do it?
In the latest episode, Dan shares unique perspective from the battlefield by answering the following key questions about what it’s like to create a high impact team that can find the next big growth opportunity for our organization.
- How can we strive for extreme diversity?
- What are key factors that create diversity?
- In addition to looking for ethnic, gender and functional diversity, how can YOU incorporate team members that view the world differently?
- How can YOU, as a leader, have a deep understanding of team members?
- How can YOU apply this to increase the chances of success in situations of extreme uncertainty?
It’s no secret that Financial companies and banks are heavily regulated, highly fragmented. These factors make the journey to innovation more difficult. As the Innovation Manager for Rabobank, Koen Bosma is taking on this incredible challenge.
In the latest episode, Koen shares his experiences in answering the following key questions when it comes to what it’s like to be an Innovation Coach for some of one of the world’s most beloved banks:
- As a coach, how do YOU make the right decisions at the right time in the right way?
- What are three common misconceptions about being a lean innovation coach and how do we overcome them?
- What does continuous growth look like for YOU?
- Why should we call it a decelerator vs. accelerator?
How can design thinking and lean methodology could help grow your company? This week, Dan Kaiser shares insights and important perspective that he has gained during his successful launch of the CUNA Innovation Center.
In the latest episode, Dan shares his expertise in answering the following key questions when it comes to creating breakthrough initiatives and launching and innovation center in large, successful insurance companies:
- How do YOU get started with a new innovation center?
- What are some key aspects of launching an innovation center?
- How do you balance stakeholders and grow the program in a sustainable way?
- How do you break through internal political barriers?
- How do you build internal policies critical to the long term survival of the Innovation center?
In this week’s podcast, Roy Rosin demystifies barriers to growth and how key behaviors can break down these barriers in large, successful healthcare companies.
As Chief Innovation Officer for Penn Medicine, he shares unique insights about his role in creating and inspiring recent initiatives such as Heart-Safe Motherhood program resulting in significant impact across the company.
For over a decade, Roy has served in leadership roles where he built innovation programs that dramatically increased entrepreneurial activity. In his previous role as the first Vice President of Innovation for Intuit (the makers of TT, Quickbooks and Quicken), he increased annual new releases from 5 per year to 30, while time to market decreased from one year to a few months. After five years at the helm of Intuit's new approach to growth, the company had delivered shareholder returns of three times Google and 33 times the S&P 500.
In our very first episode of the Innovation Coach Spotlight Series, we caught up with Jeremy Gardner to some key questions about how organizations can foster and empower their innovation coaches to create sustainable innovation transformation from within. Beyond the buzzwords and script, Jeremiah breaks down what it means and what it takes in this candid interview.
In this Episode, MTN co-founder Aaron Eden hosts entrepreneur and intrepreneur, Dan Toma. As an entrepreneur, Dan has been involved with high-tech startups globally. Over the last few years he’s been primarily focused in the enterprise and has worked with companies like DT, Bosch, Jaguar and Allianz. He has also recently co-authored a book titled The Corporate Startup - How established companies can develop successful innovation ecosystems.
Our areas of focus for this episode are:
- Why the enterprise ecosystem should mimic a living organism.
- Innovation thesis.
- What is an innovation thesis and why is it important?
- Is it different from a company or product vision?
- How can we use it to ensure we aren’t killing opportunities too early?
- Why it is important to focus on arenas rather than industries.
What Dan Toma is reading:
- Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs
- Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap
In this episode, MTN Co-Founder Aaron Eden is interviewed by James Carbary of Sweet Fish Media on their B2B Growth podcast.
We narrow in on how marketing professionals can support innovation transformation in their own organizations. Key areas of focus from this discussion were how marketing professionals can:
1) Think big and start small to move quickly.
2) Guard against premature scaling to reduce risk.
3) Behave like a product leader to increase impact.
In today’s episode, the tables turn and my frequent co-host and MTN Co-Founder, Aaron Eden, is the interviewee. We cover many of the most pressing topics that come up time and time again when folks try to drive innovation within their organization. This is an all-around great episode including what Aaron learned at a recent trip to SpaceX to demystifying “transformation”.
Topics include:
- How SpaceX launches rockets faster than most companies launch websites
- How to create a culture and workforce unified around a compelling mission
- What separates the top 1% of corporate innovation initiatives from the top 10%
- How Aaron defines transformation and the ideal state to work toward when undergoing transformation
- Other learnings from recent engagements
- Some of Aaron’s recent favorite books like Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and Unlocking Potential: 7 Coaching Skills That Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations
In today’s episode, my co-host, Aaron Eden, and I are really excited to have our guest, Kyle Nel. Kyle is the Executive Director of Lowe's Innovation Labs and has a very unique approach toward innovation which was fun to explore in this episode. They leverage a narrative-driven approach that uses story (and comics) as a strategic tool to map out the future for Lowe’s that they are working to bring to life. They then work backward to build that future, rapidly testing technology prototypes to solve everyday problems.
In the episode, Kyle takes us through his journey of making this the working reality of Lowe's Innovation Labs.
Other topics we cover are:
- How to get an innovation lab up and running
- How to use comic books to build leadership buy-in and excitement
- How Lowe’s is applying virtual and augmented Reality
- How to understand the motivation of the people in your organization
- How to leverage behavioral economics to drive organizational transformation
We’re really excited today to have our guest, Ryan Staggs. Ryan is the Assistant Vice President of Integration & Mobility Services at the Hospital Corporation of America. Ryan’s work revolves heavily around increasing innovation within the the IT department and making it more nimble and responsive. In this episode, we dive into how he’s been able to make that happen. When thinking about innovation, people quickly default to new products so hearing about the impact that Ryan has been able to drive by transforming IT department functions is refreshing.
Other topics include:
- Innovating how the core business works (within IT, HR, finance, et cetera)
- Transforming how the IT department functions to be more nimble and responsive
- Creating a more fulfilling work environment by discovering and creating new value
- Innovating at scale in a Fortune 70 healthcare organization
- Leveraging the SEE model for IT - Stabilize, Enhance, Expand
- Being fearless and willing to fail
- Building an interactive data visualization for ER in 12 weeks
In today’s episode, we’re really excited to have with us Vanessa Moore, the VP of Programs and Operations at the San Diego Food Bank. They are striving to end hunger in their area by serving over 370,000 individuals every month.
Not too long ago, they went through one of our Lean Innovation Bootcamps tailored for Non-Profit and Social Impact organizations. As a result, they reinvented their volunteer program to better serve their stakeholders and have changed the way the organization functions when it comes to creating new value.
We’re also lucky to have as my co-host, Amelia Klawon, one of the leaders of our Non-Profit and Social Impact organization programs and services. If you’re interested in learning more about that, please don’t hesitate to reach out to her via email at amelia@movestheneedle.com
Other topics that we’ll discuss include:
- How the San Diego Food Bank goes about identifying new ways to create value
- How to put a repeatable, creative system in place
- How they reinvented their volunteer program
- The huge importance of having leadership buy-in
- How to do customer development with leadership and other employees
- How to go from empathy and experiments to a brand new initiative and roll-out
As an intrapreneur, dealing with compliance can certainly be a hurdle to overcome. In today’s episode, Moves the Needle CEO Brant Cooper and I are excited to have Stephen Poor talk about how compliance departments can better enable innovation and how law firms can be more innovative. Stephen is the Chairman of Seyfarth Shaw, an international law firm comprised of over 900 lawyers. Whether you’re a lawyer or an intrapreneur, you’re in for a treat.
If you’d like to have a conversation around how you can transform your organization to make discovering new value business as usual, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at sam@movestheneedle.com. I’d be happy to help you get a call scheduled with one of our Innovation Champions. With that said, let’s jump into the show where we’ll discuss:
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Similarities and differences between innovating in the legal industry vs other types of organizations
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The ideal relationship between innovation departments/intrapreneurs and compliance
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How Seyfarth goes about innovating upon their legal services
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How to establish a set of guidelines with the compliance team in your organization
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How to restructure teams and language to enable innovation
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The importance of resilience as a lawyer and innovator
John leads the empowered innovation program within BAE, which is a nearly $20 billion multinational defense, security and aerospace company. In the episode we dive into how they’ve organized their innovation strategy into 4 operational buckets and how they not only identify new products, but innovate on the core business. We also talk about how they have done a fantastic job getting rid of the distance between the end customer and new product development teams amongst other things. Also, we’re getting great feedback on our Lean Innovation Assessment tool, so if you want to try it out and identify opportunities for growth in your organization, email me at sam@movestheneedle.com and I’d be happy to pass it along in exchange for some feedback. Other topics in today’s episode include: * Balancing internal innovation with external innovation scouting. * How BAE organizes their innovation strategy into 4 operational buckets. * Innovating upon the core business functions in addition to exploring and implementing new products. * How BAE moves products from discovery/search mode into the execution engine of the business. * Implicit vs Explicit needs, and how BAE maintains a competitive advantage by constantly searching and creating solutions for the implicit needs of customers.
Millennials play a vital part in the workforce of today and tomorrow. Yet per HBR's article, What Do Millennials Really Want at Work? The Same Things the Rest of Us Do, ‘it’s likely that companies pursuing millennial-specific employee engagement strategies are wasting time, focus, and money'.
This episode features a recording from a live webcast discussion between Aaron Eden and Marilyn Gorman!
Aaron Eden focuses on helping organizations act more entrepreneurial as the Co-Founder and COO of Moves the Needle. Prior to MTN, Aaron was the first Product Manager at Intuit (in HR) and played a key role in helping his team stop thinking about HR as a cost center and think about it as a way to drive competitive advantage. As a result, he re-designed the personal growth & development program, university recruiting program and leadership development program. Beyond his work in HR, Aaron played a key role in the development of Intuit's Innovation Program through launching a series of successful Lean Startup workshops within Intuit.
Marilyn Gorman focuses on the intersection of HR processes like Learning & Development and Organizational Design and entrepreneurial skills. Prior to founding the Gorman Group, Marilyn worked with GE and led cultural change initiatives and high-visibility, Chairman-sponsored programs as a Global Program Leader for Executive Development and Culture at GE. She also was Innovation coach for Performance Development transformation at GE, engaging with culture, systems and HR processes.
In this episode, we’re really excited to have Cholpon Rosengren, Director of Family Support at United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona, on the show together with my co-host and leader of our Non-Profit and Social Impact programs and services Heather Hiscox. In this episode, we'll discuss: - How to effectively apply lean innovation within a non-profit and social impact context.
- What mindset shifts occurred during our Lean Innovation bootcamp with NPOs.
- How the United Way was able to drive impact and create new value using lean innovation.
- How Cholpon overcame various challenges to get the ball rolling with this new way to work.
- How this new way of working transforms the way non-profits and social impact organizations function.
Usually we're focused on helping you create innovation from within, yet M&A’s play an integral role in a well rounded innovation strategy. In today’s podcast episode we’re excited to switch things up and focus on lessons learned doing mergers & acquisitions. Some of the key topics we cover in this episode are: * The role M&A has in a company’s innovation practice. * Acquiring technology vs. human capital. * Ways to prevent culture clash and a deal from going bad. * How the 3 E’s (Empathy, Experiments and Evidence) apply to M&A. * How to run experiments on M&A’s.
Listen here or don’t hesitate to pass it along to someone else in your organization who you think may enjoy it.
When trying to transform organizations to become more innovative, it’s easy to forget about the interpersonal side and get caught up in the process.
In today’s episode we dive into just that: how can you better understand your colleagues’ preferred styles of communication and leadership, so you can work together in a way that they’ll be most receptive.
Our guest Tony Cooper, CEO of Market Force, has become an expert at helping people and organizations these traits so companies can remove these “invisible blockers” and drive the impact their after. Our other guest, Kyle McCray, Innovation Manager at American Pacific Mortgage company, shares stories of how he’s leveraged this awareness to drive impact through innovating on the core business instead of focusing on flashy new products.
We also have an offer in there for that’s currently exclusive to our podcast listeners so be sure to check it out.
Today’s episode may be our best one yet (and no, I don’t say that every time).
In this episode, we go through some of the most powerful snippets from all of our podcasts in 2016. In it we have clips from the Operations Lead at Spotify, an Innovation Leader at Intuit and much more.
The topics we cover are:
- What is the end goal of innovation.
- How have Pearson and Spotify scaled their innovation initiatives.
- How does Pearson evaluate and allocate funding to new products.
- How does Intuit measure success.
- What do leaders want to see most.
- Why we’re driving innovation and how breakthrough innovation really occurs.
This one is not to be missed. Also, we’re getting ready to do a Q&A episode so if you have any questions you’d like to hear our founders Brant Cooper or Aaron Eden answer, please pass it along via email to sam@movestheneedle.com!
Today’s episode is hands down one of my favorites as it’s filled with practical tips, tactics and stories to building a more entrepreneurial organization. It’s our first time doing a host chat, where I’m joined by the Moves the Needle Co-founders, Brant Cooper and Aaron Eden. In it, we cover:
- Why you need to start by identifying problems and opportunities within core business lines.
- How to get buy-in by tying innovation into your leaders’ and company’s strategic priorities using the leadership zoom tool.
- Why we need to redefine the word innovation.
- Which mindset shifts leaders need to undertake to create an entrepreneurial culture.
- What sort of results leaders want to see.
- How to navigate the ego’s of your bosses.
- What are some things you can do right now to build more momentum at your organization.
In today’s episode, Aaron Eden and I are really excited to have Intuit Innovation Leader, Bennett Blank join us as Aaron and Bennett talk us through their journey of 100 Startups in 100 Days at Intuit. We also dive into how 100 Startups in 100 Days has evolved since then as Moves the Needle has begun to run it within other organizations looking to act the same way they’re pushing their innovation teams to, bold, fast, and with impact.
In today's episode we're honored to have our guest and Moves the Needle executive advisor Simeon Sessley. Prior to becoming the Director of Strategic Programs at World 50, Simeon played a paramount role in the development of GE Fastworks internal coaching community. Along with my co-host Brant Cooper, we cover a lot of ground and dive into the following topics and then some: * Focusing on innovation throughout all business functions, instead of just new products. * Building a thriving coaches community within GE. * How to effectively balance H1, H2, and H3 work. * What H0 is, and how can you drive innovation there. * Focusing on changing the way people work through values, systems and structures. * The importance of starting with why. * And much more...
Ghassouli, People, Finance & Strategy Director at Avito, talks us through how he proactively used the M&A he went through with Avito as an opportunity to create a better culture after taking the passive approach began to lead to some problems.
In the episode dive into:
- How he created workshops to collaboratively create a new set of values between the two organizations.
- How they doubled down on those values and identified measurable behaviors to ensure the values were embodied. Behaviors that are still measured today even 2 years after the merger.
- How they’ve gone about structuring an innovation lab within the organization.
- How he uses the lean startup methodology to run experiments beyond product development.
In today’s episode we’re excited to have Sonja Kresojevic, the VP of Product Lifecycle at Pearson. In the episode we cover:
- How teams leverage the product lifecycle framework to focus on the right things at the right time.
- How Pearson funds different early stage projects based on stage specific criteria and metrics.
- How Pearson has scaled lean innovation throughout the business and created a culture that enables innovation.
In this episode, we’re honored to have Bennett Blank, Innovation Leader at Intuit, talk about how Intuit has spread innovation thinking throughout the entire organization. Bennett is a Lean Startup in the Enterprise veteran so you’re in for a treat.
Here’s some of the key things we talk about:
- What customer benefit metrics are, how you can identify them, and how they can set teams up for success instead of focusing directly on business impact.
- How Bennett has gone from working in the trenches as a product manager and designer to leading transformation throughout the entire organization.
- How Intuit applies Lean Startup to HR and other functions throughout the business.
- The strategic levers of transformational change Intuit is using to change the way employees work.
In this episode, we interview Kelly McAdoo, the City Manager of the City of Hayward. We cover lots of ground, including deep dives into topics like:
- How Kelly has been driving impact through creating an entrepreneurial culture within a bureaucratic organization.
- How City of Hayward has been able to drastically shorten the scoping process for new projects using Lean Innovation.
- How City of Hayward is redefining the way public sector entities should function in the 21st century.
In this episode, Aaron Eden (MTN Co-Founder and COO) and I interview Neal Cross, the Chief Innovation Officer of DBS. DBS is a bang headquartered in Singapore that generated $11 billion in revenue and $4.5 billion in profit last year. They know the finance landscape is changing rapidly, and as a result are on a inspiring journey towards not only creating an innovation group within the bank, but turning the entire bank itself into an innovation group. In this episode we discuss: * How this year they’re on route to have put about 5000 people through the lean startup and design thinking training. * How valuable it’s been to have a CEO who doesn’t just talk about innovation, but backs it up with a deep understanding, money and KPI’s that revolve around human centered design and experimentation. * How Neal focuses on increasing the ambition of employees along with providing protection, education, and freedom. * How he was able to get the bank to run 1000 lean startup experiments in 2015 by matching up a broad internal PR play with the guidance needed to enable practitioners to actually deliver. * How Neal manages a healthy balance between PR and execution. * Some of the challenges Neal still faces despite having support from key executives and the CEO.
In this episode we’re excited to have Jason Harris, Director of Corporate Marketing & Communications for UI LABS. UI LABS is a first-of-its-kind innovation accelerator, addressing problems too big for any one organization to solve on its own. The challenges we are addressing in manufacturing and smart cities are at the intersection of digital convergence: computing, big data, and the Internet of Things (IOT). In this episode, we dive into lots of powerful topics, tips and tactics like: * How UI labs has brought together corporations and public sector entities build a powerful applied research and commercialization engine. * The benefits of collaborative corporate innovation. * How the Digital Manufacturing And Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) works with partners in industry, academia, the nonprofit sector and government, DMDII to sponsor research projects in digital manufacturing and design, disseminate the lessons learned, and help educate the workforce of tomorrow. * How their City Digital program functions and taps into the collective power of entities like the City of Chicago’s economic development arm, Microsoft, Siemens, CommonWealth Edison, University of Illinois, HBK Engineering. * How UI Labs identifies and unites all a bunch of diverse organizations around a problem statement. * Jason Harris’ favorite books in the innovation landscape like Steve Case’s, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future and Charles Duhigg’s Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business. * And much more!
In our first episode, we're thrilled to interview Simon Marcus, the VP of Operations at Spotify. As part of the leadership team at Spotify, Simon has played a pivotal role in the development of Spotify Rhythm, Spotify's internal innovation program. Prior to Spotify, he was Chief Operating Officer of The Library Corporation, where he lead an extraordinary whole-company lean/agile practice. He also co-founded TLC Labs, an enterprise innovation lab at the forefront of exploring change management, organizational design, process improvement, product design, and user experience. In this episode, join us as we cover: - How Spotify manages “bets," strategic decision making and execution with Spotify Rhythm
- How Simon is focusing on creating an environment where employees are comfortable to “tinker in a corner”
- Why Simon is skeptical of over-investing into internal branding when it comes to fostering internal adoption of “innovation initiatives”
- How Spotify manages areas of exploration across a simple portfolio Kanban broken down into Now (stuff being fully productized), Next (pretty confident in problem space, now focused on validating solution space) and Later (exploring the problem space).
- How Simon leads up operations at Spotify, yet remains heavily focused on structuring operations around continuing to innovate instead of just refining existing products
- Why a high-trust environment acts as the foundation for thriving as an organization
- How prior to Spotify, Simon helped The Library Corporation coped with the disruption of libraries
- Why the part-time initiative model isn’t conducive to innovation
- How The Library Corporation introduced Lean Startup into their organization