Agile Giants: Lessons From Corporate Innovators

David is probably best known as the co-author of Testing Business Ideas which he co-authored with Alexander Osterwalder. However, he’s had an incredible impact on innovation both at startups and large companies. He helped GE develop their infamous FastWorks program in partnership with Eric Ries. He also coached emerging product teams at Adobe and even helped Toyota apply the Lean Startup practices to their innovation groups. Before his transition into consulting, David spent over 10 years of his career at technology startups, and he stays connected to the startup scene today through his work at several Silicon Valley accelerators. Show Links Precoil (David’s consulting firm) Testing Business Ideas (Amazon) David’s Twitter Account David’s Instagram Account

There may be no more important topic in 2021 to innovation leaders than how to think about managing and organizing your team. On this week's episode of Agile Giants, I sit down with Stefano Mastrogiacomo to talk about his new book High-Impact Tools for Teams. Show Links: High Impact Tools for Teams (Amazon) Stefano on Twitter Team Alignment website

How do you truly operationalize a mandate to become more innovative? There are plenty of resources that talk about the importance of innovation, but over the year's I've really grown to appreciate author & innovation consultant Tendayi Viki's pragmatic advice. On this week's episode, we talk about his work and walk through companies at different points in their innovation evolution and Tendayi offers practical advice he'd offer their leadership teams.

How do you apply the lean startup methodology to the military? Well, that's the subject of this week's episode of Agile Giants. Pete Newell, whose name may sound familiar because Steve Blank mentioned him at the Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum as the co-author of his upcoming book, Innovation Doctrine. Pete is the CEO of BMNT Inc., a Silicon Valley based innovation consultancy and early stage tech accelerator. He's a retired US Army colonel and the former director of the US Army Rapid Equipping Force. You'll hear on this week's episode a little bit about what Pete's been doing both with BMNT and in the classroom with Steve Blank. And again, just like we did on Steve's episode, teasing this book coming out that I know so many of you are excited about, Innovation Doctrine.

Tim Murphy leads the One SRC Services group within Philips Sleep and Respiratory Care. He joined our Forum to discuss his experience with data based corporate startups and more generally business model transformation. As mentioned last week, we are in the process of sharing all of the videos from this year’s Forum on the 2020 Forum Website. But I also wanted to share a few highlights here on Agile Giants.

Steve Blank & Alexander Osterwalder are world famous entrepreneurs and authors whose work in many ways launched the Lean Startup movement. We had a great conversation at CSL's Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum. We are in the process of sharing all of the videos from this year's Forum on the 2020 Forum Website. But I also wanted to share a few highlights here on Agile Giants.

If you live in Pennsylvania or one of the surrounding six states, you've likely pulled into a Sheetz Gas Station not to get gas, but to order & eat food.  That's right high-quality quick serve food customized to your preferences. Sheetz pioneered this "made to order" quick-serve style food in a gas station. On this week's episode of Agile Giants Mary Beth Green shares her experiences building a team and putting an innovation process that is working to re-invent the category again.

I'm sure you are familiar with Johnson & Johnson, but do you know their innovation strategy? On this episode we're joined by 2 Corporate Innovators within J&J Michal Preminger and Stephen Pitt to discuss their innovation strategy.

After transitioning from an entrepreneur to CVC at Intel Capital, Pradeep spent the last two years setting up and leading National Grid's CVC group. We talk about both his experiences launching a new corporate fund in the energy space as well as his experiences and lessons from a career at the storied Intel Capital. We also talk about how CVC needs to react during this Covid crises.

Joseph's papers have been some of the most interesting academic research on corporate venture capital in recent years. We do (eventually) get to this at the second half of the podcast, but honestly I could have talked to him for hours and kept going down fascinating tangents around how innovation really works in the early part of the episode. Each of these topics could have been their own podcast. I hope to have Joseph back on Agile Giants again soon.

Wil Morgan has been an investment manager, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Now he has a fascinating role inside Jaguar Land Rover around corporate innovation. We have an awesome conversation to start Season 3 of Agile Giants, both focusing on his current work at JLR as well as lessons across his career for traditional and corporate entrepreneurs. One of the things I really appreciated about our conversation was focused on making connections (both internally and externally) Wil was across the innovation ecosystem for Jaguar Land Rover.

On the last episode of Season 2, we do another Q&A episode - focusing on specific questions you the audience have for me.    The questions fell into four categories: There were a lot of questions about this unprecedented time we're living in, and especially how it relates to the overall economy, companies commitment to innovation, and to education.  I also got a few questions on one of the CSL, the Corporate Startup Lab tools, the Option-Gate. Next, not surprising, given the focus on corporate venture this season, I did have some questions around that as a strategy and how companies should think about CVC. And then the last topic was actually a personal one, but a number of you asked, about my professional plans between now and the start of season 3.  I'll talk about some of my plans at the end of this episode, if that's interesting to you. Show Links:  CSL CVC Sentiment Research HBR: Roaring Out of Recession

When you think about "academic thought leadership" in entrepreneurship, Yale Hochberg is at the top of most lists. For me, as a VC, she is best known for her work on the Seed Accelerator Rankings. But as you'll hear on this week's episode of Agile Giants - Yael has done a ton of interesting work around innovation and entrepreneurship including recently starting a firm focused on corporate innovation. It was a highlight to have her join me on Agile Giants Show Links:  Yael's Personal Homepage Yael's Consulting Firm: Flywheel Innovation Yael's Twitter Yael's Rice Website Seed Accelerator Rankings website

Friend & collaborator Laurie Barkman comes back as the first repeat guest on Agile Giants.  Since our first recording, she has launched a consulting firm (SmallDotBig), launched a podcast and returned the Tepper classroom as an instructor.  We have a great conversation on growth and innovation especially in times of transition.  Laurie's LinkedIn SmallDotBig website Succession Stories webpage LinkedIn Succession Stories Podcast Community Mission statement generator

As a special episode this week, we're broadcasting the full audio of our annual CSL Demo Day. If you would prefer to watch the video, you can see the full video of Demo Day on the Corporate Startup Lab site.  You can also learn more about the project course there. 

In the last few years, companies have made huge investments in digital transformation. Companies need to leverage these investments to unlock business model transformation. One of the most common business models that we see is this platform model. My guest this week, Alex Moazed, the founder and CEO of Applico wrote the definitive book on platform businesses, "Modern Monopolies". And now his firm operationalizes these insights inside incumbent businesses.

Frontier tech - emerging technologies such as robotics, computer vision and machine learning - are transforming so many of our industries. Established companies need to understand and figure out the right way to react.  On this episode of Agile Giants, I sit down with Vin Tang, the Co-Founder of Samsung's Q Fund. The fund's tagline is: "we're more CVPR, less CES."  Referencing the annual research event, the Conference Of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition versus the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. This is clearly a different type of venture fund, but there are a lot of lessons for other corporate venture investors. 

Most people probably know Vanguard as the firm that you can buy index and mutual funds from. They were the first investment group to offer index funds to individual investors. On this week's episode, we look at how they are continuing to innovate. Warren leads a group that is doing both inside-out and outside-in innovation. It's a great conversation, three things I encourage you to specifically focus on as you listen: The way they approach startups and how they think about those collaborations. The synergies experienced between outside-in and inside-out. How they think about talent and mindset.

Optum is probably the largest software company that you've never heard of. It does over $100 billion a year in revenue, but is part of United Healthcare Group. United is one of the six largest companies in the United States and the largest health insurance company in the US. On this week's episode of Agile Giants, I'm joined by Paul Nielsen from Optum. Paul has had a storied career as an entrepreneur and now has brought that mindset to Optum and United Healthcare. He's really a change agent internally and helping the company rediscover their entrepreneurial vision. We've worked together on a number of projects (including the Optum Startup Studio we chat about on the episode). While I knew a lot about Paul and his role, it was a fun conversation about enabling change and driving innovation. Show Links: Optum Startup Studio Paul's LinkedIn Page

One of the thing's I've observed over and over again from the best corporate innovation leaders is how data can be fuel for their innovation programs. On this episode of Agile Giants, I bring on a true academic thought leader on this issue - Rebecca Nugent. Rebecca is a chaired professor in statistics and data science at CMU. She's built some really amazing programs both at the undergrad and graduate level around data science and really across the entire university. She also has partnered with me on some interesting executive education programs. As you listen to this week's episode, let me challenge you to think about how data can be fuel for your innovation programs. Show Links: Integrated Statistics Learning Environment Rebecca's Faculty Page