Agile Giants: Lessons From Corporate Innovators

About 18 months ago, Bill Pescatello returned to corporate venture after a stint in a traditional VC fund (Lightbank). Evolv is a $100 million firm created in partnership with Kraft Heinz. Bill already had CVC experience as he started his career post business school working at NBC’s Corporate Venture group. We talked on the episode about why Bill decided to return to CVC and how Evolv Ventures is set up.  Show Links: Bill's Twitter Bill's LinkedIn Evolv Ventures Homepage Evolv Ventures Medium

We are continuing our conversation for another week on Corporate Venture Capital (CVC). This time returning to academia and having a conversation with Professor Song Ma from Yale. He has written three papers that influenced my thinking significantly. We talk about each in this week’s episode.  You can follow the links to all three from Professor Ma’s Faculty page and also encourage you to follow him on Twitter.  https://som.yale.edu/faculty/song-ma https://twitter.com/ProfSongMa  

This week our conversation continues to focus on corporate venture capital. However, we go from Harvard Business School to a “serial CVC” as Matt has been at 3 different corporate venture groups — Comcast, Cisco and now Citi Ventures.  Matt has a great perspective from all three of those experiences and we also talk about specific things unique to the approach Citi Ventures takes given reporting structure and overall strategic objectives of the fund.  Show Links: Matt's Twitter & LinkedIn Citi Ventures Homepage 

Professor Josh Lerner is an academic giant. His 2013 article in HBR on Corporate Venturing is constantly being referenced in conversations as companies explore setting up their own Corporate Venture Capital group. He also has written a number of best selling books, which we reference on today’s episode and talk about the impact for each of you as corporate innovators. I think this week’s conversation will put into context a lot of the work you’re doing, from a real academic thought leader. Josh's HBS Site: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=9961

I’m excited to start a second season of Agile Giants with my friend Matt Fleckenstein. Matt has been a VC, traditional entrepreneur and corporate entrepreneur inside Microsoft and Salesforce.  Matt & I talk about his observations generally across those experiences as well as his current role where he really leads innovation across an interesting portfolio of Microsoft Products including IoT, mixed reality and quantum computing. (Full Disclosure: One of those traditional startups Matt & I co-founded together with two other founders.) 

Dave & I have known each other for a long time. We first got to know each other through his involvement helping lead a Cincinnatti based startup accelerator, The Brandery. More recently, Dave came out with a book a couple of years ago called Predicting the Turn. There’s a ton I enjoyed about this week’s episode, but actually probably the thing I enjoyed the most was the detour we took into corporate venture capital. Dave’s actually been a corporate venture capitalist twice in his career and has two more traditional financially driven VC work experiences as well. And so his perspective on how to do CVC I thought was quite interesting and relevant for a lot of you who have been reaching out to learn more on the topic, dovetailing nicely into the podcast we did earlier this year with Rich from the Touchdown Ventures team.  Show Links:   Dave on Twitter & LinkedIn   Dave's book   The Brandery

Rita McGrath is a legend in the field of corporate innovation. She developed the methodology used by so many companies today “Discovery Driven Planning” and has written numerous best-selling books.  She recently had a new book come out “Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen”  On this episode, we talk about her new book as well as observations on how corporate’s perspectives on innovation have evolved and the arc of her career.  Show Links: Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Rita’s new book)  Valize (Rita’s software company)  RitaMcGath.com (Rita’s personal site)

On this week’s episode, I respond to a question I’m getting more and more from you on social media & via email is: How does each of these different techniques highlighted in Agile Giants fit into a company’s overall growth strategy?  (Or if not that exact question a version of it)  I try to provide some context in this quick episode, but the biggest point is there are synergies across these tactics so it isn’t "build vs buy" but instead "build AND buy"! 

After helping start Comcast Ventures, Rich left with 2 other partners to start Touchdown Ventures.   On this week’s episode, we have a great conversation about his perspective on CVC as well as unpacking the model that Touchdown Ventures is pioneering.   I’ve asked you for feedback on email, Twitter, LinkedIn & Instagram about the kind of content you’re looking for.   I remain interested in that feedback, but one thing I’m consistently hearing is that you want more information about Corporate Venture Capital as a growth strategy. Rich is a great person to kick off these conversations.     Show Links: Touchdown Ventures Focus Areas Want to Break Into VC? Try CVC! by David Horowitz Can Corporate Venture Capitalists Help Startups Go Public? by Selina Troesch

After 8-years, working in various roles across the organization, three years ago Keith Berry founded the Moody’s Analytics Accelerator at the directive of the Board. This is a group inside Moody’s focused on launching innovative products typically via a partnership with a FinTech startup.  As many of you are thinking through how to set up your own innovation lab or accelerator, there are a ton of lessons from Moody’s Analytics experience including: (1) how they partner with Fintechs, (2) how trends influencing their thesis and (3) specifically how they’ve approached AI/ML as a big trend influencing so much of their work today. 

On this week’s episode of Agile Giants, we’re going to do something just a little different. There’s a lot of questions that I’m regularly asked when it comes to corporate innovation and agile product development. I’ve combined some of those questions with questions that I heard from you on social media and I’ve come up with five common questions that I get.   We’ll see how this works, but if this is interesting to you let me know other questions that you might have and maybe we’ll start weaving these in about once a quarter.  

Christina has had executive roles in a number of types of healthcare companies. In most of these organizations, at least part of her time was focused on leading innovation. Healthcare is a sector that seems to naturally lend itself to corporate innovation, given balance sheet and incumbency advantages that are often necessary for transformative innovation. This is likely why we've had so many health care companies collaborate at the Corporate Startup Lab. Christina has a great perspective on this, having worked for a number of different types of players in the sector. Show Links:   * Christina's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-weir-ripley-90941329/   * Tepper Exec Ed Course on Leading Innovation: https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/executive-education/innovation/leading-innovation/index.html

Tanya Baker is the Global Head of GS Accelerate. A new initiative inside Goldman Sachs that is “ a platform for people at Goldman Sachs to be able to apply, submit an idea, and go through various rounds of pitching and ultimately they get funded, be an intrapreneur, as we call it within Goldman Sachs.” In many ways, this is similar to many other corporate startup labs being set up at other Fortune 500 companies but they also are taking a very Goldman Sachs approach.  Show Links: Tanya Baker's LinkedIn GS Accelerate Career Page Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs (book by John Doerr) 

This is something a little unique for Agile Giants. I was at the IRI Conference and got just a few minutes to sit down with Peter. As you’ll hear on the interview, Peter’s part of a team at NASA that has quite an ambitious mission: to get people back to the moon and then ultimately to Mars.  I’m sure when you think about the projects you’re working on in your organization, they may be characterized as “moonshots” but probably not literally attempts to get to the moon. Show Links: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center  - https://www.nasa.gov/goddard Peter Hughes LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-hughes-b19997/ 

On this week’s episode of Agile Giants, I’m joined by Eric Chaniot, the Chief Digital Officer of Michelin. Most people probably know Michelin as a tire company, but as you’ll hear in the interview, they actually have a number of different divisions focused on mobility.  Eric runs a group that’s responsible for digital transformation across each of these different divisions. Eric had some great perspective on innovation and transformative innovation. Show Links:  Eric’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericchaniot/ Eric’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Force-Within-Technology-Innovation-innovations-ebook/dp/B01NAELV02

This week’s episode of Agile Giants is a little different. A few weeks ago I had a chance to moderate a panel at the 3 Rivers Venture Fair in Pittsburgh, PA.  The panel focused on corporation venture capital, and specifically the corporate venture capital value proposition. We had guests from Covestro, Bayer and UPMC, each participated as panelists talking about how each of their individual companies approached corporate venture. If you’re interested in talking more about Corporate VC, feel free to reach out. It’s an area I’m continuing to explore myself and would love to get other people’s perspective on Corporate VC.

After the last two episodes interviewing two individuals I’d never met but respected from a distance (Beth Comstock & Jeff Sutherland), this week is a little different. I sit down with Dr. Richard Florida — someone who has shaped my career very significantly and I’ve known for over 17 years.   Richard is one of the world’s leading urbanist. He’s a researcher and professor. He has written multiple best-selling books. He wrote the forward to my book “The Science of Growth” but our connection goes back to when he was a professor and I was a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon.   Richard thinks deeply and while his area of expertise is often looked at as focusing simply on location and how cities shape culture, life and work. I believe his research has wide-reaching implications around a bunch of topics. Including how corporations should look at innovation.   Our conversation was after a multi-hour brunch at a local restaurant in Miami Beach. I jump around some trying to hit some of the highlights from things

Jeff's work has really had a profound impact on the way I approach a lot of problems. I remember when one of the companies I ran switched to Scrum (mSpoke) and it was like a light switch went on in the organization. I can't really talk enough about how positive Scrum's impact was on that organization and a lot of the companies I've worked with since then. It was really amazing to meet Jeff. He's a brilliant guy and I took away a ton from our conversation. If you're thinking about how to operationalize Agile philosophies in your organization regardless of the size, I think Scrum is a great technique. And if you're already using Scrum, hopefully, there'll be new things you can learn from our conversation. I know there are a few things I've already changed in terms of how I recommend deploying Scrum based on this conversation. Show Links:   https://www.scrumatscale.com/  http://iriannual.com/  Detecting Aigle BS: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB_DETECTING_A

For this tenth episode of Agile Giants, we have quite a treat. I'm joined this week by Beth Comstock. Beth is probably best known as the former Vice Chair of GE, specifically leading innovations. She wrote a really transparent book called Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change, which is a really interesting blend of a reflection on her time at GE, the good and the bad, almost a memoir, as well as a nice set of best practices and observations for corporate leaders responsible for innovation. We use her book as a jumping off point for the discussion, but I can't recommend strongly enough you pick it up yourself if you're interested in digging in further. It's available wherever books are sold. Show Links: Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change  (Amazon) (Barnes & Nobel)  Beth's Personal Website

Peter Steinberg is rapidly becoming a key partner of ours at the Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab. He is a well know Rugby coach as well as a leader in thinking through executive education. I’m more focused on the later, but the synergy between these is interesting. The first part of the interview gives you a lens into how Pete approaches exec ed and innovation. Then, the second half of this interview focuses on our collaboration at the Corporate Startup Lab.  Show Links:    Innovative Thought (Peter's Firm)    Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab