Shift

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 Custom

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

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