Inside Outside Innovation

Amy Radin is the author of The Change Maker's Playbook: How to Seek, Seed and Scale Innovation in Any Company. She was previously a Senior Executive at American Express, Citi Group, and eTrade. Amy's experience includes leading the digital transformation of Citi Group’s credit card business ($5b bottom line). Today, Amy enjoys being on the outside of big companies and startups, to help connect the dots between growth aspirations and outcomes. Key Takeaways in Brian Ardinger's Interview with Amy:  - The human condition​ is set up to stop things that haven’t happened before.  - Big companies have everything they need, but can’t see the near-term value of innovation. Startups bring speed and agility but lack understanding of scale. Magic is when they can work together. - To “seed” ideas, take concepts and put them out to potential users. Then use the project to translate user reaction into a business model. The mistake is trying to predict too closely what people will do.  - To kill innovation is to apply t

There’s no way to innovate if you only stay in your court Xavi Cortadellas is the Head of Innovation and Design at Gatorade. He focuses on innovating in the newest spaces, like tech and services, rather than incremental innovation. Gatorade invented sports drinks 50 years ago and now has an 80% market share. With little room to expand, they actively look for new spaces to grow. Because Gatorade is a huge part of sports in America, when entering a new market, they are careful to examine what’s the right things to do and to always have patience and perseverance.   Gatorade started their innovation journey in 2010 with the G Series. They wanted to expand their product portfolio for before and after sports occasions, such as energy drinks and recovery shakes. In 2015, they changed their approach to viewing themselves as a sports fuel company, providing solutions for the 24/7 athlete in multiple spaces and with numerous products. Some products worked, while others did not.Today, Gatorade is in the third wave of

Jeff Rohrs is the CMO of Yext and Author of Audience: Marketing in the age of subscribers, fans and followers, and The Everywhere Brand ebook. He’s also a former VP at Salesforce and ExactTarget. In this episode, Brian Ardinger and Jeff talk about managing content and brands across the web and how hard it is to put perfect information into consumer’s hands everywhere. Yext uses a digital knowledge management (dkm) platform to automate this process.   With consumer behavior changing, 73% of a business’s traffic is now taking place off their website. The smallest content is becoming the most important, such as updating store hours and phone numbers. Companies need to update all the customer endpoints that matter, which is different from SEO.  Jeff's book, The Everywhere Brand, with co-author Jay Baer (also the author of Talk Triggers), discusses how brands are going to have to be everywhere. The challenge is how they will control their appearance around the web. You can download The Everywhere Brand ebook or

Melissa Steach is an ergonomic specialist with Herman Miller. She works to educate various communities about ergonomics in the workplace while valuing and focusing on the importance of the human for design innovation. Brian Ardinger and Melissa take a look at innovation from a design perspective and how that can impact the workplace and home environments. The built environment helps human growth, relationships and caring for the health of people. New healthcare research is reflecting this idea. Trends we are seeing include multiple generations living together and people placing more emphasis on health.  Companies can create innovative environments by asking people what they want. Don’t invest in a pingpong table or junk food if no one is interested. Today, companies need to take a hard look at their space to attract talent, because one-third of a company’s costs go towards real estate and a similar amount goes towards human costs. Look at "who" your company is and understand and develop a built environmen

After years of working in startups, Sean Johnson and his team began getting approached by enterprises. These companies needed help moving on ideas, accessing specialists and understanding how to be iterative. Today, Sean's company Digital Intent works with venture-backed startups and Fortune 1000 companies wanting to be tech-enabled businesses. He is also a general partner at Founder Equity. Brian and Sean discuss a variety of corporate innovation strategies. Here are a few highlights: - Companies need to be making lots of little bets, with little bits of funds. Think like investors. Spread the risk.  - Corporations innovation teams can have a similar cadence to a venture fund. Life of 7-10 years and 3 deals a year. Team churn concern. How to preserve knowledge. - Have conversations with corporate teams who are connected with customers early. Act like a startup and get realistic feedback for needs and products.  - Partner with startups. Startups are getting a channel they didn’t have, but are putting in

In this episode, Brian Ardinger talks with Douglas Ferguson, founder of Voltage Control, a company focused on design sprints and getting new products to market. Douglas tries to look at the product as a whole unit and is convinced that ideas are worthless. It’s more about focused execution. Douglas brings an operators viewpoint, as he moves into consulting and thinking about Innovation from a broader perspective.  Brian and Douglas discuss some of the problems companies face, when building from within, including the desire to standardize. Companies try to jam everything together and avoid focusing on customers’ needs. For example, AT&T buys other company's services and then takes them to market. With this strategy, AT&T will never be able to provide a superb service, because they are so far from the consumer.  When companies try to innovate, often the problem is putting a lot of resource constraints on projects. Douglas uses a framework called Eco Cycles to view the innovation processes. Projects move fro

In this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Brian Ardinger talks with Christopher Bailey and Kim Bullock with ExxonMobil. They discuss successes and challenges of innovating in a large corporation. Christopher and Kim will also be speaking at the Back End of Innovation Conference in Phoenix, AZ on Oct 17-19, 2018. Key strategies and lessons they learned include: - Create space for idea creation and tools to process.  - Protect people and their time from their existing roles.  - Train the managers of intrapreneurs on how to treat them differently. - Teach the right senior leadership how to understand innovation.  - Develop a VC board/Accountability model to guide investments in new ideas. Innovation teams return for more funding and identify what they need to learn.  - Try smallest versions of everything and then iterate, but be prepared to kill or park ideas that don’t move. Need clear decision points. Killing ideas was a considerable hurdle to get past.  - Use data to validate every step. 

In this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Brian Ardinger has a great conversation with Nicole Rufuku, author of Hiring for the Innovation Economy: Three steps to improve performance and diversity. They discuss how to hire for innovation in a world that’s changing.  In her book, Nicole gives teams a set of innovation principals to use in the hiring process. They are: 1. Collaboration  2. Continuous improvement  3. Focusing on the user    Nicole also provides three specific tools. They are: 1. Star mapping - Determine nine attributes of someone you want to hire. What is going to give you an advantage in the market?  2. Structuring the interview process - Predetermine your questions as a team and ask in the same order. 3. Evaluating candidates needs to be data-driven - Score candidates after every question, bringing bias near zero. Connect with Nicole on Twitter @Nicolerufuku or Nicolerufuku@gmail.com to preorder her book.  Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.

Jeremy Lockhorn is VP, Experience Strategy, Mobile + Emerging Technology at SapientRazorfish and has served a wide variety of roles during his 20-year tenure. The common thread is on a focus of what’s next. In this podcast, Jeremy and Brian Ardinger discuss technology changes over the past 10 years and the implications for the future. They know each other from their days in the digital signage space.  When the iPhone was launched more than 11 years ago, it was immediately breakthrough technology. What people didn’t know, was how big and disruptive it would be. We never imagined how seamless the phone would become in our lives today. Jeremy believes the Fourth Industrial Revolution is coming. He defines it as an Intersection of emerging tech such as smart home, self-driving vehicles, wearable tech, AI, VR/AR, and smart speakers, etc. Of course, the phone has a role to play in everything.  The next 10 years will move faster and be more disruptive. In the past there was one disruptive tech at a time, now all

In this episode, Brian Ardinger talks with Doug Branson about his new book The Future of Tech is Women: How to Achieve Gender Diversity.  Brian and Doug start the conversation by looking at trends in the market. Doug outlines the history of women in senior corporate positions. Of the 70 women that have been CEOs of publicly held companies, 70% have MBAs. Of the 27 women that have held exec positions in IT companies (out of 600), two have STEM backgrounds and 25 have business or law backgrounds. Doug believes the current emphasis on STEM for women produces lopsided experience. It won’t take women higher in the company. They also need business and marketing backgrounds. The IT industry, Doug suggests, is the worst of all industries for representing females. In Silicon Valley, the men they bring in, to fill the middle-level ranks using H1B visas, crowds women and minorities out and prevents them from rising in these environments.  Doug’s book, The Future of Tech is Women, is about how industries can generall

Canva, an easy graphic-design tool website, started six years ago, after two of its founders found success making customizable school yearbooks. Through this process they discovered the power of putting easy-to-use tools in the hands of their customers. Cameron Adams, Canva’s Co-founder and Chief product officer joined the team with his design and tech experience, and Canva was born. Today, Canva, an Australian-based company, has over 10 million users and is valued at $1 billion.  In this episode, Cameron talks with Brian Ardinger about Canva's work bringing goodness to the world through individuals and companies of all sizes. The Canva tools give companies and people the opportunity to easily experiment with design. One reason, Canva has seen such great success, is due to the experiences and "pain points" the founders had prior to starting the company. As the founders developed the product to address the problems in the market, they continued to do many interviews and prototypes. Canva likes to aim for t

Growth, Pricing and SaaS Patrick Campbell is the CEO of ProfitWell (formerly Price Intelligently), the software for helping subscription companies with their monetization and retention strategies. ProfitWell also provides free turnkey subscription financial metrics for over 8,000 companies. Prior to ProfitWell, Patrick lead was an Economist at Google and the NSA, an experience he thought was surprisingly similar. With 50 employees in Boston and Argentina, ProfitWell has been funded by bootstrapping and a growing customer base. They serve about 25 percent of the market. In Brian Ardinger's interview with Patrick, they started by discussing two important business themes. First, being customer focused and second, placing a high priority on building the team and hiring. Patrick believes a company needs to be direct about the type of culture they want. Focus on the right behaviors and values and bring in a diverse amount of thought.  Patrick then highlighted three key issues that ProfitWell helps SAAS comp

Corporate Innovation, Mid-Level Managers and the New 20% Ralph Welborn has spent over 25 years providing business and technology advisory services to both private and public sector organizations globally. He has held a variety of leadership positions, including CEO of Imaginatik, the market-leading innovation advisory and platform company; leader of IBM's Strategy & Transformation business in the Middle East and Africa; senior vice president at KPMG Consulting; and a cofounder of an e-commerce company.  In this podcast, Brian Ardinger talks with Ralph about his new book Topple: The End of the Firm-Based Strategy and the Rise of New Models for Explosive Growth. The Topple Rate refers to how major companies are failing, and how that is fall is accelerating. Companies are attempting digital transformation efforts, with little success.  Ralph believes we need to avoid running the Red Queen race and learn from the companies having explosive growth. Currently, approx. 20% of a company’s capabilities are driving

Peter Gardner is the Founder and CEO of Startgrid, a company focused on connecting entrepreneurs and enterprises. His mission is to use software to build the density of resources (VCs/accelerators/access to capital/relationships) in innovation ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley. He believes innovation can happen anywhere. In this podcast, Peter talks with Brian Ardinger about how enterprises need to take a collaborative approach. They need to engage with global innovation ecosystems and integrate new technology, to stay competitive in a changing marketplace. Innovation teams need to develop internal skills and capacities, while growing their external collaborations. Startups should consider a more strategic approach to building relationships with enterprises, giving both a competitive advantage. Peter has spent 20 years as both an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, helping early-stage entrepreneurs seed and build their businesses. His experience includes being a General Partner at Allegis Capital, whe

Shaina Stigler is chief empathy officer at Betwixt, a startup focused on enhancing communication and building coworker trust. With remote work growing rapidly, building trust through technology can be challenging. Shaina spoke with Brian Ardinger about building coworker trust in exclusively digital environments. If we believe success in our work relies on our ability to trust each other, then how do we use technology as a tool to bring us closer together. We need to understand how people build trust and then realize that trust is something that takes time. Shaina also shared some insight they’ve gained on how to jumpstart and measure this growth in trust, as well as how improvisation is integral to startups. To learn more about the company, check out https://betwixt.us If you like the topic of building teams, listen to Brian’s discussion with Shane Snow, Author of Dream Teams: Working Together without Falling Apart  https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-104-shane-snow-author-of-dream-teams-working-togethe

Greg Larkin is the author of This Might Get Me Fired: A Manual for Surviving in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Underground. He's also a corporate entrepreneur, launching more than 30 new products with Fortune 500 companies and startups. On this podcast, Greg talks with Brian Ardinger about practical tactics for a corporate entrepreneur forging ahead in new innovation waters. Greg believes innovation only works when there is a very high cost of not innovating. He shares key innovation strategies like finding an innovation executive and seeking out others within the company that identify as corporate entrepreneurs. If you have support within an organization, launching a product in a very short period of time is easier. Greg also suggests to never pitch ideas, only pitch outcomes. Saying no to outcomes caries a risk, while saying no to ideas is easy. As a corporate entrepreneur, if you can solve innovative problems in an innovative way, now is your time. Break through the politics, analysis, and process tes

Taylor Dawson is a founding member of GE Appliances’ FirstBuild and CEO of Giddy. In this podcast, Taylor talks with Brian Ardinger about GE Appliances's FirstBuild's origins, the obstacles they’ve conquered and the challenges they’re still solving. They also discussed product innovation and the experiences of building a Microfactory. Taylor was also a featured roundtable speaker at the Inside Outside Innovation Summit in May, 2018 (https://www.theiosummit.com). Learn more about GE's Firstbuild at https://www.firstbuild.com and Giddy at https://www.giddy.io If you are interested in product innovation, check out Brian's interview with Slava Rubin, co-founder of Indiegogo at https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-69-slava-rubin-co-founder-of-indiegogo/ GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regar

Exponential View - An Innovation Newsletter Azeem Azhar is the author of Exponential View, a weekly newsletter about innovation. He talked with Brian about broad perspectives, geography of innovation, corporate venture capital, and why you shouldn’t take a golf club to a tennis match. Sign up for his newsletter: http://azm.io/EVrocks  Twitter: @azeem GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Product Development to Create Raving Fans Using Game Thinking Amy Jo Kim is a longtime innovation consultant and author of Game Thinking, a step-by-step system for building lasting engagement into product experience and based on design techniques from hit games. With a wealth of knowledge, Amy Jo spoke to Brian about the concept of superfans, mainstream majority and early majority, and why identifying these demographics is crucial for success. Check out her book at https://gamethinking.io If you are interested in product development, check out Brian's interview with Laura Klein at https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-34-laura-klein-w-lean-startup-for-product-design/   GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Straight Talk for Startups: 100 Insider Rules Randy Komisar is author of "Straight Talk for Startups: 100 Insider Rules for Beating the Odds--From Mastering the Fundamentals to Selecting Investors, Fundraising, Managing Boards, and Achieving Liquidity." He is also an entrepreneur and partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, a Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm. In this episode, Randy and Brian Ardinger discuss why experience is so valuable now and why startups can stop worrying about scaling. For more background see https://www.kleinerperkins.com/people/randy-komisaror grab his book on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/2PiYqIf If you are interested in more insider rules for startups, check out Brian's interview with Jason Calacanis at https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-65-jason-calacanis-angel-investor-and-author-of-angel/   GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos,