In this episode, we talk to Laura Northridge, Senior Director of the AI Innovation Lab — previously just the "innovation lab" — at Harvard Business Publishing. As is the case with many corporate innovators, she’s helping shape AI strategy and policy for the Boston-based nonprofit, an affiliate of Harvard Business School. It’s one of small number of organizations we’ve been tracking where the innovation lab shifted its focus entirely to AI earlier in 2024.  Harvard Business Publishing is best known for the Harvard Business Review — in print and online — but it also publishes business books ..read more

In this episode, we talk with Steve Blank about why celebrating innovation heroes is symptomatic of a problem in large organizations. Steve is a serial entrepreneur, author, and educator and leading advocate for the methodology of customer development and the lean startup approach. In a recent Substack piece, Blank writes about an innovation awards ceremony he attended at a government agency: "I'm constantly puzzled why thoughtful and astute CEOs and agency directors never asked, why is it that innovations require heroics to occur in our organization? Why don't we have a repeatable process for ..read more

In this episode, we talk about generative AI, speech interfaces, and evolving the customer experience for one of the world’s top luxury car brands: Mercedes-Benz. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Mercedes made a major splash with a new virtual assistant that leverages advanced software and generative AI — along with on-screen visuals — to provide more proactive support and a more intuitive way of interacting with the vehicle. One of the people behind that project is James Liu, the head of customer experience for the Mercedes-Benz operating system. "I always joke with my team ..read more

Not seeing AI and panacea is key, says Evangelos Simoudis. "We're not there yet and every time we have tried to see it as such, we were always disappointed." In this podcast episode, we talked with Evangelos Simoudis, a prominent figure in Silicon Valley's innovation landscape who has a background as an author, investor, and advisor. Simoudis, having worked with early-stage startups, big corporations, and governments, brings tons of experience to the table. Formerly of Synapse Partners and with expertise in data and AI strategies, he shares valuable insights on the future of technology, corpor ..read more

From six years spent at Starbucks to designing a new countertop coffeemaker that cranks out cold brew, Mesh Gelman has been working at the cutting edge of coffee. During his time at Starbucks, he witnessed the rising popularity of cold beverages, a trend that his new startup, Cumulus Coffee Company, aims to capitalize on. In this podcast episode, we talk with Gelman about coffee trends; developing a new product from scratch; the difference between big organizations and start-ups; and his past work as an innovation consultant ..read more

In this episode, we catch up with Geoffrey Moore, the best-selling author, consultant, and venture capitalist whose groundbreaking work has shaped how we think about innovation strategy. If you’ve ever talked about a technology "crossing the chasm" from the realm of early adopters into the early majority, or your company has put a high potential project into the incubation zone, you’ve been using language given to us by Moore. His best-selling books including Zone to Win, Inside the Tornado, and Crossing the Chasm — and lately, he’s been publishing a series of insightful LinkedIn articles on t ..read more

In this episode, we talk about the challenges of innovating in biopharma with a veteran of that industry, Dan Seewald. Seewald is the former Head of Worldwide Innovation at Pfizer, the $100 billion pharma giant headquartered in Manhattan, and now the founder and CEO of the consulting and training firm Deliberate Innovation. Among the questions that InnoLead CEO Scott Kirsner covers with Seewald: How do you create space for new ideas in a regulated industry? What's your advice on exploring the potential of AI?  How do you effectively communicate an internal innovation initiative? How do y ..read more

Who’s leading the charge on generative AI in big organizations? How are they managing the tension between moving quickly and not making major missteps? And what use cases are they moving forward with?  In this episode, we dive into the rapidly-evolving world of generative AI with Paul Baier, the CEO and co-founder of GAI Insights.  Baier talks about the vendor landscape and shares several examples of first-mover companies, including McDonald's and Walmart, that are making strides in deploying generative AI. You can subscribe to our podcast, “Innovation Answered,” on Spotify, iTunes ..read more

"For too long," says Todd Dunn, "many organizations have not developed innovation as a strategic and ongoing source of competitive advantage. Instead, some organizations have used it for reputational points in the public eye, but not to deliver measurable value to consumers, customers and the company." That's a big problem, argues Dunn, who was most recently the Vice President of Enterprise Innovation at Advocate Health. Advocate is headquartered in Charlotte, NC, and it’s the fifth biggest nonprofit health system in the US.  In this episode, we talk with Dunn about what went wrong i ..read more

Design thinking is a well-known concept in the innovation sphere — it often comes up in conversation, at conferences, or in passing. But for as much as people talk about design thinking, not everyone understands its full scope — and even fewer people use it in their day-to-day work. To help bridge the gaps, we created this "beginner's guide" podcast. For this episode, we wanted to ask some basic questions about what design thinking is, how non-experts can get up to speed, the challenges experts have seen when introducing it to others, and how it can help come to viable solutions. We chatted wi ..read more