Breakthrough Innovation

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we talk with Lior Gerson, serial founder and CEO of TargetBoard — a revolutionary KPI and performance platform built to turn noise into action.

Lior helped lead Vroom to a $2.6B IPO and built a $25M product line at Placer.ai, but what shocked him most? How many unicorn startups were operating on wildly inaccurate data.

📉 Why most KPIs are “90% wrong” — and what’s really going on inside your dashboards

🛠️ How TargetBoard eliminates waste and friction across every department

⚠️ Why even successful orgs have broken metrics — and how it’s hiding in plain sight

🚦 How to go from tracking data to making decisions that actually move the business

🤖 The future of KPI intelligence — and how “agents” are about to change everything

This episode is a must-listen for CTOs, COOs, product leaders, and execs tired of vanity metrics and PowerPoint-level insights.

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In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we sit down with Perry Puccetti, Executive Director of Operations at VML, and one of the few leaders who’s successfully led transformation in the military, federal innovation, and enterprise tech.

Perry doesn’t do “innovation theater” — he brings clarity, alignment, and people-first leadership into the mess of real transformation.

💥 Why most organizations say “people first” — but design for process and tech

🧠 The 3 non-negotiables for any large-scale transformation

🚀 How Perry guided a massive SAP & Workday migration without chaos

🙌 Why every team member needs to lead — not just follow

📊 What real-time, actionable insights look like in a post-AI future

If you lead change at scale — or want to — this episode will challenge how you think about leadership, systems, and your own role in the storm.

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In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we sit down with Jonathan Vehar — leadership expert, product strategist, and co-author of How to Make Meetings Not Suck.

Jonathan has spent over 30 years helping Fortune 100s, military teams, and mid-sized companies innovate with courage, clarity, and integrity. His big message? Innovation isn’t about ideas — it’s about people.

💥 The real reason most innovation fails (and it’s not lack of creativity)

🧠 Why “humility” might be the most important leadership trait you’re not using

📉 The danger of big “Ta-Da” moments — and what to do instead

🛠️ How to replace perfectionism with smart, human-centered experimentation

🎯 Building a culture where debate is welcome and failure becomes fuel

Whether you're leading transformation, launching new products, or just trying to escape innovation theater, this episode will help you reframe how you lead for impact.

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In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we speak with Sandra D’Ambrosio, Global Transformation Leader at HP and the force behind the wildly successful Insights to Innovation (i2i) program — a grassroots movement empowering HP employees to innovate from within.

Sandra shares what it really takes to build change inside a complex system — not through another training, but by designing a program rooted in human behavior, purpose, and adaptability.

🌱 Why HP stopped "nominating" participants — and started building a waitlist

🎯 How a global program became a leadership metric tied to HP's OKRs

🛠️ What Sandra learned by participating in the program she leads

💬 How to navigate resistance, skepticism, and change fatigue from the ground up

🌍 The future of innovation at HP — and why it’s more human than ever

This one is for execs, L&D leaders, and change agents tired of top-down “innovation theater.” Sandra’s work proves: when you empower people, they build what’s next.

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In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we dive into the mindset, systems, and failures of Vincent Weberink, founder of Pizzaz.io and author of 13 Failures Later: What the Hack. Vincent has launched over a dozen companies — and failed at 13 of them — but every misstep became a stepping stone to his biggest insights.

🚀 Why most startup advice doesn’t actually apply to startups

🧠 How Vincent’s "no-emotion" method helps you kill bad ideas faster

📉 What founders misunderstand about data, feedback, and failure

🧰 How he turned 1,000+ business books into a practical decision-making system

🔥 The “stupidly simple” homepage tweak that made €11K overnight

This episode is a must-listen for founders, innovators, and intrapreneurs looking for a real-world strategy to navigate failure and build something that sticks.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we sit down with Chris LaFay, founder and CEO of Classic City Consulting, podcast host, systems nerd, and builder of scalable digital experiences.

Chris opens up about how he scaled his agency, avoided burnout, and automated the most annoying parts of business — all while staying radically human.

🧠 Why innovation = tiny plus-ones that compound over time

📨 How he built a full podcast guest workflow in one day — and never looked back

🚀 Why “done” is better than “perfect” (and how that thinking saves months of wasted work)

📉 The creeping cost trap that nearly wrecked his business during growth

📬 Why agency newsletters suck — and what he did instead that actually worked

Chris proves that innovation isn’t about big leaps — it’s about better systems, honest feedback, and hitting the go button.

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In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we talk with Dr. Julia Moore and Dr. Sobia Khan of the Center for Implementation — global experts in turning research into action and transformation into results.

Known as “rogue scientists,” Julia and Sobia aren’t just studying change — they’re making it happen. Their clients include WHO, Gates Foundation, and the CDC, but their mission is simple: make implementation practical, usable, and human.

🧠 Why most change efforts fail before they start (and how to fix it)

⚠️ The leadership myth that telling people what to do actually works

🛠️ Why implementation science is the competency every modern leader needs

💬 The 4 leadership roles that make transformation sustainable

🧱 Why “implementation therapy” is now part of their strategy offering

This one is for execs, coaches, HR leaders, and change agents who want to lead in the real world — where complexity, behavior, and relationships matter more than process.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we talk with Rob Levin — serial entrepreneur, staffing innovator, and co-founder of Work Better Now, a platform helping U.S. SMBs hire top-tier talent from Latin America.

From executive assistants to marketing and sales, Rob shares how Work Better Now is rethinking remote hiring, retention, and culture — with hundreds of SMBs scaling faster as a result.

💥 Why “most companies suck at hiring” — and how to fix it

📉 The cultural mistake that kills performance and retention

🌍 Why Latin American talent is solving the U.S. talent crisis

🧠 How to spot a toxic team member before they destroy morale

🚀 The small innovations that helped WBN land on the Inc. 5000 list

If you’re scaling a company, struggling to hire, or building culture remotely, this is a masterclass in getting it right.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we sit down with Tamara Laine — Emmy-winning journalist turned FinTech founder — now co-founder of Empower, a platform reimagining how creditworthiness is measured in a world of gig work, AI, and financial exclusion.

Tamara brings a bold, justice-centered approach to innovation — not just because it’s timely, but because it’s long overdue.

🏗️ Why the U.S. credit system is still stuck in the 1950s — and who it’s leaving behind

💳 How Empower is creating holistic credit profiles for gig workers and non-W2 earners

🧠 What investigative journalism taught Tamara about innovation and storytelling

⚠️ Why 97% of AI startups are failing — and how to avoid the “wrapper” trap

🔍 How transparency builds trust in financial tech (and mitigates risk more than compliance)

This one’s for every founder building in FinTech, equity-centered tech, or trying to lead with integrity in an AI era.

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In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we sit down with Caleb Snow, CRO at UMIT Technologies — a tribally owned MSP and cybersecurity firm. Caleb’s path isn’t typical: he’s a self-taught techie with ADHD, a storyteller with grit, and a builder who now works at the intersection of innovation and Indigenous empowerment.

🧠 Why he believes boredom is more dangerous than failure

⚙️ How tribal ownership enables long-term innovation (vs. private equity churn)

🌱 His obsession with mentoring — and why the next generation should leapfrog us

💥 Lessons from an early internet crash course — and what tech still gets wrong

🔥 What it really takes to scale trust, not just revenue, inside a growing tech firm

Whether you're leading a startup or rebuilding a legacy system, Caleb's story reminds us: the best innovation often comes from outside the spotlight.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!