CanInnovate

We made it!

I am so excited to share with you all the first year anniversary of CanInnovate podcast. I can't believe that we made it this far and I could have done it without all of you who supported me and my podcast on this journey. CanInnovate as you might already know is my passion project. A passion project that is dedicated to share to the world how awesome Canadian innovators are. During my journey, I have interviewed so many aspiring innovators who are changing the world as we know it by providing valuable lessons, marketing and innovative tips, cheat sheets and lessons.

In this episode, my good friend Julie Shum who had been with be since day 1 get to interview me about the lessons that I learned, the tips that I applied that changed the course of how I do my business and my future plans for CanInnovate. So tune in and have fun!

I remembered when I first submitted my request to Apple and thought maybe I will get three to four days approval for my podcast. But, things got a little hyped when it was in fact approved 10 minutes after I submitted my request. So I asked myself, what's next?

My first objective and goal for starting a podcast was to prove my original thesis and my mentor wrong and that there is a lot of Canadian innovation happening on the landscape.

There's so much more innovation and thought leadership that is happening in the Canadian soil and I want to share and provide awareness that there are loads of Canadian innovations out there.

I love the fact that people are saying that they don't know that this kind of innovation or company is Canadian. I love the feedback that we are getting and which brings awareness of some really great Canadian thought leaders and provide some insights out there to our listeners.

My motivation now is really to create that awareness about what is currently happening on the Canadian landscape so that we can start supporting them.

Dr Ann Cavoukian because of her take on privacy just makes me more passionate about securing our privacy. I even ask my clients about their privacy awareness and share with them what think about it and ask how they purge about or how do they maintain it and so on.

I was also inspired by Eli Fathi of MindBridge AI because he brings so much innovation tips and he has been a serial entrepreneur for a long time. He taught us how to bring company to life and how to sell these companies for millions of dollars. Eli also told us that his secret sauce for his success was his wife.

We also had Ariel Gaten of Muse who has been on our podcast twice where we talk about the value of meditation on our regular podcast episode and a masterclass about changing our minds and practice tactical things on how to get ourselves on stuck on situation by using and understanding how our brain works through meditation.

It is also really exciting that we got Daryl Hemingway who is actually a rocket scientist from NASA, who is also a filmmaker and is a serial entrepreneur. He is also the CEO and founder of SmartTone, an entertainment technology company with one goal in mind – connecting broadcast media to mobile. They believe entertainment should excite audiences and enable them to participate.

And when i found out that the book that i was reading for years, The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier who is actually Canadian, it blew my mind! Michael provided as with the seven questions that change literally almost everything that I do.

Of course I did, when they share these best practices it really excites me because I'm learning something new and a few important practices that I learned from this best practices are:

• We can't do things alone - and I think this is really important because we tend to forget that we don't have a support system all of the time.
• Networking is huge and making network count – Our guests they have given so much insight and values about networking. One of them was Andreas Souvaliotis from Carrots reward told us that he never eats alone.

He continues to never eat alone and the reason behind it is to learn the different perspective from people about the world that he didn't learn about and almost having eyes at the back of his head.

This is huge for me because I am transitioning or to change into something that this not only focuses on innovators who talked about their journey but also start offering master classes or a deep dive into those best practices because we always hear about this kinds of tips and best practices but no one tells us how to do it.

So now I have been reaching out to these innovators and masterminds to focus on more tactical things to help the listeners understand what we should do about these best practices that were given to us to bring more value into our lives and our businesses.

I want to provide more cheat sheets out there where people can do things, more workshops or things that I usually do on corporations. I'm starting to see how valuable it is to see individuals to get the same access to these things that corporations provide and I wanted to really make it user friendly.

It is really difficult for me to say because I think there is no company that is not going to get hit. For example, Fin-tech is really going to hit insurance industry soon because the whole thing and notion about privacy and security and the level of transparency is really going to continue and it is going to allow the consumers to keep asking questions and companies should be more responsive and I think this is really going to continue to evolve and take place.

Another example is the block chain technology, the smart contracts, the privacy, the security and everything else is really going to hit every industry. Supply chain is also a great one because you are looking at end to end perspective.

Company cultures, I think the shift on the company's behavior needs to change because they need to be a lot more innovative and they need to hear the employees so that they all have a stake on the ground that needs to be around for a long time.

I would love to get the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the podcast. I'd love to pick up his brain and talk about what is happening and where things are going and to really hear the vision of what they are thinking.

When I started teaching at George Brown University, I talked to a lot of people who connected with me because they listened to the podcast and they wanted to meet. And the one thing that I noticed is that they don't know how to network.

So I decided to write a book about networking and communications.

I think that networking had become an evolved art because you can network via social media, you can network behind the computer or you don't have to meet face-to-face to create a connection. In fact, I have relationships around the world with people that I have never met but I jumped on a Skype call to meet them. So yes it is about communication and networking but it is really about how to connect with people.

I love going for a walk by the waterfront!

Warren Levitan is co-founder and CEO of Smooch, the omnichannel conversation platform for enterprise software makers. He previously served as CEO of Radialpoint, which was acquired by AppDirect. Founded in 2015, Smooch connects any business software to all the world's messaging channels for a more human customer experience. It was named New Startup of the Year at Techvibes' sixth annual Canadian Startup Awards and a 2018 CIX Top 20 company by the Canadian Innovation Exchange. Episode overview: This week, Warren shares his vision and insights on what is happening in customer experience and how messaging is going to make all of our lives easier by connecting consumers to businesses in a more personal and convenient way. He will also be dropping sales and marketing tips, the story on how Smooch came about and the lessons that he learned throughout his journey as an innovator. Smooch is about building relationships between consumers and brands. Smooch is not a bot platform. Smooch is helping businesses build new channels of communication with customers through their own websites and mobile apps, plus the messaging apps consumers are already using to connect with friends and family. Businesses can handle these conversation via their existing customer experience software using live human agents or ring on automation with chatbots. Customer intimacy (getting to know your customer and being very personal with them) - building an emotional connection between consumers and brands. Warren and his team don't want the new digital channels to turn into a crap where you are stuck or when you are just typing to your agents or something but instead it is really about the connection between brands and where the consumers are and you can layer bot on top of that. "It's really hard for brands today to compete on their products." As consumers interact with brands, we generally don't know everything we need to know to place an order or acquire something. Sometimes we do but most times we don't and brands have traditionally pushed us through forms and flows that make sure they get all the information from us. "As a consumer all you want is to engage with the lowest effort in the places we're already are and not jumping through hoops." How the idea of Smooch come about: Warren shared a story about his last business delivering technical support for telcos around the world. Experiencing it firsthand, Warren realize that no matter how good they want to be in helping their customers and assisting them with their problems, by the time the call reach them, the customers are already angry. That is why he thought that this situation could be prevented. They would have solve this customer's problems so much easier if they were their first interaction. And that is where the idea for Smooch was born. Warren also shared about their venture and partnership with the biggest messaging platform, WhatsApp. What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking? Montreal-based Smooch is changing the way businesses create, nurture and grow one-to-one relationships with their customers. The Smooch Conversation Cloud allows brands to engage with users on all the world's leading messaging apps and voice assistants, with support for both live agents and AI, revolutionizing and humanizing how people interact with businesses and technology. Smooch powers the conversational products and experiences of global leaders such as Zendesk, Oracle, Genesys, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Betterment and Bird. Resources Recommendation: Restaurant: Dinette Triple Crown Book: Summary of Principles by Ray Dalio Company Mission: At Smooch, our mission is to humanize the relationships between businesses and their customers. With over 4 billion messaging accounts worldwide, people spend more time messaging than any other activity online. This shift, combined with the power of conversation at scale, creates an opportunity to make interaction with the brands we trust more useful, more immediate, more intimate, and ultimately more human. "The future is already here it is not just evenly distributed" As consumers grow to demand personal and human communication on a wide variety of channels, businesses are looking to their software vendors and partners to innovate and deliver these customer experiences. "Transformative change takes time" All great changes takes longer you might have imagined the best part of it is dance to be bigger and what you have imagined Sales and marketing tips : Make sure you're focused on your customers problem and not your solution Productivity tool: Messaging Slack Smooch WhatsApp Hot spot: Dinette Triple Crown in Montreal Jazz fest during summer Connect with Warren: Website: https://smooch.io/ Twitter: @SmoochLabs and @wlevitan Facebook: Smooch LinkedIn: Smooch.io Thanks again for tuning in! To help out the show: Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated. If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us. Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here. I'm still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen! Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn't love to save money? We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Ross Findon!

Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of several books, including The Coaching Habit and Do More Great Work. Michael has written for or been featured in numerous publications including Business Insider, Fast Company, Forbes, The Globe & Mail and The Huffington Post.

Michael is giving away two The Coaching Habit to CanInnovate listeners. So be sure to tune in and send me an email or comment down below.

A sought-after speaker, Michael regularly speaks to businesses and organizations and has delivered keynotes at Leadership, HR and Learning & Development, conferences around the world, including ATD, SHRM, IPL, HRPA and the Conference Board of Canada.

Balancing out these moments of success, Michael was banned from his high school graduation for "the balloon incident," was sued by one of his Law School lecturers for defamation, and his first published piece of writing was a Mills & Boone short story called "The Male Delivery."

Michael left Australia 25 years ago to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where his only significant achievement was falling in love with a Canadian, which is why he now lives in Toronto, having spent time in London and Boston. He was the first Canadian Coach of the Year.

For the teachings that Michael does, he tries to strive for that simplicity and he thinks that so often we over complicate things. Michael is all about making things simple, practical and doable. For normal people, coaching is a little but weird because some people are being traumatized by their coaches.

For Michael, coaching is a very powerful leadership behavior to get the best out of people, get the best out of yourself and to have more impact in the work that you are doing. Part of the question that he usually ask is what is the least he can teach people and what is the least people need to have the most impact into the work they need.

If you interact with other human beings in your life learning to be more coach-like which in the end is, can you beat yourself a little bit longer? Can you rush for action and give advice a little bit more slowly? Being a coach-like can be a little bit different for everybody.

Michael discovered that people advice is not nearly as good as they think it is because.

• The advice they have isn't solving the right problem
• The advice they have isn't that good of a solution
• People preferred to figure this stuff out themselves and come up with their own ideas and their own advice

And what else, comes with an insight that a person answer to your first question is never there only answer and it rarely gets the best to answer.

And what else is also a great management tool if you're going to slow down the rush to advice, asking and what else is a way of controlling your advice monster who is waiting for a leap of action that is trying to solve the problem and save the day. And you want to return this advice monster.

Michael's strategy question in the book says: When you think about innovation and you think about the challenges that brings with it so much of what great innovation is about and being clear to what the no's are so you can say yes to the stuff that really matters.

Every time you say yes you are rolling out a bunch of things that you can do instead of finding the things that you really want to do.

• What is ghost coaching (Coaching the Ghost)
• The difference between bad, good and great work and how to leverage it
• The benefits about giving less advice and staying curios longer

Should you get a coach when you are stuck in a rut?

Michael says that you should not get a coach immediately. If getting a coach works for you financially and how will you can commit, that would be really powerful. But there are also passive voice that you can get unstuck.

Tips on how to get unstuck.

• An accountability partner
• Hire a coach
• Read a book

Michael's Do Great Work book provides 15 very specific exercises to help you understand what great work is.

Sometimes seeking out other people's advice it is a way of detecting from you going away from understanding what's my real challenge what am i going to do about it and how am i going to take this on.

And on sudden points you have to move away from collecting advice and you have to move into taking responsibility take your best jazz and move things on.

Book recommendation:

• Art is Work by Milton Glaser
• Bill Bryson books

Hot spot recommendation:

• Defina wood pizza in Toronto
• Byblos restaurant

The Coaching Habit

Box of Crayons

MichaelBungayStanier.com

LinkedIn: Michael Bungay Stanier

Twitter: @boxofcrayons

Facebook: Box of Crayons on Facebook

• 'The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever', a new book about practical coaching for busy managers. David Allen calls it "a brilliant how-to manual " and Dan Pink says "simple yet profound."
• The award winning and best-selling book, *Do More Great Work: stop the busywork and start the work that matters*
• *End Malaria*, a collection of essays from thought leaders about Great Work. $20 from each book sold goes to Malaria No More, and we have raised about $400,000 for Malaria No More.
• The Great Work MBA, a virtual conference with 10,000 participants
• The Box of Crayons' training programs which are used by Fortune 1000 companies around the world.
• The award winning coaching tool, Get Unstuck & Get Going on the stuff that matters

Before founding Box of Crayons, Michael held senior positions in the corporate, consultancy and agency worlds He has lived and worked in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada.

Michael has an M Phil from Oxford, a law degree and a BA with highest honours from the Australian National University.

Box of Crayons teaches 10-minute coaching so your managers build stronger teams and get better results. When your managers and leaders make coaching part of their everyday work, they increase focus, resilience and impact. Led by engaged master facilitators, all of our programs are highly interactive, engaging and fun.

Richard Batchelor the Founder of Toronto Change Days and President of Capillary Consulting has been delivering successful change for over 25 years. Always an early adopter, change thinker and someone who relishes the challenge of embracing the new, he is a strong believer in following the mantra of his university - their motto is "Do Different" and that's what he's been doing ever since.

Richard is a very highly respected international change management professional with extensive experience delivering successful outcomes to engagements in business transformation, enterprise technology solutions and organizational restructures (including M&A) supported by extensive positive achievement in strategic human resources, executive leadership coaching, organizational development and operational excellence delivery. He has a global presence, working with businesses across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas to develop, plan, implement and sustain the changes needed to grow and prosper.

In 2018 Rich founded Toronto Change Days conference, an experience very different to any other conference that may happen in north america. With performance art, yoga, mindfulness, trust games and more funky workshops making up a weekend experience of learning through immersive experience, change makers, agents, innovators and more will be welcome to a learning journey of brain expanding proportions this November 16, 2018.

Rich had been working on Toronto Change Days for over 25 years and he has seen a lot of things and ideas that goes around and tell people what change actually means to them and how they are going to take things forward. - one of the things that inspired him was Berlin Change Days.

• If it wasn't for change, we never create to invent anything
• He has been looking at how he can be innovative in that learning space for people to understand change.
• The main idea of Toronto Change Days Conference coming this year is for Rich to get the idea on how we can looking at how we can get people to have a truly experienced learning and activity over the weekend.
• The conference is not about corporate entity and not about depth of a PowerPoint or experiences.
• He want people to have an experience where they can took often is not about asking that question "why am I here?" but instead it is a conference that would make them say "Oh My God, I'm glad to be here"

• Going to that experience or having lots of different things
• They have people with analogies, stories, experiences and techniques that the audience may not know before.
• They could have people spread out to the floor doing yoga poses as they learn about the agility of their body as a direct link to the agility of organization.
• People will learn the art of leadership because it is not about action but rather a mindset of learning how you approach things
• You will learn about trust. You are going to be doing trust exercises and learn how to trust boundaries and understand how sometimes, boundaries are correct and sometimes not correct.
• And so much more!

This year's theme is about Agility, Boundaries and Curiosity which also means:

• Agility - we are talking about flexibility, nimbleness and almost that agile mindset and getting people to explore these areas.
• Boundaries - we will talk to people how to understand boundaries; "should we have boundaries or should we not have boundaries?". Boundaries are there for a reason and sometimes we have to respect those boundaries.
• Curiosity - we love the fact that curiosity brings so many new things to the world yet it is something that gets driven out of us.

Rich shares why curiosity is very important to be brought back to us on our workplace and and age and how it can improve the way we think, the way we work and the way we express ourselves innovatively.

Rich explains why as adults; because of compliance, we are forces to hold back the way we think innovatively which brings us down to two sections.

Fear Factor

• We have mindset that people afraid of failure and the only way of being confident of not failing is to keep doing the same-old same-old

• Failure is good and failure is not a problem because if you fail a couple of times, you come up with the best answers.

Metrics

• People are focused on short-term steps. They are focused on getting the money back into the business as fast as possible today without knowing what the potential is when going forward.

Capillary delivers consulting, learning and coaching services focused on individual, organizational and societal change. They are far from traditional in their approach and together with their sister company, Curiosity Culture they use innovative approaches including Lego, Music, performance art, storytelling and coloring in, to explore the impact and navigation of change as it approaches.

Rich explains the deeper meaning of change and provided us with tips and lessons learned based on his experiences.

• The way people can really look at their curiosity is to focus on questions not answers.
• Stop looking at things and try to find solutions all the time.
• Don't just jump on the answer but question that question.
• Don't beat yourself up when things fail or you don't know the answers to the questions.
• It is more important to have a dynamic important questions to enable curiosity to move forward
• When you have a deeper curiosity, you are able to challenge yourself in any situation.
• Don't be afraid to fail. If you don't know, it's okay.
• Questions keep your brain exercised not the answers.
• Take a risk and go forward to develop things and the ideas

• Remember to reflect on every change
• Organizations don't change; People change.
• Stop focusing on the organization. Stop trying to drive change in the organization.
• When people embrace the change, the organization through with no problem.
• When you are trying to jump in the organization to change, the people will push back at you. Do it with them not to them.

Productivity Tool:

• Trello

Book Recommendation:

• Directing The Agile Organization by Evan Label

Personal Habit:

• Mindfulness and meditation
• Reflecting on his own personal target
• Become a little bit more realistic
• Drink coffee :-)

Hot spot Recommendation:

• Port Perry in Scugog, Ontario
• The Jester's Court

Capillary Consulting offers a broad range of consultation services delivering effective, influential and sustainable change through a new kind of collaborative consultation that puts the client at the centre of the engagement and optimizes organizational functioning.

Our collaborative approach values 'partnering to discover solutions' over 'one-size-fits-all methodologies'. We take clients on a journey of self-discovery and, through developing a thorough understanding of their organisation and situation, apply the right elements of proven successful change models to capitalize on opportunities and find innovative possibilities even in difficult situations.

Our approach is a tailor made engagement for each and every client, through which we are able to reflect on what has happened, learn from what's currently happening, to flourish into the future.

Twitter:

• @TOChangeDays
• @CapillaryTweets

LinkedIn: Rich Batchelor

Website:

• Capillary Consulting
• Toronto Change Days

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I'm still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn't love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Ross Findon!

Jonathan Hera is the Founder and Managing Partner of Marigold Capital. Marigold offers strategic consulting and fund management for private market impact investments. The firm works with families, foundations, corporations and governments to better use finance for equitable and prosperous social change.

In this episode, Jonathan talked about venture capital and why VC (venture capital) doesn't work for everybody but it is super sexy and a super exciting type of finance at this stage. In Marigold Capital, they use different types of mechanism and different type of finance that allows them to fund many activities that might not fit the traditional VC model.

Jonathan explained how venture capital handle the money that they get and provide to the entrepreneurs. For Jonathan Hera, the model of managing money and getting bigger returns on the back-end is really weird because it can be broken and it needs to change.

Jonathan also talked about why women are usually good founders on a company and talked about how they run a business and stepping it up to the market.

Venture Capital. VC is a type of private equity, a form of financing that is provided by firms or funds to small, early-stage, emerging firms that are deemed to have high growth potential, or which have demonstrated high growth (in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, or both).

Angel investor. An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity.

Jonathan explained that if you got a business idea and turned that idea into some minimal viable product and having some prototypes and testing it to some of your customers, and if you are looking to fund yourself beyond you and your founders or family who can't provide anymore capital, that is when venture capital and angel investor comes in.

You might also go to a couple of groups of angel investors or long standing entrepreneurs who are looking to give back to other inspiring entrepreneurs. And if you start to validate your product and your services a little bit more, venture capitalist will be the next step that you be looking for. These are going to be a little bit more institutional, a little bit more professional in terms of how they are managing you.

• Warm intros are the way to go
• All that marigold does is around gender and equity
• Going outbound instead of waiting for the outbound intros can often be a really useful tactic to venture out on VC's
• You just need to know your numbers
• You don't need to know everything
• It is fine to say you need to follow up but you need to have humility on the strength you need to know your operational, unit economics, market size and etc.
• You need to know what your key assumptions are
• Do your homework and build that relationship

Just because you can't see what's behind the black box or the curtain doesn't mean we're not all talking

Gender and inclusive lens that marigold focuses on that can contribute to a business and a community and the quaint customers well being:

• Women and technology
• Women with inmost companies
• Product and services
• Upstream and downstream suppliers and distributors practices

For men entrepreneurs, they should be thinking more of a board of advisers or board of directors are two places are obviously to begin with. Jonathan had also made a lot of deals in financial inclusion and med-tech and here are the things that you should be looking at.

• How the products are designed
• How the services are administered
• Who is administering those products and services

Jonathan shared about the 2017 Canadian Budget where the government is allocating a ton of money to the venture capital space to build the infrastructure for later stage financing of their startups that include a gender-balanced element. The Canadian Budget is also working on BBC to target women in technology.

We have all these elements in both domestically and internationally working private sector player.

This is not just the government's initiative but also for public and private to leverage one another towards more equitable solutions for ultimately women and girls.

• They still adhere that innovation can change society.
• They completely believe in entrepreneurs who wanted to change the world
• They completely adhere to what VC's say to that as well
• They are looking for positive social progress through awesome entrepreneurs affecting communities with great products and services

Build something that you would use that you know that there is something to demand for and that there are many more you's out there

• Never give up
• Always be fundraising but always ask for advice, never for money
• Reach out to people with something that has value to them
• Always provide value to someone who you are requesting invite from
• Stay in touch
• A tip from Venture Capital - When you need the money no one is going to give it but if you don't need the money, you'll have more offers
• Be authentic
• Start your relationship six months prior
• Make money while doing good now

Book recommendation:

• 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
• The Innovation Blindspot by Ross Baird
• Reset by Ellen Pao
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• Mindset by Carol Dweck
• New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms

Hot spot:

• El Catrin in Toronto

Marigold makes investments using a gender and inclusive lens for systems level impact. It is one of Canada's leading impact investors and blended finance practitioners, and it continues to re-conceive traditional finance to shift norms, remove structural barriers, and empower marginalized individuals to participate and benefit fully in society.

• Marigold Capital is built on leading impact investment experience at Grand Challenges Canada, RBC and Sarona Asset Management, alongside the Schulich School of Business.
• Marigold is a leader in gender lens investing and blended finance
• Marigold has built collaborative impact platforms that bring together various (and different) stakeholders to provide more finance and resources to social enterprises
• Marigold is about to launch Canada's deepest gender lens fund

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhera/

Twitter: @JonathanHera and @marigoldCap

Website: Marigold Capital

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I'm still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn't love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to RawPixel!

Braden Kelley is an experienced leader of projects and programs focused on innovation, digital transformation, design thinking, organizational change, and process improvement.

He is the author of two books (1) "Charting Change" and (2) "Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire", and has helped numerous organizations increase their revenue and cut their costs through the creation of innovative strategies, organizational change, digital transformation, and improved organizational performance. He has maximized profits for companies while living and working in England, Germany, and the United States. Braden earned his MBA from top-rated London Business School.

Braden is passionate about digital transformation, innovation and change, and has written for numerous online publications including CIO.com, The Atlantic, Wired, and The Washington Post. In addition, he has written commissioned white papers on "Harnessing the Global Talent Pool to Accelerate Innovation" for Innocentive, "Winning the War for Innovation" for Imaginatik, and "Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell Better" for Planview.

In his spare time, Braden is a popular keynote speaker, workshop leader, and a co-founder of the world's largest global innovation community – InnovationExcellence.com – home to 7,000+ innovation articles and is an innovation leader on Twitter (@innovate) with 19,500+ hard-earned followers.

InnovationExcellence.com is the online home of the global innovation community, building upon a rapidly-growing network with thousands of members from over 175 countries – thought leaders, executives, practitioners, consultants, vendors, and academia representing all sectors and industries. Their mission is to broadly enhance innovation by providing a forum for connection and conversation across this community – assembling an ever-growing arsenal of resources, best practices and proven answers for achieving innovation excellence.

Their community currently generates over 225,000 unique visits and requests more than 800,000 pages every month.

Braden also partnered with Rowan Gibson, Julie Anixter and Dean DeBiase to built Innovation Excellence and now has over 400 contributing authors around the world providing a range of perspective on the business aspects of innovation and how to help people succeed in their business.

Braden define innovation as a means to transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adoptive solution that values above every existing alternative. Several key things about this definition:

• The tension between useful VS valuable - you can create lots of useful things very easily but the things that are valuable to people are much harder.
• The tension between invention and innovation - (they are not the same thing) often times people can get confused when they are inventing things and thinking that it is innovation. One of the key differentiators between innovation and invention is for something to make that leap from one to the other is that innovation must become widely adopted and must also, as a result of its inherit value be able to displace the existing solution even if it is the "do nothing solution".

1. What you have to do is to be really really good at what you do and but you also have to have one eye at the future.
2. Your customer and understanding how their needs are changing overtime so that you are delivering the things that they look to you to provide in terms of the solutions.
3. Innovation is all about value - so you have to be constantly on top of identifying where value comes from in your contacts and how to deliver value and translate that value for people to access that value.

• Innovation excellence
• Operational excellence

• Value Creation - the invention part of it
• Value Access - helping people access that value
• Value Translation - to help people understand how these new things will fit into their lives

The challenge that companies have in creating the innovation culture is RISK PROFILE. It is one key challenge that every organization have. Oftentimes organizations tend to over index whereas repeatability and operational excellence is they do that to deliver that consistency that the customers expect in that quality. Sometimes it leads people to feeling that they can't make a mistake so you have to sort of change the mindset of the organization and make learning an accepted part of the culture because you can learn from success as much as you can learn from failures as long as you are set up to do it.

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Charting Change

• Organizational change - it is all about the mindset and what's important to different individual
• You really need to segment inside your company for your customers
• It is all about the customer

"Good artist copy and great artist steal" - Pablo Picasso

If organizations really want to be in it for a long haul and they exist 50 years from now, you have to put the right building blocks in place to build the right mindset and the right culture so that you will have the ability to change as the world changes around you.

• You should not rush in without having an understanding of what you are going to do of people's idea on the back-end.
• Do not start an innovation program if you are not committed financially, committed to time for people to work on the projects.
• Before you start asking anybody for anything, know what you are going to do with what they provide.
• Do you research, do your homework.
• It is not just about things in your area but keep a file of the things that you are trying to do that has impact.
• Look and learn from other people who are already doing it and see what you can leverage out of it.

"A body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest"

• Notepad
• Outlook Calendar (online version)

• Winning the Brain Game by Matthew E. May

Website: InnovationExcellence.com and BradenKelley.com

LinkedIn: Braden Kelley on LinkedIn

Twitter: @innovate

Facebook: Innovation Excellence

Thanks again for tuning in!

To help out the show:

• Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated.
• If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us.
• Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here.

I'm still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen!

Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn't love to save money?

We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to rawpixel

Ariel Garten is neuroscientist, innovator, mother, entrepreneur, founder of Muse, a brain sensor headband that makes everyone feel like Wonder Woman or any superhero. She speaks about happiness, meditation,understanding the brain, mental health and constantly giving her audiences the tools they need to help individuals become their better selves.

Understanding the innovation blocks for Individuals:

Normally you have 2 kinds of mental blocks, the thinking & feeling blocks. When you need to think about ways to overcome your mental blocks you tend to think about your thinking blocks but there is also this realm of feeling blocks that you can overcome as well.

One of the best way to overcome your thinking block and feeling block is motivation. Being engage, being passionate, doing something we want to do.

TIPS:

• MAKE THE IDEA BIGGER! - if you go to an idea and you want that idea to come true; is to make your idea really really big; make it so big that it overcomes the fear and it doesn't matter if it is a little uncomfortable because it is something that you really want to do in your life
• You need to feel the 'WHY'
• Make the idea real for you - make the idea soooo big that you're compelled to do it
• Don't be afraid of talking about your idea - no one is going to steal your idea. Most people don't take action
• By talking about the idea - it creates a temperature check and helps you validate your idea and they may help you connect to others that may help you with your idea
• Don't get caught in the INFO INTAKE PARALYSIS
• Reach out to people beyond your pay grade
• People genuinely want to help and support
• If you have an idea that is going to make the world a better place then you are much more likely to succeed
• Galvanize towards that idea that actually adds value for the world and add value for particular customer group
• You'll never know what will happen if you put yourself out there - Ariel shares her trip to Silicon Valley
• You just need 5 seconds of courage (you just need to take that 5 seconds of courage to take the first step to open up so many other doors
• You will get this 5 seconds of courage through Meditation
• YOUR ABILITY TO TOLERATE YOUR DISCOMFORT makes you closer to success in life!!!
• Your feelings give you fake information

During our podcast episode, Ariel talks about the importance of Meditation and how it can help leverage our selves, balance out our thoughts to get a bigger purpose. Here, you will learn:

• Meditation - focus on your breathing
• Meditation helps you stay away from your wandering mind which is often negative
• Meditation allows you to have a clear mind, which is like a clean room
• When you meditate, you are strengthening your attention and you are learning to manage your distraction
• TIP: (on how to get yourself back from wandering mode or a set-back)
  • Setbacks are completely normal and we have those all the time.
  • Being an entrepreneur and being able to deal with a no or a setback is critical and the best way to deal with it is just to let it right past and not engage in it.

In this section, Ariel shares a story of why she loves loves presenting her product or content on stage. This section we will learn:

• Why Ariel is passionate about her content and loves to deliver it
• How to focus on the content and the values of what you are presenting
• Don't pump up the fear because it actually doesn't mean anything
• Know your content and practice it (the more you practice your content beforehand, the more easier it is for you to share during your presentation)
• If you are feeling nervous, transform that nervousness into excitement because the sensation of being nervous and excited are actually really close to one another

Your inner critic are the voice that is inside of you, constantly telling you bad things about you. Ariel help us go through a little exercise to help us how to overcome our little critic.

Step 1: Think about something that your inner critic told you recently.

Step 2: Follow through Ariel's guide (audio) and imagine what your inner critic says

Step 3: Imagine what your inner critic looks like.

Step 4: Tell that inner critic the same thing that you would have told that stranger dissing your best friend

Step 5: Talk to your inner critic

Step 6: Use your fingers and imagine that you are shrinking your inner critic and flick it away

Our inner critic dis-empowers us if we use them as motivations.

The thing about procrastination is that nobody ever realize that we are doing it. Meditation will teach you how to distinctively avoid procrastination. We procrastinate because we have a feeling block, because we think we need to do something that is really hard and it feels uncomfortable.

• Recognize that you are procrastinating and then make the choice to return back to reality.
• Stay focused and stay engaged

Here are my takeaways:

• If you got an idea make it BIGGER!
• Do one small thing everyday to help you validate your idea and help push the idea forward
• Practice meditation
• Setbacks are good. It is just data that tells us whether to pivot or not or to try something new
• Know your content
• Kill the jerk in your head and flick it away
• Just do it!

If you want to learn more about Muse headband, click here to listen to our podcast episode.

Website: Muse | The Brain Sensing Headband

Social Media:

• LinkedIn: Ariel Garten on LinkedIn
• Twitter: @ariel_garten and @ChooseMuse
• Facebook: Muse on Facebook

Instagram: @Choosemuse @ariels musings

Speaker Bio:

Andreas Souvaliotis who was the founder of the world's first eco rewards program and more recently the world's first public wellness rewards initiative in partnership with the government of Canada called carrot rewards, has been recognised globally for his achievements in influencing and rewarding behaviour changes on a mass scale. Andreas is a prominent Canadian leader and an advocate for Canadian & innovative approaches to social change particularly around the areas of public health promotion climate change awareness and citizenship.

Episode Overview:

Carrot Rewards actually gives you rewards based on one your favorite loyalty rewards and whether it is your favourite programs like Aeroplan® Miles, SCENE®, Petro-Points™, More Rewards®, and Drop.

We get to challenge ourselves and Carrot Rewards give us tips about different pieces whether you're counting your steps, your food, whatever it is, it actually helps us with those different things and becomes a bit of a game for us. So it began from kind of like a core health and wellness message around the app.

Carrot Rewards is a new way to try and deliver wellness to Canadians compared to the traditional methods that have been used all over the world. So when you think of how we have tried to convince our fellow citizens not just in Canada but in any country to live a little bit healthier so that everybody saves a lot of money down the road and when they get old.

The app is free but not only is it free, you actually get a whole bunch of your favorite points just for putting it on your phone.

The important thing about Carrot is that it's actually not aimed at the healthy segment of the population it's aimed at the whole population. Carrots messaging is appropriate for every single Canadian. The app doesn't say come to Carrot because you love being healthy or because you love being financially healthy. The app says come to Carrot Rewards because it will give you more points.

For those that are looking for something to kind of help you with your own resolutions or areas that you want a change of 2018 definitely take a look at this and listen to this episode.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• What Carrot Rewards is all about and how this app can be a huge part of everyday lives.
• How the rewards convince people to live a little bit healthier
• How Carrot Rewards became almost like an aggregator of rewards
• Understanding core health and wellness
• How to do things better easier and faster and then get rewarded for it.
• How to take advantage of our addiction to mobile phones using this app
• How to be productive, passionate and focused towards your goals
• Why lunch is an important part of the day.
• How to transform lunch as an extended part of work.
• The app can be a helpful source of guidance four your new year's resolutions.
• The things that makes us different are actually the things that make us successful.
• Too often in our quest to fit in and to live normal, we end up quashing those very things that could make us special.

Resources Mentioned:

Ad: The Crazy Ones Apple Ad

Magazine: The Globe and Mail

Restaurant: The Food Dudes

Restaurant: Rasa Bar

Book: Misfit The Book

Website: https://www.carrotrewards.ca/blog/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/souvaliotis?ref=br_rs

Twitter: https://twitter.com/souvaliotis

Overview of the Company:

Carrot Rewards is a free Canadian mobile application that motivates Canadians to adopt healthier behaviors, eat better, be more physically active, and take care of their mental health by rewarding them with their favourite loyalty points. Created in partnership with the federal government, Carrot harnesses Nudge Theory to guide people through the stages of behaviour change, and currently has over 650,000 users in Ontario, British Columbia, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Dr. Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the world's leading privacy experts. She has consulted with Facebook, the European Uion and many other on privacy concerns. She is currently the Distinguished Expert-in-Residence, leading the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University. Her Privacy by Design framework is now the International Standard and has been translated into 39 languages. Dr. Ann Cavoukian has won numerous awards such as Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada Top 10 Women in Data Security & Privacy, Power 50 by Canadian Business, Top 100 Leaders in Identity.

Dr. Ann Cavoukian will be sharing:

1. How her privacy by design framework has become the international standard
2. She'll show us how to create a new competitive advantage
3. And even, how Steve Jobs avoided being tracked

Other Resources:

1. Equifax Breach - http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/equifax-canada-cyberbreach-1.4296475
2. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET): http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/mon/27009/324331.pdf
3. Book: Feel the Fear & Do it Anyways - affiliate link -> http://amzn.to/2zCXjvo
4. GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation: http://www.eugdpr.org/
5. Danah Boyd - NY University - https://tisch.nyu.edu/itp/itp-people/faculty/adjuncts/danah-boyd
6. Homomorphic Encryption: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3196121/security/how-to-make-fully-homomorphic-encryption-practical-and-usable.html
7. International Council on Global Privacy & Security by Design: https://gpsbydesign.org/
8. Privacy-Protective Surveillance - http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/mon/27009/324331.pdf
9. Twitter - @AnnCavoukian
10. Email - [email protected]
11. Restaurant - Mayrik - https://www.mayrik.ca/

Hey Innovators!

This podcast truly started out as a passion project and it's really one of my favourite things. Everytime I record an episode.. I literally say out loud 'that I love my job'. I get to learn from smart people. There is a saying that you are who you spend time with. Each episode I definitely become wiser as we get to learn from their insights.

These guests share lessons learned and best practices. Unleashing areas of unknowns. My friend Paul - will laugh when he hears me say this.

• You know what you know
• You don't know what you don't know
• But now, we know what we don't know --> this is the most powerful element.

When we know what we don't know, our blind spot - no longer becomes a blind spot. This is exactly what these innovators have done. They've shown us different perspectives.

They've identified best practices and lessons learned. Now, we know we need to learn how to implement these into our lives, our business and our careers. So, we are going to offer masterclasses so that we can all continue to evolve and innovate our own minds.

So, Innovators get ready- you're going to enjoy this new mixture

We'll continue to place a spotlight on innovative companies in Canada. We'll also continue to offer insights on global industry trends. That way, we'll be more aware of what these industry 'BUZZ' words and what they really mean to. It will give us more foresights on what could potentially disrupt our companies, our businesses and proactively identify shifts in skills and new new opportunities out there.

Plus, we are now going to offer these masterclasses, that zone deeper into particular topics so that we can gain tactical knowledge of how to implement things. For example, mindset. We've got an episode that is coming that talks about how to TACTICALLY change our mindset. In fact, on this episode - Ariel literally changes my mindset in a few areas that I've been struggling with. We do a few different exercises that you can also do, while you're listening. Since recording this episode a couple of weeks ago, things definitely changed and shifted for me. You'll see! It's such a powerful episode. In fact, I'm going to get my nieces to listen to it, so that they no longer see boundaries. It's a doozy!!!

I truly believe that education and awareness is instrumental in overcoming any perception challenges in our lives, businesses and even our careers. It's a perception game.

Plus, we'll also have Q&A episodes. Where you get to ask your question and I'll get some answers!

These four components are going to be a powerful blend - consider it a new cocktail mix for us to evolve our different areas of our lives, our careers and business.

• Spotlight on Innovative companies in Canada
• Stay on top of global industry trends - the potential disruptors
• Masterclasses where we gain tactical skills
• Q&As - where we get to learn from each other

Lots of different things coming. So - Innovators - get ready to be inspired, gain tactical skills so that we can continue to innovate our lives, our businesses and and our careers. We are just going to keep evolving and having a lot of fun while doing it!

I've also got a new tools page, of where I've negotiated some pretty cool discounts from our guests. Some of them are affiliate links. Feel free to use them, this just help us continue to produce content for free. If you use them, THANK YOU! If not, no worries. We just like to provide full transparency and provide additional options. You can find them under the resources tab - TOOLS

You can also stay in the loop of new things that are going on, with our newsletter. You can subscribe here. The links is on our home page, about us page and our contact us page!

Drop me a line - I really can't wait to hear your feedback on the new shifts! Send me your questions and we'll get them answered! You can email either myself at [email protected] or Claire at [email protected]

I love this new direction - Cocktail mix. Let the innovation games continue!

Best Always,

Sapna