Brant Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur and CEO of Moves the Needle. With over two decades of expertise helping companies bring innovative products to market, he blends agile, design thinking, and lean methodologies to ignite entrepreneurial action within large organizations. 

Brant has a unique take on disrupting our current way of thinking in order to be closer to customers, move faster, and act bolder. He has experienced monumental milestones such as IPO, acquisition, rapid growth, and crushing failure.

He serves as a global keynote speaker, mentor to entrepreneurs, and trusted advisor to corporate executives. His mission is to teach leaders how to find personal and economic growth through creating new value for fellow humans.

Brant travels the globe speaking with entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs about how to discover and create new value; about empowering individuals to make the change they want to see in the world.

We all know storytelling is a business imperative, especially for innovators, but Carol Barash is a special breed of storyteller. Knowing that some kids don’t see their stories as special – maybe even hard or painful to share, Carol started Story2 to create a future where everyone, from every background, can tell their stories and pursue their boldest dreams. She has been counseling students on college admissions and working in EdTech for more than 20 years.

Carol has also innovated HOW we tell them with tech. Leveraging her deep knowledge of storytelling from teaching at Princeton, the University of Michigan and Rutgers University, she created Story2 to build an app that makes storytelling practical, repeatable and shareable, worldwide. Her book, Write Out Loud (McGraw-Hill, 2013), is cannon for storytellers and she now shares how she’s taking the storytelling revolution, global. Get ready!

More about Carol

Award winning education innovator and entrepreneur, Carol has spent 20+ years building solutions at the intersection of teaching, technology, and community. She started Story2 to teach people how to transform themselves and their communities through the art and science of storytelling.

We’ve all heard the phrase that “data is the new oil.” And in a modern world characterized by digital disruptions, it’s hard to argue against it. Communities and businesses must learn to harness the power of data to thrive in a dynamic and changing world characterized by unprecedented challenges. 

This is the mission of Charles Rath and his company, RS21. They’re resilient in taking all of the data that exists in the world and using it for good. 

Catch this week’s episode on the Innovation Storytellers Podcast to learn how Charles Rath and RS21 are helping solve the world’s most complex problems using data. 

I’m thrilled that Elyette Roux, Head of Customer Experience in South Europe for Cisco Systems, could join me on the show today. I first met Elyette at Innov8tors, a fantastic conference in Paris attended by people at the cutting edge of innovation.

Elyette joins us as an intrapreneur and customer centricity expert who is driving business transformation and customer and employee engagement at Cisco. In this episode, we talk about the fact that sales is about far more than just selling your product. It’s about attaching human values to business problems. Connecting with people from an authentic place and a desire for impact. And adding value faster through digital transformation. 

You’ll hear us explore the importance of teamwork, collaboration, and breaking down silos in your organization, as well as the ONE thing that is absolutely key to building business resiliency. 

Bio: As an intrapreneur who drives business transformations powered by digital, customer, and employee engagement, customer centricity is more than Elyette Roux’s area of expertise: it's a constant motivation, and a source of energy to lead agile change every day. 

With experience in areas including Project Management, International Sales, Key and Global Account Management, P&L Management, Strategy and Business Development to Customer Experience, Services & Support, Elyette is an expert when it comes to business and organizational strategy. Thanks to her extensive international experience, including five years in the Nordics, she has learned that top performance comes from both providing meaning and a sense of purpose to teams and customers, as well as daily care, diversity-powered innovation, and inclusion.

Irreverent. Hysterical. Brilliant. That’s how I always introduce Greg Larkin, because it only takes about 3 minutes for someone else to realize it, too. Greg and I get to the marrow of innovation with a bare bones talk about what happens when executives say they want innovation, but prize quarterly profits more. How sharing hard truths - and failures - are the job of innovators and disruptors. And a golden rule of corporate innovation - it simply will not survive or thrive without the unflinching endorsement from the top. 

In this episode, you’ll hear the stories from Greg’s amazing book, “This Might Get Me Fired: A Manual for Thriving in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Underground.” And will talk about the off the wall stories that Greg has heard and used to move innovation forward.

We’ve been watching the rise of electric cars for nearly 30 years now, but how comfortable are you with taking an electric flight? This is a really special episode in which aviation veteran Roei Ganzarski takes us up, up and away on battery power planes and the future of electric flying.

Most importantly, storytelling at MagniX is such an important part of the culture, that they literally have it painted on the stairs leading up to their office, asking each new employee to help them write the next chapter of aviation history when they join the team. If you thought masks and temperature taking were the future of flying, think again.

Roei leads magniX. Prior to magniX, Roei was CEO of BoldIQ, a global provider of dynamic real-time scheduling optimization software which, under Roei’s leadership, grew from a seed software startup to a profitable multi-million dollar SaaS company. Before BoldIQ, Roei was Chief Customer Officer for Boeing’s Flight Services division where he led all worldwide customer and market facing organizations. Other experiences prior to Boeing include private investment banking, corporate finance, advertising, and the military.

Today’s episode features one of Tesla’s top materials experts, Michael Pilliod, who runs the glass division. We’ll explore how a globally watched “failure” became a learning experience that would change everything. He even brought the steel snowball to the show [watch the YouTube broadcast of the podcast] as a lasting memento of that moment. Some are wondering, “How does this guy still have a job?” Would you survive that public misstep? 

We explore how the culture of Tesla allows for very public triumphs and defeats and urges innovators to keep going. Mike’s background as a Product Designer at Apple through the age of the iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch as well as an Engineer at GE prepared Michael for that moment, and the ongoing successes that follow. 

What happens when two banking powerhouses, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade take on a $22 billion merger creating a behemoth online brokerage with more than $6 trillion in client assets and 28 million brokerage accounts? Innovation.

Gina Mitchell and Michael Jareo had a front-row seat at TD Ameritrade watching it all go-down. On this episode of Innovation Storytellers, you’ll learn from these innovators about the pieces that were put in place prior to the merger, the cutting edge innovations that made TD Ameritrade an attractive partner to Schwab, and the stories that are now being told to make these two companies - and their innovation departments -  into one.

Gina Mitchell is a creative problem-solver who has spent her career in the financial services industry building various programs and implementing the supporting frameworks. She has experienced the rewarding feeling of bringing together uniquely talented individuals to form successful, high-performing teams within a Fintech environment, most recently within innovation.

Gina is most inspired when she sees how she’s impacted individuals’ lives through her leadership and mentorship. She truly believes my success is directly contributed to the people who have worked alongside her through uncertainty, bringing their best everyday to help build sustaining programs and deliver projects that drive companies forward into the future.

Michael Jareo is a strategic-minded problem-solver with a successful 15-year history in the financial services industry. Starting as a front line broker directly serving clients, he has grown in his influence and impact in change management and strategic leadership.

As a Lean Leader and Champion and as an Innovation Consultant, Michael aligns those efforts with a larger strategic vision to build long-lasting and effective relationships. As a  coach from young employees and interns to executives leading large organizations, Michael gets particularly energized when his clients begin to apply new concepts and approaches in a way that improves their work and leadership.

Since our recording, Gina has gone on to become the Head of Innovation Accelerator and Managing Director, Strategy & Partnerships at Charles Schwab.

Don’t miss it!

Steve Rader is a speaker/consultant on open innovation and the future of work based on his 30 years at NASA with the last 8 years dedicated to scaling up open innovation and open talent initiatives across NASA and the U.S. federal government. Steve has a mechanical engineering degree from Rice University and has worked in various roles at NASA including flight controller, software developer, project manager, systems engineer, communications system architect, and innovation manager.

Overview:

Steve Rader is not only an award-winning speaker, innovator and thought leader on innovation, but he has taught most of us more about Open Innovation, than any other I know.

Over the past 8 years, Steve served as the Deputy Director for the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation at NASA, he has found a way to harness the power of the crowd and their love of outer space to get people from around the world collaborating on the next set of innovations that will take us to Mars and beyond.

In this episode, Steve shows us how open innovation brings diverse new talents to large organizations like NASA, ushers in new ways of thinking and inspires an even greater level of collaboration and innovation culture at the organization.

How do you stay at the cutting edge of innovation as a 169 year old company? Marty Curran and Anis Fadul have been inventing and reinventing innovation at Corning for 30 years. One of their amazing stories lies in the motto that hangs in the Innovation Center at Corning, “Not In Our House.” That means that Corning will not be disrupted by anyone other than their own innovation team.

In this episode you’ll not only hear the stories behind how glass is fighting disease, empowering Tesla and becoming a leader in sustainability, but also how innovations from 90 years ago are still yielding new fruit for Marty and his team, and all of us.

Guest Information

Name: Martin J. Curran

Title: Executive Vice President & Innovation Officer

Company: Corning Incorporated

Bio: Marty Curran was appointed Corning’s first innovation officer in August 2012. In this role, Curran manages a portfolio of programs to increase the probability of success for new business

opportunities. The innovation office was created to build an entrepreneurial-focused organization that could operate across all business segments to identify and develop near-term revenue opportunities. Over time, the expectation is to streamline the innovation process where appropriate and increase speed-to-market.

Curran joined Corning in 1984 and has held a variety of roles in finance, manufacturing, and marketing. He has served as senior vice president, general manager for Corning Cable Systems

Hardware and Equipment Operations in the Americas of which he was responsible for operations in Hickory, North Carolina; Keller, Texas; Reynosa, Mexico; Shanghai, China; and the DominicanRepublic. Curran led efforts to grow Corning’s Connectivity business, including the first major fiber-to-the-home offering with Verizon FiOS.

He has also served as senior vice president and general manager for Corning Optical Fiber and has served as Chairman of US Conec, a Corning Connectivity joint venture with Fujikura and NTT-AT.

Curran graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in finance and received his master’s degree from the University of Virginia’s Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business.

Name: Anis Fadul

Company: Corning Incorporated

Title: Director, Marketing and Strategic Planning, Emerging Innovations Group

Bio: Anis is responsible for the front-end of Corning’s Innovation process which includes opportunity identification, portfolio prioritization, business, and competitive intelligence, strategic planning, and marketing communications for Corning’s Emerging Innovations Group. In his 30+ years with Corning, he has held a variety of project management, new product development, and technology management positions within various divisions of Corning and managed Corning’s relationship with Samsung Corning Precision Materials in the CORSAM Technologies joint venture.