Innovators on Tap

A lot of people talk about the need for change, but too few people actually do something about it.

In today’s episode we talk with Dwayne Killings and Justin Gainey, best known as assistant coaches for the Marquette men’s basketball team, but who decided this summer to use their platform to educate and bring awareness to social injustices by forming Coaches for Action, alongside 19 fellow Big East coaches.

We'll hear more about their work with CFA, and also go behind the scenes of Marquette basketball where we focus more on what happens off the court than on it. Our conversation touches on the many leadership lessons they’ve learned from their long career in and around basketball, how you can create change in your corner of the world regardless of the size of your platform, and the importance of connection in attracting and developing world class talent.

While much of their experience is focused on developing student athletes, it applies to all of us, including Coach Killings advice, “The sooner you know who you are, the more apt you are to accept your role, and to become a star in that role.”

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

The episode is also available wherever else you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!

Today’s guest is Ramzi Hermiz, who recently retired from a long career in the automotive industry, including the last 8 years as the CEO of Shiloh Industries.

Throughout this impressive career, Ramzi gained insight not just about cars and the industry, but about leadership and innovation. He developed that philosophy that “Where there is risk of failure, that means there is a problem to be solved. If you embrace that risk, you are embracing the opportunity to change.”

During his time as CEO, he had to manage the tension between hitting quarterly targets and taking innovation risks, find ways to inspire teams on multiple continents to challenge the status quo, and lead the company’s efforts to make sustainability a priority across the entire business.

In this episode, we discuss Ramzi’s belief that he’s never had a bad boss or a bad day — and how he tries to teach this mindset to others, We discuss why he believes sustainability and diversity are key to any organization that wants to thrive, and what he has planned for his “second career” post-retirement — including being the Chairman of the Board of the Automotive Hall of Fame.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

For many businesses that want to innovate, the biggest challenge is not coming up with a new idea, but figuring out how to get consumers to embrace the idea. We dealt with this problem often at Cree, including when we tried to get customers to switch from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs.

The key to driving change is to first understand how humans behave. I recently had a chance to talk with Julie Miller, who is a behavioral scientist, a researcher at Dan Ariely’s Center for Advanced Hindsight, and an Innovation Partner at Wake Innovates.

Julie has been using her knowledge of human behavior to help companies connect with their customers, teach organizations to become more innovative, and recognize that “We rely way too much on asking people, when instead, we should be watching people and testing things.”

We discuss how behavioral science is more than simple user experience, why incremental improvement may actually be more risky than innovation, and the importance of workplace culture to create the right environments and contexts for employees to pursue new ideas.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

Elmer Moore started his entrepreneurial journey by helping create a comedy troupe in college before going on to a more traditional career. He later shifted his focus to teaching venture creation to others, where he was motivated to put his ideas into practice by starting his own company.

Elmer is currently the Executive Director of Scale-Up Milwaukee, a professor at Marquette University, and the founder of the Milwaukee Denim Company.

These experiences have given Elmer a unique and powerful perspective of entrepreneurship including his belief that “Truth produces safety. It is when we don’t have a grounding in truth that perception and self delusion get in the way.”

We discuss why he views failure as a tightrope, how entrepreneurship is less about business and more about confidence, and the difference between winning and not losing.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

Desmond Wiggan started his career like many other aspiring leaders — working for a large company and immersing himself in their management development program. While learning how to manage a team and deliver on his targets were important skills, Desmond comes from a long line of entrepreneurs and wanted something more; He wanted to lead.

So he decided to pivot, gave up his job at a Fortune 500 company and moved to China to dive into their tech and startup scene. In a new country without any support network, he learned how to lead: making connections, learning to embrace risk, and finding a way to do what many others thought couldn’t be done.

Our conversation touches on how his experience in China led him to create his company: BatteryXchange, which utilizes a kiosk to allow customers to rent portable chargers to keep their devices powered all day, how he builds a team around a common culture and how he's adapting to the challenges caused by the COVID crisis to develop new opportunities for his business.

Follow Desmond on Twitter and check out BatteryXchange’s website.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

Mark FitzGerald built and sold a business, then went on to help build multiple other companies as a private equity investor, before starting his latest venture, the MUKC Fund which is designed to help students, faculty, and alumni of Marquette University find capital to grow their business. This fund is on the frontier of what could be the future of Higher Ed philanthropy.

Despite Mark’s many successes, when he was in college he described himself as a C student, at best. This gave him a unique perspective on the importance of experiential learning and the value of connecting students to opportunities outside the classroom.

In our conversation, we discuss how he evaluates investment opportunities, why Universities should more actively create a pipeline for ideas that lead to business outcomes, and his philosophy that “Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s part of success”

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

The episode is also available on Spotify or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!

When Lauren Abda was in high school, her grandmother was diagnosed with Leukemia - which led her parents to radically change their approach to food, health & wellness. It also sparked a passion for her that would define what she would study in college and put her on a path for a career in the food innovation industry.

Lauren is CEO of Branchfood — a food innovation and entrepreneurship hub — and the founder of Branch Venture Group — an angel investor network — focused on developing food entrepreneurs in New England and beyond.

In our conversation, we discuss what’s driving change in the industry — including how the power of media shapes human behaviors that lead to acceptance or rejection of products and ideas.

You’ll also hear Lauren’s thoughts on her time at the Tech Stars accelerator, some ideas on how to develop emotional resilience in the face of failure, and why radical candor is essential to innovation.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

The episode is also available on Spotify or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!

On the first episode of this new season, we have an incredible guest. I sit down with John Coyle, an Olympic medalist, sought after speaker, design thinking expert, and a best-selling author.

But John’s success has been far from a liner path. After failing to qualify for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Speedskating Team, he decided to quit, abandon what was considered best practice at the time, and instead he trained by himself in a completely different way. Instead of working to better manage his weaknesses, he focused on maximizing his strengths. This approach led to John a Silver Medal in the 1994 Olympic Games, a U.S. record and an unofficial world record.

But that is only the beginning of John’s story as we talk about his later work with Lance Armstrong and former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling - and then we get into his unique ideas and insight around leadership and innovation - including the realization that I spent far too much time focusing on what team needed to do better, instead of putting them in positions to maximize their strengths.

Learn more about John here.

If you have an opinion on these topics, please feel free to email us through the contact page. The best ideas often stem from the intersection of different points of view.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.