Making Business Art

Innovating is much more than the act of creating something new or different. At its heart, innovating is really about how we relate to each other, collaborate, and bring forth our creative uniqueness. This is the view of my guest, Leon Segal, who sees innovation as highly personal because when we learn and practice innovation as a craft, what we learn touches and influences all our relationships and interactions. Leon's perspective is shaped by his decades of experience guiding innovation projects and consciousness expanding practices.

In this episode Leo and I discuss his journey from studying engineering psychology, to working at NASA in the early '90s , and then being recruited by IDEO, one of the best known innovation consultancies in the world. We also discuss a wide range of topics including lessons learned as a jazz musician, reflections on the pros and cons of remote work, establishing an appropriate process for innovation in organizations, the importance of developing a mindset for innovation, his experience learning about working with psychedelics and other consciousness expanding practices, an ideation process Leon designed to be used with cannabis called FreeStorming, and how consciousness expanding practices can be game-changing for leaders.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Leon founded Innovationship in 2012 after over thirty years in human factors, product innovation, and experience design, including leading an IDEO office. His work on empathy and design and his insight that "innovation begins with an eye" are cited in several bestselling books. He has practiced and taught at leading institutions around the world, and his experience across industries and cultures, combined with his hands-on style of teaching, give him a unique perspective on the practice of innovation.

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt

If you have ever endeavored to reach out and connect with people, you have probably come across advice like "know your audience." Although there are many ways to approach that advice, one of the most powerful approaches to get an insider perspective on your audience is immersion. My guest Vyjayanthi Vadrevu has been practicing immersion and connecting with audiences most of her life as a dancer, anthropologist, writer and actress.

In this episode Vyjayanthi and I discuss her journey into classical Indian dance, business anthropology, and acting. Our conversation includes the benefits of studying and applying anthropology in the business world, the value of conducting immersive practices like in-depth interviews, ethnography, and deep listening in business research, how immersion and walking in someone else's shoes can be the secret sauce to understanding how to make your business secret sauce, the perils of overthinking and how to overcome it, authenticity, and lessons learned from the rich world of classical Indian dance and acting.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Vyjayanthi Vadrevu is an actress, writer, and dancer based in Los Angeles. She is the founding anthropologist and strategist of Rasa.nyc where she leads research on projects ranging from social impact design to corporate technology innovation. Vyjayanthi is trained in several genres of classical Indian dance including Bharatantyam, Kathak, and Odissi, and uses movement and choreography to connect to the deepest parts of the human experience.

Instagram: @vyjayanthi_vadrevu

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt

Emotions play a crucial role in our lives. Sometimes we speak of emotion as something that gets in our way, but emotions are actually key to our experience of being alive. Neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio are deepening our understanding of how emotions evolved to help us make sense of the world, adapt, and survive. Think about what your life would be without emotions like joy, admiration, awe, romance, among others.

My guest Robin Krieglstein applies behavioral science to help people change habits and make better choices at work and in their personal lives. And he knows that emotions are a key element of achieving and sustaining behavioral change.

In this episode Robin and I discuss his journey into computer science and exploring the psychological impact technology has on people, how he applies behavioral design to drive better business outcomes, game-based design and the importance of connecting with people emotionally, why it's crucial to design for emotion, the importance of humility and awareness of our biases when problem-solving, and the cognitive costs of restructuring organizations. Robin emphasizes that we can overcome the limitations of our cognitive biases while problem-solving by taking an approach based on cycles of testing and iteration, and making evidence-based decisions.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Robin Krieglstein has been pioneering the application of behavioral science to design large-scale positive behavior change programs for over two decades.

Robin is the CEO and founder of Live Neuron Labs, a firm which specializes in behavior change for social good. Their work spans health, fitness, education, sustainability, emotional wellbeing, financial wellbeing, and more. Robin has designed dozens of behavior change solutions for leading brands including Amazon, UnderArmour, American Heart Association, LG, Spectrum Health, Kaiser, United Healthcare, Oracle, Walmart, and the American Medical Association. His design work has spanned everything from software to wearables, devices, toys, video games, board games, voice interfaces, events, print, video and more.

Robin launched the first gamified, behavior-change social network in the 1990s and later founded the Design Group at LeapFrog Educational Toys. He was a guest researcher at the Stanford Behavior Design Lab with Dr. BJ Fogg, and is currently president of the Action Design Network, a nonprofit with international reach dedicated to promoting the application of behavioral science, behavioral economics, and psychology to the development of products, services, programs, and public policy.

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt

Did you start your career with the aspiration of one day doing work that is deeply meaningful to you? Many of us do, but as the years pass we might struggle with truly fulfilling that desire. Yet, as my guest Uday Dandavate shares with us, we can start transforming what work means for us by shifting our perspective and what we look for. In Uday's case, he shifted his approach to work from making objects to deeply understanding people's experience of life, and then shifting from "selling" to co-creating value with others.

In this episode Uday and I talk about his life as a designer and travels to learn how culture influences people's choices, his first experiences with participatory design, co-founding his company SonicRim in San Francisco in the late 1990s, how he shifted his mindset from selling products to co-creating value with others, why he invites clients to express the purpose of their designs in a poem, and his experience teaching at Carnegie Mellon University's Integrated Innovation Institute.

Uday invites us all to look at things differently and explore the world through the eyes of others.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

A design activist and ethnographer of social imagination, Uday Dandavate is also CEO of SonicRim, a San Francisco based design research company specializing in co-creation. He has traveled extensively around the world, studying and connecting with all kinds of people and cultures, and watching and participating as they change over time. In his professional capacity, as well as through blogging, poetry, teaching, speaking, and facilitating, Uday provokes fresh perspectives that help to humanize technologies and democratize design.

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt

Have you ever been in a situation where you liked your job in principle, but the conditions within your organization made doing your job difficult, or maybe even soul-crushing? If you can relate to that, you know what a bad employee experience feels like.

Fortunately, there are people like my guest, Christophe Martel, who are working to make the world of work a much better experience for everyone. Christophe is the co-founder and CEO of two tech companies focused on improving the employee experience by taming the jungle of redundant policies, processes, functions, and workflows that, frankly, just suck the joy out of work and life while creating waste for organizations.

In this episode Christophe and I discuss the difference between employee engagement and employee experience, the Great Resignation and the shifting expectations about the experience of work, leadership and the challenges of HR leaders, bringing intentionality to designing the employee experience, the benefits of a better employee experience for an organization, and the importance of combining data with great storytelling.

I resonate with Christophe's desire to bring more joy to work and agree with his position that we can do so by bringing the same focus and intention we might use to design a great service to the design of work itself.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Christophe Martel is the CEO and co-founder of TI People Inc. and Fount, two companies that help large organizations enrich people's experiences at work by unleashing the power of experience data intelligence.

Prior to TI People, Christophe held a variety of leadership roles at Corporate Executive Board (CEB) (now Gartner), most recently serving as Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) and member of the Executive Committee, following many years as the Executive Director for Europe, MIddle East, Africa region (EMEA). Prior to joining the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), Christophe held business leadership roles in the software industry in Europe, North America, and Asia. Christophe holds a MSc and DEA in Geophysics from ENSG in France.

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

https://www.instagram.com/makingbusinessart/

Have you ever met someone who inspired you to rethink your approach to work and life? Maybe that person modeled ways of creating more freedom, fun, and meaning at work. If you met someone like that, did it change you in some way?

I met Scott Heaps in 2003. Looking back I can see how he was an early influence on me in thinking more seriously about becoming an entrepreneur and Making Business Art. I loved the name of Scott's digital company, Gravity Free, and his creative mindset which inspired it. You'll hear more about that in the episode. I was inspired by the intention and creative spirit with which Scott approached his business and life. He showed me how we can prioritize happiness and run a prosperous business that serves and brings joy to others.

In this episode Scott and I have a wide ranging conversation that spans teaching himself to code and his first experiments with e-commerce in the 1990s, lessons learned while building his company, his approach to fostering a creative, collaborative, fun and joyful work environment, and thoughts on Making Business Art through the lens of his experience making and playing music with a band. We also touch on why Scott has a half-pipe for skateboarding in his garage, and his unique approach to raising his twin boys.

I had a lot of fun learning more about Scott's story and the lessons he learned along the way. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Scott Heaps is the founder of GravityFree, a boutique digital agency that's been defying gravity for over 25 years by building and marketing out-of-this-world websites for florists. His team helps multi-generational floral businesses dominate their local markets and keep the national order gatherers at bay.

Scott leads a team of diverse and incredibly passionate people who genuinely care about everything they do. They have a wide range of interests, and when they do things, they invest their hearts and souls. The team is made up of musicians, travelers, photographers, cross-trainers, boaters, farmers, a professional comedian, filmmakers, gamers, and more comic book connoisseurs than you can shake a stick at.

They jam together, cook together, try new restaurants together, and they always manage to have a great time doing it. And because of that close connection, they have an incredibly collaborative environment.

https://www.gravityfree.com https://www.instagram.com/gravityfreestudios

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

https://www.instagram.com/makingbusinessart/

How clear are you on what you really want to do or be? For most of us, that is a lifelong journey of exploration and discovery. In fact, this is a pursuit with deep historical roots – many ancient wisdom traditions urge us to "know thyself" as a core principle for living a good life. It often takes many experiences and trails for us to start discovering who we truly are and muster the courage to live more authentic lives.

Miles Davis once said: "Sometimes you have to play a long time to play like yourself."

That quote applies to music as much as it does to life, and my conversation with Marte Siebenhar resonates with it.

In this episode Marte and I dig into her journey as a classically trained musician and orchestra performer, teacher, arts organization executive, and entrepreneur. We explore lessons she learned along the way including how process beats goals, pitfalls of getting what we want, discovering who we really are and what we want, creative approaches to becoming "qualified" for a new job, developing our intuition, and lessons in personal transformation.

Marte's story reminds us of the value of taking creative risks, that change is inevitable and that we benefit greatly from seeking change "on purpose."

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Marte Siebenhar is a professional musician, strategy consultant and the Founder and Principal of Cultured Innovations. Through her firm, Marte develops a deep understanding of each client's purpose, mission, and work that translates to abundance and opportunity. Her approach, which she calls Practical Creativity, seeds innovation through imagination and play. She is often called in to help clients navigate periods of high-stakes growth, change, and transition.

Marte is a classically trained professional musician and an alumna of the Manhattan School of Music. She was a Fellow with the Kennedy Center and The Miami Foundation. As an arts manager, strategic planner, nonprofit executive, and marketer, she held roles at Midori & Friends, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bakehouse Art Complex, and New World Symphony.

In addition to her work with Cultured Innovations, Marte is also an Adjunct Faculty at Watson Institute, and a Level 2 practitioner of the Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique or QHHT. She recently founded Quantum Healing Miami as another vehicle to harness her passion for helping people transform their lives. Marte is also the author of an inspiration card deck, Messages from the Heart: Cards for Inspiration, Reflection, and Empowerment, which is available on Amazon.com.

https://www.culturedinnovations.com

@culturedinnovations

https://www.quantumhealingmiami.com

@quantumhealingmiami

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

https://www.instagram.com/makingbusinessart/

Have you ever been so inspired by a character in a movie or TV show that it shaped your life in some way? And, have you ever thought about how much preparation and craft it took for the actor or actress that played that character to connect with and move you? There is a lot of inspiration and technique we can draw from the craft of acting to lead teams in any sector and make our work much more engaging and enchanting.

In this episode Sam Buti and I dig into his journey and lessons learned as a stage and voice actor, and his current work as a podcast producer and consultant.

We discuss what engages an audience, parallels between the craft of acting and leadership, and reflect on lessons from the world of acting that we can apply to leading any team. We also talk about taking risks and "walking on the knife's edge" – meaning how for something to really engage and connect with people it has to have the potential to fail. That is true about leadership, innovation, or any other creative pursuit.

I had a wonderful time speaking and learning from Sam, and hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Sam Buti helps professionals use their voice to cut through the noise and be heard. He has over a decade of experience working as a commercial voice actor on TV and radio, teaching voice over and speech training, and producing podcasts. Sam's experience includes managing and elevating a top ranked Apple Podcast in the business category; selling a podcast as exclusive content to Audible; and producing and editing over 200 podcast episodes. He is a recipient of a Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival National Commendation for Direction, and is currently a Guest Artist in the Creative Arts Department at Siena College in Upstate New York.

www.samuelbuti.com

https://twitter.com/samuelbuti

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

https://www.instagram.com/makingbusinessart/

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This is a very short episode to introduce the show and share the backstory of how this podcast came to be.

Have you ever thought about how we might live our days expressing ourselves more authentically, feeling more connected to others, engrossed in a craft that is engaging and meaningful, and feeling more fulfilled?

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

Tune in to Making Business Art on your favorite podcasting platform.