Shift

Today’s episode is hands down one of my favorites as it’s filled with practical tips, tactics and stories to building a more entrepreneurial organization. It’s our first time doing a host chat, where I’m joined by the Moves the Needle Co-founders, Brant Cooper and Aaron Eden. In it, we cover:

- Why you need to start by identifying problems and opportunities within core business lines.
- How to get buy-in by tying innovation into your leaders’ and company’s strategic priorities using the leadership zoom tool.
- Why we need to redefine the word innovation.
- Which mindset shifts leaders need to undertake to create an entrepreneurial culture.
- What sort of results leaders want to see.
- How to navigate the ego’s of your bosses.
- What are some things you can do right now to build more momentum at your organization.

In today’s episode, Aaron Eden and I are really excited to have Intuit Innovation Leader, Bennett Blank join us as Aaron and Bennett talk us through their journey of 100 Startups in 100 Days at Intuit. We also dive into how 100 Startups in 100 Days has evolved since then as Moves the Needle has begun to run it within other organizations looking to act the same way they’re pushing their innovation teams to, bold, fast, and with impact.

• Focusing on innovation throughout all business functions, instead of just new products.
• Building a thriving coaches community within GE.
• How to effectively balance H1, H2, and H3 work.
• What H0 is, and how can you drive innovation there.
• Focusing on changing the way people work through values, systems and structures.
• The importance of starting with why.
• And much more...

Ghassouli, People, Finance & Strategy Director at Avito, talks us through how he proactively used the M&A he went through with Avito as an opportunity to create a better culture after taking the passive approach began to lead to some problems.

In the episode dive into:

• How he created workshops to collaboratively create a new set of values between the two organizations.
• How they doubled down on those values and identified measurable behaviors to ensure the values were embodied. Behaviors that are still measured today even 2 years after the merger.
• How they’ve gone about structuring an innovation lab within the organization.
• How he uses the lean startup methodology to run experiments beyond product development.

In today’s episode we’re excited to have Sonja Kresojevic, the VP of Product Lifecycle at Pearson. In the episode we cover:
- How teams leverage the product lifecycle framework to focus on the right things at the right time.
- How Pearson funds different early stage projects based on stage specific criteria and metrics.
- How Pearson has scaled lean innovation throughout the business and created a culture that enables innovation.

In this episode, we’re honored to have Bennett Blank, Innovation Leader at Intuit, talk about how Intuit has spread innovation thinking throughout the entire organization. Bennett is a Lean Startup in the Enterprise veteran so you’re in for a treat.

Here’s some of the key things we talk about:

• What customer benefit metrics are, how you can identify them, and how they can set teams up for success instead of focusing directly on business impact.
• How Bennett has gone from working in the trenches as a product manager and designer to leading transformation throughout the entire organization.
• How Intuit applies Lean Startup to HR and other functions throughout the business.
• The strategic levers of transformational change Intuit is using to change the way employees work.

In this episode, we interview Kelly McAdoo, the City Manager of the City of Hayward. We cover lots of ground, including deep dives into topics like:

• How Kelly has been driving impact through creating an entrepreneurial culture within a bureaucratic organization.
• How City of Hayward has been able to drastically shorten the scoping process for new projects using Lean Innovation.
• How City of Hayward is redefining the way public sector entities should function in the 21st century.

• How this year they’re on route to have put about 5000 people through the lean startup and design thinking training.
• How valuable it’s been to have a CEO who doesn’t just talk about innovation, but backs it up with a deep understanding, money and KPI’s that revolve around human centered design and experimentation.
• How Neal focuses on increasing the ambition of employees along with providing protection, education, and freedom.
• How he was able to get the bank to run 1000 lean startup experiments in 2015 by matching up a broad internal PR play with the guidance needed to enable practitioners to actually deliver.
• How Neal manages a healthy balance between PR and execution.
• Some of the challenges Neal still faces despite having support from key executives and the CEO.

• How UI labs has brought together corporations and public sector entities build a powerful applied research and commercialization engine.
• The benefits of collaborative corporate innovation.
• How the Digital Manufacturing And Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) works with partners in industry, academia, the nonprofit sector and government, DMDII to sponsor research projects in digital manufacturing and design, disseminate the lessons learned, and help educate the workforce of tomorrow. 
• How their City Digital program functions and taps into the collective power of entities like the City of Chicago’s economic development arm, Microsoft, Siemens, CommonWealth Edison, University of Illinois, HBK Engineering.
• How UI Labs identifies and unites all a bunch of diverse organizations around a problem statement.
• Jason Harris’ favorite books in the innovation landscape like Steve Case’s, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future and Charles Duhigg’s Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business.
• And much more!

- How Spotify manages “bets," strategic decision making and execution with Spotify Rhythm
- How Simon is focusing on creating an environment where employees are comfortable to “tinker in a corner”
- Why Simon is skeptical of over-investing into internal branding when it comes to fostering internal adoption of “innovation initiatives”
- How Spotify manages areas of exploration across a simple portfolio Kanban broken down into Now (stuff being fully productized), Next (pretty confident in problem space, now focused on validating solution space) and Later (exploring the problem space).
- How Simon leads up operations at Spotify, yet remains heavily focused on structuring operations around continuing to innovate instead of just refining existing products
- Why a high-trust environment acts as the foundation for thriving as an organization
- How prior to Spotify, Simon helped The Library Corporation coped with the disruption of libraries
- Why the part-time initiative model isn’t conducive to innovation
- How The Library Corporation introduced Lean Startup into their organization