The Combustion Chronicles

The best disruptors like to iterate as much as they can to perfect an idea—or at least a minimum viable product. So, it wasn’t a total shock when Chris McCarthy, vice president of strategy and design for Hopelab and founder of the Innovation Learning Network, asked us to re-record his podcast episode. In this second take, we go meta and get uncomfortable, diving deep into Chris’s mindset of embracing the mess and bringing it all to the table—your best intellect, your whole heart, everything—and being willing to endure pain in order to heal deep wounds.

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Before grade-school choral director Gregg Breinberg won the TriBeCa Disruptive Innovation Award, before his fifth-grade chorus at Staten Island’s PS22 performed for Lady Gaga and President Obama, before the appearances on The Today Show and Sesame Street, he was just another young public-school teacher trying to follow his instincts. On this week’s episode, Gregg dives deep into his story of finding success through a clear mission and being willing to break tradition, bend the rules, and act now and apologize later.

Download the executive summary for this episode at manonfire.co.

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While imagination has no limits, designers and creatives Nancye Green and Julie Anixter know all too well that bureaucracy, hierarchy, and tradition can put up barriers that prevent transformative solutions. That’s why they’re on a mission to unteach everything we think we know about creativity. Join the dynamic duo on this week’s episode, as they advocate for following curiosities, creating collaboratively, and breaking through the boundaries we construct in our minds.

Download the executive summary for this episode at manonfire.co.

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Leading functional medicine expert Dr. Will Cole thinks his being tagged as a “disruptor” says more about the field of medicine than about his own mindset. Now, he’s flipping the script on how healthcare is delivered by empowering patients to stay healthy, focusing on preventing disease rather than treating patients after they fall ill. On this week’s episode, learn more about functional medicine and why Dr. Cole believes the democratization of information can lead to ownership, autonomy, and innovation in healthcare and beyond.

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How do you draw passion and inspiration from family tragedy? When the matriarch of family-run Paxman Coolers Limited lost her hair to chemotherapy, the company turned its decades of cooling-industry expertise into a new product: scalp coolers for cancer patients. A hundred thousand cancer patients later, the family business has become a family legacy. Join this week’s conversation as Managing Director Richard Paxman talks about preserving his family’s history and keeping a cool head when life unexpectedly changes your direction.

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Movember, a quirky moustached movement started to promote men’s health, has evolved into a global brand and charity that has raised $900 million and funded over 1,200 men’s health programs in 21 countries. How does something superficial like celebrating facial hair evolve into a worldwide phenomenon that digs deep into supporting men’s health issues, mental health and suicide prevention? Join Rich Loesing, corporate development manager at the Movember Foundation, to discover how the group is working to disrupt the traditional model of nonprofit organizations while changing the face of men’s health on a global scale. 

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Kayak and Travelocity founder Terry Jones is the poster child for embracing failure, and he brings this mindset into everything he tries. In fact, he considers his $15 million worth of epic failures to be among his best investments. Why? Because every failure is a short course in What Not to Do Next Time. Join us on this week’s episode as we explore some of Terry’s biggest lessons and how we can all embrace failure along the road to success.

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Leap before you look—that’s how HopeLab founder Margaret Laws approaches innovation. When she wants to launch a big idea, she just goes for it. She believes we learn to innovate not by planning but by doing, adapting to feedback, accepting failures, and pivoting on the fly. Join us for this week’s discussion as Margaret describes how this mindset guided her new app, Nod, which helps teens battle loneliness and depression, and how radical collaboration with teens guided the app’s creation.

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What’s on Lucien’s mind? Quite a bit, actually, and it’s all focused on pushing the envelope on how we think about healthcare. In this episode, the infectiously enthusiastic healthcare strategist Lucien Engelen, CEO of Transform Health, engages a range of topics that will make your head spin and your passion ignite.

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Ballet and whisky might seem a weird combination, but for Allison Parc they are the ingredients that make her company Brenne French Malt Whisky unique. At the age of 23, she traded ballet shoes and a stellar career performing with national ballet companies for whisky flasks and brewery casks. Today, she is one of the leading American entrepreneurs in the world whisky segment and the first woman to be named World Whisky Brand Ambassador of the Year in Whisky Magazine’s Icons of Whisky Awards. On this week’s episode, Allison talks about the challenges of entering an entirely new industry, the ballet skills that helped ease her pivot towards a new career, and the lessons she learned while moving from the barre to the bar.

Download the executive summary for this episode at manonfire.co.

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