The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is about to turn 150. But hitting that big round anniversary doesn’t mean it’s a fossilized cultural organization. Just the opposite. The MFA attitude is young, vital, experimental. We learned this when we partnered with this storied institution to redesign their membership program. In this episode of *The Resonance Test,* Brandon Tirrell, our Associate Director of Innovation Consulting, talks about the project with Katie Getchell, Chief Brand Officer and Deputy Director at the MFA, and Julia Propp, Director of Membership. What happened when we showed up slinging human-centered design? Getchell says she and Propp were surprised in that “everybody around the table kind of lit up at the idea. It wasn’t as hard as maybe we might have feared.” Listen to Getchell and Propp talk about how the MFA did some bold, improvisational prototyping all on their own! This story proves than a venerable-yet-open-minded org can learn new kinds of flexibility. Or as Propp puts it: “Being comfortable with ambiguity was a muscle that we had to learn how to flex.”

Hosts: Brandon Tirrell and Pete Chapin

Editor: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

How about that John Brownstein, PhD, eh? The Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, digital epidemiologist, Canadian, fan of hot peppers and the cinema of Wes Anderson, Brownstein recently skated over to EPAM Continuum’s Boston studio for a chat. The conversation ranged all over the ice, from voice computing (“We think that voice, especially for patients, whether in the home or the hospital… it’s very empowering”), to digital phenotypes, to population health (“There’s a whole field of disease forecasting that’s taking its lessons from weather forecasting”). Tune in for an informative, and fun, face-off.

Nick Dougherty is back! The Managing Director of MassChallenge HealthTech has returned to *The Resonance Test* to report on how his startups and champions have been working together. Since we last spoke with Dougherty, his program changed names—it was originally called Pulse@MassChallenge—and has created some great outcomes in digital health. MassChallenge HealthTech has shepherded approximately 90 companies through the program, and in the process created more than 270 partnerships. The impact is real: improvements to millions of patient lives, increases in revenue and funding for startups, increases in jobs. Always glad when an innovative program gets a clean bill of health. Listen and learn about what makes a good partnership, Gen Z entrepreneurship, and the role of data at MassChallenge HealthTech.

Host: Pete Chapin

Editor: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Dr. Eric Topol isn’t playing around. The author of *Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again* wants physicians to become activists—and to use technology to transform medicine. “That’s where we need to see the breakout. Doctors leading this charge, getting organized, and saying: ‘We’re not going to take it anymore and we’re demanding time with our patients!’” Artificial intelligence and machine learning, he says, can help us turn things around. However, adds Dr. Topol, this is far from a consensus opinion. “I think the idea that technology could enhance humanity in medicine is alien in this country.” In a spirited discussion with our own Jonathon Swersey, the good doctor touches on “the gift of time,” the role of patients and caregivers in the AI revolution, and how data should figure in healthcare’s future (“Right now, we have only fragments of people’s data about their health. Whereas we should have every part of their data from when they were in the womb up to the present moment”). We even learn, from this dialogue, which book we should read after finishing *Deep Medicine*. Tune in and download the latest chapter in the story of digital health.

“Human beings are notorious for wanting multiple conflicting things,” says Megan Burns, setting the tone of this episode of *The Resonance Test*: thoughtful, empathic, honest. One of the founding mothers of experience management, Burns honed her thinking at Forrester Research, producing more than 75 reports. Today Burns is the CEO of Experience Enterprises, but she hasn’t strayed a millimeter from the nuances of CX. “Is making it easy for someone who is trying to curb their spending habits to buy $400 worth of shoes at 3:00 in the morning from their bed from their phone… is that really meeting the customer’s ‘needs’? Probably not.” We’re thrilled to have Megan Burns Experience on the podcast. In this winning chinwag with our Toby Bottorf (no CX slouch himself,) these two parse the “E”s with warmth and intelligence. Of course, one listen won’t probably be enough—“Our conscious brains only notice about 40 pieces of the 11 million pieces of information we take in at any moment,” says Burns—but give it a shot. You can always re-experience it by hitting the play button.

Host: Pete Chapin

Editor: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Matt Sheehan is a passionate guy. As the President and CEO of Primo Water—North America’s leading single source provider of water dispensers, multi-gallon purified bottled water, and self-service refill water—he brings an undeniable sense of mission to his company culture, the retailers he works with, and thirsty customers. “I don’t care about being right, I care about getting it right,” he says, adding: “It doesn’t matter where the ideas come from.” That passion electrified his recent *Resonance Test* conversation with Kenji Ross, Senior Design Strategist at EPAM Continuum. Sheehan has strong opinions on many topics, among them: corporate values, Primo’s culture, (“If you have a big ego, Primo’s not a great place for you because we aren’t shy to tear apart some ideas,”) being a public company, and the hiring process (“We’re pretty picky about the people who get to carry our flag,”). Sheehan gets particularly jazzed about getting out and talking with customers—“Let’s really go to talk to Nancy Jones at the Walmart on 2 Main Street”—to find out what really motivates them. The insight from this customer experience work, he says, “has been a thousand light bulbs for us."

Sunandini Chopra spends her days working for IBM Watson Health (genomics and oncology). Her free time, however, belongs to AI for the Rest of Us, “a platform that facilitates discussion, problem identification and problem solving to create a positive impact on public health by leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence.” Platform? It’s a community. A discussion group. A gaggle of brainy AI brainstormers. We know because we hosted one of their events, at which Toby Bottorf, VP of Service & Experience Design, gave a sterling talk on AI and human augmentation in healthcare. Chopra visited *The Resonance Test* to report to Bottorf on chatbots, the power of Alexa (“Linked with your phone, with your television, with the speaker in your house, it can take you through the whole route of a digital visual experience, a texting experience, and an audio experience,”) the predictive similarities between meteorology and healthcare, the direction healthcare is heading (“There’re two futures: one that’s the future for cutting-edge technology and one the future for all the other people in the world to get access to basic care,”) and the adorable nature of RD-D2. *Beep Boop.*

You can call Gary David all kinds of things. Sociology professor. Ethnographer. Professional noticer. Professional outsider. A *Storage Wars* guy. He is, in short, someone with a very particular view of social science and how it translates into organizational behavior. In a recent *Resonance Test* chin wag with our Toby Bottorf, David offers up a collection of smart, tart *bon mots.* In the course of the conversation he explains the formula “Data + Context = Information” by calling in the cops: “You can’t understand what crime stats mean, unless you understand police practice.” He talks about how his CX analysis focuses on the interactions customers have with a company, rather than on perceptions. “By looking at the interactions, we can see what is actually going *on* in the encounter.” As for *Storage Wars,* he’s fascinated by the way the show puts a price tag on contestants' pickings: “[R]ight now you just got a bunch of stuff in your trunk, that you bought. So you’re actually *down* money,” he says, adding, professorially, that the show “con*structs* the notion that these numbers are an accurate reflection of some concrete state—and they’re not. They’re approximations.” But maybe the best moment of all is when David gets earnest and describes his efforts this way: “You’re trying to help workers actually leverage their expertise and their knowhow and become more self-actualized, in almost a Maslow sense, in their work.”

Host: Jen Ashman

Editor: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Legendary business author Tom Peters has long insisted on putting people first. Be excellent with customers and employees, and you’ll be reap the rewards. In an insightful and rollicking conversation with Jon Campbell, EPAM Continuum’s Head of Experience & Service Design, Peters sounds off on a variety of (always human-centered) topics. “I am an arch enemy of agile, if you capitalize the A, because then it becomes a religion,” he says. Turn in and hear him get a little choked up about Eisenhower’s leadership and heated about the idea of Management By Wandering Around, or MBWA: “If it’s not a *kick* to be out with your team in the distribution center at 1 a.m…. You. Are. In. The Wrong. Job.” There's plenty to ponder here as well. Numerous times, Peters calls up an extremely apt and memorable line, such as: “The best way to persuade someone is with your ears” (from former Secretary of State Dean Rusk), and you’ll think about it for days and days. A most resonant episode of *The Resonance Test*…

Host: Jen Ashman

Editor: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

If you want to study service design, you just might want to learn from Maurício Manhães. Manhães is both a professor of service design at the Savannah College of Art and Design—SCAD to its friends—and a truly affable human being. His friendly, informed approach leaps out from the first second of this dialogue with his long-time service design buddy, EPAM Continuum’s Jon Campbell. These two vets cover much territory in 30 minutes: Maurício’s professional and intellectual journey; the employability of SCAD grads; the function of luck and hard work in design careers; the Service Design Network and its president Birgit Mager (“she way very kind to pay attention to this crazy Brazilian guy”); bringing service design into companies; the way practice and professorship inform each other; the effects of Amazing Grace Syndrome, and, of course, more. Listen and learn!

Host: Pete Chapin

Editor: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon