The Innovation Engine Podcast

Understanding blockchain technology is the focus of this episode of the podcast. We start with an introduction to blockchain technology before talking about why it just may represent the internet 2.0, or "the internet of value." We also talk about why blockchain is a technology that companies not just in the financial services space but in a wide variety of industries should be evaluating to see how it will impact their business.

Alex Tapscott joins us for this week's episode of the podcast to talk about those topics and more. His just-released book, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, looks at blockchain in-depth. It is co-written with best-selling author Don Tapscott and is based on interviews with a wide range of technology pioneers that includes Marc Andreesen, Tim Berners-Lee, and Vint Cerf, among others. Alex is the CEO and founder of Northwest Passage Ventures, an advisory firm that builds blockchain companies. In 2014, Alex wrote the seminal report on governing digital currencies for the Global Solutions Network program at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. 

• Visit the Northwest Passage Ventures website
• Visit the Blockchain Revolution book's website
• Follow Alex Tapscott on Twitter
• Follow Don Tapscott on Twitter

Mitch Gelman joins us on this episode of the podcast to talk about what to expect from the brave new world of virtual reality and the first wave of headsets that are hitting the market. Mitch walks several of us through the virtual reality experience using the HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR. Tune in to this episode to hear why billions of investment dollars are being poured into VR, why Mark Zuckerberg thinks it represents the next big computing platform, and to hear the reactions of several people going through their first experience with the HTC Vive. 

Mitch Gelman is a Senior Fellow in Media & Technology at the Newseum. He was previously VP of Product at Gannett, where he oversaw digital product development in key areas for properties that included more than 90 national and local news entities across the USA Today Network. Mitch was the Executive Producer on USA Today’s award-winning Harvest for Change VR series and has won awards including the Pulitzer, the News Innovation Award from the Knight Foundation, and the Best Use of Technology in Journalism from the National Press Foundation. Mitch was one of the co-authors of the Knight Foundation’s recently released whitepaper, Viewing the Future of Virtual Reality in Journalism. 

In addition to the usual podcast audio, we also recorded this episode of the podcast in 360-degree spherical video. You can step inside 3Pillar's Innovation Lab to watch Mitch Gelman and Will Sherlin talk about the future of VR via YouTube (https://youtu.be/NXTl3mfduEs) or 3Pillar's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/3PillarGlobal/). At around the 9-minute mark you can see footage of Andy Zipfel, Tony Orlando, and Michael Lisse narrating their close encounters of a virtual kind.

For this episode of the podcast, we're bringing you another episode of 3Pillar's new audio endeavor, Take 3. This episode of Take 3 centers around virtual reality, and we are using it to set the stage for the next episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, when we'll be getting hands-on with several of the latest and greatest VR headsets courtesy of VR luminary Mitch Gelman. On this episode, Chris Graham and Will Sherlin talk about the wave of virtual reality devices and content that are set to hit the market and some of the industries beyond just Media and Entertainment that are likely to see a sea change thanks to virtual reality technology. Julia Slattery hosts and produces Take 3 on a bi-weekly basis. To listen to previous episodes of Take 3, please visit http://www.soundcloud.com/take3pillar.

On this episode of the podcast we'll look at the present and future of streaming analytics & data visualization. We talk about a tool that a 3Pillar Global team built for digesting vast quantities of streaming video analytics data and for visualizing that data in a meaningful way. The tool we'll discuss was built as a proof of concept for a major public television network, and you’ll hear about the motivation behind its creation and other potential applications for the data visualization aspect of the tool. 

The guests on this episode of the podcast are Dan Greene, Chris Graham, and Sayantam Dey. Dan Greene is the Director of Architecture at 3Pillar Global. He has 18 years of software design and development experience, with software and product architecture expertise in areas including eCommerce, Geospatial Analysis, SOA architecture, Big Data, and Cloud Computing. Chris Graham leads the Media & Entertainment vertical at 3Pillar Global. He works with clients across the Media and Entertainment space including Broadcast Media, Online Media, and Publications and Newspapers. Sayantam Dey is the Director of 3Pillar’s Advanced Technology Group. He has been with 3Pillar for a decade, delivering enterprise products and building frameworks for accelerated software development and testing in various technologies. His current areas of interest are data analytics, messaging systems and cloud services.

• Read Sayantam & Dan's piece on the technology behind the POC: http://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/real-time-analytics-visualization-apache-spark
• Follow Chris Graham on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisGraham
• Follow Dan Greene on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MrDanGreene

William Duggan joins us on this week's episode of the podcast to talk about "the Seventh Sense" - what it means, how to harness it, and the impact doing so can have. Among the topics we discuss are how Howard Schulz tapped into the Seventh Sense to start a little coffee empire called Starbucks, the four elements that are necessary for the Seventh Sense to swing into effect, and the importance presence of mind plays in harnessing one’s Seventh Sense.

William Duggan is the author of three recent books on innovation: The Seventh Sense: How Flashes of Insight Change Your Life (2015), Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation (2012), and Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (2007). In 2007 the journal Strategy+Business named Strategic Intuition “Best Strategy Book of the Year.” He has BA, MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University, and twenty years of experience as a strategy advisor and consultant.

Professor Duggan teaches innovation in three venues at Columbia Business School: MBA and Executive MBA courses, and Executive Education sessions. In 2014 he won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence. He has given talks and workshops on innovation to thousands of executives from companies in countries around the world.

David Burkus joins us for this episode of The Innovation Engine to talk about corporate management and how some of the world's leading organizations are working to upend business as usual for their employees, and in so doing for their customers as well.

Among the topics we discuss are why you're likely to get better results by being employee-centric rather than customer-centric, how scrapping performance reviews has helped companies like Adobe reach new heights, and what the org chart of today should look like.

David Burkus is the author of the just-released book Under New Management: How Leading Organizations are Upending Business as Usual. He's an assistant professor of management at Oral Roberts University, where he teaches courses on organizational behavior, creativity and innovation, and strategic leadership. David is also the founder and host of Radio Free Leader, a podcast that shares insights on leadership, innovation, and strategy.

Among the highlights of this week's episode are:

• We talk about some mind-boggling stats about email in the workplace, including this one: more than 108 billion emails were sent and received every day in 2014
• David shares his thoughts on why annual performance reviews do very little to improve performance and can be detrimental to employee morale
• We break down an interesting statistic that Google uncovered based on a careful review of their hiring process - after 4 interviews, they had an 86% chance of making the right hiring decision, with additional interviews only adding 1% more certainty

• Visit David Burkus' website: http://www.davidburkus.com
• Follow David Burkus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidburkus
• Read about Under New Management: http://davidburkus.com/books/under-new-management/
• Read about David's previous book, The Myths of Creativity: http://davidburkus.com/books/the-myths-of-creativity/
• Listen to the previous podcast episode we recorded with David Burkus on The Myths of Creativity: http://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/getting-past-the-creativity-myth-with-david-burkus-2

On this episode of the podcast, we look at what "taking the long view" can teach us about the innovator's mindset and imagining the future. Among the topics we discuss are why being able to think deeply into the future helps us make it reality, why we're all designers in some form or fashion whether we know it or not, and what the "Halloween asteroid" can teach us about probability, chance, and playing the Powerball.

Pete Kale joins us in-studio for this episode. Pete is an innovation expert who works for a federal government agency in the DC area. Over the course of his career, Pete has worked with a number of leaders in the field of design thinking. He has a special interest in envisioning what the world will be like many, many years from now and applying that thinking to solving problems in today's world. He writes about this and much more at www.PeteKale.com. Pete is also a long-time listener and friend of the podcast who has suggested a number of guests for us along the way!

Adarsh Desai, the head of the World Bank Group's Innovation Labs, joins us to discuss innovation and international development on this episode of the podcast. Among the topics we cover are how the Innovation Labs are working to help the World Bank meet its goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, how they are using big data and open data to fuel that mission, and why innovation and social entrepreneurship at the local level are more critical now than ever before.

As the head of the World Bank Group's Innovation Labs, Adarsh oversees a variety of programs, ranging from innovations in Big Data Analytics and Social Enterprise to the Open Aid Partnership and Human Centered Design. He is passionate about leveraging technology and data-driven innovations for international development and has managed programs on big data analytics, ICT-enabled citizen engagement, Open Innovations, Geospatial data, eLearning and other technology enabled platforms.

• Follow Adarsh Desai on Twitter: http://twitter.com/adarshdesai
• Read Adarsh Desai's latest blog posts on the World Bank's website: http://blogs.worldbank.org/team/adarsh-desai

We look at Innovation in the Sports & Fitness Space with Simon Ogus of SportTechie.com on this week’s episode. Among the topics we discuss are how virtual reality will impact the sports experience and the fan experience in the years to come, what the future holds for the next generation of wearable devices, and what some of the hottest products were on the floor of this year’s CES in Las Vegas.

Simon Ogus, COO of SportTechie.com, joins us to discuss those topics and more. SportTechie is a website dedicated to covering the intersection of sports and technology. The site covers the latest technological innovations, ideas, and products that impact the fan experience, player performance, and the sports industry as a whole. Sport Techie reports on cutting-edge developments in the sports industry with in-depth analysis and exclusive interviews. To find out more about the site or subscribe to receive their daily newsletter of the latest goings-on in the world of sports technology, you can visit www.SportTechie.com.

• Follow Simon Ogus on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SimonOgus
• Visit the SportTechie website: http://www.sporttechie.com/
• Follow SportTechie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SportTechie

For this episode of the podcast, we give listeners a sneak peek at a new audio endeavor from 3Pillar called Take 3. Take 3 is an audio series from 3Pillar that covers the trends, technologies, and tools that are changing the way business gets done in the digital age. It touches on key topics that are influencing the way technology-powered products are conceived, designed, developed, and launched.

For Take 3, Scene 1, host Julia Slattery is joined by Dan Greene and Jessica Hall to talk about Product’s Role in DevOps. Among the topics they cover are why DevOps has become the hot topic du jour in the world of product development, why having the ability to deploy to production multiple times a day isn’t for everyone, and the motivation behind Dan Greene’s 2015 TechCrunch article titled ‘What is DevOps?’.

Jessica Hall is the Director of the Innovate practice at 3Pillar, where she specializes in bringing new ideas to market through rapid prototyping. Previously she built the UX team at CEB and led the creation of the Newseum’s interactive exhibits and websites. Her work has been recognized by the Web Marketing Association, American Association of Museums, The Webby Awards, Time, Graphic Design USA, Forbes, and The Washington Post. 

Dan Greene is the Director of the Advanced Technology Group in the US at 3Pillar Global. Dan has 18 years of software design and development experience, with software and product architecture experience in areas including eCommerce, B2B integration, Geospatial Analysis, SOA architecture, Big Data, and Cloud Computing. He is an AWS Certified Solution Architect who worked at Oracle, ChoicePoint, and Booz Allen Hamilton prior to 3Pillar.