The Innovation Podcast

Opportunity Zones were legislated into existence in 2017 as part of the tax overhaul. The intention is to revitalize economically distressed parts of the country with private investments. We were really interested in learning more, so we called on Peter Stuart (https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-stuart/), Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at outlier Realty Capital (https://outliercap.com). Peter has been on the leading edge of Opportunity Zones, and has an interesting background as an entrepreneur and innovator. He started his career flipping houses in DC and has been going full-steam ahead ever since. Here, we have the first part of our discussion with Peter. Enjoy!

We have a short but sweet episode of #theipod this week as a way to introduce you to a new feature we’ll have occasionally: We call it InnoNation. It’ll be brief profiles of the innovation and entrepreneurship environment in cities and regions. Today, we start with Houston--introduced to us by last week's guest, Panos Moutafis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmoutafis/).

Facial recognition is taking the world by storm. So we found the most innovative mind in the business--Panos Moutafis, who founded Zenus Biometrics in Houston--to tell us what he and his company have been up to. Zenus has a unique technology, which Panos describes in our chat, focused on facial recognition for event check ins. The company heralds it as the world's fastest checkin, which requires no ticket scanning or wearables.

Garnet and Mark chat about two things that have been on their minds: opportunity zones and e-sports.

We're back with Geralyn Breig (https://www.linkedin.com/in/geralynbreig/), founder of AnytownUSA (https://anytownusa.com). In the first part, we talked about Geralyn’s back ground and career. In this episode, we get into her new venture—something Garnet knows well, and then we take a peek at the future.

In this episode, the first of two parts, we interview Geralyn Breig, founder and CEO of AnytownUSA.com, which launched in June 2018. Geralyn has a storied career. She was President of Clarks, Americas from 2014 to 2016. Geralyn's career in consumer products spans 35 years in executive, marketing and omnichannel business development roles. In this part of our discussion, Garnet explores the early days of Geralyn's career and all the stops along the way to her current venture.

In the second part of our chat about experiential marketing, we get into the future with James Kern and Chris Clegg. Garnet noted something he read in Ad Age recently about companies, in the wake of the data backlash, deemphasizing digital marketing and focusing on real-time face-to-face experiences. No people better than Chris and James to chat with about the implications of such a trend. Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast service (we're on most of them).

In this episode, we chat with James Kern of XISM and Chris Clegg of Portma about experiential marketing. It's the first part of a two-part chat. 2018 was the year of experiential marketing and the notion of engaging through experiences. Garnet frames the discussion with a quote from Stacy Martinet, VP of marketing strategy and communications at Adobe, that was in CMO Magazine. Martinet posits that, "It’s all about refocusing your strategy around experiences and an ongoing relationship with your customer, rather than just vying for a single transaction."

We visit again with Laura Haykel of Language Line, in a chat recorded at the Connected Home, Transport Innovation Space. Garnet asked Laura what she really liked at CES this year. Then Garnet reconnected with CES Insider James Kern, Founder and CEO of XISM, to see what the highlights were for him. James and Garnet strolled over to chat with Bart Jacobcz Rosier, the guy behind the scooters we mentioned in the first episode. He’s CEO of Etergo—the Tesla of scooters.

Garnet goes on location to CES and chats with with Flo Miniscloux (https://www.theinnovationpodcast.co/guests/flo) from Extraordinary Events in Los Angeles, the company that designed the Indiegogo Space about what she liked and what she expected from CES this year. Then, he moves to the Medialink opening night party, that legendary event that hosts dealmaking between old media giants from Hollywood, Inc. and new tech from Silicon Valley. He was joined there by Bill Westcott of Medialink, our friend James Kern of Xism and Laura Haykel of Language Line—who started off by describing the Lamborghini massage chair.