The future of work is changing. But over time organizations are building new competencies by growing different functions to impact long term development and professional impact.  Today, the economy relies on colleges and universities to train students to be the next generation of workers with practical skill sets.  Humber College is training the next generation of workers and positioning Ontario to meet the demands of the labor market now and into the future. Dr. Ginger Grant discusses how her organization is creating an innovation culture, increasing engagement, optimizing processes to boost productivity and retention.

What we cover in this episode:

01:50 Shifting culture in academics

09:30 What innovation management assessment uncovers 

16:10 Polytechnic and innovation to solve community problems

19:50 Talent management

 21:56 Global partnerships – work integrated learning

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Dr. Ginger Grant

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What is “The Innovative Executive” Podcast?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

It’s no secret that technology is driving innovation in the gaming industry today.  There are over approx. 3.1 billion gamers across the globe.  The gaming industry has increased focus on not only for gamers, but for game developers and publishers.  Investments are made around cloud gaming, subscription service and cross- platform play to enable access anytime, anywhere.  To learn more about the gaming ecosystem, I spoke to Brian Cheney, former CIO of Nintendo Americas about how the gaming industry creates interactive user experience, global reach and the social and shared connections it generates.  The gaming industry is so huge that the number of viewers actually exceed the number of online players.  And it’s predicted that the gaming industry is going to overtake the movie and entertainment industry.

What we cover in this episode:

3:25 Did not see new markets with barriers but as requirements

6:40 Feedback from local perspectives

7:24 Corporate strategy – embrace your legacy and customer base that keeps up with your        consumer

09:09 Gaming industry predictions and market trends around social content

11:23 Animal Crossing – ongoing engagement and longevity after 20 years

13:26 Innovation is a necessity in the gaming industry and creating a pipeline of products

14:32 Big I and small “i” Innovation, our organization supported both

17:50 Understand the user to create a better experience and not for new products

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Brian Cheney

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What is “The Innovative Executive” Podcast?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

In today’s episode, I share Chapter 6 from my book - When You’re Not Innovating Enough- and What to Do About it.  The chapter discusses the following:

• How bigger goals can create a culture that’s dynamic and full of energy.
• Innovations are natural outgrowth of experimentation and iteration.
• Focusing on radical innovation enables companies to stay ahead of competitors by anticipating what customers will want next.
• Innovation is not only a matter of survival but also necessary for sustainable growth.

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What is “The Innovative Executive” Podcast?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

In today’s episode, I share an overview about my book The Innovative Executive Leading Intelligently in the Age of Disruption.  What does it mean to become an Innovative Executive? 

I also share my favorite stories to discuss from the book and some topic questions that are addressed in the book.

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What is “The Innovative Executive” Podcast?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

Consumers often struggle to articulate their needs and data contains gaps that can be difficult to identify without seeing consumers conducting tasks in-context.  The focus often lies in what the anthropologist notices that the consumer may not have thought to demonstrate. 

More companies are taking an anthropological approach to their business because they understand that qualitative research skills are essential to making sense of the big data. An Anthropologists lens helps you to framing or reframing your work in a way that makes sense to stakeholders and overturn any misconceptions.  In the show I talk with Mike Youngblood who bridges the gap between big data and the consumer. We dive into inhibiting Factors of Innovation, Rethinking About Your User Design Framework, how to Capture Observations and setting Goals & Thinking Systemically.

What we cover in this episode:

03:20 Corporate anthropology on the rise

05:34 Anthropologist mindset- reflectiveness

08:19 Four inhibiting factors of innovation

12:30 Rethinking about your user design

16:14 framework to capture observations

21:13 Goal is not to have data points but understand what it means

23:32 holistic thinking/ systems thinking when solving for sustainability

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Mike Youngblood

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What is “The Innovative Executive” Podcast?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

In 1970’s  Pepsi introduced the Pepsi Challenge Campaign-“ let your taste decide”, the blind taste test that would run all over the world. Pepsi used “experience marketing” and became the largest selling consumer packaged goods in America. Fast forward to today, building customer experience is still critical today for long-term success. It's one of the core capabilities of innovation that companies need to have in order be successful and it can only happen through creativity—the kind where you're making connections with emotions –both in B2C experiences as well as B2B.  

My guest Adam Morgan shares his passion to get more creative leaders at the board room and c-suite level to bridge the gap in scaling teams, finding insights and scaling your business.  He dives into his experience on mapping an entire journey, building trust in an unfamiliar experience, and telling stories and expanding accessibility.

What we cover in this episode:

01:55 Using storytelling for long sales cycle

04:55 building trust with users

07:41 collaboration with your customers

10:37 creative leaders care about emotional experiences

16:42 Digital transformation during the pandemic

22:47 Creativity improves the bottom line

25:11 Data, logic, creativity and emotion- Repeat

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Adam Morgan

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What is “The Innovative Executive” Podcast?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

A very few serial entrepreneurs are natural innovators. They use "effectual logic" to explore new opportunities and constantly learn how they can reimagine themselves for their business models or ideas to be more effective. They have strong innovation capabilities that include idea generation, clear vision, can quickly identify real need in the market, testing and relationship building.

The process includes finding the right talent who are willing to take on challenges at every turn; reframing business models, (and sometimes even creating their own), understanding key differences between trends versus fads, testing and experimenting ideas based off data analysis throughout development stage.  My guest Alex Mashinsky shares his successful journey with radical innovation, his purpose driven mindset and commitment to do good for communities. 

What we cover in this episode:

5:07 Using Effectual logic 

8:39 Aligning soft skills and finding talent

11:02 Creating business model around new paradigm shifts

12:16 Being community-centric first

13:44 Learnings from failed ventures

17:07 Changing customer behavior for new adoption

21:20 Purpose and alignment leading to success

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Alex Mashinsky

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What is “The Innovative Executive”?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

The future of business lies in data-driven decision making. On the show, we discuss how companies are using their insights from big data to generate better decisions faster and at scale about operations as well as customer satisfaction —all while rethinking traditional processes for success!  The real value lie in generating insights that prioritize opportunities which lead them toward financial and business performance improvements. Tushar Nadkarni shares insights to make smarter decisions, rethink processes, and modify the portfolio of products and services.

What we cover in this episode:

04:15 Building foundation around data and driving insights

08:56 Digital growth and training automation 

15:27 Prioritizing new growth opportunities

17:11 What to focus on when there is no pattern, no data, no playbook

20:58 Continue testing and experimenting after the first set of data

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Tushar Nadkarni

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What is “The Innovative Executive”?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

What does it take to be a successful leader in this new age of disruption? We all have different ideas about what makes up the best company, but as trends shift and technology advances there are some things that will never change. The best leaders are those who can successfully navigate a competitive environment, overcoming fear and failure along the way. This episode will help you determine your definition of success or how to create long-lasting growth for yourself as well as others in order make sure that everyone is moving forward together towards their goal!

Listen to Dr. Ruth Gotian as she shares her learnings about what is success based on research and in-person interviews with astronauts, Nobel Prize winners, and Olympic champions.

What we cover in this episode:

02:06 Success is a moving target

06:02 Fear of failure, focus on what you can control

07:28 Importance of networks and strengthen your capabilities

12:44 Why Benchmarks are average in culture

14:33 Retaining top performers

17:31 Lack of weakness is important to confront

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Ruth Gotian

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• Pre-order my book: The Innovative Executive Leading in the Age of Disruption

What is “The Innovative Executive”?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.

Leaders who fail to think broadly will be left behind. Unless they can think flexibly and see organizations from multiple angles, they will be unable to deal with the full range of issues they inevitably encounter.  Catherine Von Burg CEO of SimpliPhi Power links the connection between entrepreneurship and innovation with flexibility and adaptation in business activities, in which benefits the society, her industry and ultimately her core business.  Join us for a conversation as the show examines how Catherine’s multiframe thinking provides direction to embracing innovation capabilities around partnerships, building strong supply chains using scenario planning, embracing diversity and company alignment.

What we cover in this episode:

• 02:46 Finding newer innovation in chemistry
• 06:32 innovation in business model, structure, and governance
• 08:05 batteries reduce CO2 when paired with CO2 generations type sources
• 11:38 humanitarian partnership -using the UN SDG 17th goal as a guidepost
• 14: 51 scenario planning before the pandemic hit
• 19:41 how core values and company mission directs a quantitative and qualitative lens
• 22:00 Bootstrapping to keep laser focus on new growth opportunities

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Catherine Von Burg

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• Pre-order my book: The Innovative Executive Leading in the Age of Disruption

What is “The Innovative Executive”?

Insightful conversation with business and thought leaders who share knowledge and stories about project selection and company growth.  With a focus on Rethinking your business model, innovation and collaboration and leveraging technology.  You’ll learn how to strengthen your innovation capabilities.