233: What MI5 and MI6 Teach Us About Risk, Secrecy, and Innovation

What can the world of corporate innovation learn from the people who spend their careers dealing with risk, secrecy, and the unknown every single day? That question stayed with me throughout my conversation with Susie Braam, the former head of innovation inside the United Kingdom's national security agencies.

In this episode, I step into territory that most of us will never experience firsthand. Susie takes us inside the thinking, culture, and decision-making that shaped innovation across MI5 and MI6, and how those lessons translate into the way we build and lead modern organizations.

I talk through her journey from operational counter-terrorism work to being asked to create innovation capabilities across the intelligence community. What struck me most was how she learned to break through silos that were deeply entrenched, sometimes to the point where teams refused to sit in the same room.

Susie explains how risk is viewed very differently within national security, what it means to make decisions with incomplete information, and how leaders can learn to think in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. Her stories reveal how culture, communication, and curiosity can become the real engines of change, even in the most highly regulated environments.

We also explore what corporate innovators can borrow from intelligence work, including how to create genuine alignment across organisations, how to make decisions with imperfect data, and how to build innovation systems that actually move.

Susie shares the pressure innovators face when resources are scarce, careers are on the line, and progress is slow to measure. She leaves us with powerful reflections about the kind of mindset shift the world needs now, far beyond technology itself. So the real question becomes this. Are we ready to rethink how we lead, collaborate, and take risks? I would love to hear your thoughts.