Inside Outside Innovation

Jeremy Lockhorn is VP, Experience Strategy, Mobile + Emerging Technology at SapientRazorfish and has served a wide variety of roles during his 20-year tenure. The common thread is on a focus of what’s next. In this podcast, Jeremy and Brian Ardinger discuss technology changes over the past 10 years and the implications for the future. They know each other from their days in the digital signage space.  When the iPhone was launched more than 11 years ago, it was immediately breakthrough technology. What people didn’t know, was how big and disruptive it would be. We never imagined how seamless the phone would become in our lives today. Jeremy believes the Fourth Industrial Revolution is coming. He defines it as an Intersection of emerging tech such as smart home, self-driving vehicles, wearable tech, AI, VR/AR, and smart speakers, etc. Of course, the phone has a role to play in everything.  The next 10 years will move faster and be more disruptive. In the past there was one disruptive tech at a time, now all this new tech is hitting at the same time, with interconnectivity. Consumers are going to expect companies to be where they are. Creating magical experiences for customers. When you make things so simple, the interface fades into the background. Jeremy provides other examples from Whirlpool Appliances and Hertz.  Are companies that will win, the ones that can customize and predict what customers want? Jeremy believes companies must use “Clairvoyance Marketing.” That is removing friction, predicting need, and then completing the task. Anything that does not do that in the future will jar the customer. It’s hard to keep up with that pace of change. Creating collaboration opportunities to drive innovation and bring in outside thinking is crucial. Look at companies like Mercedes Benz and Patron Tequila as early leaders in the space. Note: Since this recording, Jeremy Lockhorn has left SapientRazorfish and is consulting and public speaking while finding his next full-time gig. Connect with Jeremy on Twitter at @newmediageek for more information. For more interviews like this one, check out Brian's interview with David Mattin at TrendWatching - https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-60-david-mattin-w-trendwatching/ GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE GLIDR This episode is sponsored by GLIDR. GLIDR software helps you validate that you’re going to market with products and business models that drive real value. Check them out at https://www.glidr.io/iopodcast For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

In this episode, Brian Ardinger talks with Doug Branson about his new book The Future of Tech is Women: How to Achieve Gender Diversity.  Brian and Doug start the conversation by looking at trends in the market. Doug outlines the history of women in senior corporate positions. Of the 70 women that have been CEOs of publicly held companies, 70% have MBAs. Of the 27 women that have held exec positions in IT companies (out of 600), two have STEM backgrounds and 25 have business or law backgrounds. Doug believes the current emphasis on STEM for women produces lopsided experience. It won’t take women higher in the company. They also need business and marketing backgrounds. The IT industry, Doug suggests, is the worst of all industries for representing females. In Silicon Valley, the men they bring in, to fill the middle-level ranks using H1B visas, crowds women and minorities out and prevents them from rising in these environments.  Doug’s book, The Future of Tech is Women, is about how industries can generally improve diversity. There’s been little to no emphasis on what corporations can do and lots of emphasis on how women can change what they are doing. Doug recommends 15 ideas that companies can try. He says individuals can also offer earlier and equal treatment of girls, especially exposure to computers, and suggests there are good arguments for single-sex education. We also need an awareness of the nerd and geek phenomenon that happens as teens to prevent girls from getting involved in computers. When looking from a global perspective, diversity and corporate governance in the US is a back-burner issue. In Asia and Europe, it’s a very front burner issue. Europe has focused on quota laws which has worked in some countries, while women have made no headway in Japan.  Doug disagrees with some of Sheryl Sandberg’s advice in her book Lean In. He says women won’t have 11 different positions climbing the corporate ladder, but rather 3.3 positions on the way to CEO. Also mentoring programs rarely work for women to advance through companies. Australia is now trying mentoring + sponsorship to place women on executive boards there.  What should corporations be implementing? Address work life issues and support women for child birth and rearing without hurting their career. It’s statistically insignificant for a women to take off two years during a working life. Some companies are supporting women this way. Other companies are using a structured search, where they include and have an interview with a minority member. The most important thing for companies is to have this idea of dignity, respect and equality for everyone.  Things are getting better for women. Half of law and medical schools are female, and 40% of MBA programs are women. Sometimes Doug advises women to go where women aren’t, like the Oll and Gas, Ag and Utilies businesses. These industries all have females leaders.  On the other side of the coin, things haven’t changed for women. Those in dominant positions in tech are choosing people that look like them and that excludes women.  If you are interested exploring more of these ideas with Doug, you can contact him at branson@pitt.edu or order his book The Future of Tech Is Female at Amazon or NYU Press. If you are interested in learning more about women in technology and HR trends, check out Inside Outside Innovation Ep. 97 China Gorman on HR trends GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE GLIDR This episode is sponsored by GLIDR. GLIDR software helps you validate that you’re going to market with products and business models that drive real value. Check them out a...

Canva, an easy graphic-design tool website, started six years ago, after two of its founders found success making customizable school yearbooks. Through this process they discovered the power of putting easy-to-use tools in the hands of their customers. Cameron Adams, Canva’s Co-founder and Chief product officer joined the team with his design and tech experience, and Canva was born. Today, Canva, an Australian-based company, has over 10 million users and is valued at $1 billion.  In this episode, Cameron talks with Brian Ardinger about Canva's work bringing goodness to the world through individuals and companies of all sizes. The Canva tools give companies and people the opportunity to easily experiment with design. One reason, Canva has seen such great success, is due to the experiences and "pain points" the founders had prior to starting the company. As the founders developed the product to address the problems in the market, they continued to do many interviews and prototypes. Canva likes to aim for the vision and then fine tune to make sure they are improving what people like. They do a lot of user testing and surveying, as well as listening to their intuition. Canva hasn’t seen any disadvantage of building in Australia. Cameron said it was slightly hard to raise funds, when they started. They ended initially with a 50/50 funding split between American and Australian investors. Today it's relatively easy to recruit talent and raise funds. They love being in Sydney. As a part of the Asian Startup Scene, Canva thought "global" from day one. Asia plays a massive role and diversity in the market, with many different economic and socio-economics to design for. This helps Canva build a better product. As for design aesthetics, there is an international style but each culture has its own details. Last year, Canva was launched in 100 different languages. This year their focus is on deeper localization.  Cameron says as Canva builds more products, they seem to find more opportunities. This year they are tackling presentations. They believe it should be more like a dialogue between the speaker and audience. Canva also recently released an animation tool. There are many additional areas they want to pursue in the future. For more information, contact Cameron Adams on Twitter at @themaninblue or connect with @canva for questions about their products. Brian recorded this interview at the Rise Conférence in Hong Kong. For more information see https://riseconf.com For more interviews like this on on design and product design, listen to Episode 90 - Teresa Torres with Product Talk   GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE GLIDR This episode is sponsored by GLIDR. GLIDR software helps you validate that you’re going to market with products and business models that drive real value. Check them out at https://www.glidr.io/iopodcast  For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Growth, Pricing and SaaS Patrick Campbell is the CEO of ProfitWell (formerly Price Intelligently), the software for helping subscription companies with their monetization and retention strategies. ProfitWell also provides free turnkey subscription financial metrics for over 8,000 companies. Prior to ProfitWell, Patrick lead was an Economist at Google and the NSA, an experience he thought was surprisingly similar. With 50 employees in Boston and Argentina, ProfitWell has been funded by bootstrapping and a growing customer base. They serve about 25 percent of the market. In Brian Ardinger's interview with Patrick, they started by discussing two important business themes. First, being customer focused and second, placing a high priority on building the team and hiring. Patrick believes a company needs to be direct about the type of culture they want. Focus on the right behaviors and values and bring in a diverse amount of thought.  Patrick then highlighted three key issues that ProfitWell helps SAAS companies focus on: - Utilizing the right value metric. Companies that use it grow at twice the pace.  - Localizing their pricing. Make sure your pricing is localized on a currency and demand base. - Delinquent Churn on Credit Cards. Cancelled for reasons or bad credit cards. He also discussed various trends they are seeing in the industry. For example: - Seeing aquistion-based marketing backfiring a bit. Not where hyper-growth is coming from.  - Design and usage more important than ever.  - Rise of the anti-usage product. Allowing you do your work, while software does the mechanical work.  To talk further with Patrick Campbell or learn more about ProfitWell, you can email him at pc@profitwell.com or connect on LinkedIn. For more interviews on growth, pricing and SaaS, check out Brian Ardinger's interview with Tom Samph and Ajay Rajani with Nex.tt. GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE GLIDR This episode is sponsored by GLIDR. GLIDR software helps you validate that you’re going to market with products and business models that drive real value. Check them out at https://www.glidr.io/iopodcast For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Corporate Innovation, Mid-Level Managers and the New 20% Ralph Welborn has spent over 25 years providing business and technology advisory services to both private and public sector organizations globally. He has held a variety of leadership positions, including CEO of Imaginatik, the market-leading innovation advisory and platform company; leader of IBM's Strategy & Transformation business in the Middle East and Africa; senior vice president at KPMG Consulting; and a cofounder of an e-commerce company.  In this podcast, Brian Ardinger talks with Ralph about his new book Topple: The End of the Firm-Based Strategy and the Rise of New Models for Explosive Growth. The Topple Rate refers to how major companies are failing, and how that is fall is accelerating. Companies are attempting digital transformation efforts, with little success.  Ralph believes we need to avoid running the Red Queen race and learn from the companies having explosive growth. Currently, approx. 20% of a company’s capabilities are driving 70% of value. However, this will not be the new 20% that they will need tomorrow. Companies don’t have to focus on a lot of things to make a big impact. Understand that you should focus your innovation program on the new 20%. We must not look at firm-based strategies anymore. We must engage with emerging business ecosystem to capture new value. Orchestrating capabilities of others.  We must also turn the lens around on the points of friction of our customers. What are the capabilities we need to solve that problem and then, what are the products and services we have that could fit, or what do we need to create? Examine where value is being created and destroyed and where are we going to plant our flag. What are the unique set of capabilities around planting that flag and how are we going to orchestrate our ecosystem to plant the flag. They also discussed why mid-level managers are key to innovation.  To continue the discussion, connect with Ralph at ralph@capimpact.com. or http://www.capimpact.com. or check out his book Topple on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/2Nx4Ylk If you are interested in more discussion on corporate innovation, check out Brian Ardinger’s discussion with Janice Fraser with Bionic at https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-84-janice-fraser-w-bionic-solution/ This episode is sponsored by GLIDR. GLIDR software helps you validate that you're going to market with products and business models that drive real value. Check them out at https://www.glidr.io/iopodcast For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Peter Gardner is the Founder and CEO of Startgrid, a company focused on connecting entrepreneurs and enterprises. His mission is to use software to build the density of resources (VCs/accelerators/access to capital/relationships) in innovation ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley. He believes innovation can happen anywhere. In this podcast, Peter talks with Brian Ardinger about how enterprises need to take a collaborative approach. They need to engage with global innovation ecosystems and integrate new technology, to stay competitive in a changing marketplace. Innovation teams need to develop internal skills and capacities, while growing their external collaborations. Startups should consider a more strategic approach to building relationships with enterprises, giving both a competitive advantage. Peter has spent 20 years as both an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, helping early-stage entrepreneurs seed and build their businesses. His experience includes being a General Partner at Allegis Capital, where he worked with more than 30 large enterprises on their external innovation programs. Learn more about Peter at https://corp.startgrid.com/author/peter-gardener or email him at peter@startgrid.com. If you are interested in building and accessing innovation ecosystems, check out Brian's talk with Daniel Fozzati at IdeaLondon https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-101-daniel-fozzati-with-idealondon-on-system-innovation-at-30000-ft/ or Paul Singh's talk at the Inside Outside Innovation Summit 2017 https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-91-paul-singh-i-o-innovation-summit/ For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Shaina Stigler is chief empathy officer at Betwixt, a startup focused on enhancing communication and building coworker trust. With remote work growing rapidly, building trust through technology can be challenging. Shaina spoke with Brian Ardinger about building coworker trust in exclusively digital environments. If we believe success in our work relies on our ability to trust each other, then how do we use technology as a tool to bring us closer together. We need to understand how people build trust and then realize that trust is something that takes time. Shaina also shared some insight they’ve gained on how to jumpstart and measure this growth in trust, as well as how improvisation is integral to startups. To learn more about the company, check out https://betwixt.us If you like the topic of building teams, listen to Brian’s discussion with Shane Snow, Author of Dream Teams: Working Together without Falling Apart  https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-104-shane-snow-author-of-dream-teams-working-together-without-falling-apart/ GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Greg Larkin is the author of This Might Get Me Fired: A Manual for Surviving in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Underground. He's also a corporate entrepreneur, launching more than 30 new products with Fortune 500 companies and startups. On this podcast, Greg talks with Brian Ardinger about practical tactics for a corporate entrepreneur forging ahead in new innovation waters. Greg believes innovation only works when there is a very high cost of not innovating. He shares key innovation strategies like finding an innovation executive and seeking out others within the company that identify as corporate entrepreneurs. If you have support within an organization, launching a product in a very short period of time is easier. Greg also suggests to never pitch ideas, only pitch outcomes. Saying no to outcomes caries a risk, while saying no to ideas is easy. As a corporate entrepreneur, if you can solve innovative problems in an innovative way, now is your time. Break through the politics, analysis, and process testing because the market won't wait any more. Check out Greg's bestselling book This Might Get Me Fired: A Manual for Surviving in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Undergroundon Amazon at https://amzn.to/2PfV09c If you are interested in corporate entrepreneurship, check out Brian's discussion with Ryan Jacoby. He is the Founder of Machine and Author of Making Progress: The 7 Responsibilities of the Innovation Leader https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-99-ryan-jacoby-w-machine/ GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Taylor Dawson is a founding member of GE Appliances’ FirstBuild and CEO of Giddy. In this podcast, Taylor talks with Brian Ardinger about GE Appliances's FirstBuild's origins, the obstacles they’ve conquered and the challenges they’re still solving. They also discussed product innovation and the experiences of building a Microfactory. Taylor was also a featured roundtable speaker at the Inside Outside Innovation Summit in May, 2018 (https://www.theiosummit.com). Learn more about GE's Firstbuild at https://www.firstbuild.com and Giddy at https://www.giddy.io If you are interested in product innovation, check out Brian's interview with Slava Rubin, co-founder of Indiegogo at https://insideoutside.io/podcast/ep-69-slava-rubin-co-founder-of-indiegogo/ GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Exponential View - An Innovation Newsletter Azeem Azhar is the author of Exponential View, a weekly newsletter about innovation. He talked with Brian about broad perspectives, geography of innovation, corporate venture capital, and why you shouldn’t take a golf club to a tennis match. Sign up for his newsletter: http://azm.io/EVrocks  Twitter: @azeem GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy