Inside Outside Innovation

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with two innovators from Dole Packaged Foods, Dr. Lara Ramdin, Chief Innovation Officer and Barbara Guerpillon, Head of Ventures. We talk about Dole's new venture fund, its open innovation initiatives, and how it's tackling global issues from nutrition to sustainability. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Dole Packaged Foods' Dr. Lara Ramdin, Chief Innovation Officer and Barbara Guerpillon, Head of VenturesBrian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have some amazing guests. Today, we actually have two guests coming from all around the world. We have Dr. Lara Ramdin, the Chief Innovation Officer and Barbara Guerpillon, Head of Ventures at Dole Packaged Foods. So welcome to the show. Lara Ramdin: Thanks.Barbara Guerpillon: Glad to be here. Brian Ardinger: Excellent. Well, I am so excited to have you both on the show together. The two of you are at the forefront of Dole's transformation and focus on innovation. And so, we wanted to have you on the show to talk about some of the new initiatives that you unveiled in the recent months and why they're so important. How does Dole define innovation? Lara Ramdin: Innovation is, it's a very broad term, right? And it can often be overused in our case, it's at all touch points. So, from the farm to the fruit, to the product, to the way the consumer uses it, to the way the consumer disposes it. So, it's actually end to end, innovation can occur them, any of those points.And that's obviously why we're here because we're trying to broaden our horizons in all of those aspects. It's time that we thought about Innovation beyond just a formulation and a pack. Barbara Guerpillon: It's also about innovation in ways of working and Lara and I is a very great example of how we are working on Innovation. It's just different approaches as well to solving problems. Brian Ardinger: So, let's talk a little bit about those different types of approaches. One of the things I wanted to talk about is you've unveiled this new Dole Promise. These are six promises that you're making to the world that by 2025 you're going to make some big changes and transformation. So, Lara do you want to talk a little bit about the Dole Promise and what it is all about? Lara Ramdin: What's really interesting about Dole and both Barbara and I are new to the company, right? So that's also new for Dole in terms of Innovation, having a Head of Ventures and the Head of Innovation, is that they sort of set their stool out and said, if we're really, really going to make a difference, where we're going to make a difference is by actually closing this nutrition gap, which we see happening all over the world and happening, not just in developing countries, but in developed countries.And so, it's our mission to make nutrition accessible and affordable. And also, as part of this wider innovation agenda, try and get nutrition to people in different ways. Right? So that's the first thing. That's really the first big promise pillar. And then underneath that, we're really striving. For access to sustainable nutrition for 1 billion people. And then also we're looking at our current portfolio and saying, how can we make those better? And how can we take out processed sugar? And how can we take out the things that we know you don't need? Right. And how can we give you the things that we already make in this period school? So that's one big nutrition pillar, Brian Ardinger: Barbara, what are your thoughts?Barbara Guerpillon: I'm specifically looking at reducing our carbon footprint. As Head of Venture, my role is to bring the outside in. Identify technology, startups, and entrepreneur we can work with. And if you look at the massive agenda on reducing carbon footprint, we know, we cannot do it all alone and we need to partner and we have innovators with new technology, and therefore reducing our carbon footprint, we'll start from, it will have to be a closed loop.It will start from the farms, to our package product, to the way we are shipping the product to the way we are packing them. So, we also have a goal on a zero-footprint based plastic by 2025 in our world packaging, but it's not only on the packaging and so everywhere where there is today for based plastics. It also includes within our farm. So, there is a big interconnectivity between all our Dole Promises, which will be mutually beneficial. We are really looking forward to exploring those partnerships and those new developments with entrepreneurs. Lara Ramdin: There's a big recognition Brian that we want systemic change. And if we want systemic change, we can't do it on our own. Right. So actually, we're in this position, and I think Barbara alluded to earlier, because we want to innovate in the way we work. And actually, Dole's saying, hey guys, we can't do this on our own. Come help us. That's already really innovative for us. Right. And I think we are embracing open innovation in its truest form in that way. Brian Ardinger: And that leads to my next question. So, you were both new to Dole. I was going to ask, how are these initiatives different from the way Dole approached Innovation in the past? Obviously, you said it's much more open than before. Why do you think this is a different image for Dole and why are you going to go on this path? Barbara Guerpillon: I think I'm going to start because my answer is going to be way shorter than Lara's.  One, the Head of Venture and the Venturing Team is a new team, and it hasn't been done before. And I really, really focus on working with startups and young companies. So, the answer is quite easy because this did not exist before. It's a new initiative. It has been launched about a year ago. So that's a simple answer. Lara Ramdin: And then building on that. I would say that Dole has been in the past quite traditional about how it focused on Innovation. Right? So, it innovated on what it knew how to do already. And actually, we're expanding our portfolio beyond the canned Pineapple.  And so, we're saying, we want to go beyond that. We know fruit, we are the experts in food, but we want to get fruit and nutrition in fruit and vegetables and plants to people in different ways. How can we do that? If we don't know how to do it, let's go and find somebody that can, that's the other part of this sort of innovation continuum that I'm doing, is that person over there can do supplements, sell it. Cause we've just launched supplements. Let's go and work with them to launch fruit-based supplements, for example. So, I think that's why I'm saying it's really open innovation in its truest form.Brian Ardinger:  That leads to my question, Barbara, about Dole Ventures and I believe you have a ne...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Melissa Vincent, Executive Director of Pipeline Entrepreneurial Fellowship. This recording was part of our IO Live series and Melissa and I sit down and talk about the people, the resources, and the companies making the Midwest a great place for startups to grow and prosper. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation, is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Melissa Vincent, Executive Director of Pipeline Entrepreneurial FellowshipBrian Ardinger: Welcome to Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest with us today. This is part of our IO Live series, which is our virtual conversation series to talk innovation and entrepreneurship. Part of our Inside Outside platform, where we have our podcast and newsletter and ongoing events like this. So I'm super excited to host Melissa today. Melissa is a good friend. She's the Executive Director of Pipeline. So welcome to the show, Melissa. Melissa Vincent: Brian, thank you so much. I love it when I get to chat with you. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited about this conversation. Before we get too far. I always like to thank our sponsors. Today our sponsor is the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. They are a private nonpartisan foundation based in the Kansas City, Missouri. They seek to build inclusive prosperity through entrepreneur focused economic development. They've been a huge help to a lot of things going on, including Pipeline. I believe they're a sponsor for. If people are interested in finding out more about Kauffman, go to kauffman.org or check them out @KauffmanFDN on Facebook and Twitter.And so huge shout out to our sponsors for making things like this happen. And having conversations that make Midwest Entrepreneurs even better. I was gonna say, you're new to Pipeline, but you were new from the standpoint of you started working at Pipeline right before the pandemic. It seems like that's a short time ago, but it seems now we're what, almost two years into this thing. So it's exactly, exactly the pandemic years. But I wanted to have you on, because I think Pipeline has been one of those proven things in the ecosystem that has helped entrepreneurs across the Midwest here. And I wanted to get you on to talk about, you know, what have you seen? What's different and, and more importantly, what's going to happen moving forward. So maybe let's start the conversation with, tell us a little bit about what Pipeline is. For those who may not know that and where we're at right now. Melissa Vincent: I would love to. Yes. So I have been there for, as you mentioned, it'll be two years next month. So it's kind of crazy because it feels sometimes like six months and other times it feels like 10 years because of the pandemic. So you never know. So Pipeline is a fellowship for high- growth entrepreneurs in the Midwest. We are industry agnostic. So we do everything from Bio to Ag. You name it, everything in between. And do not take equity in the organizations that we work with. And so we're different in that way as well. And we focus on serial entrepreneurs because they have the greatest economic impact on the region, when you focus on someone who's going to get right back up, if they have a failure. And if they succeed, they're going to get back up, start another company and invest in the community. Brian Ardinger: Pipeline's been around for a number of years. It was actually started even prior to me starting Nmotion and that. I think you have over 140 or a 150 entrepreneurs that have gone through the program. Had had an economic benefit. 2,700 employees I think are, are based in Kansas and Missouri and Nebraska because of the founders that have been part of Pipeline. Your founders have raised over $600 million in capital since joining Pipeline. And it's a flywheel approach. So, you know what started 10 or 15 years ago. Now we're seeing some of the fruits of that payoff. So tell us a little bit about how you got involved in Pipeline. Melissa Vincent: Pipeline was started 14 years ago. It was started by Joni Cobb and a number of key people kind of in the Midwest. She was the CEO. And the idea was that there was such, as you mentioned, like 14 years ago, we were in such a different place.There weren't all the entrepreneur support organizations that we have now. And so, you know, when she started the organization, it was around this idea that if you came and you brought resources from the coast to the Midwest. And you focus specifically on serial entrepreneurs to have a massive impact on the region because of what we talked about earlier, they're going to reinvest, they're going to get back up, start another company. And that was really true. So over the last 14 years, our members are not just creating jobs. They're creating really high paying jobs. So average salary for an employee of one of our members is $52,000. So they're creating great jobs. They're creating a lot of them. And they're raising capital and they are staying here in the Midwest.And so really over 14 years, that whole concept that we were seeing, if it could be proved or not, if you bring in these resources, what impact would that have if you focused on serial entrepreneurs is proven. So it's like, okay, successful, we've done that. That's really amazing. But then it becomes the question of 14 years later, how things changed. Like to your point, we've had, with the pandemic and we've had social injustice that's been ongoing that really came to a head last year.So we have all these different things that happened over the past few years. And so I think for us as an organization, we've really looked at well, how do we respond to that? And I think there's a lot of other entrepreneurial support organizations that are doing the same. How do we step in. How do we be a part of that progress and change that really needs to happen? That's where Pipeline is headed. But we couldn't have gotten there without the legacy that was started 14 years ago, by bringing in all these resources and creating some amazing fellowship programs. Brian Ardinger: It's been a very important piece of the puzzle. When I started Nmotion, I think it was 10 years ago, ish. It was the first accelerator in Nebraska at the time that's a equity based accelerator. But we quickly wanted to tie ourselves with Pipeline and get our founders an opportunity to move through the Pipeline. And you find those early stage founders. You get them a little bit of capital. You surround them with mentors and investment capital.We help build that. And then you also then connect them into a wider network. I think that was one of the most important things about like an Nmotion is, you know, we started in Lincoln, Nebraska. But we realized quickly that you can't build a startup ecosystem by yourself. In just...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Dr. Ben Bensaou, Professor at INSEAD and author of the new book Built to Innovate. We talk about some interesting case studies and essential practices that companies can use to make innovation accessible to everyone in the organization. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help the new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript of Dr. Ben Bensaou, Professor at INSEAD and Author of Built to InnovateBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Dr. Ben Bensaou. He is the professor and former Dean of Executive Education at INSEAD and author of the new book, Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into your Company's DNA. Welcome to the show, Ben.Ben Bensaou: Good morning, Brian. And thank you for having me. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you. And I understand you're in Japan right now, so we're different sides of the world. You've got a new book out called Built to Innovate. But I wanted to step back and talk about how did you get into the field of innovation research.Ben Bensaou: Well, actually, as a matter of fact, I got into the field of innovation starting where I am right now. I did my PhD looking at Japanese firms. And I had lived in Japan before, but my PhD at MIT Sloan was on the way that Japanese firms were actually developing production systems. And a production system was the quality management movement.So, I was in Japan at the time. And then when I went back and joined INSEAD, I continued my interest in Japanese firms, but this time I want to know what they were doing in the field of innovation. And this is how I got involved with companies in Japan and outside of Japan. Mostly its established firms who are trying to become more innovative.Brian Ardinger: One of the things that we think about is corporations, it's hard for them to innovate. Maybe now it's a little bit more thought of is, you know with all the disruption from everything from COVID to new technologies and that. Companies are a little bit more aware of the fact that they need to be innovating and that the world is changing around them. Can you talk a little bit about how your research and your experience in the field of innovation has changed and evolved over the years? Ben Bensaou: Yes. I would say that one thing that I've noticed over the years, I've been doing my teaching innovation and also helping firms is that I noticed that number one, a lot of people, a lot of organizations equate innovation with launching a new blockbuster product or coming up with a life changing new business model.Many also think that you need to have a genius leader or to be a startup by a matter of fact, to be innovative, to be able to innovate. But I found out that it's not true. I found in my research established even centuries old companies are able to innovate. How did they do this? Well, they don't only focus on industry changing effects, but also for small important changes, very often in unexpected places.And for this, what they do is that they rely on continuous and systematic innovation. Innovation of all kinds. And innovation driven by everyone in the organization. And that's what Built to Innovate is about. It's really about how do you embed continuous innovation inside an organization using a systematic approach.Brian Ardinger: I think that's so important because a lot of corporations that I've talked to want innovation to happen somewhere else. Or like they have their teams and they're executing on their business model and they're optimizing that, but they want innovation to happen somewhere else. So, they create an innovation lab or something and they throw the idea over to someone else to execute. But what I've seen, and I think what it's apparent in your book, and the examples you give is that again, to survive in this changing world, we all have to become innovators. And it doesn't mean, like you said, you have to come up with the next electric car, but you have to find problems and take those early ideas and then innovate them and execute on them so that they become value creation, parts of the business.Ben Bensaou: Absolutely. Absolutely. I find so many people expecting that the innovation is going to come from the leaders. Or, you know, like you say, they create a skunkworks, or they create specialist units that are supposed to do all the innovations for the company. And I think many organizations, and I found this very innovative companies in my research, are able to enlist and leverage the capability of everyone in the organization. For this, what they do is that that they create what I call an innovating engine. Which is a protected, fully legitimized and organized space within the company where everyone can innovate. Not just the specialist. You can innovate in everything you do. I mean, you can innovate of course, in your products and services, but you can innovate in your processes as well, or your internal functions. You can innovate in HR and legal. And you can make innovating a regular habit. Not a sporadic kind of burst of creativity when there's a crisis. And that's what I think I've seen some of these innovative companies do is to create this innovating engine. And leveraging everybody's inate capabilities. Brian Ardinger: So, what do you think are some of the common myths or mistakes that companies make when it comes to executing or putting these innovation initiatives into place.Ben Bensaou: I think it's always the same thing is that many of these organizations, like you were talking earlier about startups, don't have the problem of size. When they start, they're all innovating in a sense innovating mode. Everybody is in contact with customers. But as soon as you grow, you start to be dominated by an execution logic. And the execution, what I call the execution takes over. And the execution engine takes over. And the execution changing is very much about control. It's no surprise that many organizations, established organizations, develop hierarchies and vertical silos focused on supplier side view challenges. And innovating in a sense is less about control. Is more about delegating and is more about collaboration. Is more about teamwork. Horizontal structures that are focused on the customer. Like you said earlier, I think this is a very important word. You said innovation is about problem finding. What kind of new problems do we need to find to solve for the customers. And execution is very much about problem solving. It's a very convergent mindset.And I think this is where a lot of companies fail. Is that they don't realize that when you move into innovating and what I'm saying is that when you create an innovating engine, you allow for every employee to be able to spend time doing some innovating activity in the space of the invading engine. And at that time, they ne...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Karin Hurt, Co-author of the new book, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. Karin and I talk about the difficulties and opportunities with creating a culture that values innovation and curiosity, and how companies can develop productive micro innovators. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started. Interview Transcript with Karin Hurt, Co-Author of Courageous CulturesBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Karin Hurt. She's co-author of the new book, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. Welcome to the show, Karen. Karin Hurt: Thank you so much for having me. Brian Ardinger: Karen, I am excited to have you on the show. I just got a chance to read through a preview copy of the book and excited to dig into that. Tell me a little bit about how you got interested in this particular topic.Karin Hurt: Yeah. So, I run a company called Let's Grow Leaders. And we work with human centered leaders all over the world with practical tools and techniques. So we were noticing a consistent pattern. As we were going into organizations, we'd be working at the very senior levels of organizations. And we would hear things like why don't more people speak up. Why don't people share ideas? Why do I stumble upon a best practice? Why are people sharing them with one another? And then we would go into do leadership training at the supervisor level. And we would hear things like nobody really wants my ideas. Last time I spoke up, I got in trouble. You know, why bother nothing ever happens anyway. We thought, are you all working for the same company? So, you know, most leaders really do want ideas and employees have great ideas to share. So why was there this disconnect? So, we partnered with the university of North Colorado on an extensive research study to answer that question. When people were holding back ideas, what kinds of ideas were they holding back and what was preventing them from speaking up and sharing ideas to improve the customer experience, the employee experience, or productivity in a process. That's a little bit about why we got so excited about this research. Brian Ardinger: So, let's dig into it. What makes a culture courageous? Karin Hurt: You know, our favorite definition of culture comes from Seth Godin, the marketing guru, who just says culture is simply people like us do things like this. And so, when you're talking about a courageous culture, people like us speak up. They share ideas. The default is to contribute. People are coming to work every day saying, huh, how can I make this better. And managers are proactively going out and asking for those ideas and responding well when people share them. Brian Ardinger: So clearly that is not the case in a lot of organizations, at least the ones that I've worked with and have been around. It's not always courageous. What do you think makes it so difficult for people to speak their truth or overcome that particular fear? Karin Hurt: Yeah. So, Dr. Amy Edmondson of Harvard who wrote the Fearless Organization, you know, she's really a pioneer of psychological safety. And she talks about people are more likely to hold onto a negative experience than a positive experience. And that really played out in our research as well. We would ask people; we did a whole qualitative set of interviews in addition to the quantitative study. And we would say, okay, if you're holding back an idea, you know why? And they would say, well, because you know, something bad happened in the past. Was okay, how long ago was that?And you wouldn't believe it. Sometimes people say, well about 10 years ago. And then we would say, well, was it at this company? Oh, no, no, no. I was away at some place completely different. But it was enough to teach them that speaking up is scary. So that's one piece of it. And then, you know, other things that came out in our research, 49% said, I'm not regularly asked for my ideas. Something as simple as that.And when we got underneath that binding, the managers are saying, well, I told them I have an open door. And the problem with an open door is it's passive. And for some people, especially if they've had a bad experience in the past, it still takes some level of courage to walk through that open door. And another thing that people said, which the most surprising finding quite frankly for me was 56% said, they're not sharing ideas because of fear they will not get the credit. And, you know, as fascinating. As I've been sharing that statistic people like aha. Yeah, well that happened to me too. And  so, I think that really resonates with folks. And then another statistic that I thought was really interesting was 50% said nothing will ever happen. So why bother?And sometimes that nothing will ever happen. Isn't actually true. Something has happened, but the loop isn't closed. Right? So, people think their idea went into this black hole, you know, and because we're not circling back. So, whether it's an employee survey, it's a suggestion box. It's in a one-on-one meeting. Are we closing the loop and what we call responding with regard to the ideas that are coming forward? Brian Ardinger: That's a fascinating insight, because I see that a lot when we talk with corporations and what are their innovation efforts. And a lot of them say, well, we're doing these hackathons. Or challenges and asking for employee feedback.And that's great to do that, but what they fail to do is put the process in place and what to do with those ideas after they come through the funnel. And like you said, be able to either close the loop or have a process that moves those particular ideas forward. So, you don't have this environment where people throw things in and, and again, like you say, the black hole of nothingness. And they get discouraged to do it again.In the book, you talk a lot about this loop between clarity and curiosity, kind of back and forth. Can you talk a little bit about that and why that's so important? Karin Hurt: Yes. So, when you're building a courageous culture, it really does start with clarity. And that's clarity around two things. One clarity that you really do want people's ideas. And we found this to be really, really critical as we were testing the different tools and techniques. Clarity about where you need a great idea. So, you know, not just going out and saying, hey, do you have any ideas to improve the business? Or what do you think we could do to improve productivity? Tha...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Todd Embley, Senior Startup Advocate for Agora. Todd and I talk about the new technologies and trends from no-code tools to embedded audio and video platforms, that affect how we see, hear, and interact with each other. We also explore how companies are tapping into startups and startup ecosystems to enable founders to build and impact the world more effectively. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation as the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. Each week. We'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started. Interview Transcript with Todd Embley, Senior Startup Advocate for AgoraBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Todd Embley. He is a Senior Startup Advocate for Agora and a formerly with China Accelerator. So welcome to the show, Todd, Todd Embley: Thank you, Brian. It's good to be here. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you because we've met a while back early in my startup days when I was running NMotion. You were in China. And we met at some global accelerator network conference. I think it was in San Diego, perhaps. So, you spent a lot of time in Asia, as I did. And recently moved back to the states, working for a interesting company called Agora. We had a chance to run into each other again in Lincoln. Todd Embley: Yeah. Thanks very much. I actually did come back from China and moved to the U.S. but now I'm back in Canada. I am Canadian and I'm living in Western Canada. Brian Ardinger: I wanted to start the conversation with the most recent company that you're with is a company called Agora. It's an interesting company for a couple different reasons. And it's a real-time engagement platform that a lot of popular companies are using to build on top of like Run the World, which is something that we've used for our IO Conferences and that. And some of our IO Live events. I think you guys provide like the SDKs and the building blocks to enable these types of startups to build off of. So, I I'd love to get your take, not on just Agora, but you've got an interesting role there as a Startup Advocate. So, what is a Startup Advocate? Todd Embley: It's a great role, for those of us who aren't necessarily adept at selling. And we fall under marketing. And the role is really, if I were to compartmentalize everything that we're about and our ethos and thesis. Is go out into startup land and be as helpful as possible. Try to integrate. You know, we sponsor. I run workshops. I meet with lots and lots of entrepreneurs all the time, and we're just out there trying to be as helpful as possible. And the great thing that the company and the founders and senior leadership have all gotten behind is just be out and be as helpful as possible. And wear the t-shirt while you're doing it. That's almost the be all and end of it. And for those that are really interested in what Agora is and what Agora does, then we can get into that. But essentially, we're not trying to put it in front of everybody and not trying to blast everybody with, with Agora specifically. The team is comprised of people who have been entrepreneurs, been in startups, been in VC, run accelerators. And who have just a lot of empathy for startups and that's kind of where it begins and ends. Brian Ardinger: We see a couple of different companies use this approach of startup advocate type of program to help build their business. Walk me through like, what are the benefits and the reasons why a corporation would want to put together some type of program around this.Todd Embley: You know, I think AWS and what they've been doing for as long as they've been doing it are kind of the benchmark. And they were, I would say the pioneers, at least the most famous pioneers of running programs like this. Our senior leadership had an opportunity in China to talk to the heads of AWS Activate in China.And they divulged some interesting statistics, which I think were the precipice of Agora wanting to build their own startup team as well. And that was that after 15 years of them having a program, they will now attribute up to 65% of AWS revenues today to the activities, you know, over the last 15 years, of their startup program.And what we're trying to do is invest in our future huge customers. Knowing that the world's next billionaire companies, trillion-dollar companies. The unicorns of the future are still just startups today. And if we want to align ourselves correctly with what it takes to build a startup and how hard it is, let's maybe try to get out of their way at the early stages while they're trying to cross the early chasms of, you know, and the difficulties of what it takes. So, from a revenue perspective or from a cost perspective, let's give our stuff for free. You know, until you, their revenue. You can't get blood from a stone. So, while they're still searching for product market fit and revenue, let's let them use our software for free until such time as they are then finding product market fit and then able to start generating revenue. And only at that time, should we then start to talk to them about actually paying for the service? Brian Ardinger: That makes sense. And obviously it seems to be working. I think I read on your website, you've got over 50 billion minutes of engagement on the platform. Probably going up as we speak. I don't know if you can speak to any specific use cases or specifically what you do when it comes to helping these companies get up and off the ground. Todd Embley: Sure. As you alluded to, there are some famous companies that have been using us, especially in the real-time audio space. There are a few NDAs in place. So, you could mention who those companies are. And by all means it's pretty widely known. I necessarily can't speak directly to who some of those more famous ones are. But the nuts and bolts of the program essentially boils down to free minutes. So, my Director, Tony Blank. He and another friend of ours, Paul Ford, used to do this at SendGrid. And that's where they were a big supporter of the Global Accelerator Network where you and I met in the beginning and then the Twilio acquisition of SendGrid. So, he was there. And they were doing a great job as well. And leading on some of the data from their experience there, or Tony's experience there, and then understanding our business and the data that we had over the years that Agora has been thriving. We positioned the amount of minutes at 1 million, we figured 1 million minutes of Agora should be enough for most companies to achieve product market fit and revenue.If you haven't achieved product market fit and revenue, after using a million minutes of Agora, you may have some underlying other issues that are getting in the way of that. But we really feel that upwards of 80%, even 90% of companies who do achieve and use up the million free minute...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with entrepreneur and product developer Radhika Dutt, Author of the new book, Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter. On this episode, we talk about the product diseases holding back good product development, as well as ways to develop and execute a more radical vision to build products that have impact in a changing world. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Radhika Dutt, Author of Radical Product ThinkingBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Radhika Dutt. She is the author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter. Welcome to the show. Radhika Dutt: Thanks so much for having me on Brian. Brian Ardinger: I am excited to have you on the show. I always love to have entrepreneurs and product folks on here to talk about what it takes to build in today's world. You've been in product development for a long time, and you help companies figure this out. What's the state of product development today? What's working and what's not? Radhika Dutt: I think the most important thing in terms of where we have landed today, right. Is we've learned that the way we build products is by iteration. The mantras have been, you know, fail fast, learn fast. We keep hearing that you really just have to keep iterating and pivoting until you hit this nirvana of product market fit. And here in lies the problem. Because Innovation it's like having a fast car, a fast car is great. It's good to have a fast car. But the problem is, if a fast car is just not that useful, unless you know where you're going. And the ability to iterate fast has often given us this illusion that you don't need to start with a vision, just set off on your journey, and you'll kind of discover a vision. And that is the piece that's really not working.So, if we think about the fact that Lean Startup, Agile, all of these methodologies have really become ubiquitous over the last decade, right? And yet fundamentally the number of startups who succeed or fail hasn't really changed. Right? So, we've really gotten this approach of innovating fast, but what we're really missing is a methodology that helps us set the direction and be able to navigate to it using this fast car. Meaning that our iterations have to be driven by a vision and strategy. And that's the piece that's been not working so far. Brian Ardinger: You talk about in the book, how folks in product and that, or they're building stuff, kind of run in to these product diseases that hold back good product development. Can you talk a little bit about what stops people from developing and maybe getting into this iteration rut? Radhika Dutt: These product diseases are things that we need to be able to speak openly about. Because regardless of the size of company or the industry that we're in, I keep seeing these same product diseases over and over. So, a few that I've run into or caught myself, right? One that I will admit to contributing to myself is obsessive sales disorder.This is where your salesperson comes to you and says, you know, if you just add this one custom feature, we can win this mega client. And it sounds mostly harmless as a product person. I was like, yes, let's do this. Right. And pretty soon, by the end of the year, you're sitting with a stack of contracts and your entire roadmap is driven by what you have to make good on. And that's one example. A really common one is Pivotitus. Pivotitus is where you know this idea that we have that you just pivot until you find product market fit, it leads us to just keep trying different ideas to see what works. And your team just feel demoralized, confused, even your customers, they don't know what you're about anymore. And that's Pivotitus. Brian Ardinger: I love those. And I think a lot of us in product can relate to that. And even more to that, I think it's not just product folks that are running into these particular issues. A lot has changed in the world of product development with things like no code and low code. And pretty much everyone these days has run into this ability to create something. You know, and it's democratized the product development process in general.And so, whether you are in product today and you've seen these things, the majority of folks are going to be running into these diseases, whether they know it or not. What can you talk about to the new product person, the person who maybe is new to this world and trying to understand what does it take to build something of value in this world?Radhika Dutt: Yeah, maybe first, I want to talk about what I mean by product. Because, you know, traditionally we've thought about product is a software or a hardware. A thing, basically, right. A digital or a physical thing. And that view has really become outdated is what I've realized. To me product is your mechanism to create change in the world.It's your vehicle for whatever that change is. And so, you know, whether you're a non-profit, you're working in a government agency, in a high-tech startup, or even freelance. You're creating change in the world. And as a result, you are building a product. And I think that's the first fundamental realization. Given that this is our new definition of product for every person who's entering this field, the question is then, you know, how can you create change very systematically? So, you're most likely running into these diseases and I list seven of them in the book. A few other examples are Hyper Metracina. Which is where we're all about analyzing data and optimizing for metrics, except that sometimes those wrong metrics. And things like Strategic Swelling. Which is where your, either your organization or your product just tries to do more and more and more, but it's just a very bloated product and you kind of lose your way.So, all of these diseases, like it's not just in your product itself, it's in your organization that you might be seeing it. And so, we need to think about product differently as a mechanism to create change. And then think about, are we experiencing these diseases in our organization? And then finally, if you're seeing it, then it's time for a new approach where you create change systematically and build the successful product systematically, which is what Radical Product Thinking is about as a methodology. Instead of taking this approach of let's just try what works, which is kind of evolved from the venture capital business model over the last decade. Brian Ardinger: And what I like about the book is you say all the stuff that we're doing when it comes to Agile or Lean or that, they're good tactical stuff to continue to do. But you almost have to have a layer above. That thinks about the vision and thinks about how does the vision f...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Dave Parker, five-time founder, and author of the new book Trajectory: Startup. Dave and I talk about a range of topics for helping founders go from ideation to product market fit. And this conversation was part of our IO Live Series recorded during Startup Week Lincoln. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, Founder of InsideOutside.io. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started. Interview Transcript with Dave Parker, Five-time founder and Author of Trajectory StartupBrian Ardinger: I wanted to thank our sponsors for this event. We are part of the Techstars Startup Week here in Lincoln. So, we wanted to give a shout out to them and Startup LNK for making this all possible.Also Inside Outside is sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. As many of you may know about the Kauffman Foundation, they run 1 Million Cups and a variety of other things, but they're a private, non-partisan foundation based in Kansas City. They seek to build inclusive prosperity through entrepreneurship- led economic development. So, we're super excited to have them as partners with us here. And you can find out more about them at kaufman.org or follow them on Twitter at Kaufman FDN on Facebook or Twitter. So, thank you again to the sponsors. Thank you, Dave, for coming on, we had set this up when your book was coming out and I said Hey, I've got the perfect time to do this during startup week. When we might have some startup founders who may be having some questions. You and I met eight or nine years ago through Up Global. We were with Startup America. And you were based in Seattle. You also helped found Code Fellows and you're a five-time founder, so you've got a lot of experience in this particular space. Eight years ago, the startup ecosystem, and what it was like was a little bit different than is today. So, what has been the biggest trends or things that you've seen that it's changed over the course of the few years that we've known each other? Dave Parker: Well, let me go a little further back. I started my first company in 98 in Seattle. And believe it or not bill gates and Jeff Bezos weren't really giving back to the startup community at that time. Oh, wait, they haven't yet. I mean, Bill gives back to like global change the world stuff. Right. But the idea there was, wow there's a bunch of us doing this startup thing, but there's not really anybody to give much advice. So, we did a peer cohort. Which was my first thing. And after a while I was like, wow, we need to level up our city. All of us tend to think of the next city bigger than us as like, oh, we want to be more like, Seattle doesn't want to be like Vancouver, Canada. We want to be like San Francisco. Where Portland's like, well, we want to be more like Seattle.Because I grew up in Portland and then moved here to go to college and never went back. First startup in 1988. Built a software distribution company called license online. The company went from zero to 32 million in sales in 4 years. Which was ridiculously fast. And we went from 3 employees to 150 and in four years. And then we sold the company in 2002.So then in 98 to 2002, if you remember back there, there was a tech bubble in there and there was 9/ 11 in there. So, it was an interesting time. Wasn't a great time to sell a company now, too. But got it sold anyway. And that was my first startup. First of five. Three of them sold. Two of them failed. One in a rather epic crater fashion. Which is funny. Because it was after the first one, that actually worked. So, you know, people were like, I wouldn't do this again. And they're like working on the next one? I'm like obviously got a serial glutton for punishment. So, 16 exits total. So as a founder board member advisor. So, my day job is helping companies and founders sell their companies. Which allows me to my 20% time to work on community building and giving back.Which kind of got me to Startup Weekend and Up Global. Up Global was the merger of Startup America and Startup Weekend. And we did about 1,265 events worldwide, my last full year there, before we sold to Techstars. Including launching Startup Week globally. And we launched it in 26 cities globally, the second year. I ran it in Seattle.Andrew Hyde started it in Boulder. And we ran it in six cities, the first year. And 26 cities the second year. So, startup communities stuff is awesome. And I love it. It's, as you know, though, it doesn't pay, so you have to have a day job. You have to have a side hustle, so you can keep your community building job, right. Or vice versa.Brian Ardinger: Exactly. Yeah. I think we're nine years here at the Startup Week in Lincoln. We got grandfathered in when Techstars made it a global deal. But we found it very helpful to have these conversations, even if it's just once a year to get people connected and reengaged with why it's important to have a startup and why a startup ecosystem is so important in your own backyard.So, you've got a great book out called Trajectory Startup. I would encourage you to take a look at this. There's a lot of books about startups out there. What made you say, I want to take a different take in this and give back to the community by writing a book about startups Dave Parker: Two big things about the book gap that I saw in the marketplace is one, I mean, you, you know, Brian, you've been around Startup Weekend. I'd see people coming out of Startup Weekend and they're like, woo. I met my co-founder, Charles. We're going to leave at eight and then go start our start up. And I'm like, yikes. Like, there are some things you can know before you leave your day job and your benefits and all those things, which allow you to really look at what do I want to know so I can de-risk this as the first semester, right. So, I got to do the market research and competitive analysis and look how big the market is and like, and how do I do that? The book's really focused on, the original title was Six Month Startup. And then I started delivering it in different formats and I'm like that doesn't work for the brand. So, it became Trajectory Series. But the program now is focused on a five-month program that takes you from ideation to revenue. And the idea there is, if you can't get to revenue in six months, it's probably not a great idea. There are exceptions to that rule. Like if you're a B2B or B2B enterprise and you need to build a really robust product, like that's an exception. Or biotech. Or you're doing B to C and you're competing with clubhouse and you're really about growth of users, right? You won't get to revenue in six months. But in general, you should be able to validate or invalidate your idea in six months was the goal. The second thing that came out of it, I kind of backed into was somebody came to me during my time at Startup Weekend. And they're like, hey, can I have your fi...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Selina Troesch Munster, Principal at Touchdown Ventures. Selena and I talk about the changing opportunities in corporate venture capital, both for corporates and startups, as well as the impact in the growing focus of diversity, equity, inclusion, and how it's impacting the industry. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Selina Troesch Munster, Principal at Touchdown VenturesBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Selina Troesch Munster. She is the Principal at Touchdown Ventures. Welcome back to the show Selina. Selina Troesch Munster: Thank you. It's great to be here. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you back. You were out in Nebraska in 2019. You spoke at our Inside Outside Innovation Summit. And so, I'm super excited to reconnect after COVID to see what's going on in the world of corporate venture. Selina Troesch Munster: Yeah, it's such a shame that COVID ended in person events because that was such a fun event. And I encourage anybody listening to definitely get out there the next time it happens in person. It was fantastic. And I have relationships from that week that are still very fruitful. Brian Ardinger: That's awesome. Oh, I'll give a little bit of background to our audience members who may not have seen you there or heard more about you. But you started at Touchdown Ventures, I think in 2014 or so when it first got off the ground. Before that you were at Barclays in New York. You're currently an Adjunct Professor at USC teaching Venture Capital at the MBA school there. And then also just were named a Global Corporate Venturing Rising Star in 2020. So, congrats on that as well. Selina Troesch Munster: Thank you. Yeah, that's so accurate. Brian Ardinger: For those who aren't familiar with Touchdown Ventures, it's a corporate venture as a service almost type of company. So, let's talk a little bit about what is Touchdown Ventures and how does it fit into this corporate venture environment?Selina Troesch Munster: Yes, absolutely. So, Touchdown works with corporations to help them manage their venture capital programs. And what that means in practice is most corporations either don't have the appetite or ability to hire experienced VCs to run a program internally.So, what our co-founders decided to do was to create a service-based business where experienced VCs, work together with folks internally at the corporations to develop a strategy for, and then actually manage, these corporate venture programs. And the opportunity that David, Rich and Scott saw back in 2014, when they founded the business, was corporations have so much to provide to startups in you know, having a relationship with them. In addition to the capital that they deploy.But often they don't have the skill set necessary to identify which of those startups are a good investment opportunity. And then to manage those investments through to an exit, whatever that may be. Which is what we know how to do. We, on the other hand, don't have the expertise in the internal politics and priorities within that organization.And so, by marrying together, our financial analysis and, you know, opportunity evaluation skills, and then deal management skills, and their knowledge of what's impactful for their business, we have a really powerful way of making investments in startups. That as some of our corporate partners say, give them a bit of a leg up against their competitors based on that relationship. We work together with I believe 18 different corporations, as of right now, managing their funds. Each one is developed specifically for that corporation's goals and objectives and risk tolerance. And, you know, we have a dedicated team to manage each one of those specifically.And so, we run programs across a variety of different industries and have made, I think almost 70 investments at this point across all those programs. Pretty awesome growth from where we were in 2014. Brian Ardinger: When you think about corporate venture, it's somewhat new to the field of venture capital. I mean started probably with Intel. I think they were one of the first corporate venture funds to come on the scene. But you're seeing more and more companies look to startups and look to corporate venture capital as a way to either differentiate their Innovation efforts or have access to different things that they wouldn't have before. What do you think is driving corporates to taking a look at venture capital as a means to meet their goals?Selina Troesch Munster: I think there are a couple of drivers. One is the increasing rate of company formation and, you know, to use an overused word disruption within traditional industries. And so having the foresight that venture capital gives you of, oh my gosh, I just saw 10 companies that raised funding in a particular space. That gives you an idea of where the market might be moving toward and what a corporation needs to be aware of in terms of what might be coming their way and trying to eat their lunch in the future. And so, you know, even if we don't make that many investments over the course of a year, we still interacted with hundreds of startups and started to see what's happening out in the market. And that intelligence is a really important part of a corporate venture program, is you don't have to say yes to an opportunity to learn from it. The other thing that I think is driving it is that there is a lot of capital out there funding a lot of different types of businesses that haven't traditionally been venture backed. And so, we see it in the food space. That is a relatively new sector for investment for venture capitalists. You know, traditionally you're talking about software. That's pretty much it. And so, when you have VC money flowing into these sectors that are non-traditional VC sectors, you have a greater volume of threats to those businesses as well. And having that function where you get to have a much tighter relationship with some of these upstarts is really valuable to the corporate strategy team and really the business units. And there are also certain types of partnerships that just don't happen without capital investment. And startups are recognizing that they can leverage the capital raise process to also get really tight, great relationships with corporate partners in that way.Brian Ardinger: A lot of corporates out there, they do invest in the venture space, but they do it primarily just investing in other funds and that. So, are you seeing more and more companies wanting to take more of that hands-on approach? Not only just investing for ROI return, but investing in Touchdown Ventures and what you can bring to the table to give them tha...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Kaiser Yang, Co-founder of Platypus Labs and Author of the new book Crack the Code. Kaiser and I talk about the mindsets needed to foster creativity and innovation. And some of the pitfalls you can avoid when trying to spin up your innovation initiatives.Inside Outside Innovation as the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript of Kaiser Yang, Co-founder of Platypus Labs and Author of Crack the CodeBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Kaiser Yang. He is co-founder of Platypus Labs and author of the book Crack the Code: Eight Surprising Keys to Unlock Innovation. Welcome. Kaiser Yang: Hey, thank you so much, Brian. I'm delighted to be here and be a part of your program. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. We got connected through Josh Linkner. I was interviewing him about his new book, Big Little Breakthroughs. And he reached out recently to say, hey, Kaiser's got a new book out in and around this particular subject. You've worked with some great companies out there when it comes to Innovation, Heineken, and ESPN, and Coca-Cola. What are some of the most common problems that companies are trying to solve when it comes to Innovation?Kaiser Yang: There's a number of challenges that we help organizations focus on and prioritize. But it really starts at the leadership level of prioritizing Innovation, building the right set of rituals and rewards that motivates team members to drive inventive thinking in their day-to-day responsibilities. And so, we do spend a lot of time working from the leadership level first understanding what the desired state is. What some of the desired outcomes are.And crafting a strategy. And that strategy, it could involve a number of different things from bringing thought leadership to the organization, doing training workshops, running Innovation, bootcamps. Sometimes it even just comes down to creating inspiration and motivation in terms of ideas, like giving them the power to recognize patterns outside of their industry. So, they can innovate their own and challenge the status quo. So, for us, I think when we first work with organizations, it has to start at the top. Meaning there needs to be a commitment to driving innovation and making it a priority. And then it makes the rest of the initiatives so much smoother moving forward.Brian Ardinger: That is so important that context setting. Because I think a lot of times organizations get off the wrong track because they don't necessarily define Innovation the same way. A lot of people think of innovation as I've got to come up with the next electric car or new Uber. And as you know, Innovation can be something much simpler as far as, you know, how do you find it and identify a problem and create something of value to solve that problem. And a lot of the book talks about that creative problem-solving area that doesn't have to be transformational, but it can be little breakthroughs that make a difference. Kaiser Yang: Absolutely. It's a philosophy that I share with Josh. And his book, Big Little Breakthroughs is all about the fact that we should look for everyday acts of creativity or what he calls micro innovations.And for us too, when we work with organizations, we obviously want to look at transformational opportunities, high growth opportunities. But sometimes when you look at Innovation, just in that context, it can be paralyzing for most of the team members, right. Unless it's a billion-dollar Elon Musk type idea that it doesn't count.When in reality, some of the best innovations start with small acts of creativity applied to solving the customer experience or driving improvement in internal processes. And those little innovations can stack up and make a significant difference over time. Brian Ardinger: Well, you almost have to build up those muscles and, you know, to jump directly to starting a brand-new business or a brand-new idea is challenging, especially if you've been hired to optimize and execute in a particular business model that you know and have some certainty around. Versus a completely unknown kind of environment. Kaiser Yang: For sure. What we see in many organizations is that there's this tremendous creative readiness, this curiosity, this willingness to drive change. But where it falls short is the implementation side. And it's most often these teams and individuals don't have the right tools or the training or critical thinking skills to apply their creativity to innovative outcomes.And that really is kind of the point of Crack the Code, my new book. It's more of a field guide, a manual to help you unlock your creativity. And add a little bit more structure to the process. So rather than saying, hey, let's solve the sales challenge or this customer experience problem, or this operational inefficiency and just brainstorming in the traditional sense. These are proven tools and techniques that really guide you through that creative process, so you can realize better outcomes in the end. Brian Ardinger: Let's talk a little bit about the book. You kind of break it up into these four key mindsets that you believe individuals and organizations need to be building and growing on. Talk a little bit about the mindsets and how they came to be and the thought process around it. Kaiser Yang: Yeah. I mean, these mindsets are really based on almost like two decades worth of research and real-world experiences, having been a startup entrepreneur and starting my own businesses. Creativity is that one underlying skill set that was applied to drive growth and transformation and performance at pretty much every level.And so, when we think about some of these mindsets, they may come across to you as common sense, but common sense isn't always common practice. So, for example, the first core mindset that we start out with is this notion that every barrier can be penetrated. It's this inherent belief that no matter how difficult the challenge is, if you apply enough creative energy at it, that obstacle can be overcome.Right, the most powerful successful innovators out there, when they have a setback or they have a failure, what they don't do is throw up their arms and get discouraged. They're the ones that say not yet. So, while it seems obvious that every barrier can be penetrated, if you look at organizations and teams, once you have a couple of failures or a few setbacks, a lot of times it's like, eh, this idea is not going to work. Or maybe we should do something else. Instead, we believe that with the right focus of your creative energy, you can really overcome some of the most difficult challenges out there. Brian Ardinger: And ironically, sometimes those constraints are actually the things that open ...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Nora Herting, Founder and CEO of ImageThink and Author of the new book, Draw Your Big Idea. Nora and I talk about the benefits of visual thinking, some of the myths surrounding art and business, and some of the exercises anyone can use to think and work more creatively using visualization tools. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript of Nora Herting, Founder and CEO of ImageThink and Author of Draw Your Big IdeaBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Nora Herting. She is Founder and CEO at the visual strategy firm ImageThink, and Author of the new book called Draw Your Big Idea: The Ultimate Creativity Tool for Turning Thoughts into Action and Dreams into Reality. Welcome to the show, Nora. Nora Herting: Hi, Brian. Great to be here. Brian Ardinger: I am so excited to have you on this show. Because I've been a big proponent, whether I'm working with startups or corporate innovation teams about using visual tools to help you think through new ideas and launch new projects and that. And when I came upon you and the stuff that you're doing in this space, I wanted to have you on the show to dig in deeper about what it all takes to make this happen.So, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? How you went from becoming an artist and a photographer to working your way to work with some of the biggest companies in the world, Google and IBM and NASA on this idea of visual strategy. Nora Herting: Basically, I had started my career off in academia as an artist, going into academia, sort of the most sure-fire fit. You get the tenure track and the health insurance and whatnot. And I was 27. Managed to get a position. And then had this terrible realization that my goal was really just a failure of imagination. That I hadn't really thought or tested what else I could do with my skill set, outside of sort of this academic world.So, I left my position, moved to New York with no job. And found myself at a division of Cap Gemini that we would call now like their design thinking solution. But this was the early 2000s. And that wasn't really a term we even used there. But it was a network of facilitators that we would put huge corporate projects through these innovative incubators for three days and tell them in three days we could get three months of work out of their team. And I learned the skill of graphic recording while I was there because they knew I, besides having a Masters, I had also for a little while been an elementary school art teacher, which was actually kind of a great qualification for this particular work. And saw the power of visuals to help business people really clarify their thinking.Get people on the same page. Sort out a lot of complexity. And in time, my first client, when we started ImageThink was NASA. And I had this real moment there where they had brought in someone to talk about the space glove. They had not been able to innovate a better space glove for several decades. They opened it up to a public contest. All these teams in turn, but it was actually one solo engineer that designed a better space glove than all of the NASA scientists in a couple of decades. And they were fascinated about how this worked, and they described this guy's process. And while I was there, I'm visualizing the story. And I realized that they're really just describing a series of iterative process.Things that are really intuitive to tinkers to artists. And that it was just this moment where I thought these things that I've learned that seems so innate to the creative process were mysteries to corporations. So that's one of the joys of ImageThink is not just using the visual tools, but really helping. Tried to demystify that for business leaders so that they can take some of those same mindsets and techniques and apply them to innovation in larger companies. Brian Ardinger: I think a lot of folks do have that misperception, that businesses over here and art is over here. What are some of the myths that you've seen of how people and innovators should be doubling down on art in the business world?Nora Herting: Great question. I love this question. You know one big myth is if you don't have the title Creative on your business card and then you don't have an opportunity to think creatively. Just don't believe that that's true. At ImageThink I think that we believe that everybody who has a job that requires complexity or problem solving has a huge creative opportunity in front of them.So that's one thing is people will think, oh, because I'm in engineering or because I'm in HR, what I don't get to be creative. I forgot how to be creative. Another one is just this narrow idea that, you know, you're only creative if you can paint or write or play the guitar. Right. So, expanding that idea to things that are more broad and then, you know, just kind of a lack of creative confidence in people, kind of around those ideas. And, you know, we have different ways of trying to break that down and expose people, show people, that they can exercise that muscle. And really, they have that opportunity every time. Brian Ardinger: Walk me through some of the benefits that you've seen firsthand about getting people unstuck or what really happens when you move into that art visual mode to tackle problems that you couldn't track before.Nora Herting: One example or one benefit of it is first off is to remember it's a very, very old technology. We've been drawing and using pictures to communicate before, you know, as a species before we had written language. You know, some of the earliest cave paintings are 30,000 BC. And they're basically instructions for hunting.So, this is something that we've been hard-wired neurologically for a long time to process things and pictures. And when you do that, you're using multiple facets of your brain, including the prefrontal cortex. I like to tell people if they want to look at a problem differently, or they want to use a different set of neurons to fire, ask people to illustrate, or at least use visuals of some aspect of it to really get people just literally to think a little bit differently. So, one way we do that is first to just have people practice on really low stakes things. We'll do something called like a visual bio. We'll ask everyone to tell us about themselves, really mundane things like their name, their role, but using only pictures to convey that.And what happens is there's a lot of laughing, people feel a little awkward. But people realize pretty quickly that there's a lot more nuance that gets conveyed when someone is illustrating, let's say their role, than just say, you know, I'm a Director of Innovation at X company. Right. So how they think about that?So that immediately gets peopl...