Corporate Unplugged

Laurent “Larry” Leksell is the co-founder of Elekta, a global company that is pushing the boundaries of radiation therapy to provide access for advanced, high-quality cancer care. While studying at the Stockholm School of Economics, Larry jumped into entrepreneurship with his father who had a passion in cancer research. Larry now sits as a chairman and principal shareholder of Elekta while he fulfills his passions of philanthropy, entrepreneurship and art.In this podcast:Founding Elekta with his fatherHis life dedication to solutions for cancer His passions for philanthropy, entrepreneurship and artCancer care innovation and resourcesEntrepreneurship expectationsLong-term business solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Markus Lehto is a Utopian, an expert generalist. He’s also the co-founder of Joint Idea and Lifeworks Labs and the co-founder of the global community - Love Mafia. Born in Canada with Finnish traditions and culture, life took him on a path across the world as a professional in consulting, investment banking and real estate development. He's based in Istanbul and is pursuing entrepreneurial ventures in design and architecture, investment, community building, learning and tech development. In this podcast:Why we need to rethink our Anglo Saxon worldviewCreating Lifeworks LabsWhy seeking his own truth is his passionBecoming an expert generalistRedefining what the good life meansWhat decentralisation meansWhy we need to break in order to growCultivating serendipityWhy the world needs loveLinks:Joint Idea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Business leaders should be ready to be challenged by young people. I feel we have ended up in this patriarchal system with CEOs and leaders who do not want to be confronted by the young generations.”Meet Zakaria Bekkali, a 22 year old with a wise head on young shoulders. Zak is a graduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he’s been awarded a postgraduate excellence scholarship for a Master of Public Administration with a specialisation in social impact. He also holds a Bachelor in International Politics and Government from Bocconi University in Milan, as well as having studied at Princeton University during his undergraduate senior year. In this podcast:Transformational momentsWhy insecurity was a driver for himThe synergy between business and communityEquality of opportunityGive opportunities to young peopleWhy feminine isn’t another word for weaknessRadical vulnerability for collective healingLinks:Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economics Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maria Konnikova is a New York Times best-selling author, journalist and psychologist who in 2018 while researching her newest book, The Biggest Bluff, became an international poker champion and the winner of over $300,000 in tournament earnings, inadvertently turning herself into a professional poker player. In this podcast:The role that luck plays in our livesWhat Maria has learned about life from playing pokerWhy we shouldn’t take life for grantedWhere she gets her inspiration to write fromHow COVID-19 is revealing our true coloursThe power of language and communication in businessHow chance affected her lifeThe value of human connectionsLinks:The Biggest Bluff Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ma Steinsvik is passionate about emerging technologies and believes in the power of digital transformation and AI in order to scale business transformation towards a circular economy. Because an augmented circular future will lead to a better world. Ma is a European business leader, futurist and investor, and the CEO of Bulls Holding, an international agency for film, literary and art-based brands, influencers and editorial content, and Chair of the Board of R&B Licensing, a global 360 agency for literary and design based properties. She is an acknowledged international keynote speaker on technical leaps and their impact around the world. Ma discusses the foundations of business, of being a part of something big and giving back. And how even now, while the whole world is going through one of the toughest times in living memory, we still see people who, when they have their own lives secured, do what they can to contribute and give back to society. “When I invest in companies I'm often so struck by the generosity I receive back in the form of knowledge and network and tips and so on, because people, entrepreneurs and leaders, people of all kinds really want to give back. And if you look at it from a psychological point of view, that's when we're really happy.”In this podcast:We are hardwired to want to give The changing basis for innovationThe power of the internetWhy a crisis shows gaps in our knowledgeWhy imbalance leads to creativityHow to find wisdomDigital transformationThe formula for business - value driven, data driven and customer centric Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is design and who is it for? This loaded question is asked of Ayse Birsel, named by Fast Company as one of the Most Creative People in Business. Ayse is a beautiful blend of East meets West, born and raised in Turkey but who now calls New York home. “The combination of East and West, being Turkish living in the States, really allows me to see two sides of everything, which is a great quality, actually a superpower for designers, especially when those qualities are often in opposition to each other.”And there is no better person to pose this question to: Ayse is a designer and innovator who has designed hundreds of award winning products and systems for Fortune 500 brands. She's known for bringing new solutions to old problems and for her humanistic design approach. She's also the author of Design The Life You Love, and gives lectures on Design The Work You Love to corporations. She's also the co-founder of Birsel Plus Seck, the award winning design and innovation studio and consults for a large number of big brand businesses. Her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). If anyone knows design, it’s Ayse (pronounced Eye-Shay). And she’s keen to show people that rather than letting the current pandemic get the better of us, we should use it as inspiration to redesign our lives. “Constraints are necessary for great opportunities. If this is the biggest constraint that we've ever had, this should be our biggest opportunity as well.”In this podcast:What is design and who is it forWhy Covid-19 is the perfect excuse to redesign your lifeTurning constraints into opportunitiesHow the 2008 financial crisis created her now life The butterfly effectRe-humanising our workselvesLinks:Design the life you love - Ayse Birselhttps://thinkers50.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve all suffered from ‘Not Enough Syndrome’ at some point in our lives. “In our relentless pursuit for external validation, we've lost sight with the fact that validation actually comes from within always, and I think that actually applies to business and products.”Tara Schuster was told early on to pick a lane and stick with it. She couldn’t be or do more than one thing, but luckily for the rest of us she rejected this notion and has since become an author, playwright, and accomplished entertainment executive, currently serving as Vice President of Talent and Development at Comedy Central. In her first book, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies, which lies at the intersection of self-help humour and memoir, she shares hard-won lessons in learning to love and care for yourself.“I think we are very good at being mean to ourselves and treating ourselves with such little care. I mean shocking because we'll treat a guest 10X better than we'll treat ourselves.”This episode is as brutally honest as her book and a refreshing listen for anyone who is struggling with self-doubt. In this podcast:Her standard day structureHow to become more self awareThe difference between a truth and a beliefWe need to unlearn crueltyNot every experience has to be exceptionalAnyone can be a leaderLinks:Tara’s Book - Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: and Other Rituals to Fix Your Life from Someone Who has Been ThereJulia Cameron’s - The Artist’s Way Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With everything going on globally, taking your physical mailbox online is probably one of the smartest decisions you could make. Not just to protect yourself, but to protect the environment too. It’s such a smart move that today over 3.7 million Swedish people, almost half of the grown up population in Sweden, have Kivra. That’s roughly 25,000 companies and organisations that rely on Kivra, the digital mail company, for important letters, invoices, doctor’s appointments, salary specifications and so on. Anna Bäck is an entrepreneur and innovation leader who’s been leading a number of startups in China and Sweden, and most recently driving innovation and disruption as a design leader within McKinsey.This is an incredibly interesting conversation, learning about Anna’s influences and transformational points in her life that have led her to where she is today - to a business model that goes hand in hand with doing good and driving a more sustainable future.This is an inspirational podcast with an inspirational leader. In this podcast:Where the idea for Kivra came fromThe importance of creating a sustainable business modelHer passion for making a difference in a positive wayHow she deals with fear and anxietyWhy she values having a global world viewThe need for cross border collaborationLinks:www.kivra.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You might think it an impossible task to find inspiration in these troubled times. But according to Jen Grace Baron, co-founder and Chief Inspiration Officer at InspireCorps, an inspiration strategy firm that partners with organisations to drive business growth and also innovation, it’s precisely during times like these when we are most likely to find inspiration. “Some of what people find most inspiring in their whole lives, are some of the hardest times that they had been through or had survived.”Inspiration is a complex entity, something that is hard to define in itself without using the word ‘inspiration’. It’s not a smiley thing that works just in the good times, it’s not something that we do only when it’s convenient, inspiration is a critical foundation for healthy humans. Inspiration is especially critical during times of crisis, such as the one we are enduring right now. “We found that during times of crisis, the ways that we act in the world change, right, all of how we're thinking and seeing the world changes. And in that unfreezing, there is an opportunity to shape new mindsets, to create new, powerful connections, to reinvent how we do business.”So if you’re struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel, don’t despair, let this inspirational woman inspire you to bring about new change. In this podcast:Why inspiration is a muscle that needs to be workedHow to get inspiredHow InspireCorps is working through Covid-19The difference between offering a service and being willing to serveWhy it’s a birthright for people to be inspired in their workPost traumatic growthLinks:Dare to Inspirehttps://inspirecorps.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WD-40 Company has one of the highest employee engagement rates in the world (93%). And no wonder, at its helm is Garry Ridge, Chairman of the Board and CEO. Garry has been with the company for almost 33 years, having worked his way up through the managerial ranks to the top position, he knows what great company culture looks like, so much so, he not only practices what he preaches, he teaches it to the next generation of leaders too. Having realised that micromanagement as a leadership technique isn't scalable, if Garry wanted to take the blue and yellow can with the little red top to the world, he knew he’d have to set his employees free, to give them freedom to do their best work. So when he became CEO, he went back to school and worked hard to create an extraordinary workplace culture in WD-40 Company. “In 394 BC, Aristotle said, ‘pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work’. And I really believe that that's something that we need to do, to build an economic environment for our companies that firstly serves the people in the organisation. And if we take care of them, they will take care of our customers. So that's where the journey began.”In this podcast:Why being a servant leader pays dividendsBusiness has the opportunity to change the worldOur values grant us freedom to make autonomous decisions yet still act as one Why honesty and integrity aren’t valuesWhy technology is forcing us to behave unnaturallyThe attributes of a bad CEOWhy we need more love in the worldLinks:https://www.wd40company.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.