AlchemistX: Innovators Inside
What is new in Corporate Innovation, and why is it so hard?
Join us for a series of interviews with thought leaders, founders, and high achievers inside the world of innovation. Through intimate conversations with Host and Head of AlchemistX, Ian Bergman, we explore what makes innovation so challenging. Guests range from established stars to the most exciting up-and-comers. Innovators Inside is a must-listen for anyone trying to instill a culture of curiosity into a large corporation or organization.
Latest episodes
Jul 8, 2021 • 26min
E.14 - Fernanda Bordin: Smart and Sustainable
Who is Fernanda Bordin?
Fernanda is the Senior Manager for Innovation at Gerdau Next. The new business arm of Gerdau, the largest producer of long steel in Latin America. Before coming to Gerdau, Fernanda worked with open Innovation and data analytics at NASA via the laboratory of Innovation Science at Harvard and managed the business incubation program at Mercedes-Benz R&D North America.
And now, AXII welcomes her to the community!
Jul 1, 2021 • 34min
E. 13 - Jez Humble: Continuous Innovation
Who is Jez Humble?
Jez works in Site Reliability Engineering at Google and teaches at UC Berkeley. He previously co-founded the amazingly influential DevOps Research and Assessment, DORA. And co-conducted the annual State of DevOps Report. Before that was stints at 18F, the legendary Obama-era federal agency that modernized several digital services and thought works.
Get ready to meet Jez!
Jun 10, 2021 • 20min
E.12 - Shige Ihara: Win-Win Situation
Who is Shige Ihara?
Shigeto is the president and CEO of NEC X launched in 2018 by NEC Corp, formerly Nippon Electric Company. NEC X is a Palo Alto-based business incubator that fast-tracks technologies and business ideas selected from inside and outside NEC. Not only is AlchemistX working with them on their current accelerator batch, but we got Shige on our show!
You're going to love Shige!
May 27, 2021 • 32min
E.11 - Kathy Chill: Tactics and Chill
Who is Kathy Chill?
Kathy Chill is a business development powerhouse. She spent 10 years at Citrix where she grew the SAAS business from 30 million to half a billion dollars - making Citrix one of the 10 biggest SAAS companies on Earth. But that was just the first act of a distinguished career. Kathy went on to found the awesomely named, Chill Strategic Partners, where she helps companies around the world accelerate time to market. Her clients include everything from early stage startups to established public and private enterprises. She provides both strategic guidance and hands-on operational support to folks launching new products in new markets. Kathy's particularly good at helping clients evaluate and capitalize on new market opportunities - the very core of Corporate Innovation.
What a delight to have her indeed!
May 12, 2021 • 38min
E.10 - Laura Merling: Driving the Future
Who is Laura Merling?
Laura Marling is the Digital Transformation Officer Automotive for Google. Before joining Google, she was Managing Director and Chief Digital Officer for Slalom, providing business and product strategy to multi-billion dollar companies in technology, transportation, energy, cpg, retail, healthcare, and education. She served as Chief Digital Officer for Collins Aerospace and Vice President, Digital Products for Ford and AT&T.
Of course we had to get her on the show, she's awesome!
Apr 29, 2021 • 37min
E.09 - Jesper Frederiksen Window To Innovation
Who is Jesper Frederiksen?
Jesper Fredrickson was president of research and development for Danaher. Since then Jesper has served as Chief Innovation Officer at Banfield Pet Hospital, at Mars company, and then at Mars Veterinary health care. Today he is VP and Digital Executive for Velux, a Danish manufacturing company. Jesper attended INSEAD at the Syed School of Business at the University of Oxford. And now, AXII!
You're going to love this one!
Apr 15, 2021 • 38min
E.08 - Alan Boehme: Next Stop, Space!
Who is Alan Boehme?
For about a dozen years corporate Innovation in Silicon Valley has been synonymous with Alan Boehme. From stints at DHL, General Electric, and ING , Alan went on to a spectacular career at Coca-Cola rising and rising through that company to become Global CTO, Chief Innovation officer and head of Enterprise Architecture. After leaving Coca-Cola, he advised all kinds of infrastructure startup companies from Netskope to VeloCloud. Then he took on the Chief Innovation Officer role at Procter & Gamble. Today, he’s CTO for H&M group. But a recitation of his titles doesn't do justice to Alan and his impact. He knows everyone and is endlessly generous with his time and insight. He is a pioneer of the Innovation model in which a large corporation has eyes and ears on the ground here in the valley. It's hard to imagine anyone better qualified to talk about why corporate Innovation is hard.
Enjoy this talk as much as we did!
Apr 1, 2021 • 45min
E.07 - Cindy Alvarez: Discovering Customers
Who is Cindy Alvarez?
Cindy is the author of Lean Customer Development and the Director of Customer Research for Github where she works to understand what helps developers collaborate to build effective solutions and drive change within their organizations. She came to GitHub and Microsoft from Yammer where she was Director of User Experience. Cindy's passionate about diversity and inclusion; supporting women, black, Latino, and girls in tech.
We're so glad to share her talk with us!
Mar 18, 2021 • 48min
E.06 - Sam Ramji: Seeds of Change
Who is Sam Ramji?
Sam's currently the Chief Strategy Officer for DataStax. In his 25 year Silicon Valley career he's been instrumental in creating two, billion dollar markets. The Enterprise Service Bus during his time at BA systems and API management when he was at Apigee. Notably, Sam laid the foundation for open source at Microsoft back in the aughts. When to do this was next to unthinkable. Now, of course Microsoft owns GitHub and is a titan thought leader in free software. Thanks in no small part to Sam's work.
He's also done time at Google and Autodesk and is a prolific adviser to everyone from early stage startups to massive enterprises. He has a degree in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego and still plays around with machine learning and AI just for fun.
We're so glad to share Sam's story with you all!
Mar 4, 2021 • 43min
E.05 - Christi Zuber: Innovation by Design
Who is Christi Zuber?
Christi is the founder and managing director of Aspen Labs and holds a Doctorate in Design and Innovation from Coventry University. She's also on the faculty of Northwestern, and has served as Fellowship faculty for Arizona State. This all is the culmination of a distinguished career in Corporate Innovation that included founding and directing The Innovation Consultancy for Kaiser Permanente.
We're so happy to share our wonderful conversation with you!
