Innovation Storytellers

In this episode of The Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Mary Beth Cicero, co-founder and CEO of 3Daughters, a clinical development company determined to transform women’s healthcare. Mary Beth has spent more than forty years in executive leadership, marketing, and business development, devoting most of her career to contraception, fertility, and the health conditions that affect women most. Her career has spanned work with start-ups, biotech firms, and major pharmaceutical companies, giving her a rare perspective on how innovation can truly change lives. Our conversation begins with an origin story that is as surprising as it is inspiring. A veterinary innovation for performance horses became the starting point for a groundbreaking frameless, non-hormonal IUD designed to dramatically reduce pain, eliminate strings, and adapt to the shape of a woman’s uterus. Mary Beth explains the science behind the device, which uses three self-assembling copper-encased magnets, and how her team developed a new insertion method that prioritises comfort and safety. We also talk about the bigger picture. Mary Beth shares why the contraceptive market has seen so little innovation in recent decades and why she believes women deserve more options for the thirty years they are likely to use contraception. She discusses the investment gap in women’s health, the lack of awareness among many investors, and the importance of creating products that respond to real patient needs. As policies around reproductive health shift around the world, the demand for reliable and accessible contraception is growing, making this not only a medical opportunity but also a critical societal need. From securing grants to navigating the complexities of FDA approval, Mary Beth offers an honest look at the challenges and rewards of bringing a new medical device to market. She leaves listeners with a clear message: innovation in women’s health is not optional, it is essential, and the potential impact reaches far beyond the individual patient. This is an episode that will expand your thinking about what is possible when passion, science, and persistence come together to solve one of the most pressing health challenges of our time.  

What does it take for corporate innovators to stop killing startups and start working with them productively? In this episode of The Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Andy Goldstein, Partner at Venture University, to unpack how large companies can finally bridge the gap between venture capital and innovation that delivers results. Andy is a seasoned entrepreneur and investor with over 40 years of experience founding, scaling, and funding startups around the world. He's worked with thousands of founders, co-launched accelerator programs across Europe, and played a critical role in creating nine unicorns. Now, through Venture University, Andy is training corporate innovation leaders to develop the skills of real VCs by doing the work themselves. In our conversation, we explore why so many corporate innovation programs stall or fail when trying to work with startups. Andy explains that the majority of breakthrough technologies come from startups, not from within the walls of large corporations. Yet many corporations still lack a repeatable system for sourcing, piloting, and integrating those innovations. This disconnect, he argues, isn't just an oversight. It's a strategic blind spot. We talk about the structural flaws in most corporate venture capital teams, particularly the tendency to jump into ownership too soon without proving value through partnership first. Andy introduces the concept of "venture clienting," a model pioneered at BMW that allows corporations to work with startups as paying clients before investing in or acquiring them. This approach, he says, reduces risk, builds trust, and produces measurable ROI long before equity ever changes hands. Andy also shares how Venture University flips the traditional VC education model. Rather than teaching venture theory in a classroom, the program operates as a functioning VC fund. Participants, many of whom are corporate leaders, source real deals, perform due diligence, sit in on partner meetings, and help deploy capital. It's a hands-on apprenticeship designed to demystify the venture process and make it actionable within a corporate setting. Throughout our discussion, Andy offered real-world examples of startups that became critical partners to large organizations. Not because they were acquired, but because the relationship started with a competent pilot, clear value, and mutual respect. He emphasizes that the key to success lies in aligning venture strategies with the real pain points and revenue goals of the business.  The startups that win are those that solve expensive problems, scale well inside complex environments, and come backed with investor confidence.  

This week on The Innovation Storytellers Show, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Gina O’Connor, Professor of Innovation Management at Babson College. If you're in the corporate innovation space and feel like you're spinning your wheels or chasing moonshots that never lift off, this episode is for you. I first heard Gina speak at the Innov8rs conference in Arizona, and I was blown away by how practical and grounded her research is. She doesn’t just talk theory. She shows exactly what it takes for large companies to build innovation functions that actually deliver. Her work spans decades, and she’s worked with companies like IBM and DSM to study how they’ve structured innovation to drive long-term growth. We discussed why innovation teams often fail, how to structure a program that lasts beyond a single flashy project, and what it means to build something Gina calls a “domain of innovation intent.” It’s not about chasing shiny objects. It’s about being intentional, strategic, and deeply aligned with your company’s future direction. What I loved most about our conversation was how she breaks down the three stages of innovation: discovery, incubation, and acceleration. Gina explains that each stage requires different kinds of thinkers, various processes, and substantial leadership support. We also got into why most companies aim too small, how to avoid what she calls “incrementalism creep,” and why so many innovation leaders burn out after just 22 months in the role. This isn’t just an episode filled with great ideas. It’s a roadmap for anyone trying to build real innovation capability inside a mature organization. If you’ve ever felt stuck between big vision and slow-moving systems, this conversation will help you find a new path forward.  

What does it take to turn an entire city into a thriving innovation hub? In this episode of The Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Callie Taylor, Vice President of Economic Development at Opportunity Austin, to explore how Austin, Texas, evolved from a creative, music-fueled city into one of the world's fastest-growing innovation ecosystems. This is not just a profile of a single company or tech success story. It offers a wide-angle view of how a region mobilized its talent, institutions, and identity to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Callie shares the remarkable story behind Austin's intentional growth, from its early days as a haven for misfits and musicians to its emergence as a global player in tech, life sciences, space innovation, and advanced manufacturing. She explains how South by Southwest helped shift global attention toward the city, but how the real power came from coordinated action across universities, accelerators, local government, and industry.  From Samsung's multibillion-dollar investment to Tesla's 20,000-employee expansion, the Austin region is now attracting international startups and legacy companies alike. Together, we explore the infrastructure that makes this possible, including the role of Austin Community College in customizing workforce pipelines and the city's openness to both international founders and homegrown startups.  We also discuss why venture capital is steadily flowing into the region, how the community supports life sciences growth, and what it means for innovation when public school districts, higher education institutions, and private employers all work toward a common goal.  Austin's ability to stay weird while scaling fast is not just branding. It is a key ingredient in maintaining its creative and inclusive spirit. Throughout the conversation, Callie offers practical insight into what makes a city attractive to innovators. She also addresses the challenges of rapid growth, including infrastructure strain and the need for improved collaboration between neighbors working on similar ideas.  What emerges is a clear picture of how innovation ecosystems are not born but built, and how culture, policy, and human connection all have to align for that to happen. Whether you're a startup founder, a city planner, or just someone curious about the future of innovation, this episode is packed with ideas that extend far beyond Austin's city limits.  

What if getting your big idea across the finish line wasn't about pitching harder, but about thinking like a storyteller… or a mastermind? In this episode of The Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Ed Essey, Director of Business Value at The Microsoft Garage, to uncover the surprising mechanics behind one of the most successful innovation engines in tech. Ed isn't just helping Microsoft employees come up with bold ideas. He's teaching them how to bring those ideas to life, secure executive sponsorship, and scale them globally. With more than 20,000 projects emerging from Microsoft's annual hackathon, his work is reshaping what innovation looks like inside a giant. We discuss the Garage Growth Framework, the storytelling techniques that help innovators get to 'yes,' and why corporate innovation often needs to feel more like a heist than a business plan. Along the way, Ed shares the powerful backstories of projects like Repowering Coal, which sparked the revitalization of Three Mile Island with clean nuclear energy, and MirrorHR, a deeply personal project that's helping families reduce epileptic seizures using AI and wearables. Ed also gives us a preview of his upcoming book, The Inside Job, a heist-themed guide to innovation for intrapreneurs looking to create meaningful change in complex organizations.

Do corporate innovators truly innovate, or are they trapped inside systems that make real transformation impossible? On this episode of The Innovation Storytellers Show, I speak with Elliott Parker, CEO of Alloy Partners and author of The Illusion of Innovation. Drawing on decades of experience launching startups with High Alpha and advising Fortune 100 companies at Innosight, Elliott explains why most corporate innovation efforts fall short. He outlines how organizational structures, incentives, and short-term metrics often prevent innovation teams from achieving the transformation they are tasked with delivering. Elliott also breaks down the critical difference between execution problems and learning problems, and why most corporations confuse the two.  Elliot shares how Alloy builds startups outside the core business, giving them the freedom to take risks, run fast experiments, and uncover opportunities that internal teams cannot reach. These external ventures enable corporations to explore innovative ideas, validate assumptions, and acquire the type of knowledge that drives long-term strategic advantage. Whether you are running an innovation team, funding one, or simply wondering why they rarely deliver game-changing results, this episode offers sharp insights, real examples, and a practical framework for thinking differently about how innovation works.  

What does it really take to fix a billion-dollar bottleneck inside a company famous for saying no to new spending? And how do you translate that same problem-solving into one of the world’s largest bureaucracies? This week, I sat down with Danielle McCormick, Founder of Immersive Insights, whose talent for turning messy systems into high-performance engines has saved companies like Southwest Airlines and defense contractors billions of dollars. At Southwest, Danielle faced a straightforward request: get a single aircraft hangar approved. What she uncovered instead was a tangled web of disconnected teams, undersized infrastructure, and a fleet plan with no roadmap for growth. Her answer was radical in its simplicity: build a twenty-year plan that no one could refute, backed by math and front-line buy-in. From aligning network planning, airport affairs, ground operations, and maintenance to fighting for trust on the hangar floor, Danielle reveals how real innovation is often about listening better and connecting the dots others overlook. She then shares how she applied this same mindset to the Department of Defense, navigating the notorious “Valley of Death” to bring cutting-edge counter-drone technology into the hands of young warfighters, proving that even the most rigid organizations can adapt when they care about the people at the end of the process. Stick around to hear Danielle’s answers to my three hot seat questions: the greatest innovation of all time, the historic team she would join in a heartbeat, and her wish for how to fix the workplace once and for all. If you want to understand how process innovation works in the real world and why it is more human than technical, this is an episode you cannot miss.  

Steve Rader returns to share how open innovation has transformed from an experiment to a mission-critical tool inside NASA and beyond. As a newly minted retiree from NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, Steve unpacks how crowdsourcing and challenge-based problem-solving went from fringe ideas to proven ways of tackling complex technical barriers. He explains what NASA looked like before open innovation took hold, the cultural resistance it faced, and how a small group of believers turned crowdsourced expertise into life-saving solutions, including doubling the warning time for dangerous solar flares and improving landing systems for Mars missions. Real-world stories bring this conversation to life. A retired cell phone engineer offered an algorithm that outperformed NASA’s best predictions. A marine biologist from a tiny Texas town found a more innovative way to study Mars’ atmosphere. A violinist’s hobby cracked a stubborn food industry problem. These examples show that sometimes, the answers come from the least expected places. Steve also tackles what this means for the future of work. As gig platforms, remote teams, and flexible careers reshape how experts contribute, companies that ignore open talent risk falling behind. He makes the case that innovation is no longer limited to those on your payroll. In a world of constant technological change, staying connected to the right expertise has become a vital survival skill. This episode is a clear reminder that better ideas are out there waiting. All it takes is the courage to open the door and invite them in.  

What does it take to shake up one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world from the inside out? On this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I invite you to buckle up for a conversation that dives straight into the heart of how the US Air Force is building a homegrown culture of audacious innovation through its Blue Horizons Fellowship. I’m joined by Colonel Daniel Ruttenber and Dr. Eric Keels, two brilliant minds guiding this unique think-and-do tank based at the Air War College. Blue Horizons is where selected majors and lieutenant colonels step out of their daily missions and into a ten-month sprint to tackle strategic challenges that could redefine the future of national security.  What makes it so remarkable is that these officers aren’t handed polished blueprints to test. Instead, they begin by hunting down the most significant, thorniest problems no one else has solved yet, then race to turn raw ideas into tangible prototypes that push the boundaries of what’s possible in modern warfare and defense technology. Colonel Ruttenber lifts the curtain on how this fellowship for battle-hardened innovators has evolved from an academic elective into a crucible for rapid prototyping and strategy shaping that senior leaders now rely on for bold insights.  Eric shares how diverse perspectives, strategic forecasting, and a healthy risk appetite come together to give fellows the courage to imagine everything from bacteria-built runways to Google Maps-style decision support for mission commanders. Together, they unpack why breaking through bureaucratic roadblocks and perfecting the art of storytelling is just as vital as building breakthrough tech when you’re challenging an institution designed to prioritize certainty over the experiment. Suppose you’ve ever wondered what real innovation under pressure looks like and how a tight-knit cohort can turn constraints into rocket fuel. In that case, this episode delivers an inside look at a program rewriting the playbook on defense innovation.  We also explore how private companies, startups, and universities can collaborate with Blue Horizons, bringing fresh thinking to the Air Force’s most challenging missions while learning what it truly means to build resilience, speed, and adaptability. After listening, I’d love to hear your thoughts. How can leaders inside large organizations borrow lessons from Blue Horizons to encourage more risk-taking, faster learning, and better storytelling to turn big ideas into real-world impact? Join the conversation and share what you think.  

In this episode, I sit down with Shegun Otulana, founder and former CEO of Therapy Brands. His journey from arriving in Birmingham, Alabama at 18 to leading one of the largest software exits in the state's history is nothing short of remarkable. Shegun opens up about his early days, the lessons learned from failure, and the moment his wife encouraged him to finally go all in. He explains how he used consulting work to attract real-world problems and applied a personal framework to choose which one was worth building into a business. We talk about why pricing can be a powerful form of innovation, how Therapy Brands stood out by aligning with what customers actually valued, and why differentiation often beats being the best. Shegun reflects on communication as the greatest innovation of all time and shares his passion for helping build Alabama's innovation ecosystem through his work with Innovate Alabama. This is a conversation about self-awareness, long-term thinking, and what it really takes to build something meaningful.