Inside Outside

In this episode, Brian Ardinger talks with Doug Branson about his new book The Future of Tech is Women: How to Achieve Gender Diversity.  Brian and Doug start the conversation by looking at trends in the market. Doug outlines the history of women in senior corporate positions. Of the 70 women that have been CEOs of publicly held companies, 70% have MBAs. Of the 27 women that have held exec positions in IT companies (out of 600), two have STEM backgrounds and 25 have business or law backgrounds. Doug believes the current emphasis on STEM for women produces lopsided experience. It won’t take women higher in the company. They also need business and marketing backgrounds. The IT industry, Doug suggests, is the worst of all industries for representing females. In Silicon Valley, the men they bring in, to fill the middle-level ranks using H1B visas, crowds women and minorities out and prevents them from rising in these environments.  Doug’s book, The Future of Tech is Women, is about how industries can generall

Canva, an easy graphic-design tool website, started six years ago, after two of its founders found success making customizable school yearbooks. Through this process they discovered the power of putting easy-to-use tools in the hands of their customers. Cameron Adams, Canva’s Co-founder and Chief product officer joined the team with his design and tech experience, and Canva was born. Today, Canva, an Australian-based company, has over 10 million users and is valued at $1 billion.  In this episode, Cameron talks with Brian Ardinger about Canva's work bringing goodness to the world through individuals and companies of all sizes. The Canva tools give companies and people the opportunity to easily experiment with design. One reason, Canva has seen such great success, is due to the experiences and "pain points" the founders had prior to starting the company. As the founders developed the product to address the problems in the market, they continued to do many interviews and prototypes. Canva likes to aim for t

Growth, Pricing and SaaS Patrick Campbell is the CEO of ProfitWell (formerly Price Intelligently), the software for helping subscription companies with their monetization and retention strategies. ProfitWell also provides free turnkey subscription financial metrics for over 8,000 companies. Prior to ProfitWell, Patrick lead was an Economist at Google and the NSA, an experience he thought was surprisingly similar. With 50 employees in Boston and Argentina, ProfitWell has been funded by bootstrapping and a growing customer base. They serve about 25 percent of the market. In Brian Ardinger's interview with Patrick, they started by discussing two important business themes. First, being customer focused and second, placing a high priority on building the team and hiring. Patrick believes a company needs to be direct about the type of culture they want. Focus on the right behaviors and values and bring in a diverse amount of thought.  Patrick then highlighted three key issues that ProfitWell helps SAAS comp

Corporate Innovation, Mid-Level Managers and the New 20% Ralph Welborn has spent over 25 years providing business and technology advisory services to both private and public sector organizations globally. He has held a variety of leadership positions, including CEO of Imaginatik, the market-leading innovation advisory and platform company; leader of IBM's Strategy & Transformation business in the Middle East and Africa; senior vice president at KPMG Consulting; and a cofounder of an e-commerce company.  In this podcast, Brian Ardinger talks with Ralph about his new book Topple: The End of the Firm-Based Strategy and the Rise of New Models for Explosive Growth. The Topple Rate refers to how major companies are failing, and how that is fall is accelerating. Companies are attempting digital transformation efforts, with little success.  Ralph believes we need to avoid running the Red Queen race and learn from the companies having explosive growth. Currently, approx. 20% of a company’s capabilities are driving

Peter Gardner worked for 20 years as a venture capitalist with Allegis Capital before switching to consulting and eventually launching Startgrid. Peter and Startgrid’s mission is to use software to intensify the density of resources in ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley so that innovation can continue to happen no matter where.

Shaina Stigler is chief empathy officer at the startup, Betwixt, that’s focused on enhancing communication and trust between coworkers. She shared some insight they’ve gained on how to jumpstart and measure this growth as well as how improvisation is integral to startups. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Greg Larkin is the author of "This Might Get Me Fired: A Manual for Surviving in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Underground." He talked with Brian about the impetus for his book as well as practical tactics and bits of advice for people forging ahead in new innovation waters. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Taylor Dawson is a founding member of GE Appliances’ FirstBuild Microfactory. In addition to his conversation with Brian, he spoke at the Inside Outside Innovation Summit in May. He had some great stories to tell about FirstBuild’s origins and the obstacles they’ve conquered the challenges they’re still solving. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Azeem Azhar is the author of Exponential View, a weekly newsletter about innovation. He talked with Brian about broad perspectives, geography of innovation, corporate venture capital, and why you shouldn’t take a golf club to a tennis match. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Amy Jo Kim is a longtime innovation consultant and author of “Game Thinking.” With a wealth of knowledge that she is eager to share, she talked to Brian about the concept of superfans, mainstream majority, and early majority and why identifying these demographics is crucial for success. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Randy Komisar is on Inside/Outside Innovation this week to talk about his new book "Straight Talk for Startups," why experience is so valuable now, and why startups can stop worrying about scaling. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Andi Plantenberg is an innovation consultant with about as much experience as one can have in such a new market. Her history includes large organizations, small startups, and starting her own business all on the path toward working now to expand entrepreneurial capabilities in teams. Her conversation with Brian addressed among many things: how teachable is innovation, and what’s the most effective incentive? Reach out to her on Twitter @andisf. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Daniel Fozzati is Head of Product Development and Commercialization at IdeaLondon, an innovation center by Cisco, EDF and UCL. As a product engineer who always finds himself frustrated by the ground constraints of innovation systems, he takes the 30,000 foot view and works on innovating the systems themselves to help facilitate both visionary and nitty-gritty innovation. He talked with Brian about IdeaLondon, China’s involvement in European innovation, and up and coming trends Daniel is witnessing in the UK. Reach out to him on Twitter @fuzzydaniel or LinkedIn. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Atul Kamra is a managing partner at Six-Thirty, which is a seed fund based out of St. Louis. Atul talked about what makes Six-Thirty unique, what attitude is best to adopt for combining startups and corporations, and how to keep a narrow focus to stay on track for your goals. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Today’s episode features special guest, Jason Calacanis, longtime angel investor and author of the book "Angel." He and Brian talked about why he wrote this particular book, why startups are the future of wealth accumulation, and how senior executives in a corporation can harness the power of angel investing for the sake of their personal portfolio and the benefit of their company. Jason’s handle on social media is @Jason, and you can find his book on Amazon. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Tristan Kromer is a lean startup coach with the Global Lean Startup Movement. With years of experience and a broad perspective, Tristan brings a global perspective to ecosystems from Lincoln to Ramallah. With his open source book, Tristan is all about helping innovators find the right tools wherever they are, and especially outside of silicon valley. To contact him about his open source book, you can email (tk@tristankromer.com) or by visiting his blog at grasshopperherder.com or his website trikro.com. You can also download the book on his blog and website. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Lucy Beard is the founder and CEO of Feetz, a revolutionary 3-D shoe-printing company that makes shoes just as customized as coffee orders. Coming from an actuarial science background, Lucy has a fresh perspective on corporate innovation, entrepreneurship, and what it means to partner between the two in new and exciting ways. Find out more about Feetz at Feetz.com and more about our summit, including the 100k pitch contest at theiosummit.com. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

In the second episode of Josh's conversation with Arnaud Bonzom, he talked about the different approaches to innovation that he observed among the 500 corporations in their study, especially BMW. Find the full report here: http://698640.hs-sites.com/500corporations This episode also features important clips from Brian's conversation with Gregor Gimmy, founder and head of BMW Startup Garage. Gregor talked about how their Venture Client model works, what makes it different than an accelerator, and how it bridges the gaps between startups and corporations that Arnaud discussed. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Arnaud Bonzom is the Directory of Corporate Innovation at 500 Startups. In his conversation with Josh, Arnaud shared some insights from their report on the status of corporate innovation in the world's top 500 corporations, which you can find here: http://698640.hs-sites.com/500corporations Apply for the Inside Outside Innovation Summit 100k startup pitch contest at theiosummit.com. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Our team here at Inside Outside Innovation along with our sponsor, Econic, is very excited to announce the first Inside Outside Innovation Summit on June 19-21st. In what will be a premier conference in the Midwest focused on startup driven innovation, there's something for everyone. Corporations can match with startups, and startups can compete in a $100k pitch contest. Learn more and buy your ticket at theiosummit.com and talk to us on twitter @TheIOSummit For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy