Inside Outside

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Nancy Wang, Head of Product at AWS Data Protection and Founder of Advancing Women in Product (AWIP). Brian and Nancy talk about women in tech, a Midwest AWIP chapter, mentors, diversity, and product development. Read the interview Transcript at insideoutside.io

Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Max Fergus, Founder and CEO of LUM, a music streaming app rooted in the discovery of emerging music. Brian and Max discuss disruption, entrepreneurship, trends, content creation, building a team, and corporate startup collaboration. Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.io

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder talks with Flavio Lobato of Ikove Capital. Ikove is a venture development company founded to pursue early-stage investments with an emphasis on technology commercialization. Brian and Flavio discuss investing in the Midwest, identifying and validating high-impact technologies, bridging the gap between R&D and VC funded rounds, and innovation talent. Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.io

Dr. Nada Sanders is a Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at Northeastern University and co-author of The Humachine: Humankind, Machines, and the Future of Enterprise. Dr. Sanders talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about Humachines and the implications for the future of business. Key Points: - Humachine - Emerging forms of enterprise. Combines human qualities (creativity, judgment, and intuition) with machines (economies of scale, AI, artificial processing, etc.). What are the capabilities? - The key difference is the human resource element in the tech era. Some will wait and see what tech is doing. Others are using tech as plug and play. Neither will work. Move towards superhuman enterprise management. The interplay between tech, people, and processes. - Tactics: How can you determine where AI can help? Don’t need all tech. Understand your strategy. Who are you and what are you trying to do. - Data: People don’t know what to ask of it. What questions do you n

Ben Yoskovitz is the Founding Partner at Highline BETA, a startup co-creation company. He is also Co-Author of Lean Analytics and a former VP of VarageSale and GoInstant, which sold to Salesforce. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside innovation Founder, talks with Ben about corporate-startup collaboration. Ben started his first company in 1996 during University, where he got into tech and entrepreneurship. Since that time, he founded several other companies, ran products, and started one of the first accelerators in Canada called Year 1 labs. Ben applied the Lean Startup methodology to the companies they invested in, then wrote the book Lean Analytics. Soon he began angel investing and finally launched Highline BETA. Highline BETA Highline BETA believes by working with big companies, they can build better startups. Their service arm works with big companies to identify opportunities. Their fund arm finances them. This strategy can share risk. The corporate side realizes the big model is unlikely to survive. The

Derek Chin is Head of Innovation and Product Strategy at Nerdery, a business consulting company. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Derek about corporate innovation, adaptability, and financing innovation projects. With the heart of a serial entrepreneur, Derek is fascinated about how to bring ideas to life. After working at a startup in college, Derek started his own business and learned the importance of design thinking and bootstrapping. He eventually went to law school and had the opportunity to work for United Healthcare, analyzing new laws and regs to discover new business opportunities. Derek continued at United Healthcare after law school, as their entrepreneur-in-residence, and was humbled by the challenges of corporate innovation. After a few years, Derek left to help start a new company called BrightHealth, with a former CEO of United Healthcare. In 5 months, they raised $80 million, in Series A, as a small startup trying to replicate a huge insurance company. Selecting

This week's podcast features RSM’s Kevin Depew and Matt Wolf talking with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about RSM's unique industry eminence program. They highlight the collision of ideas that brought this program to life and how it has enabled RSM to deliver an enhanced, differentiating client experience. To read the interview transcript, go to insideoutside.io

Aviad Stein is the Director of Client Partnerships at Alpha, a consumer insights company. He has worked with Tumbler, Bloomberg, Nordstrom, and Dun & Bradstreet on customer-centric innovation strategies. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Aviad about his experiences with experimentation and digital transformations. Podcast Highlights: - Aviad has taken many companies of different sizes through digital transformation. Created an innovation incubator at Nordstrom. Built online and mobile ecosystem for users engaging in-store and online. Bloomberg Digital team developed Audio/Video digitalization. Bringing content to consumers and creating partnerships. - Advice for working in large companies? Take one challenge at a time. At Nordstrom, identified acquiring new users. How can tech support them? Bring teams together to solve this goal. The business wanted to leverage tech. Customers wanted tech to engage with the company. Gathered customer feedback, then took to tech to create those

After working at Nike for 20 years, Lorrie Vogel founded ImagineNOW, an Innovation consultancy. She talks with Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside Innovation, about building an innovation portfolio. Lorrie started her career at Nike working in industrial design, then led innovation and sustainability, and finally served as Vice President of Material Science and Innovation. Today, Lorrie leads an innovation consultancy, where she helps others with emerging science and tech, systems, and innovation teams.  Key Points - Nike’s approach is very systematic. Every team has a process. Nike does early prototyping. - As we brought new innovation into the portfolio, we became more systematic when looking at tech. If it was successful, how would it impact our business? - If you work in innovation, you need a filter. Evaluate - Does it drive revenue, decrease cost, reduce environmental footprint, strategic IT, new better performance, and brand value? Look at it from different perspectives, which innovations ar

David Bland is the Founder of Precoil and the Co-Author of Testing Business Ideas, along with Alexander Osterwalder. David talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about risk, generating evidence through experimentation, and listening to customers. David’s new book is a field guide for rapid experimentation. Through tactical examples, it describes what he’s seen with various teams and testing in the market. It also describes product and backend business model testing, in addition to 44 experiments organized from low strength of evidence to high strength of evidence. Key Points - Think about risk - I have this risk. Should we do this? Can we do this? Companies need to generate more evidence before jumping to build. Learn about desirable, viable, and feasible. - What has changed in the experimentation process? Originally landing pages were it. Now we need to think about the hypothesis we’re trying to test. Experimentation terminology and processes are being adopted by product managers

Scott Lenet, President of Touchdown Ventures, takes a different approach to investing. With a tagline of VC as a Service, Scott helps companies set up and run their funds. Scott talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about corporate venture. Corporates can be some of the best investors on the Cap table and achieve multiple objectives, from financial to strategic.They can also help themselves while helping the startup. How have corporates changed their startup investing? - There's a correlation between corporate venture success and longevity/experience of managers. Touchdown works hand-in-hand with corporations. - Companies should set themselves up for learning, but not as a tire kicker.  - Touchdown is seeing demand from every industry. It's not only from large corporations, but also from mid-market and startups in SF.   - How do we stay innovative? All companies can see disruption. Can I do learning without investing? No. Startups won't share info.   How do you help companies t

Josh Seiden is the author of Outcomes Over Outputs, Sense and Respond, and Lean UX, in addition to being a designer, strategy consultant, and coach. He has worked with companies like S&P, Fidelity, and AMEX. He also started the Sense and Respond Press, which focuses on short, actionable books about innovation, product management, and digital transformation. Josh spends much of his time consulting and training teams to work together effectively and create business outcomes. In this podcast, Josh talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about applying outcomes over outputs. When thinking about being outcome-centered in a complex, emergent system, Josh suggests defining outcome as a change in behavior that creates business value. E.g.- Twitter. The challenge is to focus all work around outputs, rather than features. The highest level of outputs is impact, including revenue, costs, and customer satisfaction. Increasing customer satisfaction isn't solved through new features. Getting the out

Kathleen Cohen is the founder of the Collaboratorium, a consultancy that creates enhanced guest experiences, in multi-use environments, through digital, AI/ML, XR, computer vision, and immersive and experiential thought leaders. She has previously worked with  DreamWorks, IBM innovation, and Disney Resorts, among others. Kathleen talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Founder, about innovation’s future through experiential technology. What changes have you seen in innovation? - Kathleen was first an artist, then moved to digital, and now back to physical space. - Innovation brought the data layover to experiences, and now AI and Machine Learning are making an impact. How has innovation changed because of tech? - Started as a digital strategist and now calls herself an experiential strategist - Kathleen helped launch Disneyworld.com and soon found herself asked to join the 1st meeting on Disney’s creative team to help re-architect Epcot. Although Kathleen started her own consultancy at that point, h

Leaders need to have a balanced stance to invest in core, adjacent, and breakthroughs innovation for the long-term sustainability of their corporations. Currently, corporations put 95% of their focus on operational excellence and 5% on innovation excellence.  Gordon Stannis is Director of Design & Strategy and Partner at Twisthink. Gordon talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about how to grow innovation excellence.  Twisthink was launched two decades ago, to solve business problems through the "twisting" of design and creative technologists. For Crown, Twisthink developed a digital glove that drives a 3-ton truck in a warehouse. It solves a safety problem by driving remotely, and also eliminates 70% of footsteps from the worker’s daily routine. Crown was able to increase the price of the product by 2X. What process does Twisthink go through to work with clients? - Understand stakeholders and pain points and then begin to solve problems.  - Use any process that yields results a

Omar Luqmann-Harris is the author of Leader Board: The DNA of High-Performance Teams. While leading teams around the world, he saw an employee engagement gap emerge because traditional leadership principles didn’t change with the workforce of today. Omar talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about why employees won’t respond to old ways of leadership. Omar first looked at the titans of leadership and applied their principles to his teams around the world. Then he created new methods to determine what works today. Leadership 1.0 - Late 1800s to post WWII - Farm to the Factory - Hierarchy, homogenous workforce - Henry Ford Leadership 2.0 - Post-WWII - 1990s - Diversity, American Dream Phase, Teams - JFK and Space Race Leadership 3.0 - 1990s - now - Information Revolution - Solution to innovation - Leadership different, organizations are flatter and connected. Work has changed from individuals to teams, moving from A Players focus to Team Focus. Now everyone on the team is excellen

Savannah Economic Development's Jen Bonnett - VP of Innovation/Entrepreneurship & ED of The Creative Coast talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder about Startup Ecosystem Building. Jen recently moved from Atlanta, where she founded Startup Chicks, led the state of Georgia's technology incubator, and helped the ATL startup community. She ranks ATL in the top startup ecosystems in the country. Highlights from their conversation: - Savanah has three University assets. Similar to Boulder.  - Why the Creative Coast? Savanah has a thriving arts community. How do you teach artists to thrive online?  - Digital technology a significant focus. Also, healthcare tech and logistics.   - E-commerce - creative meets the port.  - Jen knew community and leaders. Began by building Ecosystem map — missing investor community.  - Savannah is a significant port. - Startups don't know each other or their peer groups. We are creating peer group and revenue meetups. - "Slowvannah" - Blog post - Savan

Oscar Allain is Vice President of Cross-Cultural Strategy and Research at UM Worldwide. He focuses on reaching the rapidly changing multicultural audiences in the US. Oscar talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about brands being part of the cultural conversation and doing it the right way.  Key Points - WAVE is UM’s annual study to gain a better understanding of the digital world. This year they decided to quantify the Remix cultures.  - Remix Culture studies the movements within cultures that are being influenced by ethic or minorities such as Hispanics, Asians and LGBT communities. They want to understand what the implications are for certain businesses.   - ReMix’s four cultural pillars - Resist, Retrograde, Re-globallize, Recreate - Latinos have changed over past 20 years from need to assimilate to amping up on sense of identity.  - Ethnic Cultures are part of movement/generations that speak up against things that don’t align with values, ability to retro-culturate, have a c

(Replay of Nov 20, 2018 episode) Amy Radin is the author of The Change Maker’s Playbook: How to Seek, Seed and Scale Innovation in Any Company. She was previously a Senior Executive at American Express, Citi, and ETrade. Amy’s experience includes leading the digital transformation of Citi’s credit card business ($5b bottom line). Today, Amy enjoys being on the outside of big companies and startups, to help connect the dots between growth aspirations and outcomes. Amy and Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, discuss startup and corporate collaboration, measuring innovation, and the future for financial services. Key Takeaways in Brian Ardinger’s Interview with Amy: - The human condition is set up to stop things that haven’t happened before. - Big companies have everything they need, but can’t see the near-term value of innovation. Startups bring speed and agility but lack understanding of scale. Magic is when they can work together. - To “seed” ideas, take concepts and put them out to pote

Thales Teixeira is an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and Author of Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, talks with Thales about innovation, consumer disruption, and decoupling. They also discuss Thales new HBR article titled Disruption Starts with Unhappy Customers, Not Technology. Key Points  - Economics of Attention - To help companies understand consumer attention - Where, how and why. - www.economicsofattention.com - Understanding Digital Disruptors - Customers Disrupt Markets. - Startups are just faster at delivering needs and understanding customers. - Why do large companies think they KNOW and adapt to their customers. - Large companies are obsessed with their competitors, but should be focused on their customers. - Inside Outside Innovation Summit - Oct 2-22, 2019 - www.theiosummit.com - Customer problems might not be big enough for large companies. This creates an opening for startups.

Jeff Gothelf, Co-Author of Lean UX, Sense & Respond, and Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about building a culture of innovation.  Key Ideas - Shifting from outputs to outcomes. - Changing incentives. - Find the person and team with the political capital to prove out the validity and scalability.  - Reward learning in a way that focuses on ideas that are likely to succeed.  - Incentivize learning and being transparent.  - Story telling and marketing of efforts. - Overcoming national cultural traits. - Language and ideas are universal, but hard to implement.  - Failure of the Corporate Innovation Lab. Create an innovation path.  For More Information For more information, check out Jeffgothelf.com.  If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Ep. 37 – Josh Seiden & Jeff Gothelf, authors of “Sense and Respond” Ep. 90 – Teresa Torres w/ Product Talk Ep. 103 – Andi Plantenberg on Entrepreneurial Capabilities in Teams Ep. 140 – Melis