Innovation Answered InnoLead

In this episode, we talk to Laura Northridge, Senior Director of the AI Innovation Lab — previously just the "innovation lab" — at Harvard Business Publishing.

As is the case with many corporate innovators, she’s helping shape AI strategy and policy for the Boston-based nonprofit, an affiliate of Harvard Business School. It’s one of small number of organizations we’ve been tracking where the innovation lab shifted its focus entirely to AI earlier in 2024. 

Harvard Business Publishing is best known for the Harvard Business Review — in print and online — but it also publishes business books, learning materials, and the famous Harvard Business School case studies. 

In this episode, we talk with Steve Blank about why celebrating innovation heroes is symptomatic of a problem in large organizations. Steve is a serial entrepreneur, author, and educator and leading advocate for the methodology of customer development and the lean startup approach.
In a recent Substack piece, Blank writes about an innovation awards ceremony he attended at a government agency:
"I'm constantly puzzled why thoughtful and astute CEOs and agency directors never asked, why is it that innovations require heroics to occur in our organization? Why don't we have a repeatable process for innovation? What are the obstacles in the way of delivering needed innovation with speed and urgency in our organization? And why is it that after each one of these [innovation] awards we give out, we don't go back and fix the parts of the system that made creating something new so difficult?"
Blank talks about the role of senior leaders, and the concept of an innovation doctrine. And he touches on the significance of AI: "I think this is as important as anything we've seen in tech in probably the last 50 years," he says.

In this episode, we talk about generative AI, speech interfaces, and evolving the customer experience for one of the world’s top luxury car brands: Mercedes-Benz. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Mercedes made a major splash with a new virtual assistant that leverages advanced software and generative AI — along with on-screen visuals — to provide more proactive support and a more intuitive way of interacting with the vehicle. One of the people behind that project is James Liu, the head of customer experience for the Mercedes-Benz operating system.
"I always joke with my team that we're the last layer of light and sound waves between all of our technologies and the customer," Liu says. "Practically speaking, my teams are responsible for HMI concept, UX design, front-end engineering, speech, and the AI platform." 

We talk AI, employment disruption, UBI, corporate innovation, and the future of the automotive industry with Evangelos Simoudis, an author, investor, and advisor based in Silicon Valley. 
At Synapse Partners, he invests in early-stage startups that develop enterprise software and AI applications and also advises big companies and governments on the use of data and AI to address strategic problems. 
"This is not the first time that we've seen this bringing together of both anxiety and excitement" around AI, Simoudis says. "My perspective is colored by the fact that I've seen three other AI springs, as I call them. ...I will say that the optimist in me sees advancements in every one of these AI springs."
Simoudis is also the author of several books, including Transportation Transformation and The Flagship Experience, published in late 2023. He is also a close observer of the corporate innovation and startup ecosystems in Silicon Valley, and he writes a blog called “Re-Imagining Corporate Innovation with a Silicon Valley Perspective.”

 

From six years spent at Starbucks to designing a new countertop coffeemaker that cranks out cold brew, Mesh Gelman has been working at the cutting edge of coffee.

During his time at Starbucks, he witnessed the rising popularity of cold beverages, a trend that his new startup, Cumulus Coffee Company, aims to capitalize on.

In this podcast episode, we talk with Gelman about coffee trends; developing a new product from scratch; the difference between big organizations and start-ups; and his past work as an innovation consultant.

In this episode, we catch up with Geoffrey Moore, the best-selling author, consultant, and venture capitalist whose groundbreaking work has shaped how we think about innovation strategy.
If you’ve ever talked about a technology "crossing the chasm" from the realm of early adopters into the early majority, or your company has put a high potential project into the incubation zone, you’ve been using language given to us by Moore. His best-selling books including Zone to Win, Inside the Tornado, and Crossing the Chasm — and lately, he’s been publishing a series of insightful LinkedIn articles on topics including the future of the office…rethinking personalization… and why it’s time to stop talking about generative AI and start doing something with it.
Listen to the episode to hear the full conversation.