The Dumbest Guy in the Room

CivicScience
  • 5.0 (25)
  • BUSINESS

The Podcast Where Data Meets Life

  1. 04/25/2024

    Girl Power – Making Winning Bets on America's Most Influential Consumer

    Young women are changing entire categories of retail. Take cosmetics, for example. Gen Z women have decided that beauty is a gesture of self-care, and they’re willing to spend their money on it despite economic headwinds. The smartest person in the room today is Kory Marchisotto, the trailblazing CMO of e.l.f. Beauty — the fastest-growing company on the NYSE for the past five years. Kory and John talked about e.l.f.’s meteoric rise, and how she’s positioned the company at the epicenter of America’s biggest cultural trends.

    54 min

  2. 04/27/2023

    Too Big to Succeed: How to Make Government Work | Diego Piacentini

    Innovation gets harder the older, larger, and more complex an organization becomes. Government agencies that have been around and expanding for hundreds of years are nearly impossible to evolve. And it doesn’t help that modernizing government services seldom grabs big headlines, leading politicians to focus on the biggest problems — even though it could take years before the solutions are felt by the average American.. On this week’s episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room, host John Dick welcomes Diego Piacentini. Born in Italy, Diego was one of the earliest executives at Amazon. He climbed the ranks there for over 16 years before leaving to bring Amazon’s principles of innovation and customer-obsession to the Italian government. Now he’s back in the private sector as an investor, board member, and advisor. Diego and John talked about how governments can tackle problems, what makes America most unique on the world stage, how adventurous Diego has become at trying new foods, and whether or not he could jumpstart a Ferrari if he had to.

    53 min

  3. 03/16/2023

    Welcome to the Wellness Era | Dave Kimbell, CEO of Ulta Beauty

    It's no surprise that CivicScience data show that Americans' levels of stress are still running high after the coronavirus pandemic. So, people are taking matters into their own hands. Acts of self-care, "revenge travel," and splurging of all kinds are hallmarks of U.S. consumerism right now. Nowhere has this trend been more evident than in the beauty and cosmetics industry. Through all the ups and downs of quarantines, supply chain disruptions, and inflation, the beauty category keeps growing, quarter after quarter.  On this episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room, host John Dick welcomes Ulta Beauty CEO Dave Kimbell. John and Dave discuss how the pandemic changed the way Ulta customers think about beauty products, Ulta's wildly successful partnership with Target, their investments in minority-owned beauty startups, corporate leadership, and the very best way to eat ketchup with a basket of fries.

    46 min

  4. 03/08/2023

    Minding What Matters | Chris Cuomo of NewsNation

    How are we supposed to know what really matters anymore? That used to be what the news was for. Reporters would uncover the things we couldn't see, work diligently to surface the truth, and deliver it to us in a newspaper we read cover to cover. But all that changed with the 24-hour news cycle, the internet, and the competition and fragmentation they created. We used to only read or watch what matters. Now, it only matters what we read or watch.  On this week's episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room, host John Dick welcomes Christopher Cuomo, the host of CUOMO on NewsNation. Christopher is trying to establish a middle ground in the partisan world of national news. They talk about the uphill battle of winning over a moderate audience – long turned off by the polarizing news of the day – and how to get people focused on the big, meaningful problems that actually matter.

    55 min
  5. Politics and Tech: Why Can't We All Just Get Along | Congressman Mike Doyle

    09/22/2022

    Politics and Tech: Why Can't We All Just Get Along | Congressman Mike Doyle

    Our elected leaders used to set the tone of political discourse. Today, politicians take cues from their tribe, gleaning their talking points from whatever's trending on social media that day. And because legislation can't be written in 140 characters, there's a huge disconnect between the soundbites that voters want to hear and the substantive policies the country actually needs. That disconnect is particularly pervasive in technology policy — or the extreme lack thereof. The tech industry moves so fast and the nuances are so complex, Congress can't keep up. Today on The Dumbest Guy in the Room, host John Dick welcomes Congressman Mike Doyle, who's retiring after this term following 28 years in the House of Representatives. Congressman Doyle holds a seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and he chairs the subcommittee on communications and technology, where the most important debates on tech policy are happening. The two talk about the changes the congressman has seen over three decades in Washington; how the new breed of politicians is more interested in being social media stars than passing laws; and why tech remains largely unregulated.

    52 min

  6. 09/14/2022

    Leading from the Bottom: How Systems Thinking Can Revitalize Everything From the Ground Up | Jeff Wilke, co-founder and chairman of Re:Build

    This week on The Dumbest Guy in the Room, host John Dick welcomes Jeff Wilke, who played a major role in building Amazon into the company it is today. After his retirement from Amazon in 2021, Wilke co-founded a company called Re:Build to help revitalize American manufacturing. John and Jeff talk about how short-term, quarterly earnings-driven corporate decision-making in America has created a host of problems that only corporate America can solve. Jeff also shared the origins of Amazon’s famed leadership principles and why they were so crucial to the company’s success.

    47 min
  7. Did COVID Save Retail? The Painful But Essential Lessons of the Pandemic | Shelley Bransten of Microsoft

    09/08/2022

    Did COVID Save Retail? The Painful But Essential Lessons of the Pandemic | Shelley Bransten of Microsoft

    It's no secret that the pandemic changed everything that businesses knew about their customers overnight. But old habits – and big systems – are hard to break, especially in big corporations where innovation is expensive and "risk" is a swear word. On this week's episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room, host John Dick welcomes Shelley Bransten, Microsoft's corporate vice president for global retail and consumer goods. John and Shelley talk about how COVID became the new "chief innovation officer" in retail, how companies need to be agile and resilient in the face of constant change, and whether it's better to write a grocery list by hand or on a smartphone.

    53 min
  8. Remaking Media: How to Build Trust in an Ever-changing Landscape | John Battelle, co-founder of Wired and The Recount

    08/31/2022

    Remaking Media: How to Build Trust in an Ever-changing Landscape | John Battelle, co-founder of Wired and The Recount

    Like many things in our country, media is broken – badly. It's hard to know where to start to fix it. Media outlets who once prided themselves on rigor and objectivity are now forced to pander to the biases of their tribal audiences, lest they lose viewers and advertisers to the countless other things vying for our attention. Algorithms help to promote the most sensational and divisive content possible – all while our private data is collected under murky terms. On this week's episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room, host John Dick welcomes John Battelle, a legendary journalist who helped create Wired magazine 30 years ago and has launched several influential companies since then, including The Recount. The two discuss Twitter, TikTok, the future of privacy, and the role advertisers can play in saving media – and saving us from it.

    59 min
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    Ratings & Reviews

    5
    out of 5
    25 Ratings

    About

    The Podcast Where Data Meets Life

    Information

    • Creator
      CivicScience
    • Years Active
      2020 - 2024
    • Episodes
      24
    • Rating
      Explicit
    • Copyright
      © CivicScience
    • Show Website
      The Dumbest Guy in the Room

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