Episodios

  • Robots, Revivals, AI Slop, and the Bolt Conference with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

    Robots, Revivals, AI Slop, and the Bolt Conference with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton
    Oct 7 2025
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how an 86-year-old musical is creating a billion-dollar payoff for a bold innovator, how robots are helping 7-Eleven manage the labor crunch, and how AI work slop is damaging the progress AI is promising. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Mile Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have our co-host, Robyn Bolton. Welcome Robyn.[00:00:52] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always.[00:00:55] Brian Ardinger: We were together this week at the Bolt Conference in Indianapolis. This is a conference that's put on by gener8tor, a group of folks out of Madison and Milwaukee, and now I think they run over 300 accelerators around mostly non-tech hubs. They host a conference where they bring together startups and corporates to talk about all the amazing things that are going on. Investors can have a chance to invest in these companies, and two and a half days at the ballpark in Indianapolis to talk about innovations. Love to get your thoughts on it.[00:01:27] Robyn Bolton: You know, the audience they brought together, as you were saying, of startups and VCs, and corporate innovators bringing all together into a very non-traditional space, which I think led to a lot of really interesting conversations. Because everybody was in a different element. And then a great mix of speakers. They had industry-specific keynotes, but then they also had hot takes, which were, you know, a whole variety of speakers giving five to seven-minute single-topic rapid-fire hot takes.[00:02:00] Brian Ardinger: You got to do one of those hot takes.[00:02:02] Robyn Bolton: I did do one of those hot takes, which I just love those little bite-sized nuggets of information and insight and stuff to think about.[00:02:11] Brian Ardinger: A lot of the conversations were with other folks saying, am I crazy, or is the world crazy? [00:02:17] Robyn Bolton: And yes, and we did a lot of reassuring of, you are not crazy. The world is crazy. And you're also not alone. There are other people asking the same questions, and go find the other people. They're not just here at this conference. They're in your organization too.[00:02:36] Brian Ardinger: Some of the themes that obviously were AI and all the new technologies that are changing different parts of different industries. It was interesting to see different industry takes and being in a venue, a lot of times you go to conferences and you hear only about one side or one industry, and it was nice to be able to sit in an audience and see across healthcare and see across ag and see across manufacturing, and see what was resonating.One of the biggest things that's resonating is this idea that opportunity exists where there is dissatisfaction. And there's a lot of dissatisfaction in markets, in the politics, in the world around us. And so there's no better time to start build, try and do some stuff. [00:03:13] Robyn Bolton: The keynote speaker who kicked off the day, Gary Cooper, he just had some great points, and a couple that I wrote down are chaos is not in opposition to creativity, it is the precursor to it.There's so much noise out there, and for each of us to try to be the signal in that age of noise of creating tangible, undeniable proof that better is possible and it's being built. And I thought that was just such a great message of yes, we're all feeling like the world has turned upside down, and the world is crazy. And we all have agency to do something about it, even in our small own individual way. [00:03:55] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, I like that talk as well. I like the fact that he emphasized that startups and founders should be thinking less about their product and solution and more about their impact. I think oftentimes we forget about that, you know, or we start the journey that way, but then you get into the weeds of like, okay, what feature do I have to ship or whatever. And you oftentimes lose sight of the fact of what's the impact we're trying to do here, regardless of the solution we created around it. [00:04:18] Robyn Bolton: In the face of uncertainty, don't despair, build. And I just thought that was a great rallying cry for all of us. Regardless of where we play in this space.[00:04:29] Brian Ardinger: We've got a couple of different articles that we're going to discuss today, as our normal convention suggests. So the first thing that we wanted to throw out, there's an article in Bloomberg called The ...
    Más Menos
    18 m
  • Why Startups Fail & Where Innovators Thrive with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

    Why Startups Fail & Where Innovators Thrive with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton
    Sep 30 2025
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and Brian talk about why startups fail, the best workplaces for innovators, and the digital detox on college campuses. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Mile Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with Impact. Let's get started.Podcast Interview Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have our co-host, Robyn Bolton. [00:00:46] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Glad to be here as always.[00:00:48] Brian Ardinger: We are excited to continue on giving our audience the best insights into what we're seeing. [00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: Let's get to it. [00:00:55] Brian Ardinger: The first article is an article I read in Wildfire Labs called Why Startups Fail Patterns From $2 billion In Startup Failures.In the article, it talks about some of the research that shows that failure patterns are more consistent than success patterns or success formulas, which makes sense. There's a lot more ways to fail and probably a lot more consistent ways to fail than there are ways to win. The article talks about like, how can startups be more focused on understanding where failure points are? And then what can you do about it?They had some research in there. CB Insights took a look at startup failures and revealed that 42% failed due to no market need. 29% ran out of cash and 23% had team issues. So I think everybody can relate to those particular common problems and, and not only in the startup realm, but also in the corporate innovation realms. With that, what was your first take on the article? [00:01:48] Robyn Bolton: My first take was 42% failing because there's no market was like come on. Like step one is finding a problem that's worth solving. It should absolutely not be that high, but also knowing that people tend to fall in love with ideas and not problems, kind of not surprised.[00:02:09] Brian Ardinger: It'd be interesting to see what that number is at the very beginning because actually might be higher than 42% because I think a lot of times we don't hear about the initial idea. Initial idea is probably closer to 90% and that's not right. Yes. When you first get off the ground and it's, you know, 42% by the first or second pivot.Yes. I think that is a common issue. There's so many reasons why I've seen it manifest itself from the standpoint of like, again, you get somebody who's interested in a particular topic or they see something that bothers them and they start going off in a particular solution and don't necessarily realize that may be a problem, but it may be problem number 355 on the list of problems to solve. And therefore, you don't get market traction or enough immediate application to it to trying to solve that particular problems.Doing things like customer discovery and making that a primary part of the first idea innovation efforts is probably a way to help mitigate that particular pitfall. [00:03:03] Robyn Bolton: I always say it's the hill I will die on. Start with talking to your customers or your desired customers and actually listen. You know, ask them open-ended questions and listen. Because I think we also all fall back on like, do you like this idea? And no one's going to call the baby ugly. They know you spent time on it. So you have to ask open-ended questions.And the other thing, and I've seen this come up more and more in conversations that I'm having with other folks in the innovation space, is this realization that a lot of the tools that we use, especially in corporate innovation, you know, business model canvas, lean startup, things like that are actually best used to develop an idea of once you already know that there's a problem. And in the rush that both entrepreneurs and corporate innovators have of like, oh my gosh, we need to like do something, get something out in the market.We have all these tools that are proven that are great for getting things out into the market. We naturally gravitate to the canvases and to the frameworks that are like, this is how you go do stuff. [00:04:06] Brian Ardinger: You can use those canvases in a way, even at the earliest stages, but you have to look at it from the standpoint of like, this is our best guess day one, and these are going to change, and as long as you're open to changing it. The reason why I do like those particular tool sets is that it is a little bit easier to change than, back in the day when you had to write a hundred page business plan and 65 Excel sheets to justify it. At least it's much easier to take a look at a business model and say, okay, ...
    Más Menos
    23 m
  • Corporate Innovation Tactics: When to Cut, Cull, and Create with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

    Corporate Innovation Tactics: When to Cut, Cull, and Create with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton
    Sep 16 2025
    Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front-row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper-uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton. As we discussed, the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Robyn’s book, Unlocking Innovation, is available on Kindle for $.99 on September 18, 2025. Grab your copy today! Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm Brian Ardinger, and today we have our co-host, Robyn Bolton, back. Welcome Robyn. [00:00:35] Robyn Bolton: Glad to be back. [00:00:37] Brian Ardinger: We are excited to be back talking about innovation. We were ranked one of the top 15 corporate innovation podcasts out there, so I'm excited to continue this journey and helping our audience understand this world of innovation for this new format that we've been trying. Robyn came on as a co-host. Anything new going on in your world? [00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: I think you're being very humble. You weren't just kind of in the top 15 podcasts by a hair. You were... [00:01:01] Brian Ardinger: I think we were four.[00:01:02] Robyn Bolton: You were up there. [00:01:03] Brian Ardinger: Yeah. It was a sweet spot. It was nice to be recognized.[00:01:07] Robyn Bolton: Well, and they nailed it.[00:01:09] Brian Ardinger: One of the articles that I wanted to talk about today, and actually was a newsletter of a friend of mine, and people who've listened to podcasts or know of innovation, might know of David Bland.He's the author of Testing Business Ideas, among other things. In his most recent newsletter. He had a little article talking about why most execs regret the projects they didn't cut. The gist of the article was talking about how every executive has a few projects that haunt them, and it's usually the ones that drag on too long and consume too much capital.And we always hear about the winner, so to speak, and or not betting on the winner, but the idea of a portfolio of things that you've got within your corporate environment of things that you should cut or look at. Could it be a big win if we got rid of this thing? How do you prevent that burning capital on projects that you don't want or don't warrant additional investment and time, energy, and money?I'd love to get your thoughts on what you've seen in the corporate environment and this idea of cutting your bets off or making sure that you don't continue bets down the wrong line. [00:02:07] Robyn Bolton: Sadly, I see it all the time. You know, we call them zombie projects. They're the living dead and sadly kind of the people that are staffed on them. Eventually figure it out. And I feel like they become zombies too. Zombie projects eat their brain.The thing is, they are consuming really valuable resources. They're taking up the time of really smart people. They're taking up the funding that could be used to go to another great idea that has better potential.I think back to my early days in P & G's kind of new business development group, in just one single BU, and I think there were probably, at one time, eight different projects, all new brands that were in different phases of development, and ultimately only Swiffer launched nationally and survived for several years.There was another one called Dryel that launched but didn't quite survive the first several years, and then a whole bunch that just petered out, like you kind of had to wait for the next CEO to come in and do the culling that every CEO does. But in the meantime, it was years of people working really hard on things they cared about that just were never going to work. It was heartbreaking. [00:03:26] Brian Ardinger: It's interesting because I think about why does this happen? Because if you're a startup and you're going down the wrong path, you probably don't hear about it because you just kind of run out of runway and it goes away. Where the challenge in a corporate environment is typically you do have some capital that can continue to be funneled in different ways down projects that may or may not be deserving of it.And so, I think one of the traps that a lot of corporates fall into is this, okay, we've sunk costs into it. Let's just keep going with it. We know the expectations. It's not going to be a big win or whatever, but it's not going to be a loser if we get rid of it and branded as a loser, or a minimal amount of capital that maybe it is bringing in, the revenue it is bringing in. It's like, well, why should we get rid of it? It's bringing some revenue versus thinking about it from the standpoint of what if we got rid of that $30-50 million investment that we're making every year and reallocated that into newer things that could have more explosive growth or more opportunities...
    Más Menos
    19 m
  • Handwriting, Hype & The Future of Innovation with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

    Handwriting, Hype & The Future of Innovation with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton
    Sep 2 2025
    Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and MileZero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Interview Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn BoltonBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and today we have a brand-new format. If you've been listening to the podcast for the last eight or nine years, every week I bring in an amazing guest to talk about innovation. I thought we'd try to mix it up and innovate on the format itself. And for the next few weeks, we're gonna have a guest host.My guest host is Robin Bolton. She's been a guest on the podcast a couple of times in the past. She spoke at our Inside Outside Innovation Summit in 2022. She's the bestselling author of Unlocking Innovation, founder of MileZero, and a good friend. So, Robyn, welcome to the show. [00:01:03] Robyn Bolton: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and co-hosting. [00:01:06] Brian Ardinger: We need to innovate. We need to eat our own dog food. So I figured after all these years of interviewing amazing people about innovation, we'd mix it up a little bit, and every week we'll try to bring you some insights into innovation from what we've seen in the field and use it as a way to get your feedback from the audience as well.One of the things we thought about is to talk about innovation and what we're seeing, and so one of the things we do, both Robyn and I publish a newsletter, and we're constantly running into new information sources and new people, new insights into what's going on. Thought the first thing we're going to do is talk about the article of the week or what we've been reading.We have both called together a, a couple of different articles to start the conversation. Since people may not have heard you on the podcast in the past, why don't you give a short intro of how you got into the innovation space and some of your background? [00:01:58] Robyn Bolton: I was lucky enough to get into the innovation space kind of as it was forming, which now saying that makes me feel very old, but coming straight out of university, I went to work at P&G and it's when they were doing the very first iteration of creating new products and new brand teams.And so straight out of school went into a brand team that was working on a new business, and that new business eventually became Swiffer. I got to experience the life of a corporate innovator and all the scars and all the great stories that go with it very early on.Then, you know, a couple meanderings later, you know, meandered into Arkansas, the Walmart sales team meandered up to Boston to get an MBA, meandered over to Denmark to work for a big consulting firm. Then I ended up back in Boston and had the pleasure of working with Clayton Christensen at his firm. Spent almost a decade there working across a ton of industries, tons of different types of organizations, but always on innovation.Then, about six, seven years ago, went out on my own, started MileZero, and you know, have continued the innovation adventure since. [00:03:15] Brian Ardinger: We've talked a lot about some of the past things that you've done and the ability that you have to work across different aisles, to work in the corporate innovation space from the trenches. I think a lot of people talk about innovation, have seen it in various formats, but not necessarily the depth and the breadth that you've seen it. So that's where I'm excited to have you as a co-host on the shows. [00:03:35] Robyn Bolton: Thank you very much. I'm really glad to be here and talking about all this because it's a tough time out there for innovators. You know, whether you're in a company, you're in a startup, you know, you're an entrepreneur, it's tough times and there's always a way through. I think we're relentless optimists, maybe sometimes delusional, but relentless optimist. So it's great to be chatting about it. [00:03:58] Brian Ardinger: One of the articles you sent over was CNBC has come up with a Disruptors 50 List, the top 50 disruptive companies out there.[00:04:06] Robyn Bolton: Anyone hears a list of innovative companies and immediately our heads go to AI and CNBC delivered on that. You know, their number one disruptor is a company that's actually in the military and defense system space using AI. Number two is Open AI. I mean, it's just all the usual suspects, but what caught my attention was that there were actually non-AI companies on there.It was exciting to see that. So, there was Thrive Market. You know, full disclosure, I'm a member of Thrive Market and basically, it's kind of like a membership to get discounts on what's essentially kind of Whole Foods online. ...
    Más Menos
    21 m
  • Lead, Align, and Build what matters with Radhika Dutt, Author of Escaping the Performance Trap

    Lead, Align, and Build what matters with Radhika Dutt, Author of Escaping the Performance Trap
    Aug 19 2025
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Radhika Dutt, author of the upcoming book Escaping the Performance Trap. Radhika and I talk about the challenges with traditional OKR systems and how companies can break free from the performance theater to create a better way to lead, align, and build what matters. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty, join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering business. It's time to get started.Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Radhika Dutt. She's the author of a new book called Escaping the Performance Trap. Welcome. Radhika Dutt: Thank you, Brian. It's great to be here again. We talked a few years ago. [00:00:58] Brian Ardinger: I should say welcome back. Yes, the last time you were on, I think it was episode 273. And you had your first book that came out, which was Radical Product Thinking. And when you said you're writing a new book, and it focused on things like OKRs and goals and how people are misusing that. I said, hey, we need to get her back on to talk about some of the things that she's seeing. So welcome back to the show. Let's get started refreshing the audience a little bit about your background and, and how you got here. [00:01:24] Radhika Dutt: Yeah, my background is I started as an engineer. I did my undergrad and grad at MIT. I started companies and I later went to work at bigger companies and it, it was in so many different industries from broadcast media and entertainment, advertising, robotics, even wine. Oh, and telecom was in there too. Government agencies. It was all over.And so, the one common theme in working across all of these industries, working all of these, at different sizes of companies, the one common theme was I kept seeing the same set of product diseases over and over, and I was learning hard lessons in terms of how do you build good products and avoid these product diseases?And so that's what led me to write the first book Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter. And It's been fantastic, like so many people have read it. It's become the staple when people are building products. And what's most satisfying for me is that really a lot of people describe it as it has changed their mindset, that now they apply product thinking to all sorts of things, even to parenting, to personal life, et cetera.So that's been wonderful to see. Right. But that it's a philosophy of how do you think systematically about products being vision-driven as opposed to iteration led, and let's just throw things at the wall and see what sticks and keep iterating. It was this vision-driven approach. How do you envision, what is the problem you're trying to solve? The end state you wanna create. And how do you systematically drive that change?So, what brings me to the second book? A lot of people who wrote to me saying, you know, just how helpful Radical Product Thinking was, there was also a set of people who wrote saying, you know, I love what you're saying in Radical Product Thinking, but what do I do in my organization that sets all these goals and OKRs and I have all these short term deliverables and that's what I have to focus on.I can't do all of this long-term vision driven stuff. And this question came up to me so many times, I realized we really do need to tackle it. And for a long time, by the way, I was seeing the downsides of goals and OKRs, but for so many years I just didn't know how to articulate for people, why should you stop using goals and OKRs?What's the, what's the problem with them? But most importantly, even if I could say, look, don't use OKRs, the question was always, well. It's the devil I know. What are you proposing instead? You know, I didn't have an answer until I started trying this new approach and it's worked so well and that's what's driving me to write this new book, Escaping the Performance Trap.[00:04:03] Brian Ardinger: What is a performance trap? What are you seeing and how does that show up in organizations and teams? [00:04:09] Radhika Dutt: You know, whenever I talk about the problem with goals and OKRs, people instantly identify one thing, which is we've all been in these monthly cycles where every month for our monthly business review, oh, what are some numbers we can show so that we can show, look, we are achieving these results, things are going well.What actually happens, right? Is for leaders, you think, oh, I'm seeing these numbers. My team is being rigorous in terms of metrics. You wanna see the numbers, you want to see rigor, you want to see progress. But...
    Más Menos
    23 m
  • Product Design Empathy and Context with Wayne Li, GA Tech Professor and Author

    Product Design Empathy and Context with Wayne Li, GA Tech Professor and Author
    Aug 12 2025
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Wayne Li, author of the new book, Design Empathy and Contextual Awareness. Wayne and I talk about the changing landscape of design and some of the important concepts needed to make better products and services. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Wayne Li. He's the author of a new book called Design Empathy and Contextual Awareness: Frames of Reference for the 21st Century Creative. Welcome, Wayne.Wayne Li: Hi, Brian. Great to be here.[00:00:59] Brian Ardinger: Wayne, it's great to have you back. Why don't you give a little bit of refresher of who you are and where you've been? [00:01:04] Wayne Li: Happy to do so. It's been a wonderful journey up to this point. My background is degrees in fine arts and in engineering and product design. Wasn't always a professor, right?I started, besides my collegiate career, working at design firm such as like IDEO product development and Design Edge in Austin, Texas. And then wound up working at Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen as a car designer. So started out as a vehicle engineer doing chassis and body systems. Helping to actually design the infrastructure of a car and then moved into the studio where you draw and sculpt cars.So, for listeners who are interested in that, in that side of the business, you're thinking about the aesthetic of the vehicle, the psychology of the vehicle, its placement in society, and how people use it. People in today's parlance is user experience, right? The user experience of a car. I was at Ford for five years.At Volkswagen I was in the electronic research unit and then I wound up graduate school on the west coast at Stanford University. Was doing what they call interaction design back then, which is human machine interface. What is the interior of the car, how do the controls work, how does the interior look?And so they have an electronics research lab in Western California right in the Northern Bay area that couples with their advanced studio in Semi Valley in Southern California helping design advanced concept cars and things like that. Stanford's work was creating this philosophy, you now know it's called design thinking.Or human-centered design. So that was the very first initial work into how to understand how your creative process incorporates different aspects of your mind. In design thinking, they look at triple Venn diagram, so they look at technology, which is like the engineering side. They would call that say like feasibility. And then they have like the business circle, right? Which is, can we make this, can we produce it? Can we sell it for a profit? Now it would be like it's viability. And then there's the desirability or usability side, which is the art or the, the human element. Do people like it? Is it beautiful to look at? Is it easy to use? All those kind of psychological principles. So, Stanford helped to kind of create that philosophy.Then after that really got into the academia space. I did dabble after graduate school for five years, working at Williams Sonoma as part of the creative staff at Pottery Barn. Home decor products, furniture, all those types of things where we're part of that creative process.Wound up teaching. Taught at Stanford for seven years, and now I'm at Georgia Tech. They've kind of pulled me from the west coast to the east coast. So I've set up a design thinking center here called the Design Block Innovation Design Collaborative. Stanford's where we said that we were the founding class of, was the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, which now people know as the D School. Helped kind of set up a similar center here at Georgia Tech, and I've been teaching here for almost 15 years now. It has been a wonderful journey to shepherd students and creatives and young professionals, and I do consulting on the side, so I do work with Fortune 500 companies to figure out their business processes and things like that, their product mixes, that type of thing. Design strategy, product management, all that good stuff. [00:03:54] Brian Ardinger: You cover so much. Again, you've been in the trenches. You helped teach. One of the reasons I wanted to have you back on is the fact that I think you can give a lot of insights into the real world stuff. Not just, you know, what's happening today and student perspective and that.But I wanted to dive into your new book. There's a lot of design books out there. Obviously, design has ...
    Más Menos
    25 m
  • 50 Ideas that Changed the World of Work with Jeremy Kourdi and Jonathan Besser

    50 Ideas that Changed the World of Work with Jeremy Kourdi and Jonathan Besser
    Jun 3 2025
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Jeremy Kourdi and Jonathan Besser, authors of the new book, 50 Ideas that Changed the World of Work. From the Growth Mindset to Business Model Canvas, we delve into their guidebook for some of the key concepts, models, and frameworks that are shaping business leadership and workplace dynamics. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.[00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have some amazing guests. Today we have Jeremy Kourdi and Jonathan Besser, authors of the new book, 50 Ideas That Change the World of Work. Welcome guys. [00:01:02] Jeremy Kourdi: Hi, Brian. [00:01:03] Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you guys on because the title alone got me intrigued to reach out to you the 50 Ideas that Changed the World of Work. And when I got a copy of it, it, it did open my eyes to all the amazing work that has gone on over the years talking about innovation and workplace dynamics, and leadership. And you've decided to take on the amazing work of like, how do you tackle this mass body of work that all these other people have put together and put it into a book of your own.[00:01:31] Jeremy Kourdi: The first thing is to do it with someone. You'll know this, Brian, you'll certainly appreciate it. That life leadership business, certainly innovation is easier if you have someone that you understand, that you know, that you respect, crucially, that you have a great connection with. I always say one of the great things about rapport and connection is that that then means you can disagree, you can challenge, you can push back. And the other person that you are challenging or disagree with knows you're on their site, knows where you're coming from and appreciates that. [00:02:04] Jonathan Besser: I mean, you know, Jeremy and I have known each other for a number of years. We've worked together, we've collaborated, we've disagreed agreeably, we've argued along the way. But yeah, hopefully 50 Ideas is is the output from that discussion, from that partnership, from working together and I think is a different angle that people will enjoy and use. It'll stand the test of time. [00:02:24] Brian Ardinger: What I liked about it is, again, you talk about emotional intelligence, growth mindset, blue ocean strategy, SWOT analysis, business model canvas. I mean, the list is, is again, 50 plus, first of all, to pull that together, how did you decide which particular ideas were the ones most worthy of going into a book and, and what was the process of pulling that together?[00:02:45] Jonathan Besser: There was kind of a mental all wrestle as you went through. You know, I think Jer and I started with, with a, a long list. And yeah, with the help of our publisher and long discussions between the two of us, we whittled it down to what we thought stood the test of time. You know, what do people want to hear and what would be useful to people from, you know, Sun Tzu's Art Of War, which is centuries old, right through to some of the more modern concepts like Lean In. Samberg's Lead In is very, you really very new.And the the pieces that come in between. That help you understand the, the intention is to give people perhaps the reference book and as a first starting point. You know, the book can be one that is, you can dip into, you know, I just heard about NBTI, let me go into, yeah, to have a look at that chapter, this great reference book, to also the book that feeds through from the 50 different chapters coming through that builds upon concept and idea and references back to itself as it goes along.It was a collaboration of what we both thought. And you know, Jeremy and I have known each other a long time. We've worked well together over all those years, and it was really the way that it came together. We had a lot of synergy and not too much disagreement. [00:03:48] Jeremy Kourdi: The themes we have, I think, are absolutely on the mark, and they, you know, as Jonathan alluded to, as you alluded to Brian, they come out really strongly. And what really interested me was some of those themes. So, you see the rise, particularly over the last 30 years of psychology. Business and leadership. So really not just understanding your customers, which used to be the thing in the eighties and nineties perhaps, but currently it's getting to a level of customer understanding, empathy, customer experience, is the new frontier there.Getting to a level of that insight really, that's really valuable. So, psychology, and not ...
    Más Menos
    22 m
  • Innovator's Journey and Mapping your Progress with Robyn Bolton, founder of Mile Zero and author of Unlocking Innovation

    Innovator's Journey and Mapping your Progress with Robyn Bolton, founder of Mile Zero and author of Unlocking Innovation
    Mar 4 2025
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Robyn Bolton, author of the new book, Unlocking Innovation. Robyn and I talk about the Innovator's journey for unlocking architecture behaviors and culture of innovation and ways you can measure and map your progress. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive. In today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Robyn Bolton, Author of Unlocking InnovationBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Robyn Bolton. She's the founder of Mile Zero and author of the new book, Unlocking Innovation: A Leader's guide for Turning Bold Ideas into tangible results. Welcome, Robyn. Robyn Bolton: I am so glad to be here. Thank you. Brian. Brian Ardinger: Thank you for coming on the podcast. We've been friends, and long-time listeners of the podcast and newsletter from Inside Outside should be familiar with some of your work. You came out and spoke at our Inside Outside Innovation Summit in 2022, but since then you've got a lot of stuff that's happened. So, I wanted to have you on the show to talk about your new book that's coming up today. Yeah. And talk about innovation. And maybe a little bit of background on how you began your innovation journey. Robyn Bolton: So, I began my innovation journey purely by luck straight out of undergrad. After graduating from undergrad, went to work at P&G in brand management and was put on the team that was developing some new cleaning products. And a year after joining the team, we launched Swiffer. So, I was part of that kind of amazing journey of corporate innovation. And all the experiences and the scars and, and all of that. And then kind of fast forward a bit, moved up to Boston, got my MBA, did some consulting work in one of the big firms, but then spent almost a decade at the firm that was founded by Clayton Christensen.Nearly a decade immersed in not just disruptive innovation, but all the different types of innovations that companies do and the challenges that companies face. And then since 2018, have been running my own firm. Mile Zero, which has continued to focus on corporate innovation and really supporting the leaders and the teams who are doing that hard work.Brian Ardinger: You do some great writing and that. If you've followed our newsletter, I try to find the best articles every week to disseminate to our audience, and you come up there fairly regularly. Stuff that I want to... Robyn Bolton: I am always quite honored. Brian Ardinger: Let's talk about writing. So, you have a new book out called Unlocking Innovation. What made you decide to write another book on innovation and what is the secret nugget that you wanted to talk to your audience about? Robyn Bolton: So, I resisted writing a book for a long time because it's like the last thing this world needs is another book on innovation. But eventually I broke through my own resistance 'cause you know, in reflecting on my career in innovation, I realized that like, hey, the Innovator's Dilemma came out in the late nineties and in the 30 years since that happened, the results, the success rate of corporate innovation has not changed. And all that's changed in 30 years is we've kind of had this innovation industrial complex get created of consultants, guilty books now guilty, articles, all this stuff that's grown up, but it hasn't changed the success rate.And I got curious as to why that is. And I think it is because, and this is what the book focuses on. Is that we've tend to take a really siloed approach to innovation. You know, we come in like, you need this team structure, or you need this process, or this governance, or on the other end of things, you know, we need to build a culture of innovation.And the reality is, is you have to take a much more holistic approach, which I call the ABCs, that you need to have the architecture of innovation to the process structure strategies. It's necessary, but not sufficient for success. You also need to be really focused on leadership behaviors and how leaders are interacting with innovation teams, how they're supporting innovation.And you need a culture that, at least at the very beginning, isn't resistant to innovation. So, you need to be working on all three of these things, all of the ABCs all at the same time, but in different ways as the team progresses. Brian Ardinger: I think one of the challenges you find with that is oftentimes if one or two people have been given the mantle of the person who has to figure that out. And this is very ...
    Más Menos
    21 m