What if innovation were not a mysterious creative gift but a measurable engineering discipline? That is exactly the argument Professor David Cropley of the University of Adelaide makes — and he has the diagnostic framework to back it up.

In this episode of Arkaro Insights, Mark Blackwell talks with David about why most organisations are failing at innovation, where precisely the failure occurs, and what leaders can do about it.

David introduces the Innovation Phase Model, a 42-cell diagnostic matrix that maps seven stages of innovation against six psychosocial dimensions. Administered as a survey across teams and organisations, it pinpoints exactly where the roadblocks are — and consistently reveals the same pattern: most organisations are competent at implementation but struggle badly at the front end, where problems need to be identified and ideas generated before anything can be built.

They also discuss why AI is being deployed the wrong way in most organisations — treated as a product innovation when it is fundamentally a process innovation — and David shares the mathematical proof that large language models are capped at roughly average human creativity. Useful, but not the innovation engine many believe it to be.

The Smith Corona story brings it home: a world-class innovator that went bankrupt because it could only think incrementally when disruption arrived.

In this episode:

• The Innovation Phase Model and the 42-cell diagnostic
• Why structure determines behaviour, and most people are rewarded for exploiting not exploring
• AI as a process innovation being treated as a product — and why that matters
• The mathematical ceiling on large language model creativity
• Three things a new CEO or VP should do first to build a genuine innovation culture

Guest: Professor David Cropley, University of Adelaide Author of The Psychology of Innovation in Organizations (Cambridge University Press)

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidcropley

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What if sustainability weren't a cost of doing business, but its central engine? That is exactly the transformation Juan Aguiriano, Group Head of Sustainability at Kerry, has helped to architect over the past seven years.

In this episode, Juan traces Kerry's journey from its roots as an Irish dairy cooperative to its emergence as what the company calls an impact company, with an audacious mission to reach over two billion people with sustainable nutrition solutions by 2030.

We explore how Kerry's Beyond the Horizon strategy moved sustainability from implicit good practice to an explicit business choice, reshaping the company's portfolio, investment decisions and innovation pipeline. Juan explains the "and equation" at the heart of Kerry's approach: making food that is healthy, affordable, tasty and sustainable, all at once.

The conversation covers:

• How Kerry built its purpose, "inspiring food, nourishing life," through dialogue with tens of thousands of employees worldwide
• The five strategic impact themes driving Kerry's sustainability agenda, from nutrition and climate to responsible sourcing and social impact
• The Evolve programme: how Kerry worked with 3,000 Irish dairy farmers and Bord Bia to create what became the world's most sustainably verified dairy supply chain
• Why extending shelf life through natural fermentation and biotechnology is one of the most cost-effective tools in the fight against food waste
• How the Kerry Health and Nutrition Institute (KHNI) is advancing the science of sustainable nutrition
• The role of digital tools and AI in scaling and accelerating impact

Juan brings the perspective of a realistic optimist: the physical risks facing the global food system are accelerating, yet the cultural shift inside Kerry, where sustainability has become everyone's business, gives genuine cause for confidence.

A compelling case study in how doing good and doing well are not in conflict, but increasingly inseparable.

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What does the science of creativity actually tell us about working with AI? And where does human judgement remain irreplaceable?

Mark Blackwell speaks with Dr Todd Lubart, Professor of Psychology at Université Paris Cité, about his research on Cyber-Creativity and the future of human-AI collaboration in innovation.

Todd has spent his career building rigorous frameworks for understanding and measuring creative potential. In this conversation he brings that evidence base to bear on the questions business leaders are wrestling with right now.

In this episode:

• Why AI excels at divergent thinking but struggles with genuine originality
• Where the quickest wins are in the creative process, and where the pitfalls lie
• The Pick and Mix approach to prompting multiple AI systems for better results
• Why problem definition remains a distinctly human advantage
• The four scenarios from the Manifesto for Human-AI Creativity, including Plagiarism 3.0 and Shutdown
• How rigorous benchmarking transforms the quality of idea evaluation
• The hidden cost of slop, and what to do about it

Essential listening for business leaders in innovation-intensive sectors who want to engage with AI on the basis of evidence, not headlines.

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That famous statistic, that 70% of organisational transformations fail, turns out to have no evidence behind it whatsoever. So says Professor Julie Hodges, and she should know. As Professor of Organisational Change at Durham University Business School, and with 20 years of commercial experience at PwC and Royal Bank of Scotland, Julie is one of the world's leading authorities on how organisations change, and why it so often goes wrong.

In this episode, Mark Blackwell and Julie explore why the tidy, linear models of change that most organisations still rely on are no longer fit for purpose, and what a more honest, people-centred approach actually looks like in practice.

In this episode:

• Why the "70% failure" statistic is a myth, and what we should be asking instead
• The difference between incremental and transformational change, and why it matters
• Why change is messy, emotional and rarely linear, and why that is actually normal
• The critical role of sense-making and why people resist change for good reasons
• Co-creation versus design by committee: how to involve people without losing momentum
• The evolving role of HR in leading organisational change
• How AI is raising the stakes for change management, and what leaders should do about it
• The skills managers need most: empathy, courage, agility and digital fluency

Julie's books mentioned in this episode:

• People-Centric Change
• Managing and Leading People Through Change (3rd edition)

Both are grounded in empirical research and written with practical application firmly in mind.

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Most organisations are asking the wrong question about AI. They're treating it as a technology to be managed rather than a capability that should serve their business goals. The result? An executive vacuum where leadership sees the potential but the middle of the organisation is paralysed on the how.

In this episode, Mark speaks with Charlene Li — one of the world's foremost experts on disruptive transformation and AI strategy, adviser to 49 of the Fortune 100, and author of six books including her latest, Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success.

Charlene's central thesis is that growth creates disruption — and that the leaders who thrive are those who run towards it rather than wait for it to settle.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why you don't need an AI strategy — and what you need instead
• How companies like Nestlé, Marsh, Ally Bank, and Moderna are reimagining work with AI
• The real reason people resist AI (it's not the technology)
• The Playground Paradox and why more constraints can unlock more innovation
• Why your data will never be clean enough — and why that's not an excuse
• How to build the right transformation team, including the one role most organisations overlook
• Why speed is the new competitive moat

About Charlene Li Charlene Li is a world-renowned expert on disruptive transformation and AI strategy with over three decades of experience. She has advised 49 of the Fortune 100 companies, including Adobe and Southwest Airlines. A Harvard MBA and New York Times bestselling author of six books, her latest, Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success, provides a manual for moving from experimentation to strategic value. She is the founder of Quantum Networks Group and previously established the analyst firm Altimeter. Named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company.

🔗 Charlene's website: https://charleneli.com/
🔗 Connect with Charlene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleneli/
📖 Get the book: WinningWithAIBook.com

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45% of teams select a suboptimal solution — even when a better one is right in front of them. Creativity researcher Dr. Roni Reiter-Palmon explains why, and what leaders can do to fix it.

Most teams jump straight to solutions. It feels productive. It looks like progress. But according to Dr. Roni Reiter-Palmon, that instinct is costing organisations their best ideas — before they ever get off the whiteboard.

Roni is the John Lewis Holland Distinguished Professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Director of Innovation for the Centre of Collaboration Science, and President of Division 10 of the American Psychological Association. Ranked in the top 2% of researchers globally, she has authored over 200 publications and is co-editor of the forthcoming APA Handbook of Creativity.

In this conversation, we explore the full arc of creative problem solving — from defining the problem to selecting the solution — and why rushing any part of the process leads teams to consistently underperform.

What we cover:

The 53% finding — In videotaped team sessions, over half of all communication was devoted to defining the problem, not solving it. Far from wasted time, this investment was the single biggest driver of better outcomes.

The 45% problem — Nearly half of teams in Roni's research selected a suboptimal solution from their own generated ideas. They did not recognise an effective idea even when they had produced it themselves. More structure and guidance reduced this to 25% — still a sobering number.

Why AI produces mediocrity — AI compresses the distribution of ideas toward the average. The truly terrible ideas disappear, but so do the genuinely breakthrough ones. If you are relying on AI for creative thinking, you may be trading originality for the illusion of productivity.

The hidden cost of brainstorming — The brainstorming movement did creativity a disservice by equating one phase of the process with the whole. Problem construction and idea evaluation — the phases before and after — are where most teams lose the most value.

Psychological safety as the foundation — Every component of effective creative problem solving, from information sharing to constructive conflict, depends on psychological safety. Without it, none of the other techniques take hold.

What leaders can actually do — Practical guidance on managing the messy middle of collaboration: how to keep multiple perspectives alive, how to prevent task conflict tipping into relationship conflict, and how to know when creativity is genuinely needed and when it is not.

Connect with Roni: University of Nebraska at Omaha: unomaha.edu Email: rreiter-palmon@unomaha.edu LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roni-reiter-palmon-222ba46/

Referenced episodes: Zorana Ivcevic Pringle — Problem framing and emotional creativity Vlad Gl

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Why do sophisticated five-year plans so often fail the moment they hit real-world complexity? In this conversation, Pete Compo—author of The Emergent Approach to Strategy and former corporate director at DuPont—argues that traditional planning isn't just ineffective in today's world, it's actively dangerous.

Most leadership teams operate with LAMO tools (linear, anthropocentric, mechanistic, ordered) whilst the world demands VUCA fluency (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous). The arrival of AI has made this mismatch impossible to ignore.

In this episode, Pete and Mark explore:

• Why five-year plans were never useful—but we can say with certainty they're useless today
• The LAMO trap: why we treat organisations like high-precision clocks when they behave like murmurations of starlings
• The five disqualifiers of flabby strategy: how to test whether you've got real strategy or just goals masquerading as one
• Nested strategy frameworks: cascading logic and interaction, not goals
• The central rule: a rigorous, simple rule designed to bust through your organisation's primary bottleneck
• Distal CEOs: empowering people at the edge to develop strategies based on simple rules
• Why cascading goals create silos: manufacturing optimises for efficiency, marketing for revenue—everyone hits their numbers whilst the organisation fails
• The four-station dashboard: foundational feedback, adherence, progress, and bottom line
• Why AI makes the emergent approach urgent: traditional planning is like flying a modern aircraft using steam-age instruments

Key Quote: "It's not somebody's job to just have a piece of the goal. It's everybody's job to have a strategy framework on how they're going to do their part of the whole."

About Pete Compo: Pete Compo is the author of The Emergent Approach to Strategy and a former corporate director at DuPont, where he spent decades witnessing firsthand why traditional strategy and planning often collapse the moment they hit real-world complexity. His work focuses on helping organisations develop strategy frameworks that actually function in complex, uncertain environments.

Resources mentioned:

• emergentapproach.com – free downloadable resources, examples, and task sets
• PeterCompo.com – Pete's personal website
• Pete Compo on LinkedIn – regular posts on strategy, complexity, and adaptive systems

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Former Akzo Nobel supply chain chief Karen-Marie Katholm on leading 14,000 people through transformation—why soft skills beat technical expertise when navigating complexity.

How do you transform 13 separate supply chains into one integrated operation across 130 manufacturing sites and 14,000 employees?

Karen-Marie Katholm has done exactly that. As former Chief Integrated Supply Chain Officer at Akzo Nobel—and now Chief Supply Chain Officer at Orkla Foods—she's learned that technical expertise is merely the price of entry. The real differentiator is human-centric leadership.

In this episode, Karen-Marie and Mark Blackwell explore:

The Balcony and the Dance Floor Why leaders must understand operations without getting lost in them—and how the Heifetz leadership metaphor transformed her approach

Three Dimensions of Excellence Processes, systems, and capabilities—why most organisations underinvest in the third, and why that's where transformations stall

From S&OP to Integrated Business Management The five-step monthly rhythm that connects supply chain to strategy execution—lessons from DuPont that Karen-Marie has carried throughout her career

Differentiated Supply Chains Why one size doesn't fit all—agile supply chains for demanding customers require different approaches from cost-focused commodity flows

Soft Skills Aren't Soft Gemba walks, listening, and clear narrative—why these matter more than technical prowess when leading global teams

Diversity Drives Innovation How fresh perspectives from engineering trainees surface the questions experienced leaders have stopped asking

Karen-Marie's career spans iconic operations at Lego, the cooperative complexities of Arla Foods, global leadership at DuPont, and executive committee membership at Akzo Nobel. An engineer by training with an Executive MBA in Change Management, she proves that the most powerful tools for supply chain leadership aren't technical—they're empathy, authentic confidence, and the ability to drive transformation through people.

This episode is essential listening for supply chain leaders, operations executives, and anyone navigating large-scale organisational change.

Karen-Marie Katholm is the incoming Chief Supply Chain Officer and Management Team member at Orkla Foods (effective March 1, 2026), joining from AkzoNobel where she served as Chief Integrated Supply Chain Officer. Leading a global organization of 14,000 employees across 130 manufacturing sites, she spearheaded the consolidation of 13 fragmented supply chains into a single, synergistic end-to-end unit.

With over 20 years of leadership at giants like DuPont, Arla Foods, and LEGO, Karen-Marie is a recognized expert in large-scale transformation and digital innovation. Named one of the "Top 10 Women in Supply Chain 2024," she is a champion for human-centric leadership, emphasizing that empathy and transparency are critical tools for industrial excellence.

She serves on the boards of Corbion, Uhrenholt and Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker.

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