Podcasts about agile giants

We'll be back later this fall with another full season of Agile Giants, but I wanted to interrupt our break to share a conversation I had with David Schonthal. David is the Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Business, and the reason I'm interrupting this is he's got a book that came out on October 5th called The Human Element It looks at how resistance to innovation and change can be overcome using some really interesting techniques. I think there are applications obviously, for introducing new products and services, but there are also a ton of applications around how you just create change in many of your larger established organizations, and really drive towards transformation.  Get the book here: humanelementbook.com

There may be no more important topic in 2021 to innovation leaders than how to think about managing and organizing your team. On this week's episode of Agile Giants, I sit down with Stefano Mastrogiacomo to talk about his new book High-Impact Tools for Teams. Show Links: High Impact Tools for Teams (Amazon) Stefano on Twitter Team Alignment website

How do you apply the lean startup methodology to the military? Well, that's the subject of this week's episode of Agile Giants. Pete Newell, whose name may sound familiar because Steve Blank mentioned him at the Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum as the co-author of his upcoming book, Innovation Doctrine. Pete is the CEO of BMNT Inc., a Silicon Valley based innovation consultancy and early stage tech accelerator. He's a retired US Army colonel and the former director of the US Army Rapid Equipping Force. You'll hear on this week's episode a little bit about what Pete's been doing both with BMNT and in the classroom with Steve Blank. And again, just like we did on Steve's episode, teasing this book coming out that I know so many of you are excited about, Innovation Doctrine.

Tim Murphy leads the One SRC Services group within Philips Sleep and Respiratory Care. He joined our Forum to discuss his experience with data based corporate startups and more generally business model transformation. As mentioned last week, we are in the process of sharing all of the videos from this year’s Forum on the 2020 Forum Website. But I also wanted to share a few highlights here on Agile Giants.

Steve Blank & Alexander Osterwalder are world famous entrepreneurs and authors whose work in many ways launched the Lean Startup movement. We had a great conversation at CSL's Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum. We are in the process of sharing all of the videos from this year's Forum on the 2020 Forum Website. But I also wanted to share a few highlights here on Agile Giants.

Joseph's papers have been some of the most interesting academic research on corporate venture capital in recent years. We do (eventually) get to this at the second half of the podcast, but honestly I could have talked to him for hours and kept going down fascinating tangents around how innovation really works in the early part of the episode. Each of these topics could have been their own podcast. I hope to have Joseph back on Agile Giants again soon.

Wil Morgan has been an investment manager, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Now he has a fascinating role inside Jaguar Land Rover around corporate innovation. We have an awesome conversation to start Season 3 of Agile Giants, both focusing on his current work at JLR as well as lessons across his career for traditional and corporate entrepreneurs. One of the things I really appreciated about our conversation was focused on making connections (both internally and externally) Wil was across the innovation ecosystem for Jaguar Land Rover.

Friend & collaborator Laurie Barkman comes back as the first repeat guest on Agile Giants.  Since our first recording, she has launched a consulting firm (SmallDotBig), launched a podcast and returned the Tepper classroom as an instructor.  We have a great conversation on growth and innovation especially in times of transition.  Laurie's LinkedIn SmallDotBig website Succession Stories webpage LinkedIn Succession Stories Podcast Community Mission statement generator

Frontier tech - emerging technologies such as robotics, computer vision and machine learning - are transforming so many of our industries. Established companies need to understand and figure out the right way to react.  On this episode of Agile Giants, I sit down with Vin Tang, the Co-Founder of Samsung's Q Fund. The fund's tagline is: "we're more CVPR, less CES."  Referencing the annual research event, the Conference Of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition versus the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. This is clearly a different type of venture fund, but there are a lot of lessons for other corporate venture investors. 

Optum is probably the largest software company that you've never heard of. It does over $100 billion a year in revenue, but is part of United Healthcare Group. United is one of the six largest companies in the United States and the largest health insurance company in the US. On this week's episode of Agile Giants, I'm joined by Paul Nielsen from Optum. Paul has had a storied career as an entrepreneur and now has brought that mindset to Optum and United Healthcare. He's really a change agent internally and helping the company rediscover their entrepreneurial vision. We've worked together on a number of projects (including the Optum Startup Studio we chat about on the episode). While I knew a lot about Paul and his role, it was a fun conversation about enabling change and driving innovation. Show Links: Optum Startup Studio Paul's LinkedIn Page

One of the thing's I've observed over and over again from the best corporate innovation leaders is how data can be fuel for their innovation programs. On this episode of Agile Giants, I bring on a true academic thought leader on this issue - Rebecca Nugent. Rebecca is a chaired professor in statistics and data science at CMU. She's built some really amazing programs both at the undergrad and graduate level around data science and really across the entire university. She also has partnered with me on some interesting executive education programs. As you listen to this week's episode, let me challenge you to think about how data can be fuel for your innovation programs. Show Links: Integrated Statistics Learning Environment Rebecca's Faculty Page

I’m excited to start a second season of Agile Giants with my friend Matt Fleckenstein. Matt has been a VC, traditional entrepreneur and corporate entrepreneur inside Microsoft and Salesforce.  Matt & I talk about his observations generally across those experiences as well as his current role where he really leads innovation across an interesting portfolio of Microsoft Products including IoT, mixed reality and quantum computing. (Full Disclosure: One of those traditional startups Matt & I co-founded together with two other founders.) 

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 9In this episode, Sean and I discuss Slack. He says Slack has basically been slashed in half – $42 a share vs. $22 a share. Its market cap is $12 billion. Sean says what would these statistics be worth inside Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, or Google. He says that with some of the assets Microsoft has, LinkedIn plus Slack would be a very good combination. Sean says LinkedIn bought Lynda, a corporate education company, for $1.5 billion, but so far it’s been an accretive acquisition.He speculates Walmart has the potential to buy one or two very large companies – including FedEx, which he says would be a good acquisition – and maybe Shopify too. He says we’ll see a further investment in Walmart Labs, including new business models.He then turns to Amazon and AWS. He says he just can’t wrap his head around why Amazon won’t spin out AWS this year. He says he’s seen all the denials from the management team – but it just doesn’t make sense that they don’t want to do this. Sean says how does Walmart feel about cutting checks to AWS? I say that AWS will finish the calendar year with about $38 billion in revenue – placing them among the top seven tech companies.Sean says he’s not an economist, but his conclusion is that often companies are wrong. They often deliver with confidence and that confidence often turns out to be incorrect. The market almost certainly needs to correct in 2020.Sean’s podcast is Agile Giants, and it’s on all the major platforms. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 8In this episode, Sean and I discuss how Disney+ had over 10 million people signed up in 24 hours – and they’re registering 1.2 million downloads a day on the app. He says his wife was one of the 10 million people who signed up for Disney+. And because he has two kids he says you need food, water, and Mickey Mouse.I told him about a guy who used to work for Oracle who said to Larry Ellison, “Hey Larry, we’re doing a lot of stuff here at Yahoo and we got a call from some people at Disney. And they asked if maybe we could discuss the opportunity of doing some things together. I don't know, what should we tell them?” Larry said, “Let’s see, they have the greatest movies in the world, they have theme parks, hundreds of millions of fans around the world, an incredible brand, loyal employees. You know, all these assets you’d die for. What does Yahoo have? Free news and email.”Sean says SAP is reimagining HR the transition from HCM to HXM – in other words, employees first. He says SAP is creating a whole new category, and he thinks that’s not going to be the last thing you’re going to see coming out of SAP.Salesforce and Microsoft were in a bidding war for LinkedIn, and Sean says what felt expensive for LinkedIn now feels awfully cheap with the HCM space heating up.Sean circles back to Disney+ and says the CEO of Netflix should figure out what to do to level the playing field. He says that his currency is down in the last six months, and he has less currency to deals than he did six months ago. Sean knows the history of AOL and TimeWarner. He says the world has changed and you need to scale to play in the game that Netflix and Disney+ a playing out today.The Agile Giants podcast is on all the major platforms. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 5In this episode, Sean and I discuss how he wants everybody to think about themselves as an entrepreneur – and that includes people working inside large businesses. He quotes Jim Collins of “Good to Great” fame by saying good is the enemy of great – and that’s why some entities don’t become great. Sean says that software, when done well, provides asymmetric value, and how Satya Nadella of Microsoft said that over the next five years, 500 million new applications will be written – far more than in the history of the software industry. And finally, Sean says you can go to corporatestartuplab.com and see free tools that are in development – all the Corporate Startup Lab asks for is feedback. His podcast Agile Giants is on all the major streaming networks. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week’s episode, I respond to a question I’m getting more and more from you on social media & via email is: How does each of these different techniques highlighted in Agile Giants fit into a company’s overall growth strategy?  (Or if not that exact question a version of it)  I try to provide some context in this quick episode, but the biggest point is there are synergies across these tactics so it isn’t "build vs buy" but instead "build AND buy"! 

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 3In this episode, Sean and I talk about decision-making, from a couple of angles. First, we explore the choice that giant global corporations have to make when a new opportunity comes along. Namely, do we do this ourselves, or partner up to make it happen? We also affirm that companies can walk and chew gum at the same time— meaning that they need to care about customers AND users at the same time. Sean has a podcast called “Agile Giants,” where he interviews guests ranging from CEOs, CTOs, and VCs to authors. With that unique POV underpinning his thoughts on the subject, Sean tells us that Oracle and Microsoft teaming up together makes for strange bedfellows. Later, Sean reveals that knew he wanted to be a programmer from the age of seven (!!!). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week’s episode of Agile Giants, we’re going to do something just a little different. There’s a lot of questions that I’m regularly asked when it comes to corporate innovation and agile product development. I’ve combined some of those questions with questions that I heard from you on social media and I’ve come up with five common questions that I get.   We’ll see how this works, but if this is interesting to you let me know other questions that you might have and maybe we’ll start weaving these in about once a quarter.  

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 3In this episode, Sean and I talk about how you can walk and chew gum at the same time – meaning that you need to care about your customers AND your users. Sean has a podcast called “Agile Giants,” where he interviews guests ranging from CEOs, CTOs, and VCs to authors. He speaks about how Oracle and Microsoft teaming up together makes for some pretty strange bedfellows. Later, Sean reveals that knew he wanted to be a programmer from the age of seven (?). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is something a little unique for Agile Giants. I was at the IRI Conference and got just a few minutes to sit down with Peter. As you’ll hear on the interview, Peter’s part of a team at NASA that has quite an ambitious mission: to get people back to the moon and then ultimately to Mars.  I’m sure when you think about the projects you’re working on in your organization, they may be characterized as “moonshots” but probably not literally attempts to get to the moon. Show Links: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center  - https://www.nasa.gov/goddard Peter Hughes LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-hughes-b19997/ 

On this week’s episode of Agile Giants, I’m joined by Eric Chaniot, the Chief Digital Officer of Michelin. Most people probably know Michelin as a tire company, but as you’ll hear in the interview, they actually have a number of different divisions focused on mobility.  Eric runs a group that’s responsible for digital transformation across each of these different divisions. Eric had some great perspective on innovation and transformative innovation. Show Links:  Eric’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericchaniot/ Eric’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Force-Within-Technology-Innovation-innovations-ebook/dp/B01NAELV02

This week’s episode of Agile Giants is a little different. A few weeks ago I had a chance to moderate a panel at the 3 Rivers Venture Fair in Pittsburgh, PA.  The panel focused on corporation venture capital, and specifically the corporate venture capital value proposition. We had guests from Covestro, Bayer and UPMC, each participated as panelists talking about how each of their individual companies approached corporate venture. If you’re interested in talking more about Corporate VC, feel free to reach out. It’s an area I’m continuing to explore myself and would love to get other people’s perspective on Corporate VC.

After the last two episodes interviewing two individuals I’d never met but respected from a distance (Beth Comstock & Jeff Sutherland), this week is a little different. I sit down with Dr. Richard Florida — someone who has shaped my career very significantly and I’ve known for over 17 years.   Richard is one of the world’s leading urbanist. He’s a researcher and professor. He has written multiple best-selling books. He wrote the forward to my book “The Science of Growth” but our connection goes back to when he was a professor and I was a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon.   Richard thinks deeply and while his area of expertise is often looked at as focusing simply on location and how cities shape culture, life and work. I believe his research has wide-reaching implications around a bunch of topics. Including how corporations should look at innovation.   Our conversation was after a multi-hour brunch at a local restaurant in Miami Beach. I jump around some trying to hit some of the highlights from things we’d already discussed, plus make sure to cover a few points on his research that I think corporate executives should spend more time thinking about. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode of Agile Giants!   Show Links: The Rise of the Creative Class The New Urban Crisis The Breakthrough Illusion City Lab: America’s Tech Hubs Still Dominate, But Some Smaller Cities Are Rising

For this tenth episode of Agile Giants, we have quite a treat. I'm joined this week by Beth Comstock. Beth is probably best known as the former Vice Chair of GE, specifically leading innovations. She wrote a really transparent book called Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change, which is a really interesting blend of a reflection on her time at GE, the good and the bad, almost a memoir, as well as a nice set of best practices and observations for corporate leaders responsible for innovation. We use her book as a jumping off point for the discussion, but I can't recommend strongly enough you pick it up yourself if you're interested in digging in further. It's available wherever books are sold. Show Links: Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change  (Amazon) (Barnes & Nobel)  Beth's Personal Website

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 1In this episode, Sean and I discuss what innovation looks like in 2019: where it’s coming from, who gets funding for their ideas and how, and why cloud has been so transformative in terms of the business models for entrepreneurs and innovators. Sean also shares his thoughts on the recent story about Lyft and Amazon’s $8-million-per-month partnership for AWS services. (Spoiler alert: he thinks it’s worth every penny.)Sean Ammirati is a partner at Birchmere Ventures, which focuses on both SaaS and consumer internet investments, as well as their Birchmere Labs initiative. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School, and hosts a podcast series called “Agile Giants.”--Explore more in the Cloud Wars series - https://cloudwars.coListen to more episode of Cloud Wars Live - https://bit.ly/2WIYncvFollow Sean on Twitter - https://twitter.com/SeanAmmiratiFollow Bob on Twitter - https://twitter.com/bobevansIT See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week’s episode of Agile Giants, I’m joined by Gustavo Lopez a general manager at MS The Safety Company. MSA is over 100-years old. They historically have sold safety devices, things like portable gas detectors.  Over the last few years, those devices have started throwing off more and more data about the detection that they’re doing. Two years ago made a decision to launch a new startup within the company called Safety IO. Their corporate startup does big data analytics from the data that those devices are throwing off.  I should say for full disclosure, January through May of 2018, a team of my graduate students in my Corporate Startup Lab project course actually worked with MSA to refine the ideas for Safety IO. And at the end of that course, when an MSA decided to push forward, I joined their advisory board. Also, Laurie Barkman (on last week’s episode) is also on their advisory board. While I admittedly am slightly conflicted, I do think this is an amazing story and it’s a perfect illustration of how large established companies are able to leverage their brand and customer relationships to build a new startup inside an existing company. It really would have been challenging for two entrepreneurs inside a startup accelerator to do what Safety IO has done, yet MSA has had a ton of success with it and I’m really excited to be part of it. So even with the conflict, it just felt like a perfect episode to add into our conversation about how large companies can do transformative innovation. I hope you enjoyed this week’s conversation. Episode Links: SafetyIO: https://www.safetyio.com/ CMU Corporate Startup Lab Project Course: https://www.corporatestartuplab.com/course 

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 1In this episode, Sean and I discuss what innovation looks like in 2019: where it’s coming from, who gets funding for their ideas and how, and why cloud has been so transformative in terms of the business models for entrepreneurs and innovators. Sean also shares his thoughts on the recent story about Lyft and Amazon’s $8-million-per-month partnership for AWS services. (Spoiler alert: he thinks it’s worth every penny.)Sean Ammirati is a partner at Birchmere Ventures, which focuses on both SaaS and consumer internet investments, as well as their Birchmere Labs initiative. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School, and hosts a podcast series called “Agile Giants.”--Explore more in the Cloud Wars series - https://cloudwars.coListen to more episode of Cloud Wars Live - https://bit.ly/2WIYncvFollow Sean on Twitter - https://twitter.com/SeanAmmiratiFollow Bob on Twitter - https://twitter.com/bobevansIT See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week’s episode of Agile Giants, I’m joined by Laurie Barkman. I’ve known Laurie for a long time. She ran marketing for a startup that I invested in years ago and more recently she’s been an advisor and mentor at the Corporate Startup Lab that I run at Carnegie Mellon.  We’re also — for full disclosure — on an advisory board together of Safetyio, a corporate startup within MSA, that will actually be featured in next week’s episode of Agile Giants.  Laurie has some really interesting insights into the similarities and differences between startups and large corporate innovation because she’s built startups inside companies as well as worked at startups. I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. Disrupt Book - https://www.amazon.com/Disrupt-Think-Unthinkable-Transformation-Business/dp/0137025149/

On this week’s episode of Agile Giants, I sit down with Sylvia Vogt. Sylvia is the President of the Carnegie Bosch Institute, and a co-instructor of the leading innovation executive education course that I talked with last week at the beginning of Dennis Boecker’s interview. Show Links:  Tepper Executive Education Leading Innovation Course (the executive education course Sylvia & I teach together) About Damian Killen About The Carnegie Bosch Insitute I enjoyed the entire interview, but particularly would call out:  Her definition of innovation vs creativity (starting at 3:03)  How different personalities approach creativity and innovation (6:43) How team leaders should approach innovation? (13:02) How culture impacts innovation? (26:34) 

On this week's episode of Agile Giants, I have Dennis Boecker. In some ways, this is really a continuation of last week's conversation with Terry Lonier. Dennis built one of the innovation labs that she talked a little bit about, the Chicago Connectory. It's a fascinating coworking space and innovation center that I would encourage you to check out if you're in the Chicago area.   Show Links: Chicago Connectory - https://chicagoconnectory.com/ Tepper Executive Education Leading Innovation - https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/executive-education/innovation/leading-innovation/index.html  Follow Dennis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/boecker_dennis?lang=en 

The premiere episode of Agile Giants. Host Sean Ammirati, Co-Founder and Director of the Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab, sits down with author and entrepreneur Neil Soni.     Author of the book "The Startup Goldmine," Neil and Sean discuss the hidden innovation agendas of large companies to grow your business and how Neil's insights apply to both startups and Fortune 500 companies alike.    Show Links:   Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab https://www.corporatestartuplab.com/   The Startup Gold Mine: How to Tap the Hidden Innovation Agendas of Large Companies to Fund and Grow Your Business on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Gold-Mine-Innovation-Companies-ebook/dp/B07C622VRY    Learn more about Neil http://www.neilsoni.com/    Learn more about Sean https://www.seanammirati.com/