Podcasts about smes

Sudeep Bhaju is a Kathmandu-based filmmaker, best known for his documentary “Dimag Ghochne Manche” a powerful documentary chronicling the life and legacy of Ujjwal Thapa. Joining him is Aalok Subedi, a Nepali legal-tech entrepreneur and the CEO of MeroAdda, Nepal's leading legal platform which provides free legal Q&A services, practical legal guides, and compliance tools for SMEs.

Are you thinking about moving into a leadership role?  Here are my top 5 lessons on what I wish I knew before becoming an instructional design manager. 

Allen and Joel are joined by Pete Andrews, Managing Director at EchoBolt. They discuss the company’s new BoltWave inspection device, the shift from routine retightening to condition-based monitoring, and how ultrasonic technology helps operators manage blade stud and tower bolt integrity throughout the turbine lifecycle. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Pete Andrews: Pete, welcome to the program. Good to be back. Yeah. See you face to face. Yeah. Yes. This is wonderful. It’s a really great event to catch it with loads of the. UK innovation that are happening in the supply chain. So it’s, yeah, really nice to be here.  Allen Hall: This is really good to meet in person because we have seen a lot of bolt issues in the us, Canada, Australia, yeah. Uh, all around the world and every time bolt problems come up, I say, have you called Pete Andrews and Echo Bolt and gotten the kit to detect bolt issues? And then who’s Pete? Give me Pete’s phone number. Okay, sure. Uh, but now that we’re here in person, a lot has changed since we first talked to you probably two years ago.[00:01:00] You’re a bootstrap company based in the UK that has global presence, and I, I think it’s a good start to explain what the technology is and why Echo Bolt matters so much in today’s world.  Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as you said, we’re a uk, um, SME, there’s a team of 13 of us based here in the uk. Yeah. But we do deliver our services internationally, but really focused on Northern Europe. Yeah. But increasingly we’ve done more in the US and North America, a little bit in Canada. Um, but our big offering really is to help wind turbine operators and owners reduce the need to routinely retire in bulks. So we have a quick and simple inspection technology that people can deploy, find out the status of their bolt connections, and then. Reti them if necessary, but the vast majority of the time we find that they’re static and absolutely fine and can be left [00:02:00] alone. So it’s a real big efficiency boost for wind operators.  Joel Saxum: Well, you’re doing things by prescription now, right? Instead of just blanket cover, we’re gonna do all of this. It’s like, let’s work on the ones that actually need to be worked on. Let’s do the, the work that we actually need to, and instead of lugging, like we’re looking at the kit right here, and I can, you can hold the case in one hand, let alone the tools in a couple of fingers. As opposed to torque tensioning tools that are this big, they weigh a hundred kilos, and those come with all of their own problems. So I know that you guys said you’re, you’re focused here. You do a lot of work, um, in the offshore wind world as well. Yeah. I mean, offshore wind is where you add a zero right? To zeros. Yeah. Everything else is that much more complicated. It costs that much more. It’s you’re transitioning people offshore to the transition pieces. Like there’s so much more HSE risk, dollar risk, all of these different spend things. So. The Echo Bolt systems, these different tools that you have being developed and utilized here first make absolute sense, but now you guys are starting to go to onshore as well.  Pete Andrews: Yeah, that’s right. So I mean, as as you said, that there’s really [00:03:00] three main benefit areas we focus on. The first one is the health and safety of technicians, right? As you said, some of the fasteners used offshore now are up to MA hundred. So a hundred millimeter diameter bolts,  Joel Saxum: four inches for our American friends. Yeah, absolutely.  Pete Andrews: And they probably weigh. 30 kilos plus per bolt. Yeah. Um, so just the physical manual handling of that sort of equipment and the tightening equipment for those bolts is a huge risk for people. If you think 150 bolts lifting or maneuvering, the tooling around on on its own can cause all the problems. So as well as the inherent risk of the hydraulic kit failing. So occasionally we see catastrophic tool failure. Is, which have really high potential severity, you know, sort of tensioner heads ejecting or crush injuries from Tor. So that is really a key focus for our customers, just to [00:04:00] keep their teams safe, but also you have to be the cost effective and the the major cost benefit we allow is that we don’t have to revisit every bolt and every turbine like you’d have to do if you were retyping. So we believe there’s something of the order of a million pounds per installed gigawatt saving. By moving from a routine REIT uh, maintenance strategy to a focused condition based inspection, you significantly reduce the amount of intervention you make and keep your turbines running more and reduce the boots on the ground on the turbine. So three real kind of, um, key. Benefits for people adopting our technology  Allen Hall: because we routinely see tower bolts being reworked or retention depending on who the manufacturer is. And I’m watching this go on. I’m like, why are [00:05:00] we doing this? It seems, or the 10% rule, we’re tighten 10% this year, and they’ll come back and see how it’s going. That’s a little insane, right, because you’re just kind of. Tensioning bolts up to see if one of them has a problem and then you just do more of them and we’re wasting so much time because echo bolts figured this out years ago. You don’t need to do that. You can tell what the tension is in a bolt ultrasonically, which was the original technology, the first gen I’ll call it, uh, that you could tell the length of the bolt. If the length of the bolt is correct within certain parameters, you know that it is tension properly. If it’s shrunk, that probably means it’s not tensioned properly. That’s a huge advantage because you can’t physically see it. And I know I’ve seen technicians go, oh, I could take a hammer and I can tell you which ones are not tensioned properly wrong. Wrong. And I think that’s where equitable comes in because you’re actually applying a a lot of science simply [00:06:00] to a complex problem because the numbers are so big. Pete Andrews: Yeah, I mean that, that, that’s been the real. Driving force between our offering is to simplify it. So ultimately we’re based on a non-destructive testing technique. It’s an ultrasonic thickness checking technique, but when from the non-destructive testing background, it’s crack detection, people have time, they can be, it’s a very precision measurement. People have to be trained in the wind industry. We’re trying to inspect. A thousand, 2000 bolts a day at scale. It’s a completely different, um, ask of the technology and the way the technology has been developed historically has required too much technician expertise, too much configuration and set up time, and hasn’t delivered on the, on the speed that’s needed to be efficient in wind. And that’s where our bolt wave [00:07:00] unit we’ve, that we’ve developed over the last. 18 months, let’s say, where all of our focus has gone to make it as slick and as easy for a client technician to pick up with minimal training. It’s through an iOS interface. Everyone understands it intuitively. Um, it’s a bit like using the camera app on your phone. You know, you’re just hitting measure, measure, measure, measure, measure 10 seconds a bolt as you move the, um, ultrasonic transducer across, and then the data gets moved. Automatically to the cloud, to our bolt platform. And customers can view it in near real time. The engineer in the office can see the inspections happened. They can see if there are any anomalous bolts, and then there can be communication there and then whether an intervention is necessary. So it’s sort of really changed the way our customers think about managing their, um. They’re bolted joints.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think these are, these are the kind of innovations that we love to see, right? Because [00:08:00] we regularly talk about a shortage of technicians, and this isn’t, I was just learning this this week too, like this is not a wind problem. This is a everywhere problem. No matter what industry you’re in. Use are short of technicians. But we’re seeing like a tool like this is developed to be able to scale that workforce as well. Right. You don’t need to be an NDT level three expert to go and do these things. ’cause there’s a very few of those people out there. Right? Right. We know the NDT people, a lot of NDT people, and that’s a hard skillset to come by. Yeah. This can be put in the hands of any technician. Yeah, a quick training course. Just, Hey, this is how you use your iPhone. You can check Instagram, right? Yeah. Okay. You can off figure. Yeah, have fun. See you at lunch. Um, but they can, they can make this happen, right? They can go do these inspections and you’re getting that, that, uh, data collected in the field. Centralized back to an SME that’s looking at it and you don’t have to put that SME in the field and try to scale their ability to go and travel and do all these things. They can be in the office making sure that the, the QA, QC is done correctly. I love it. I think that that’s the way we need to go with a lot of things. [00:09:00]Uh, and you’re making it happen.  Pete Andrews: Yeah. And it’s a real kind of. F change in mindset for us. So originally when we started Ebot, we were using third party hardware. Yeah. Which required a bit of that specialism. Yeah. A bit of care about the setup of the project, getting multiple parameters configured before you got going. And it wasn’t really something we could put in the hands of a customer.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Pete Andrews: Which meant Ebot scale was limited to what our own team could go and do, and regionally as well. You know, so we’re UK based. Probably 60% of our customers are uk, but now we have this Northern Europe offshore wind is obviously on our doorstep, but then increasingly we’ve done more and more in North America, so we’ve probably been to five or six sites now in North America and expect that to be a growth market because we can, we can now ship the devices over there, give some virtual training help. Uh, [00:10:00] people set themselves up and then that opens up that market, you know, so it’s been a real change in strategy for us, but has allowed us to have far more impact than we otherwise would just try to be a pure service.  Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk about the big problem in the states of a minute, which are the root bushing or inserts that are loose in some blades. When you lose that pushing, you also lose the tension on the bolt that can be measured. Is that something you’re getting involved with quite a bit now because of just trying to determine how many bolts are affected and, and where we are on the safety scale of can we run this turbine or not? Is that something that EE bolt’s been looking into? Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So I, I’d say there’s sort of two halves of what we do. There’s the, there’s the bulk wholesale monitoring of. Typically static connections to eliminate this routine retitling where it’s not needed typically, typically. But then we have these edge cases of certain [00:11:00] connections and certain platforms that have known bolt integrity problems, and we are working with clients to really, um, manage those integrity risks. Blade stud is an absolute classic, you know, sort of, I think almost every turbine OEM on some, if not all of their platforms has got. Embedded risk into their blades, pitch bearing connections. Um, so yeah, exactly as you said, our customers are using the technology for two things really. One is to ensure the bolts have been tightened to the preload that was specified or the target window. And quite often we find there is an opportunity to increase the preload and therefore increase the resistance to fatigue failure. So. You know, particularly on older sites where the bolts perhaps not in the condition they were on day one. Well, they definitely won’t be. Um, when people have gone and retti them, they haven’t got back to where they, they should be.[00:12:00] So we can prove that and increase a bit of that resilience, but then also start to look for the segments around the joint where, um, the bolt might start loosening or failures are occurring, and find areas where they can really hone in. And actively manage risk. And that sort of leads to what we’ve decided to do for the next year, particularly with Blade Stud in mind, is evolve this technology. So whilst it’s also measuring the elongation, we will do a defect scan at the same time. So you’ll monitor your blade stu, um, connection and we’re hoping that we can set the device to flag to you there and then. We believe this bulk has got a defect while you’re here, get it changed out before it fails and, and all the knock on problems, um, from there. Joel Saxum: So what you’re just pointing to there is a, is a workflow, right? So to me that is typical [00:13:00] of some of the amazing, innovative companies in the UK that I’ve run into throughout my career. And that is, you’re a group of SMEs, you know, bolted connections. That’s what you do, right? But then you’re like, hey. If there’s a tool, we could make a tool that would make our lives a bit easier, then it’s like, well, we could make the entire industry’s lives a little bit easier as well. So let’s iterate on that. And now you’re able to send these kits around the world to look at these things. Hey, you have a problem with this specific model. We can help you with this because we know the failure mode and we know how to look for it. Let’s do that for you. Also here, you’re doing bolt bulk measurements. We got that for you. But it all kind of flows back to the fact that Echo Bolt is a team. A bolted connection, SMEs that are making tools and being able to also provide consulting if need be. Yeah. Right. Um, to, to an entire industry. And I think that, um, this is my take on it, right? Wind is stop number one. I think you guys are gonna do a fantastic year, but there’s a lot of, uh, opportunity out there in bolted [00:14:00] connections as well. Allen Hall: A tremendous amount blade bolts being broken from defects in the crystalline structure. What appears to be a more. Rapidly developing issue across fleets that I’ve seen. I went to a farm this summer and the number of blade bolts that were there on the table that were broken on the conference room table was And the whiteboard office. Yeah. Yeah. This one,  Joel Saxum: this one.  Allen Hall: Your hard head is not gonna protect you from this one. It’s, it’s, it was this, um, I couldn’t imagine the amount of time they were spending hunting these things down. And of course, the only way they were finding ’em was they were broken. You like to catch ’em before they break because it becomes  Joel Saxum: a safety risk. Just not too long ago we saw an insurance case where there’s an RCA going on and it is pointing at an entire tower came down. Right. And it is pointing at a mid, mid tower section bolted connection. How often do you guys run into those problems? Or are you contacted by insurance companies or anything like that to, to take a peek at those? Pete Andrews: We haven’t done anything directly for insurance [00:15:00]companies, but we have been engaged by. Engineering consultancies that are doing RCA type activities. Okay. Um, things like at the end of defect liability periods mm-hmm. A customer has, has seen, they’ve had a lot of, uh, issues from an OEM, maybe an OE EM has offered a modification or an upgrade, assessing whether that upgrade is actually solved the problem or not. We’ve got involved in, um, but the tower. Issue specifically. It’s actually very rare we find, um, problems with tower connections, but where we do is often where they haven’t achieved good flange flatness, ah, during installation or the bolts have been, let’s say, left out in the elements for a period and lubrication has been, has deteriorated before the bolt’s been installed. So there are cases out there, but what I would say is. [00:16:00] To think about your whole life cycle, so ensure the bolt’s installed correctly and we can help with that with a QA to say, yes, this torque or tightening method has got you to the load that you want. Do some through life monitoring, but often if you install it correctly, it will it’s operational life. You will have very little concern. But then in the UK market, we’re increasingly getting involved again at the end of life, right? Life extension where life extension turbines are 20, 25 years old. How does an operator make a decision to carry on running without replacing all bots? Um, and that’s where increasingly we being asked to use the technologist just to say, actually the joint is fine. The bolts have run in a good, um, operational envelope. Run them on. Don’t replace a hundred percent of them like you might have been recommended to from your, um, yeah. Turbine supplier side. [00:17:00] Allen Hall: So Pete, if someone’s doing a repower where they’re basically putting a new one in the cell on an existing tower, they’re making a lot of assumptions about all the bolts from the ground up that they’re gonna be okay. And I know we’re talking about that. We’re in a lot of installations where. If the turbine has gone through a repowered or two. So now those bolts are 20 years old. Yeah. And trying to get ’em to  Joel Saxum: 30 35. 35  Allen Hall: 40. Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing. By those bolted connections. Are they just like replacing the bolts? Are they hitting ’em with a hammer again? Is that the, yeah,  Pete Andrews: I mean, they might replace ’em, but you’ve got a problem with the foundation bolts. ’cause they’re obviously often anchor bolts set into concrete, so you have to reuse them and. With the projects, both in wind and in process power industry with the chimney stacks to try and ascertain whether foundation bolts that are set into concrete are still suitable for operations. So look for corrosion losses, look for [00:18:00] defects. Um, so yeah, they’re all things that need thinking about before you just make the snap decision to repower. But I think  Joel Saxum: a lot of that, uh, going back to a couple minutes ago, you were talking about at the commissioning phase, making sure that you have proper qa, QC of how these things were installed day one, and then making sure that before commissioning of a turbine, they’re checked. I think that’s really important. We’re starting to see that in the blade world now too, where we’ve been talking about it for a long time, and now when you talk to operators, they’re like, we’re getting inspections done on the blades before they’re hung. Or at the factory before they’re hung. After they’re hung. Like they want a good foundation baseline. Are you seeing that in the bolted connection world too?  Pete Andrews: Yes. Sort of. It’s just emerging for us. What we’ve found is, so most of our customers are in the operational phase ’cause they are the ones feeling the pain. Yeah. Of the routine retitling work. When they do major components, they sometimes engage us to come and say, can you check [00:19:00] before and after the blade was removed? What was it? Before we took it off from a a bolt load perspective, what is it afterwards? Can you then recheck after 500 hours When we retalk it? And what we’ve seen there often is the initial install hasn’t got them to where they needed to be and they’ve had to go and do the break in maintenance or the 500 hour REIT to get the bolts to the right load. So one of the questions that we have is whether. Some of the defects are actually being initiated very early on in that initial running in period and whether if, if actually you’d taken the time at, at the point of assembly to make sure you were correct, whether that avoids some of the knock on integrity concerns. So yeah, it’s interesting area.  Allen Hall: Well, bolts are what hold wind turbines together and you better know you have the right. Tension and [00:20:00] torque on your bolts to get to the lifetime of the wind turbine and to, and to check it once in a while. And I know there’s a lot of operators I can think of right now in the United States that are sort of doing that job somewhat. I I think they have missed out on opportunities to save a lot of money and to call it echo bolt. How do people get ahold of you? Because that’s one thing I run into all the time. Like, Hey, hey, you gotta talk to Ebol, call Ebol. How do they get ahold of you?  Pete Andrews: So the easiest ways are via our website. Which is echo bolt.com. Um, LinkedIn, you’ll find us at Echo Bolt on LinkedIn. Reach out. Our email would be info@cobolt.com. So any of those route and you’ll, uh, reach me and the team and more than happy to speak to you about any of your faulting concerns or problems. We are, uh, yeah, we’re passionate about your problems.  Allen Hall: Pete, thank you so much for being on this podcast. I, it is great to actually see you in person and see the bolt wave technology. It’s really [00:21:00] impressive. So anybody out there that needs bolt tensioning to checking tools, you need to get ahold of Pete at Echo Bolt and get started today. Thank you Pete. Thanks guys. It’s great to be here.

In this episode of The Product Experience, host Lily Smith speaks with veteran product leader Sean Flaherty about a question at the heart of modern product management: how do you influence without authority? Drawing from behavioural science and decades of experience building products and teams, Sean outlines a framework based on self‑determination theory — the modern science of intrinsic motivation.Through the lens of autonomy, competence and relatedness, Sean explains why traditional command‑and‑control leadership undermines creativity and accountability. He shows how true autonomy is structured freedom, how competence is demonstrated through behaviour, and how relatedness builds trust and advocacy among teams and users. Along the way he reframes accountability as something teams hold themselves to, not something enforced by fear, and discusses how leaders can help teams grow, adapt and thrive in a world of constant change.Chapters00:00 — Introduction & central question01:30 — Guest background04:45 — State of leadership today06:10 — Intro to intrinsic motivation08:40 — The “code” of motivation12:28 — Autonomy in teams17:11 — Competence and product work20:30 — Observable behaviour and growth paths23:10 — Adaptability and learning culture24:25 — Accountability misunderstood27:04 — Accountability spectrum31:21 — Addressing negative behaviour36:19 — AI and leadership change38:01 — Leadership trends todayKey Takeaways— Motivation is scientific, not abstract— Product leaders need to understand the science of intrinsic motivation — not just processes or tools — to influence without authority and achieve sustainable outcomes.— Three core motivators drive behaviourAutonomy: people need meaningful choice, not chaos or micro‑managementCompetence: motivation increases when people feel capable and are supported to growRelatedness: connection and shared purpose power trust, loyalty and advocacy— Autonomy is structured freedom: Autonomy is not “do whatever you want”. It's about balancing freedom with guidance so teams can be creative but not lost.— Competence is observed in behaviour, not checklists: Real competence shows up in behaviour — what people do — not just knowledge or titles.— Accountability emerges, not enforced: Traditional accountability relies on fear and external control. In contrast, self‑accountability arises when goals are meaningful and environments allow peopleOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Doing more, faster, better with less has become the permanent setting in modern business. Post-pandemic, with tighter budgets, higher customer expectations, and AI speeding up competitors, leaders can't rely on "the boss with the whiteboard marker" to magically produce genius ideas on demand. You need a repeatable innovation system that draws out creativity from the whole organisation—especially the people closest to customers. Below is a practical nine-step innovation process leaders can run again and again, so innovation becomes a habit—not a lucky accident.  How do leaders define "success" before trying to innovate? Innovation gets messy fast unless everyone is crystal clear on what "good" looks like. Step One is Visualisation: define the goal, the "should be" case, and what success looks like in concrete terms—customer outcomes, cost, quality, time, risk, or growth. In practice, this is where executives at firms like Toyota or Unilever would translate strategy into a shared target: "Reduce onboarding time from 14 days to 3," or "Increase repeat purchase by 10% in APAC by Q4." Compare that with many SMEs where the goal is vague ("be more innovative") and the team sprints hard in random directions. Do now (mini-summary): Write a one-sentence "should be" target and 3 measurable success indicators (KPI, timeline, customer impact). Align the team before you chase ideas. What's the fastest way to gather the right facts without killing creativity? Great ideas come from great inputs, and Step Two is Fact Finding—collect data before opinions. Leaders should separate "facts" from "feelings" by digging into who/what/when/where/why/how. This is where many organisations discover their measurement systems are weak—or worse, wrong. In the US, you might lean on product analytics, A/B testing, and voice-of-customer tools. In Japan, you'll often combine frontline observation (genba thinking) with structured reporting—useful, but sometimes filtered by hierarchy. Either way, don't judge yet. Just get the evidence: customer complaints, churn reasons, sales cycle delays, defect rates, staff turnover, and time wasted in approvals. Do now (mini-summary): Collect 10 hard facts (numbers, patterns, examples) and 10 "customer voice" quotes. No solutions yet—just reality. How do you frame the real problem so you don't solve the wrong thing? The way you state the problem determines the quality of the ideas you'll get. Step Three is Problem (or Opportunity) Finding: clarify what's actually holding you back, where resources leak, and what success constraints exist. This is harder than it sounds. Ask five people the main problem and you'll get eight opinions—especially in matrixed multinationals or fast-moving startups. Use smart problem framing techniques: "How might we…?", "What's the bottleneck?", "If we fixed one thing this quarter, what would move the needle?" Compare Japan vs the US here: US teams may jump to action quickly; Japan teams may seek consensus early. Both can miss the root cause if the framing is sloppy. Do now (mini-summary): Rewrite your problem three ways: customer-impact, process-bottleneck, and cost-leakage. Pick the clearest, most actionable version. How do you run ideation so the loud people don't crush the good ideas? Step Four is Idea Finding, and the golden rule is: no judgement, chase volume, and do it in silence. This is where most leaders accidentally sabotage innovation—someone blurts an idea, the "bolshie" confident voices start critiquing, and the timid thinkers shut down. Silent idea generation (think brainwriting rather than brainstorming) helps deeper thinkers contribute and reduces status bias—critical in hierarchical cultures and in teams where junior staff defer to seniority. If you want better ideas, ask the people closest to the coal face: new hires, customer support, frontline sales, and the group that best matches your buyers' profile. Often they see problems the C-suite never touches. Do now (mini-summary): Run 10 minutes of silent brainwriting: each person writes 10 ideas. No talking. Then collect and cluster ideas by theme. How do leaders choose the best ideas without politics or "rank wins"? Step Five is Solution Finding—now you're allowed to judge, but you must judge fairly. The risk here is predictable: seniority dominates, juniors defer, and the "easy consensus" becomes a polite rubber stamp. Use a structured selection method: score ideas against agreed criteria (impact, effort, speed, risk, customer value). Borrow from frameworks like Stage-Gate, Lean Startup (testable hypotheses), and even RICE scoring (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort). Compare sectors: in B2B, feasibility and implementation risk often weigh more; in consumer markets, speed and customer delight can dominate. The point is to remove the "who said it" factor. Do now (mini-summary): Build a simple 4-criteria scorecard and rank the top 10 ideas. Make scoring anonymous if hierarchy is distorting decisions. How do you get buy-in and actually execute innovation in the real world? Ideas don't win—execution wins, and Steps Six to Nine turn creativity into results. Step Six is Acceptance Finding: sell the idea internally for time, money, and people. Step Seven is Implementation: define who does what by when, with budget and resources. Step Eight is Follow Up: check progress early so you don't discover the team is zigging when you needed zagging. Step Nine is Evaluation: did it work, was it worth it, and what did we learn? In 2025-era organisations, this is also where AI can help: drafting business cases, mapping risks, creating implementation plans, and summarising learnings—without replacing leadership accountability. Startups might run faster experiments; conglomerates might need governance and change management. Either way, the process keeps you moving. Do now (mini-summary): Assign an owner, set a 30-day milestone, and define the success metric. Review weekly. Capture learnings as you go. Final wrap-up A surprising number of companies still have no shared system for generating ideas—so innovation depends on mood, meetings, or the loudest voice in the room. A repeatable nine-step process creates better ideation, stronger decision-making, and cleaner execution. Run it consistently, and innovation becomes part of your organisational DNA—not a once-a-year workshop. Quick next steps for leaders Pick one business pain point and run Steps 1–4 in a 60-minute session this week. Use silent idea generation to protect the deeper thinkers. Score ideas with a simple rubric to avoid politics. Pilot one idea in 30 days, then evaluate and repeat. FAQs Is brainstorming or brainwriting better for innovation? Brainwriting usually beats brainstorming because it reduces groupthink and status bias. Silent idea generation produces more ideas and more diverse ideas in most teams. How long does the nine-step innovation process take? You can run Steps 1–5 in a half-day and Steps 6–9 over 30–90 days. The timeline depends on complexity, risk, and resources. What if leadership won't support the idea? Treat Step Six like a sales process—build a business case and show trade-offs. If you can't win resources, scale the idea down into a testable pilot.   Author credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan. 

Banking innovation usually gets reduced to apps and features.But the real changes are happening underneath.In this episode of Couchonomics with Arjun, Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank, joins the couch to talk about how challenger banks are actually rebuilding SME banking in the UK.Richard breaks down why established SMEs need a very different banking model, why go-to-market is harder than building the technology, and how value, trust, and low cost structures become the real advantage over time.The conversation moves through how digital banking has matured in the UK, what open banking really delivers today, how AI is being used inside regulated banks, and where stablecoins and tokenised money actually make sense and where they do not.An honest discussion on SME credit gaps, the limits of the super-app idea, the role of humans in an AI-led bank, and what the next decade of challenger banking could realistically look like.

Submarine and A Roach, Nigeria's funniest podcast and the #1 comedy podcast in Nigeria, presents “2026 Predictions: Nostradamus vs Adeboye,” hosted by Mayowa, TMT, and Koj.Quatrains meet altar calls as the boys translate two very different prophets for 2026. Nostradamus' “thunderbolt” and “blood flowed” are remixed into cancel-culture hazards and pregnancy hopes.Pastor Adeboye's 2026 notes include: “more remarkable than 2025,” stronger winds, more opportunities, less hunger, SMEs blooming, a touch of reverse JAPA, fewer chances of major war, and a hurricane watch; they become a point of contact for hope and survival.From there, it's culture and sport: paying athletes on time (and why “disgrace the shameless” sometimes works), the art of grooming your kids into your football club, and a bold World Cup prophecy that has Declan Rice polishing a Ballon d'Or.Music heads get a Wizkid × Asake temperature check, while politicians get roasted for their palatial interior design choices and Ozempic.Farmers and the Middle Belt get their flowers, Harmattan gets side-eyed, and 2026 car lots are predicted to invent saner payment plans, because everybody deserves a clean whip.Personal prophecies land too: one truly viral guest, at least one live show, crypto finally paying rent, a 15-minute comedy taping, pickleball and squash supremacy, and, Insha'Allah, IG-approved abs. It's predictions, prayers, hot takes, and practical optimism, the Submaroach way.

In this episode, Nathan Fabian, Chief Sustainable Systems Officer at the PRI, explores how global policy frameworks are evolving to unlock private capital for sustainable development. He is joined by Helena Viñes Fiestas, Commissioner at the Spanish Financial Markets Authority and Co-Chair of the Taskforce on Net Zero Policy, and Eric Usher, Head of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and PRI Board member.The discussion focuses on the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville and the significance of Paragraph 34 of the Seville Commitment, a milestone recognising the role of well-functioning financial markets in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals.OverviewAs public finance comes under pressure, governments are increasingly focused on creating enabling environments that attract long-term private investment, particularly in emerging and developing economies.Helena and Eric explain why Paragraph 34 marks an important shift: embedding issues such as transparency, disclosures, taxonomies and market integrity into a multilateral development framework. They discuss how this convergence of development, climate and financial policy could help mobilise capital at scale, if implemented effectively.Detailed coverageFrom development aid to market-based solutionsEric explains how financing for sustainable development has traditionally focused on public finance, debt and governance, but is now recognising the need for private capital and functioning financial markets to deliver long-term outcomes.Policy momentum beyond Europe and North AmericaHelena shares findings from the Taskforce on Net Zero Policy, showing that most new sustainable finance policies adopted last year emerged outside Europe and North America, particularly across Asia-Pacific. She highlights why global companies and investors will increasingly need to align with these frameworks.What's inside Paragraph 34The guests outline how Paragraph 34 references a broad set of tools, from sustainability disclosures and taxonomies to market transparency, covering environmental and social objectives across the SDGs.Development banks, DFIs and private capitalBoth guests reflect on the growing role of development finance institutions (DFIs) in de-risking investments and creating pathways for pension funds and asset managers to invest in emerging markets.Taxonomies and interoperabilityWith over 50 taxonomies now in development globally, the discussion explores why interoperability, rather than a single global standard, is essential for attracting international capital while reflecting local economic realities.From policy design to implementationHelena highlights lessons from Europe's experience: the need for better engagement with industry, tailored approaches for SMEs, capacity building for supervisors, and a stronger balance between incentives and regulation.The responsibility of investingIn closing reflections, Eric emphasises dynamic materiality and the role of science in understanding long-term risk, while Helena highlights the growing responsibility of investors, and citizens, to align capital with sustainable outcomes.For more information on the compromiso de sevilla, see our...

In this episode of The Product Experience, Mariah (Executive Director of Product at The Atlantic) discusses the often-vague transition from being a great Product Manager to becoming an effective manager of people. Drawing on her background as a journalist, Mariah explores how empathy and storytelling translate into product leadership. She deep-dives into using the Reforge PM Competency Model to remove subjectivity from performance reviews, fostering growth through "Development Conversations," and integrating AI into the PM workflow without losing the human touch.Chapters[0:00] The Pitfalls of People Management[1:15] Mariah's Origin Story: From Journalism to Product[3:24] Product Goals at The Atlantic[4:14] Transferable Skills from Journalism[6:08] The Evolution of the News Product Industry[8:40] Why Product Leaders Struggle with Management[13:12] The Reforge Competency Framework[15:13] Running 6-Week Development Conversations[21:20] Linking Development to Pay and Promotions[22:58] Managing the Human Element of Performance[26:12] Addressing Burnout and Imposter Syndrome[28:58] Upskilling Teams in the Era of AI[31:40] AI Disruption in the News Industry[33:01] Closing and ResourcesKey Takeaways— Journalism as a Product Foundation: Skills like active listening, asking the "question behind the question," and storytelling are directly transferable to discovery and stakeholder management.— The "Liking" Trap: Effective management isn't about being liked; it is about challenging your team. Radical transparency often leads to more long-term gratitude than avoiding uncomfortable conversations.— Structured Development: Using a competency framework turns vague performance evaluations into objective, actionable growth plans.— The 6-Week Pulse: Dedicated "Development Conversations" every six weeks help track progress and adjust goals in real-time, far beyond the utility of an annual review.— Protecting Focus: "Focus Fridays" (no-meeting days) are essential for PMs to escape the "weeds" and execute high-value work.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this episode of the Influence Global Podcast, host Gordon Glenister speaks with Kristian Downer, Director of Dowsocial Marketing, about how B2B businesses can use LinkedIn thought leader ads to become more visible, build trust and ultimately generate revenue. Kristian shares how he moved from a “portfolio career” and full-service agency into specialising in LinkedIn ads, why thought leader ads are such a powerful (and often more affordable) option for SMEs, and how using your personal profile in paid campaigns can open doors that traditional sales teams have been knocking on for years. They discuss what kind of content actually works as a thought leader ad (hint: it doesn't look like an ad), what to absolutely avoid on LinkedIn, and how behind-the-scenes and more human content fits into the mix. Kristian also lifts the lid on his upcoming six-week Thought Leader Ads Bootcamp, designed to help business owners and marketers build, run and optimise their own campaigns without blowing the budget on agency fees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For SMEs and startups, things are always changing—new projects, growing teams, and evolving products. Amidst this growth, cybersecurity often takes a backseat. However, protecting your business from cyber threats is more important than ever.In this episode, Anh Pham, Director of Penetration Testing and Security at Trava, explains how a robust Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework can help businesses stay secure. He also discusses how Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) and Vulnerability Management as a Service (VMaaS) offer ongoing protection and risk management without the need for a full-time security team.Anh shares how partnering with cybersecurity experts can give you peace of mind, letting you focus on your business while staying ahead of potential threats. Tune in for practical advice on implementing CTEM, PTaaS, and VMaaS to ensure your business is safe and secure.Key takeaways:The role of PTaaS and VMaaS in continuous protectionThe benefits of partnering with cybersecurity expertsPractical steps to implement CTEM, PTaaS, and VMaaSWant to know exactly what to look for in a PTaaS provider? We've outlined everything you need to know in this guide: https://travasecurity.com/understanding-ptaasEpisode highlights:(00:00) The aspects of a robust CTEM strategy(01:15) Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS)(02:29) Vulnerability Management as a Service (VMaaS)(03:42) Why you need PTaaS and VMaaS in your CTEM framework(06:32) How to start small with CTEM(07:48) Making continuous cybersecurity affordable for SMEs and startupsConnect with the host:Jara Rowe's LinkedIn - @jararoweConnect with the guest:Anh Pham's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anhpham11/Connect with Trava:Website - www.travasecurity.comBlog - www.travasecurity.com/learn-with-trava/blogLinkedIn - @travasecurityYouTube - @travasecurity

Product managers are saving hours with AI, yet feel more uncertain than ever about whether their products will succeed. What's going on?In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver sit down with Axel Sooriah, product management evangelist at Atlassian, to unpack the findings from a large-scale survey into the state of product management today.Axel shares why so many teams are stuck on the hamster wheel of execution, how cross-functional collaboration still breaks down in practice, and why 84% of product managers doubt their products will succeed despite loving the craft. The conversation explores the real reasons behind PM anxiety, the role of leadership in creating confidence, and how reframing work around customer progress can re-energise teams.Chapters00:00 – Money, motivation, and product work01:12 – Axel Sooriah's product background02:16 – What a product management evangelist does05:38 – Why Atlassian ran the state of product management survey07:01 – AI productivity and the strategy time paradox11:32 – The hamster wheel of execution14:01 – Leadership, incentives, and product manager agency16:16 – Using AI in customer discovery18:17 – Cross-functional collaboration in practice22:06 – Why 84% of product managers doubt success26:16 – Discovery, evidence, and decision-making confidence28:47 – Fear and curiosity in the age of AI30:50 – Getting started with AI as a product manager32:54 – Profit focus and product team motivationOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this episode, Apron founder Bogdan Uzbekov explains how he built a 100+ person payments team, created a culture where people “do the work of their lives”, and why his 10-year vision includes building something in space. For UK bookkeepers, accountants and small business owners, this is a practical masterclass in leadership, team culture and modern business payments. The way you build your team and choose your technology stack directly affects cash flow, client experience and your capacity to grow. Bogdan shares what he learned in almost a decade in payments, how Apron was designed around accountants and bookkeepers, and the leadership principles he uses to scale quickly without losing quality. By the end of this episode, viewers will understand how high-growth fintech thinking can be applied inside a small UK bookkeeping practice. Hosted by Jo Wood and Zoe Whitman from The 6 Figure Bookkeeper, this Leadership Takeover Session connects real founder experience with the day-to-day reality of running a modern practice. Bogdan has spent nearly 10 years in payments, built Apron from concept to a fast-growing funded company, and now leads a team serving SMEs, accountants and bookkeepers across the UK. In this conversation, Jo and Zoe explore how Bogdan moved from a background in physics and research into startups and payments, why he chose the pace of entrepreneurship over a PhD, how Apron evolved from a simple frustration with broken business payments into a platform used by practices and their clients, what it really takes to grow a team from the first hire to over 100 people, how to design team culture deliberately so people can thrive, why he openly says “I love hustle” and how he balances that with family life, and his long-term ambition to “do something in space”. Bogdan is clear that great products are built by great teams. He explains why hiring is “really hard”, how Apron uses structured culture-led interviews, why values and learning speed matter more than technical skill alone, and why founders must eventually let go of control to allow new leaders to step forward. For UK bookkeepers, this offers a blueprint for moving from a solo practice to a small, high-impact firm. Apron is a business payments platform that helps small businesses pay suppliers and staff while keeping accountants and bookkeepers at the centre of the workflow. Bogdan Uzbekov is Apron's founder and currently leads a 100+ person team building payment infrastructure for UK SMEs. Platforms like Apron allow UK bookkeepers to centralise outgoing payments, improve visibility over cash flow, and introduce more structured client processes. Get started with Apron for free at https://getapron.com/?utm_source=6fb ----------------------------------------------- About us We're Jo and Zoe and we help bookkeepers find clients, make more money and build profitable businesses they love. Find out about working with us in The Bookkeepers' Collective, at: 6figurebookkeeper.com/collective ----------------------------------------------- Promotion This video contains paid promotion. ----------------------------------------------- Disclaimer The information contained in The Bookkeepers' Podcast is provided for information purposes only. The contents of The Bookkeepers' Podcast is not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of the Bookkeepers' Podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of the Bookkeepers' Podcast. The 6 Figure Bookkeeper Ltd disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of the Bookkeepers' Podcast.

As part of Digital December 2025, in partnership with Laxmi Sunrise Bank Limited, this episode explores how Nepal's digital payment infrastructure is shaping the way money moves across the economy from everyday transactions to enterprise and national-level systems. This conversation brings together two key perspectives from Nepal's digital payment ecosystem: Manoj Thapa, Country Head – Visa Nepal, sharing a global view on payments, cross-border commerce, and how international networks connect Nepali businesses to the world. Munni Rajbhandari, COO – Nepal Clearing House Ltd. (NCHL), explaining the national payment rails, enterprise payment systems, and the infrastructure that processes millions of transactions every day. Together, they discuss Nepal's journey from manual, paper-based processes to a digitally connected payment ecosystem — and why the focus is now shifting from building infrastructure to driving adoption, trust, and customer experience. In this episode, you'll learn: How money moves across banks, businesses, and platforms in Nepal What large-scale digital payment volumes reveal about the economy How enterprises and SMEs manage salaries, vendors, taxes, and disbursements digitally Why global payment connectivity matters for tourism, exports, and IT services How digital transaction data builds trust, creditworthiness, and future financial access Why security, standards, and financial literacy are critical as digital payments scale Whether you're a business owner, financial professional, policymaker, or someone who pays digitally every day, this episode helps you understand where Nepal's digital payment system stands today — and where it's headed next. Timestamps 00:00 – Welcome to Digital December | Episode 2 02:00 – Why Digital Payments Matter for Nepal's Economy 05:00 – Nepal's Leapfrog Journey into Digital Payments 07:00 – Women Leadership in Nepal's Fintech Sector 10:00 – What Visa Really Does Beyond Cards 14:00 – Connecting Nepal to Global Money Movement 18:00 – Tourism, Remittance & Early Payment Advantage 23:00 – How Government Payments Went Fully Digital 27:00 – From Cheques to Instant Dividends & Salaries 30:00 – Digital Payments Growth: Data vs Reality 35:00 – What Is NPI? Nepal's Payment Backbone Explained 38:00 – APIs, Account Validation & Secure Transfers 42:00 – Why Trust & Security Come Before Scale 45:00 – Corporate Pay & Enterprise Payments for SMEs 49:00 – How Nepali Businesses Can Accept Global Payments 56:00 – Why SMEs Struggle with Digital Adoption 01:02:00 – Payment Gateways, Aggregators & Automation 01:14:00 – How Digital Payments Build Credit History 01:26:00 – Fraud, Awareness & Consumer Protection 01:44:00 – Final Takeaways: The Future of Digital Nepal  

Great partnerships can make all the difference.In this episode of The Greener Way, host Michelle Baltazar talks with Yossi Kraemer, co-head of capital partnerships and director of funds management at Salter Brothers.In the year where the future of sustainable investing was hotly debated following greenwashing claims and reversal of climate policies in the US, Salter Brothers defied general sentiment and partnered with Kilara Capital to launch KSB Sustainable Investments. Why now, and what are the results?Yossi explains the merits of sustainability and the impact of decarbonisation, electrification, and sustainable technologies on investment returns and how SMEs operate.00:30 Guest Introduction: Yossi Kraemer00:56 Background of Salter Brothers01:48 The fund behind major hotel brands and boutiques02:52 Teaming up with Kilara Capital04:26 Growth opportunities and market trends05:43 Electrification and energy efficiency06:34 Investor returns and risksThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

We flagged this last episode—now let's get practical about evidence. Modern presenters face two problems at the same time: we're in an Age of Distraction (people will escape to the internet, even while "listening"), and an Era of Cynicism(audiences are more sensitive than ever to whether information is valid).  Why is evidence more important now than ever? Because opinion won't hold attention—and it won't survive cynicism. If your talk is mostly "editorial" (your views), people either disengage or multitask. If you don't provide concrete insights backed by proof, hands reach for phones fast.  Do now: Audit your draft. Highlight anything that is "opinion" and ask: "Where's the proof?"  What makes evidence credible in the "Era of Cynicism"? Credibility comes from quality and transparency: use highly credible sources, use multiple sources, and explain how findings were assembled. Your own research can help, but it may be greeted with doubt if you can't explain your method. The point is to make listeners feel: "This is checkable."  Do now: If you cite your own research, add one line on how it was done (sample, method, timeframe).  What are the best types of evidence to use in presentations? Use the DEFEATS framework to choose evidence that convinces busy, skeptical audiences. DEFEATS is a checklist of evidence types you can use to prove what you're saying is true: Demonstration, Example, Facts, Exhibits, Analogies, Testimonials, Statistics.  Do now: For each key point in your talk, pick at least one DEFEATS proof type (two if the audience is skeptical).  What does each DEFEATS evidence type mean (and how do you use it)? Each type does a different job—so match the type to the point you're making.  D — Demonstration: show something physically or on-screen (software/audio/video) that reinforces your point. It must be congruent with the message.  E — Example: choose examples that are relevant to the audience—same industry, similar organisation size—so people can relate.  F — Facts: facts must be provable and independently verifiable. A claim is not a fact. If you use graphs, display the data source clearly (people like knowing they could verify it).  E — Exhibits: show a physical object (or image). Make it easy to see: hold it around shoulder height, keep it still.  A — Analogies: simplify complexity by comparing two unrelated things (e.g., flight takeoff/landing vs speech opening/closing).  T — Testimonials: social proof adds credibility—especially when it comes from recognised experts. It's not the primary proof, but it strengthens belief.  S — Statistics: third-party stats are strongest; your own stats are fine, but less convincing without independent numbers too.  Do now: Add sources to your slides (small but visible). Make "checkable" part of your credibility.  What's the biggest evidence mistake presenters make? Using examples the audience can't relate to—or presenting "facts" without checkable sourcing. A senior executive using examples from a major organisation can miss the room if the audience is SMEs. And if you show graphs without citing where the data came from, you quietly trigger doubt.  Do now: Ask, "Is my example their world?" If not, swap it for one that matches audience size/industry.  Conclusion In today's distracted and cynical environment, evidence is what keeps people with you to the end. Design your key points, then deliberately "match" each one with credible proof—preferably multiple sources—using DEFEATS as your checklist. Do that, and you'll hold attention and trust at the same time.  Author Credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012).  As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results.  He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業) and Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人). Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business

Send us a textStrategy comes alive when the economy is viewed like a chessboard. We reframe Nigeria's markets across 64 squares, where each square represents an industry and each piece mirrors a real actor: kings as policy institutions, queens as visionary industrialists, rooks as powerful conglomerates, bishops as diagonal innovators, knights as agile dealmakers, and pawns as the countless SMEs pushing toward promotion. What looks like a flat board hides a layered terrain of liquidity, regulation, and technology—tilts that speed up some moves and slow others.We unpack how colonial openings constrained the early game and how today's middle game is defined by consolidation, alliances, and vertical integration across cement, energy, finance, logistics, and telecoms. From diversification to innovation leaps, we explore the tactics that build durable advantage in Nigeria's economy: strategic castling through public–private partnerships, surviving regulatory ambushes like sudden forex or tax changes, and the long march of promotion as startups scale into regional leaders. We highlight the role of industrialists who move like queens across multiple files, the steady influence of rooks in pan-African institutions, and the surprising jumps of knights who time entries and exits for outsized impact.At the center of this story are SMEs—the pawns whose disciplined grind unlocks transformation. With patient play, access to capital, and smart policy, the smallest pieces can reshape entire files. We close with practical takeaways: choose the right square, understand your piece, read the gradients beneath your market, and plan three moves ahead. If you're a founder, policymaker, or operator, this lens helps you make clearer decisions, build resilient strategies, and spot new diagonals of growth.Enjoy the episode, then share it with someone who's ready to rethink their playbook. Follow our channels, subscribe for fresh drops, and leave a review to tell us which move you're making next.Support the showYou can support this show via the link below;https://www.buzzsprout.com/1718587/supporters/new

In this episode of the Product Experience Podcast, we speak with Kasia Chmielinski, co-founder of The Data Nutrition Project, who discusses their work on responsible AI, data quality, and the Data Nutrition Project. Kasia highlights the importance of balancing innovation with ethical considerations in product management, the challenges of working within large organizations like the UN, and the need for transparency in data usage. Featured Links: Follow Kasia on LinkedIn | The Data Nutrition Project | 'What we learned at Pendomonium and #mtpcon 2024 Raleigh: Day 2' feature by Louron PrattOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

The European medical device sector is a vital pillar of healthcare innovation, employing over 930,000 people and representing a market of approximately €170 billion. However, since the implementation of MDR and IVDR, manufacturers—especially SMEs—have faced increasing regulatory complexity, long certification timelines, and reduced market predictability.In this podcast episode, we explore the 2025 EU proposal designed to address these challenges by simplifying regulatory processes while preserving patient safety.The discussion covers:Key shortcomings of the current MDR/IVDR frameworkThe impact on innovation, availability of devices, and SMEsThe eight reform pillars, including proportionality, digitalisation, international cooperation, and improved coordination with EMA and Notified BodiesHow upcoming EU legislation (AI Act, Cybersecurity Act, Biotech Act) will interact with medical device regulationsThis episode provides practical insights for manufacturers, regulatory professionals, and policymakers seeking to anticipate regulatory changes and adapt their strategies accordingly.Who is Monir El Azzouzi? Monir El Azzouzi is a Medical Device Expert specializing in Quality and Regulatory Affairs. After working for many years with big Healthcare companies, particularly Johnson and Johnson, he decided to create EasyMedicalDevice.com to help people better understand Medical Device Regulations worldwide. He has now created the consulting firm Easy Medical Device GmbH and developed many ways to deliver knowledge through videos, podcasts, online courses… His company also acts as Authorized Representative for the EU, UK, and Switzerland. Easy Medical Device becomes a one-stop shop for medical device manufacturers that need support on Quality and Regulatory Affairs.Links  Adam Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-isaacs-rae/Social Media to follow Monir El Azzouzi Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/melazzouzi Twitter:https://twitter.com/elazzouzim Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/easymedicaldevice Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/easymedicaldevice 

What if reviews felt collaborative instead of confrontational? In this episode, I walk through a practical, five-pour framework to collect and use feedback from peers, stakeholders, SMEs, QA and accessibility reviewers, and—most importantly—learners, so your projects move faster and land stronger. You'll get short scripts, simple prompts, and a clear structure to keep conversations focused on outcomes instead of opinions.If you want feedback to become fuel, not friction, this guide gives you the tools to make it happen. Subscribe for more practical instructional design tactics, share this episode with a teammate who reviews your work, and leave a quick review telling us which script you'll try first.

Want a quick estimate of how much your business is worth? With our free valuation calculator, answer a few questions about your business, and you'll get an immediate estimate of the value of your business. You might be surprised by how much you can get for it: https://flippa.com/exit -- Are you running your business, or is it running you? In this episode, we sit down with Alexis Sikorsky, co-founder of Nightscale, who reveals the brutal truth about the "Grind" and the specific strategies he used to exit his banking software company for a massive multiple. If you are a founder stuck at the $5M–$10M revenue plateau, this episode is a masterclass in cashing out. Alexis breaks down the "$50 Million Mistake", a calculation of the money and time he lost by not knowing the secrets of Private Equity earlier, and how you can avoid it. What You'll Learn: The "Fish and Chip" Trap: How Private Equity firms lure founders with high valuations only to chip away at the price during due diligence—and how to stop them. Nominal EBITDA vs. EBITDA: The financial metric that matters more than your bottom line. Learn how "dressing the bride" and identifying add-backs can instantly increase your valuation. The Magic Number: Why a $40M valuation is the specific target for a lifestyle where you never have to touch your capital again. The Due Diligence Reverse Card: How to investigate a PE firm by calling the founders they don't want you to talk to. Escaping the Operator Trap: Why you need to fire yourself from day-to-day operations to make your company sellable. -- Alexis Sikorsky is a seasoned entrepreneur, strategic advisor, and #1 international best-selling author who helps founders and SMEs scale with confidence, make smarter strategic decisions, and prepare for long-term growth and successful exits. Over his career, he has founded, scaled, and led multiple companies, including building and selling a software business to private equity in a nine-figure transaction. He is the founder of Sikorsky Consulting Ltd. and a co-founder of KnightScale Partners, where he works closely with founders as a true operator partner, providing experienced, founder-to-founder guidance on scaling, leadership, and value creation. Holding an EMBA from Oxford University, Alexis blends real-world entrepreneurial experience with strategic insight to help business owners future-proof their companies and navigate critical inflection points. Website - https://www.knightscalepartners.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-sikorsky-consulting/ -- Time Stamps: (01:11) Surviving the 2008 crash: Losing 75% of revenue overnight. (03:46) The "Unbelievable" Offer: Selling for 11x EBITDA based on a future plan. (06:00) Calculating the $50 Million / 5-Year Mistake. (08:59) When is the right time to sell? (The mathematics of the exit). (14:00) Red Flags: Detecting the "Fish and Chip" strategy. (20:30) How to boost valuation using Nominal EBITDA and non-recurring costs. (27:30) Why you should do M&A earlier than you think. -- The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You'll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

Australia’s small business landscape is being reshaped by some major forces right now – including the need for AI training, and a proposed new Small Business Charter. We explore both in this week’s episode. First up, Freshworks Australia’s Vice President, Andrew Phillips, talks us through the widening gap between businesses adopting AI and those holding back. Andrew warns business leaders about the risks that come with inaction. He also provides practical, accessible steps for businesses ready to leverage AI to lift efficiency and stay competitive. Next, Anne Nalder, CEO of the Small Business Association of Australia, delves into the proposed Small Business Charter and its potential to tackle long-standing structural disadvantages faced by SMEs. She outlines the reforms, protections and support the Charter could bring to businesses navigating today’s challenging conditions. Business Essentials is produced by: SoundCartelsoundcartel.com.au+61 3 9882 8333See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it really take to build a fintech company that quietly fixes one of the most frustrating problems SMEs face every day? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier, the Founder and CEO of iBanFirst, for a candid conversation about entrepreneurship, timing, and why cross-border payments have remained broken for so long.  Pierre-Antoine's story begins in London, where his early career as an FX trader felt like a compromise at the time, yet quietly gave him a front-row seat to inefficiencies most people accepted as normal. That experience would later shape two companies and a very clear point of view on how money should move across borders. Pierre-Antoine walks through his first venture, Combeast.com, one of France's earliest FX brokerages for retail investors, and what he learned from selling it to Saxo Bank and staying on to run Western European operations. That chapter matters, because it exposed the gap between how sophisticated FX markets really are and how poorly SMEs are served when FX and payments are bundled together inside traditional banks. Out of that frustration, IbanFirst was born in 2016 with a simple idea: treat cross-border payments as a specialist discipline, not a side feature. Today, IbanFirst serves more than 10,000 clients across Europe and processes over €2 billion in transactions every month. We dig into why growth has continued while many fintechs have slowed, from a product designed to be used daily, to proactive sales, to a new generation of CFOs and CEOs who expect the same clarity and speed at work that they get from consumer fintech tools.  Pierre-Antoine explains how real-time FX rates, payment tracking using SWIFT GPI, and multi-entity account management change the day-to-day reality for SMEs trading internationally. We also talk about Brexit, and how being rooted in continental Europe created an unexpected opening. Pierre-Antoine shares why expanding into the UK, including the acquisition of Cornhill, made sense, and why London's payments ecosystem still stands apart in scale and depth. Along the way, he is refreshingly open about the heavy investment required in compliance, trust, and regulation, and why nearly a third of IbanFirst's team focuses on operations and oversight. Looking ahead, Pierre-Antoine lays out a bold vision for the SME payments market, predicting a future where specialists replace banks in much the same way fintech reshaped consumer money transfers. As cross-border trade grows and currency volatility becomes a daily concern, his perspective raises an interesting question for anyone running an international business today:  if specialists already exist, why keep relying on systems that were never designed for how SMEs actually operate? Useful Links: Connect with Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier Learn more about iBanFirst, Tech Talks Daily is sponsored by Denodo

The Dext Effect: How Modern Bookkeepers Save UK SMBs: https://subscribepage.io/qn0D3U We talk about the Dext report here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02y_ZDbROus In this solo episode, Zoe dives into why so many bookkeeping practices are falling behind — not because of skill, but because the industry has evolved faster than the services most bookkeepers are offering. Drawing on new data from Dext's survey of 500 SMEs, Zoe reveals a widening gap between what small businesses urgently need (support, clarity, forecasting, guidance) and what the bookkeeping profession is traditionally providing. She speaks candidly about the crisis mindset many business owners are in — some even saying conditions now feel worse than Covid — and explains the pivotal opportunity for bookkeepers to reposition themselves as finance business partners. Through insights from their Summer 2025 Bookkeeper Survey, Zoe breaks down the time bottlenecks, confidence challenges, and outdated processes keeping practices stuck. She then shares a practical roadmap for modernising your practice through 1% improvements, automation, advisory conversations, and building a gold-standard service that scales with ease. ----------------------------------------------- About us We're Jo and Zoe and we help bookkeepers find clients, make more money and build profitable businesses they love. Find out about working with us in The Bookkeepers' Collective, at: 6figurebookkeeper.com/collective ----------------------------------------------- About our Sponsor This episode of The Bookkeepers' Podcast is sponsored by Xero. Get 90% off your first 6 months by visiting: https://xero5440.partnerlinks.io/6figurebookkeeper ----------------------------------------------- Promotion This video contains paid promotion. ----------------------------------------------- Disclaimer The information contained in The Bookkeepers' Podcast is provided for information purposes only. The contents of The Bookkeepers' Podcast is not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of the Bookkeepers' Podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of the Bookkeepers' Podcast. The 6 Figure Bookkeeper Ltd disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of the Bookkeepers' Podcast.

The Gulf as One System: Bahrain's Aerospace EcosystemMany organizations get too big to succeed. Bahrain is small enough to call the minister and align an ecosystem over coffee. That's not a limitation—it's infrastructure. Leena Faraj spent a decade proving that relationship density beats bureaucratic scale. One island. Neighbors who outspend you ten to one. The puzzle: how do you win when you can't win the resource game? The answer: don't fight for the whole trip—win the increment. For some, Bahrain may not be big enough for two-week stays. But "pop in for a couple of days" works when the Gulf operates as one system. Regional partnerships turn constraints into market expansion.The method: incubate what government can't control, prove it works, and hand it back. Tamkeen for SMEs. Mumtalakat—the sovereign fund whose subsidiaries now include McLaren. Airport operations are separated from the regulator. Ten years of lobbying later: Bahrain's first National Aviation Strategy.Paradigm Shifts:

Outsourcing podcast Learn more about this outsourcing podcast and Inside Outsourcing here: https://www.outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/inside-outsourcing-podcast-series/    We're publishing the entire book, Inside Outsourcing, written by Derek Gallimore, on this podcast feed over the coming weeks. This episode: OA 569 Inside Outsourcing (full audiobook) - Chapter 2.3 SMEs and Business   If you're tuning in for the first time, go back to Episode 563 to catch the book from the beginning. — — — About the book: Inside Outsourcing: How Remote Work, Offshoring & Global Employment is Changing the World Outsourcing has long been criticized for low wages and poor conditions, yet nearly every major company—from Apple to JP Morgan—depends on it. Once a $200 billion industry limited to multinationals, outsourcing is now accessible to small and mid-sized firms, offering up to 70% savings and access to a global talent pool of 2 billion professionals. Inside Outsourcing unpacks the industry's evolution, misconceptions, and future—offering clear insights and practical guidance for businesses ready to harness outsourcing as a driver of innovation and growth.   NOTES on listening: We will be publishing full chapters of the book over the coming weeks. Start with Ep 563 first, and tune in next week for the following chapter(s). Please share with your friends.   Get a copy of the book: You can buy a full version of Inside Outsourcing for yourself from Amazon - with audio, Kindle, and hardcopy available. https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Outsourcing-Offshoring-Employment-Changing/dp/1739623002   Please leave a review: If you've listened to the book and enjoyed it, please support us by leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Outsourcing-Offshoring-Employment-Changing/dp/1739623002 or https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61210866-inside-outsourcing Enjoy.   Start Outsourcing Outsource Accelerator can help you transform your business with outsourcing. Get in touch now, or use one of the resources below.   Business Process Outsourcing Get a Free Quote - Connect with 3 verified outsourcing experts & see how outsourcing can transform your business Book a Discovery Call - See how Outsource Accelerator can help you enhance your company's innovation and growth with outsourcing The Top 40 BPOs - We have compiled this review of the most notable 40 Business Process Outsourcing companies in the Philippines Outsourcing Calculator - This tool provides you with invaluable insight into the potential savings outsourcing can do for your business Outsourcing Salary Guide - Access the comprehensive guide to payroll salary compensation, benefits, and allowances in the Philippines Outsourcing Accelerator Podcast - Subscribe and listen to the world's leading outsourcing podcast, hosted by Derek Gallimore Payoneer - The leading global B2B payment solution for the outsourcing industry   About Outsource Accelerator Outsource Accelerator is the world's leading outsourcing marketplace and advisory. We offer the full spectrum of services, from light advisory and vendor brokerage, though to full implementation and fully-managed solutions. We service companies of all sectors, and all sizes, spanning all departmental verticals. Outsource Accelerator's unique approach to outsourcing enables our clients to build the best teams, access the most flexible solutions, and generate the best results possible. Our unrivaled sector knowledge and market reach mean that you get the best terms and results possible, at the best ALL-IN market-leading price - guaranteed.

By Dominic Colenso, who is an international speaker, communication coach and the author of Cut-Through: The pitch and presentation playbook. Playing the leading role: How to deliver when all eyes are on you When I was shooting the film Thunderbirds, the late Bill Paxton gave me a piece of advice that has stayed with me ever since. He said, "Honour the audience." Cut-Through and play the leading role Bill had starred in some of the biggest films of his generation, yet he was meticulous about understanding who the film was for and what they expected from it. His point was simple. When you're in the spotlight, it's very easy to think you're the most important person in the room. In reality, the audience is. That lesson applies just as much in business as it does on screen. When leaders speak, whether it's in a pitch, a town hall, or a project update, all eyes are already on them. Playing the leading role in that moment isn't about commanding attention or dominating airtime. It's about taking responsibility for how the message lands. One of the most common issues I see in tech companies and SMEs is leaders over-relying on content. They build detailed decks, share reams of information, and hope that clarity will emerge. But clarity doesn't come from volume. It comes from intention. In my first book, IMPACT: How to be more confident, increase your influence and know what to say under pressure, I suggest that intention is the first ingredient of effective communication for a reason. Before an actor steps on stage, they're crystal clear on what they are there to do. What should the audience feel? What energy do they need to bring to the scene? They understand their role in the narrative. Leaders face the same challenge. If you can't clearly articulate what you want your audience to know, feel, or do after you've spoken, your message will lack focus, no matter how strong the strategy is. Once intention is clear, presence becomes critical. Presence isn't charisma or confidence in the traditional sense. It's the ability to be fully there, especially when the pressure is on. On stage, that comes from breath, posture, and focus. In leadership, those things are vital too. They show up in how calmly you speak, how well you listen, and how much space you give others. People read these signals instantly. If a leader looks rushed or distracted, the room becomes unsettled. If they're grounded and attentive, trust builds. This isn't about personality. It's about presence and awareness of the signals you're sending out. That's where preparation comes in. In acting, rehearsal isn't only about memorising lines. More importantly, it's about creating enough familiarity with the material that you can respond naturally in the moment. The performances that look most relaxed are usually the most rehearsed. In my latest book, Cut-Through: The Pitch and Presentation Playbook, I describe this as drilling the moments that matter. Your opening words. Your closing message. The question you hope doesn't get asked but probably will. Leaders who do this work show up calmer, clearer, and more credible. Those who don't often feel exposed when things don't go to plan. Importantly, playing the leading role doesn't mean being centre stage all the time. The best leaders, like the best actors, make the people around them better. They shine the spotlight on their teams, create clarity about direction, and help others understand where they fit and why their work matters. When all eyes are on you, your job isn't to perform harder. It's to serve better. Be clear on your intention. Show up with presence. Prepare properly. Do that, and people won't just hear your message. They'll buy into it. Dominic Colenso is an international speaker, communication coach and the author of Cut-Through: The pitch and presentation playbook. See more breaking stories here. More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podc...

India's rural areas are developing at an extraordinary rate, and it poses both challenges and extraordinary opportunities to rethink development at a large scale. Across the OECD, over nine in ten households are now connected to the Internet, but in rural regions connectivity still lags behind, with only about 89% of rural households having even a basic broadband connection. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2024/11/oecd-digital-economy-outlook-2024-volume-2_9b2801fc.html India reflects these contrasts in its own way, but the speed of change is remarkable. Over the four years ending in December 2024, internet penetration in rural India surged from 59% to 78%, a jump that outpaced urban growth, which rose from 77% to 90% over the same period. https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/indias-rural-subscribers-to-primarily-drive-arpu-growth-in-fy26-crisil/121130745 Recorded live from the OECD Rural Development Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Shayne MacLachlan speaks with Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, Secretary to the Government in the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, about how India's fascinating track-record of rural transformation can offer practical lessons to policymakers everywhere. Tune in to hear how one of the world's most dynamic rural transformations is unfolding and what it means for the future of development. Dr. Shahid currently serves as Secretary to the Government, Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (Local Self-Government). Over the course of his distinguished public service career, he has held several key leadership positions, including Secretary, Tribal Affairs, J&K Government; CEO, Mission Youth J&K; Managing Director, Skill Development & Livelihood Initiatives; and multiple tenures as District Development Commissioner/District Magistrate in Srinagar, Rajouri, Bandipora, Leh, Udhampur, Kathua, and Reasi. He has also served as Additional Secretary in the Chief Minister's Office, Director, Information & Public Relations, Managing Director, J&K Tourism Development Corporation, Additional Secretary, Planning & Development, Special Officer, Relief & Reconstruction Leh, and SDM Nowshera. Internationally, Dr. Shahid is recognized as a resource person on mobile indigenous communities, transhumance, and migration. He is a member of the UN Working Group for the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists and has represented India in international collaborations on pastoralism and migratory indigenous peoples in Albania (2021), Ethiopia (2021), and Italy (2022). As Public Affairs and Communications Manager, Shayne engages with policy issues concerning SMEs, tourism, culture, regions and cities to name a few. He has worked on a number of OECD campaigns including “Going Digital”, "Climate Action" and "I am the future of work". **** To learn more, visit OECD Latin American Rural Development Conference www.oecd.org/en/events/2025/11/…nt-conference.html and the OECD's work on Rural Development www.oecd.org/en/topics/policy-i…l-development.html. Find out more on these topics by reading Reinforcing Rural Resilience www.oecd.org/en/publications/re…e_7cd485e3-en.html and Rural Innovation Pathways www.oecd.org/en/publications/ru…s_c86de0f4-en.html. To learn more about the OECD, our global reach, and how to join us, go to www.oecd.org/about/ To keep up with latest at the OECD, visit www.oecd.org/ Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters

What does it take to build truly product-driven engineering teams? In this episode, Matt Watson — founder and CEO of Full Scale and author of Product Driven — joins Lily and Randy to challenge the longstanding silos between product and engineering. Drawing on 25+ years of experience and four tech ventures, Matt makes the case for why developers need more than just code to care about: they need context, ownership, and clarity.From redefining “done” to the evolving role of AI in software teams, this conversation dives into how product leaders can foster a culture where engineers aren't just implementers, but co-creators of customer value.Chapters0:00 – Why “no feedback” is a warning sign, not success1:46 – Matt's journey: from developer to founder2:58 – Thinking outside the code: how the book Product Driven started4:50 – Why many engineers don't think about the customer5:57 – The rise of product managers and the walling off of engineers6:56 – Redefining the role of PMs in cross-functional teams9:01 – Metrics, measurement, and the illusion of progress10:57 – Ownership as the root of productivity13:04 – Code monkeys, culture, and killing creativity14:55 – Communicating context: five minutes that save weeks17:04 – AI and the changing definition of developer productivity20:32 – External value vs internal tech debt22:48 – The Product Driven model: Vision, Focus, Clarity, Shared Ownership, Courage27:08 – Why courage is the starting point for changeOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

The OECD Report for Regional Policy for Greece Post-2020 (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/regional-policy-for-greece-post-2020_cedf09a5-en.html) revealed that 32% of the population lives in predominantly rural regions which is significantly higher than the OECD average share of rural population which is around 25%. Of those living in predominantly rural regions (~3.4 million people), roughly 3 million live in remote rural regions meaning Greece has one of the largest shares in this demographic among OECD countries. Recorded live from the OECD Rural Development Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Greek officials Vasiliki Pantelopoulou (Secretary-General of the Partnership Agreement) and Christos Kyrkoglou (General Director of Monitoring and Implementation) explain Greece's approach to rural urban development under the European Union's Cohesion Policy and the role of Integrated Territorial Investments (ITIs). They describe their respective roles in coordinating and implementing programmes financed through the Partnership Agreement, stressing the importance of integrating urban and rural policies. Sit back, relax and take a listen! Vasiliki Pantelopoulou is a lawyer and a Member of Athens Bar Association. She graduated from School of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and holds two postgraduate degrees (LL.M. in Commercial and Business Law from East Anglia University, U.K., and MSc in Business Administration for Law Practitioners from Alba Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece, Greece). She is a Member of the Board of the Hellenic Development Bank. She has worked for twenty years as an in-house lawyer at STASY – Urban Rail Transport S.A., specialized in the field of public procurement (Law 4412/2016). Since April 2023, she has been the Director of Legal Services at Metavasi S.A. – Hellenic Company for Just Transition S.A. She is a Member of investing Committees such as EQUIFUND I & II, TEPIX III Loan Fund and others. Christos Kyrkoglou is the General Director of Monitoring and Implementation for the ESPA, which operate under the Secretary General. Mr Kyrkoglou holds a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, as well as a Master's Degree in Urban and Regional Development from the same institution. In 2023, he was appointed Head of the Special Service for the Coordination of Regional Programs of the General Secretariat for the Partnership Agreement of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Since 2025, he is Head of the General Directorate for Monitoring and Implementation. His professional interests and fields of expertise span the full spectrum of development interventions under the Partnership Agreement for Regional Development 2021–2027, with a particular focus on employment, human resources development, innovation and entrepreneurship, social policy, territorial development, culture, and the environment. As Public Affairs and Communications Manager, Shayne engages with policy issues concerning SMEs, tourism, culture, regions and cities to name a few. He has worked on a number of OECD campaigns including “Going Digital”, "Climate Action" and "I am the future of work". **** To learn more, visit OECD Latin American Rural Development Conference www.oecd.org/en/events/2025/11/…nt-conference.html and the OECD's work on Rural Development www.oecd.org/en/topics/policy-i…l-development.html. Find out more on these topics by reading Reinforcing Rural Resilience www.oecd.org/en/publications/re…e_7cd485e3-en.html and Rural Innovation Pathways www.oecd.org/en/publications/ru…s_c86de0f4-en.html. To learn more about the OECD, our global reach, and how to join us, go to www.oecd.org/about/ To keep up with latest at the OECD, visit www.oecd.org/ Get the latest OECD content delivered directly to your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletters: www.oecd.org/newsletters

There are two major forces shaping how businesses operate right now: intergenerational pressures, and hefty tax debts. In this week’s episode, leadership expert Marnie Brokenshire explains why managing five generations in one workplace is pushing managers to their limits - and why employees in their 50s may be the most underutilised asset in your organisation. Marnie also outlines the emotional-intelligence skills needed to turn generational tension into team strength. Next, CEO of Grow Capital Gus Gilkeson, breaks down this year’s surge in ATO tax debt - and what SMEs must do to avoid financial strain. Gus shares practical steps for early intervention, clear communication and managing tax obligations before they become business-threatening. Business Essentials is produced by: SoundCartelsoundcartel.com.au+61 3 9882 8333See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's a magnet for side hustlers around Europe. The CoCreate event was held this November in London, the first time it's come to Europe. It's an event run by Alibaba.com, a global online marketplace for b2b wholesale trade. Small businesses use it to source in bulk products from manufacturers and trading companies to then sell to consumers themselves. Alibaba.com is part of Alibaba Group founded by Jack Ma in China in 1999. Alibaba.com now connects 50 million buyers with 200,000 global suppliers, many of them based in China. At CoCreate there are suppliers showing off their wares, including everything from robot vacuum cleaners to skincare products and fashion items. Dougal Shaw spoke to the entrepreneurs who flocked to this event before catching up with Kuo Zhang, the president of Alibaba.com, to find out how small companies can access global supply chains, with AI making the task increasingly sophisticated. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this final Accountants Minute Podcast episode for 2025, Peter Towers is joined by Darren Gleeson, Managing Director of TaxFitness, to explore how benchmarking and virtual CFO services can transform struggling SMEs into top-performing businesses. They discuss why benchmarking against the top 20% (not the average) is critical, how to turn profit gaps into advisory opportunities, and why accountants and bookkeepers must move beyond compliance if they want to stay relevant in an AI-driven world. Perfect for firms ready to lead clients—and their own team—into 2026 with stronger profitability and sharper advisory services. You can also access our podcast on: Amazon Music Apple Podcasts Audible Spotify YouTube  

In this episode, Prerna Singh, CPTO at Avaaz, walks us through how AI is reshaping the way we prototype, learn and build digital products. Rather than replacing teams or skipping straight to production, she argues that AI shines when used as a “thought partner” to accelerate early‑stage experimentation. Through her own journey building a community platform on weekends, she demonstrates how tools like ChatGPT, Lovable (and later Claude / Replet) and Figma AI enabled her to move from blank page to clickable prototype in hours — while retaining the human insight, iteration and context that underpin good product work. The conversation reframes common assumptions about “fast‑AI = bypass human work,” and instead proposes a balanced adoption path: start in “sandbox mode,” learn and play — before graduating to “architect mode” where the real value to business begins.Chapters00:00 – Introduction & AI's impact on product cycles01:43 – Meet Prerna Singh: her background in product and community building03:50 – The community problem: logistics over connection05:11 – Turning to AI to solve her own problem06:50 – What AI can't do: user insight and human judgment08:08 – From waterfall to short-cycle prototyping10:54 – Using ChatGPT as a Socratic thought partner13:07 – Working solo vs team: where AI fits17:17 – From prompt to prototype: using Lovable19:06 – Iterating with Figma AI and other tools23:00 – Real feedback from real users25:02 – Creating a feedback knowledge base with AI26:16 – AI vs design sprints: same principles, new toolsOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Graham Dufault, General Counsel at ACT | The App Association, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to explore how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are navigating the EU's AI regulatory framework. The duo breakdown the Association's recent survey of SMEs, which included the views of more than 1,000 enterprises and assessed their views on regulation and adoption of AI. Follow Graham: @GDufault and ACT | The App Association: @actonline Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Todd Irwin, founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Fazer on de-positioning, a strategic approach to outperform competitors by solving hero customer pain points better than anyone else. The musician and artist turned brand strategist who has advised Fortune 500 companies, SMEs and startups for three decades, argues for a shift in thinking from differentiation to problem solving, and simply being better. An expert in delivering competitive brand strategies to visionary leaders seeking growth, he argues that creativity is downstream of positioning, and solving problems reminds us that when people grow, brands grow, and when companies grow, we all grow. 

According to Forbes, sales reps spend 35.2% of their time selling and 65% of their time on literally everything else. So how can organizations cut through the noise and focus reps on the activities that matter most? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win-Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic are Yvette Boucher, Director of Sales Enablement at CentralReach, and Chelsea Louro, Senior Manager of Sales Enablement at CentralReach. Thank you so much for joining us, both. Just to kick us off, I’d love if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Yvette, would you like to kick us off? Yvette Boucher: Yeah, thanks for having us. I’m Yvette. I’ve been with Central Reach for about six years now, building out our enablement programs. We’re an AI-powered platform for autism and IDD care providers. Our end-to-end software and learning solutions help organizations deliver quality outcomes to help every client succeed. I'll pass it over to Chelsea. Chelsea Louro: Thank you. I’m Chelsea Louro, senior manager of sales enablement. I’m also approaching six years here at CentralReach. And then prior to coming to CentralReach, I was a teacher for a little over a decade. I also did teacher training and recruitment and then education sales, then that brought me here where I was in SDR, an account executive, and then also now in enablement the last three and a half years. RR: Amazing. Well, we’re super excited to have you here, especially knowing that you guys were both up for a Spark Award this year. So you are doing some really wonderful work that I’m really looking forward to digging into as we kick off. I’d love to start with you, Yvette. Let’s open with what’s difficult, what you’re up against lately. So, what are some of the core challenges to GTM success that you’re seeing, and how have those challenges kind of evolved throughout your enablement career? YB: One of the biggest challenges we’ve seen recently is just how short the timelines have become between a product announcement and when reps are expected to start selling it. We’re moving faster than ever, especially with our new AI products. That means enablement has to get the reps the right information, the right messaging, and the right training almost immediately. It’s been a constant balancing act between speed and depth. We want reps to feel confident and well prepared, but we also need to deliver that enablement in a really agile way, so they’re ready to have meaningful conversations from day one. So the pressure to move fast has definitely shaped how enablement operates today. For us, it’s not just about building training, it’s about building our systems and processes that can scale and flex with the business. RR: I think you’re certainly not alone in some of those challenges. Organizations across the board are struggling with similar things, and everyone’s kind of looking for that silver bullet. Chelsea, I wonder if you can maybe help us kind of build on this. So, from your perspective, how does an enablement platform support you and the team in addressing these challenges and helping reps focus on selling? CL: Yeah, so I’ve been in roles at other companies where there wasn’t much organization. There was no enablement platform at all. Both as a seller and a leader, I spent a lot of time trying to find the resources that I needed, and sometimes just—out of pure frustration—had to create my own. I know a lot of sales reps come across that as well. So, having a platform like Highspot gives us kind of that single source of truth so we can get all of our content guidance training all together in one platform, one workflow. Our reps aren’t spending time trying to find things and they can focus on what they really need to do, which is sell. It also helps us deliver insights back to our leadership, um, and lets us see what content and sales plays are actually driving our sales. That visibility allows us to continually refine and to make sure that the reps are supported and then focused on selling. RR: Kind of moving forward, I would love to maybe focus on some of the ways that you’re using an enablement tool. I’ve heard that you and the team are doing some really wonderful things with Sales Plays, and that’s kind of part of what earned you that Spark Award nomination. Yvette, knowing that Sales Plays are playing such a critical role in supporting some of your AI-centric product launches this year, I’d love to learn a little bit from you about what that strategy is, and how you’re using plays to streamline rep workflows. YB: We’ve really built our Plays with simplicity and speed in mind. So, the idea is that we get the right information in our reps hands as quickly as possible with who to target, what to say, and what resources they can use so they can jump straight into the action instead of digging through multiple tools or decks. When we launched our AI solutions last year, the Plays became a living guide for the team. And because the plays live right in Highspot, reps can easily pull them up in the moment. So as our products continue to evolve, the Plays evolve too. So they’ve become a go-to reference point that helps stay, keep everyone aligned and stay confident in how they’re positioning our solutions. RR: It’s funny because you know, a Sales Play is such a humble thing, but it can be so powerful if you use it right. It’s not just the strategy that I think is really impressive with what you guys are doing. Chelsea, I’ve heard that you and the team have driven a really incredible 99 again, 99% adoption rate of your Plays. So can you walk us through how you maintain such high sales play adoption? CL: I think a lot of it is just constant repetition and reinforcement. Our teams have kind of become used to our enablement and go-to-market communications, so adding in Sales Plays was just a nice easy process. Every time we roll out a new Sales Play, we emphasize the importance to them. We let the team know that any changes or updates will be made in that Sales Play. So that’s where they need to go to find their source of truth. I put out a weekly newsletter called the CR Morning Brew every Monday, and in the Brew we share new marketing content, any updates to those Sales Plays, any initiatives, things that they need to know. Then we have a live sales meeting on Tuesdays where everything that was shared in the Brew is reinforced. So again, the reps are reading it, they’re getting it in sales team channels—because I share out that Brew in every single sales team channel—and then that live, vocal repetition and just making sure that they’re paying attention and, and they know what’s happening. RR: I think one thing that’s really important that you called out there is that yes, you’ve driven really high adoption, but you also built the foundation of communication beforehand. So you had these levers in place that you could pull and be like: “You trust us. You know where we’re coming from, and now I can send you to the right places.” So, you’ve built a strategy. You’ve seen near unanimous engagement with it, but it goes further than that. Yvette, you shared that using Sales Plays during a recent product launch led you to influence over 900 opportunities. Could you walk us through how you drove those results and then how that impacted the launch outcomes? YB: I think it really came down to how we set up the Plays to begin with. Like it came down with that alignment and teamwork. So prior to the launch we worked cross-functionally with product marketing, sales leaderships and our SMEs to make sure the reps had everything they needed for messaging, positioning, and the hands-on product support, which I think was key there. They needed someone that knew that product. We also knew we would be learning in real time. So every team at CR leaned in to help them, everyone. By the time the Play that went live, we were already making edits and updates based on early feedback. Every update and change was communicated in our Morning Brew. sales team meetings, and individual team meetings, and we continued that communication and support from our SMEs, and that’s really what helped us influence those opportunities. It’s also great that it was a great product for people to have. RR: That is the kicker—it's hard to sell when you don’t have something exciting. So I’m glad that both cylinders were firing there. You guys were doing the right things and so was the product. Now, I feel like we could probably continue digging into Sales Plays, there's a lot there. Again, like I said, they're one thing that gets overlooked, but they can be really, really high impact. I would like to maybe switch gears to another win that you’ve shared with us. Chelsea, you leveraged Highspot to redesign your onboarding program, achieving a really impressive one hundred percent adoption of required training and reducing ramp time by one to two weeks. Can you walk me through what you were thinking about as you were improving this program? What impact has that has had on rep productivity, ramp time, and all of those good things? CL: Yeah, so we kind of reimagined the onboarding program to be a little bit more personalized and performance driven. Using Highspot's training module, we built out role-specific Learning Paths that kind of combine product knowledge, our Sales Plays, and then real world scenarios. We also created an onboarding homepage. So when a brand new rep first joins the team, they log into Highspot. They have an onboarding homepage that clearly links all the Learning Paths but also defines the expectations, the deliverables, and what they should expect every single week. We also hold weekly check-in meetings with all of our new hires where we can answer any questions about what they’ve learned. We have discussions, we’ll bring in SMEs and then we can do any troubleshooting. And then honestly, just using the analytics with the Learning Paths, we’ve been able to track completion and performance and we can kind of quickly identify where the reps need maybe a little bit of additional support in different areas. But yeah, I mean this all together, we’ve kind of, like you said, we’ve reduced our ramp time, one to two weeks, and we make sure just with buy-in from our leadership, that all of the sales reps are completing every single Learning Path. So we do have that hundred percent completion rate. RR: What motivated the shift in the onboarding process? Where were you, and why were you like: “It’s time”? CL: We had all of the resources, but we hadn’t had that training or coaching platform yet. So we adopted that, really rolled that out, and that was kind of the kicker to get everything together and organized and built out into those Learning Paths. So I think just adding that training and coaching platform was the kicker to really redefine what our onboarding looks like. YB: I would say that previously we had our onboarding program in another tool outside of Highspot. So it’s just—we know sales reps: They wanna find everything right away, very easily. So just putting content and introducing people “Hey, you’re gonna use Highspot for this, but in your onboarding you’re gonna be using something else” just wasn’t going to get people using it or building things out. RR: That kind of goes back to something we were talking about earlier with your established communication cadences, and so bringing everything together, that’s a great move and I love to see that it’s already having that impact on not only engagement, but on productivity. And I think one thing that’s really impressive to me is just how much data you guys are coming with—of we’ve improved ramp time, we’ve seen really high adoption, and we’ve seen high engagement. Proving enablements impact is usually really, really hard. How are you measuring the effectiveness of your programs and demonstrating their contribution to broader business goals? YB: That is such a good question and honestly it’s something that’s been a challenge for us too. Measuring the true impact of enablement isn’t always straightforward. You can track engagement completion rates, but tying that back to real business outcomes takes a lot more work. One thing that really helped us in the last year really is using the Business Outcome section of our Sales Play Scorecards. That gives us a way to look beyond the usage and see how those Plays are actually influencing the results. So it tells us a clearer story about how our enablement drives performance, and not just participation from our reps. We’re taking that a step further next year. Our team is really excited to roll out Initiative Scorecards for our programs in 2026, so that’ll let us measure the impact across the full life cycle from launch to execution so we can keep improving and show the tangible value of enablement in driving the business forward. RR: Can I ask how you’re planning to use the Initiative Scorecard? Knowing that CentralReach is in a pretty launch heavy motion right now, is it going to be for product launches? What are your goals for that? YB: You know, we’re trying to develop that right now, so as we’re thinking of 2026 planning, I want to partner with the different sales leaders here as well as my direct leader and see what are our initiatives going into 2026. So potentially Q1, Q2, we’re not sure how we’re gonna break that out yet. But really getting some pipeline generation numbers. I know we have a lot of releases happening in some of our already launched AI products, so I want to generate campaigns of this is the product of focus, how much pipeline do we want to build, and how are we gonna build it. Then we'll use that Scorecard to show here’s the content, here’s the Plays, and here’s the training, supporting the team. Then, here’s the teams using it, getting it out there, and being able to tie that back to our future opportunities. RR: Amazing. I think that’s the foundation you need, right? You can have these key motions in the business, but encapsulating it all into an agreed-upon initiative that every function is aligned with is harder than you’d think. So I like to hear that you’re starting that new planning with: “What are our initiatives?” We looked a little bit ahead there, but I’d like to kind of just take a pause at where we are. We’ve talked about a couple of wins—Sales Plays, influenced opportunities, improved onboarding programs, and better ramp time. Outside of those things, since implementing Highspot, what are some of the key results that you’ve achieved? Are there any wins or really proud achievements that you could share? Chelsea, I’ll kick it over to you first. CL: Yeah, so I mean like you mentioned, just the 99% adoption of our sales plays and our onboarding ramp time being reduced to one to two weeks. I think overall just the 900 influenced opportunities in our new AI products was a huge win for us and brought in a lot of revenue, and Yvette mentioned at the beginning, it’s really a tool that helps this industry and helps our customers. So we were really excited to see that. But overall, just our win rates have improved our deal velocity, and I think that’s just more thanks to consistent execution and messaging alignment. Overall, I think the biggest win that we’ve seen is rep confidence. Our reps feel like they know what to say. They know the value prop, they know what to do. We get less questions, which is nice because they know exactly where to find things. They know where to go, what to find, how to use it, and just how to use it to win. RR: I think that’s everything you want to hear—your reps know how to do the thing. That’s what you’re here for. So fantastic that you’re kind of achieving that and have the data to back that up. Yvette, were there any wins that you wanted to share? YB: Honestly, I think Chelsea nailed it. Like the Learning Paths and all the work we’ve been doing with our training, I think that’s been huge. Definitely noticed the ramp time reduced with our new hires. They’re more confident, and I think we also have that always continue learning and changing mentality here. So, it's meeting with Chelsea and the enablement team and always like, how do we improve this? Just adding things like Role Plays now for SDRs because we found that, hey, once we launch a training, yes they can get on, they can get opportunities very, very quickly, reduce their ramp time, but we want to improve their conversations, so let’s have additional weeks of learn of Role Play training added into their courses. Just those minor changes make a really big difference. RR: Fantastic. I love that you're kind of evolving your strategy with the product, that as new things come on board, you guys are embedding it and finding new ways to make the product work for you. And that kind of leads me to my last question very neatly, which is that we’ve talked a little bit now about Spark—and you guys were able to come and join us and see a little bit of the fun, exciting new things that are coming out—so looking ahead, based on what you saw, how do you plan to evolve your enablement strategy, especially with some of those AI features? Maybe it’s Role Play, maybe it’s other things. YB: Spark is always such an inspiring event and we love going every year and this year really showed how quickly AI is transforming the way we work. So, for us, we see AI as a huge opportunity to scale our enablement smarter. We’re exploring ways to use it to personalize a learning experience, surface more relevant content right when the reps need it, and provide managers with coaching insights to help them guide their teams more effectively. Our goal is to make enablement more proactive. So we want to anticipate what the sellers will need before they realize it themselves. So that’s where AI will come in. For us. It’s not just about speeding things up, it’s gonna be about helping our reps focus on what really drives the results. RR: I think that’s a great vision. One of the ways I’ve heard it put is that AI can allow us to do more, but what it can really allow us to do is do better. So you guys, it seems, are really leaning into that and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I know we have kind of hit the time that we have for you today, so I just wanna thank you both again for joining us. It was a really wonderful conversation and it’s been so fantastic to hear from you. CB: Thanks so much for having us.  RR: To our listeners, thank you for tuning into this episode of the Win-Win podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

In this episode of The Product Experience, host Randy Silver speaks with Teresa Huang — Head of Product for Enablement at global health‑insurer Bupa — about the often‑overlooked world of platform product management. They explore why building internal platforms is fundamentally different and often more challenging than building user‑facing products, how to measure the value of platform work, and practical strategies for gaining stakeholder alignment, driving platform adoption and demonstrating business impact.Chapters0:00 – Why “efficiency” alone no longer cuts it — measuring platform impact in business terms1:02 – Teresa's background: from business analyst to head of product in health insurance6:20 – What we mean by “platform product management” — internal tools vs marketplace vs public‑API platforms7:44 – Why you need to “hop two steps”: address developer needs and end-customer value10:24 – Types of platforms: internal APIs, marketplace ecosystems, public‑facing platforms (e.g. like Shopify)10:55 – Reframing platform work: building business cases instead of chasing “efficiency” metrics13:16 – Linking platform initiatives to core business goals and joint OKRs15:47 – The importance of visualisation — using prototypes and role‑plays to communicate platform value20:57 – Internal showcases: keeping stakeholders engaged with real‑world scenarios23:28 – Success metrics for platforms: adoption, usage, reliability, ecosystem growth26:00 – Retiring legacy services: deciding when low-use tools should be decommissioned28:55 – From cost centre to enabler: shifting the narrative to show value creationOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Raviteja Yelamanchili shares how Scale AI transformed banking cycles from one year to real-time and why your most valuable enterprise data isn't being collected.Topics Include:Scale evolved from data annotations company to enterprise AI solutions providerHealthcare system transformed patient transcriptions into value using reinforcement learning researchBlank slate customer problems allow Scale to experiment with latest methodsMany customers propose solutions before explaining their actual underlying business problemsBiggest AI misconception: technology will replace jobs rather than augment productivityDon't wait for perfect AI—start learning through iteration and evolution nowBanking credit cycle transformed from one-year process to real-time strategic insightsScale deploys flexibly across EC2, EKS, or Bedrock based on customer requirementsEnterprises want business value generation more than academic research papers aloneNext 12-24 months focus: making data consumable and leveraging unused datasetsTribal knowledge from experienced SMEs represents most valuable yet uncollected dataAgent-based learning captures expertise through feedback loops on Scale's SGP platformParticipants:Raviteja Yelamanchili - Head of Solution Engineering, Scale AISee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Allen and Joel sit down with Dan Fesenmeyer of Windquest Advisors to discuss turbine supply agreement fundamentals, negotiation leverage, and how tariff uncertainty is reshaping contract terms. Dan also explains why operators should maximize warranty claims before service agreements take over. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Dan, welcome to the program. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. Well, we’ve been looking forward to this for several weeks now because. We’re trying to learn some of the ins and outs of turbine supply agreements, FSAs, because everybody’s talking about them now. Uh, and there’s a lot of assets being exchanged. A lot of turbine farms up for sale. A lot of acquisitions on the other side, on the investment side coming in and. As engineers, we don’t deal a lot with TSAs. It’s just not something that we typically see until, unless there’s a huge problem and then we sort of get involved a little bit. I wanna understand, first off, and you have a a ton of experience doing this, that’s why we [00:01:00] love having you. What are some of the fundamentals of turbine supply agreements? Like what? What is their function? How do they operate? Because I think a lot of engineers and technicians don’t understand the basic fundamentals of these TSAs. Dan Fesenmeyer: The TSA is a turbine supply agreement and it’s for the purchase and delivery of the wind turbines for your wind farm. Um, typically they are negotiated maybe over a 12 ish month period and typically they’re signed at least 12 months before you need, or you want your deliveries for the wind turbines. Joel Saxum: We talk with people all over the world. Um, you know, GE Americas is different than GE in Spain and GE in Australia and Nordics here, and everybody’s a little bit different. Um, but what we, we regularly see, and this is always an odd thing to me, is you talked about like negotiating. It starts 12 months ahead of time stuff, but we see that [00:02:00] the agreements a lot of times are very boilerplate. They’re very much like we’re trying to structure this in a certain way, and at the end of the day, well, as from an operator standpoint, from the the person buying them, we would like this and we would like this and we would like this, but at the end of the day, they don’t really seem to get that much negotiation in ’em. It’s kind of like, this is what the agreement you’re gonna take and this is how we sell them. That’s it. Is, is that your experience? I mean, you’re at GE for a long time, one of the leading OEMs, but is that what you’re seeing now or is there a little bit more flexibility or kind of what’s your take on that? Dan Fesenmeyer: I think generally it depends, and of course the, the OEMs in the, and I’ll focus more on the us, they’ll start with their standard template and it’s up to the purchaser, uh, to develop what they want as their wishlist and start negotiations and do their, let’s say, markup. So, uh, and then there’s a bit of leverage involved. If you’re buying two units, it’s hard to get a lot of interest. [00:03:00] If you’re buying 200 units, then you have a lot more leverage, uh, to negotiate terms and conditions in those agreements. I was with GE for 12 years on the sales and commercial side and now doing advisory services for four years. Uh, some of these negotiations can go for a long time and can get very, very red. Others can go pretty quick. It really depends on what your priorities are. How hard you want to push for what you need. Allen Hall: So how much detail goes into a TSA then are, are they getting very prescriptive, the operators coming with a, a list of things they would like to see? Or is it more negotiating on the price side and the delivery time and the specifics of the turbine? Dan Fesenmeyer: Generally speaking, you start kind of with the proposal stage and. First thing I always tell people is, let’s understand what you have in your proposal. Let’s understand, you know, what are the delivery [00:04:00] rates and times and does that fit with your project? Does the price work with respect to your PPA, what does it say about tariffs? That’s a huge one right now. Where is the risk going to land? What’s in, what’s out? Um. Is the price firm or is there indexation, whether it’s tied to commodities or different currencies. So in my view, there’s some pre-negotiations or at least really understanding what the offer is before you start getting into red lines and, and generally it’s good to sit down with the purchasing team and then ultimately with the OEM and walk through that proposal. Make sure you have everything you need. Make sure you understand what’s included, what’s not. Scope of supply is also a big one. Um, less in less in terms of the turbine itself, but more about the options, like does it have the control features you need for Ercot, for example. Uh, does it have leading [00:05:00]edge protection on your blades? Does it have low noise trailing edge? Do we even need lo low noise trailing edges? Uh, you know, those Joel Saxum: sorts Dan Fesenmeyer: of things. Joel Saxum: Do you see the more of the red lining in the commercial phase or like the technical phase? Because, and why I ask this question is when we talk, ’cause we’re regularly in the o and m world, right? Talking with engineers and asset managers, how do you manage your assets? And they really complain a lot that a lot of their input in that, that feedback loop from operations doesn’t make it to the developers when they’re signing TSAs. Um, so that’s a big complaint of theirs. And so my question is like, kind of like. All right. Are there wishes being heard or is it more general on the technical side and more focused on the commercial Dan Fesenmeyer: side? Where do you see that it comes down to making sure that your negotiation team has all the different voices and constituents at the table? Uh, my approach and our, our team’s approach is you have the legal piece, a technical piece, and we’re in between. We’re [00:06:00] the commercial piece. So when you’re talking TSAs, we’re talking price delivery terms. Determination, warranty, you know, kind of the, the big ticket items, liquidated damages, contract caps, all those big ticket commercial items. When you move over to the operations agreement, which generally gets negotiated at the same time or immediately after, I recommend doing them at the same time because you have more leverage and you wanna make sure terms go from TSA. They look the same in the. Services agreement. And that’s where it’s really important to have your operations people involved. Right? And, and we all learn by mistakes. So people that have operated assets for a long time, they always have their list of five or 10 things that they want in their o and m agreement. And, um, from a process standpoint, before we get into red lines, we usually do kind of a high [00:07:00] level walkthrough of here’s what we think is important. Um. For the TSA and for the SMA or the operations and maintenance agreement, let’s get on the same page as a team on what’s important, what’s our priority, and what do we want to see as the outcome. Allen Hall: And the weird thing right now is the tariffs in the United States that they are a hundred percent, 200%, then they’re 10%. They are bouncing. Like a pinball or a pong ping pong ball at the moment. How are you writing in adjustments for tariffs right now? Because some of the components may enter the country when there’s a tariff or the park the same park enter a week later and not be under that tariff. How does that even get written into a contract right now? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, that’s a fluid, it’s a fluid environment with terrorists obviously, and. It seems, and I’ll speak mostly from the two large OEMs in the US market. Um, [00:08:00] basically what you’re seeing is you have a proposal and tariffs, it includes a tariff adder based on tariffs as in as they were in effect in August. And each one may have a different date. And this is fairly recent, right? So as of August, here’s what the dates, you know, here’s a tariff table with the different countries and the amounts. Here’s what it translates into a dollar amount. And it’ll also say, well, what we’re going to do is when, uh, these units ship, or they’re delivered X works, that’s when we come back and say, here’s what the tariffs are now. And that difference is on the developer or the purchaser typically. Allen Hall: So at the end of the day. The OEM is not going to eat all the tariffs. They’re gonna pass that on. It’s just basically a price increase at the end. So the, are the, are the buyers of turbines then [00:09:00] really conscious of where components are coming from to try to minimize those tariffs? Dan Fesenmeyer: That’s Allen Hall: difficult. Dan Fesenmeyer: I mean, I would say that’s the starting point of the negotiation. Um, I’ve seen things go different ways depending on, you know, if an off, if a developer can pass through their tariffs to the, on their PPA. They can handle more. If they can’t, then they may come back and say, you know what, we can only handle this much tariff risk or amount in our, in our PPA. The rest we need to figure out a way to share between the OEM or maybe and the developer. Uh, so let’s not assume, you know, not one, one size doesn’t fit all. Joel Saxum: The scary thing there is it sound, it sounds like you’re, like, as a developer when you’re signing a TSA, you’re almost signing a pro forma invoice. Right. That that could, that could go up 25% depending on the, the mood on, in Capitol Hill that day, which is, it’s a scary thought and I, I would think in my mind, hard to really get to [00:10:00] FID with that hanging over your head. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. It it’s a tough situation right now for sure. Yeah. And, and we haven’t really seen what section 2 32, which is another round of potential tariffs out there, and I think that’s what. At least in the last month or two. People are comfortable with what tariffs are currently, but there’s this risk of section 2 32, uh, and who’s going to take that risk Allen Hall: moving forward? Because the 2 32 risk is, is not set in stone as when it will apply yet or if it even Dan Fesenmeyer: will happen and the amount, right. So three ifs, three big ifs there, Alan. Allen Hall: Yeah. And I, maybe that’s designed on purpose to be that way because it does seem. A little bit of chaos in the system will slow down wind and solar development. That’s one way you do. We just have a, a tariff. It’s sort of a tariff that just hangs out there forever. And you, are there ways to avoid that? Is it just getting the contract in [00:11:00] place ahead of time that you can avoid like the 2 32 thing or is it just luck of the draw right now? It’s always Dan Fesenmeyer: up to the situation and what your project delivery. Is looking at what your PPA, what can go in, what can go out. Um, it’s tough to avoid because the OEMs certainly don’t want to take that risk. And, uh, and I don’t blame them. Uh, and separately you were asking about, well, gee, do you start worrying about where your components are sourced from? Of course you are. However, you’re going to see that in the price and in the tariff table. Uh, typically. I would say from that may impact your, your, uh, sort of which, which OEM or which manufacturer you go with, depending on where their supply chain is. Although frankly, a lot of components come from China. Plain and simple, Allen Hall: right? Dan Fesenmeyer: Same place. If you are [00:12:00] subject to these tariffs, then you want to be more on a, you know, what I would say a fleet wide basis. So, uh, meaning. Blades can come from two places. We don’t want to have, you know, an OEM select place number one because it’s subject to tariff and we have to pay for it. You want it more on a fleet basis, so you’re not, so the OEM’s not necessarily picking and choosing who gets covered or who has to pay for a tariff or not. Joel Saxum: And I wonder that, going back to your first statement there, like if you have the power, the leverage, if you can influence that, right? Like. Immediately. My mind goes to, of course, like one of the big operators that has like 10, 12, 15,000 turbines and deals exclusively with ge. They probably have a lot of, they might have the, the stroke to be able to say, no, we want our components to come from here. We want our blades to come from TPI Mexico, or whatever it may be, because we don’t want to make sure they’re coming from overseas. And, and, and if that happens in, in [00:13:00] the, let’s take like the market as a whole, the macro environment. If you’re not that big player. You kind of get the shaft, like you, you would get the leftovers basically. Dan Fesenmeyer: You could, and that makes for a very interesting discussion when you’re negotiating the contract and, and figuring out something that could work for both. It also gets tricky with, you know, there could be maybe three different gearbox suppliers, right? And some of those. So this is when things really get, you know, peeling back an onion level. It’s difficult and I’ll be nice to the OEMs. It’s very tough for them to say, oh, we’re only a source these gearbox, because they avoid the tariffs. Right? That’s why I get more to this fleet cost basis, which I think is a fair way for both sides to, to handle the the issue. Allen Hall: What’s a turbine backlog right now? If I sign a TSA today, what’s the earliest I would see a turbine? Delivered. Dan Fesenmeyer: You know, I, I really don’t know the answer to that. I would say [00:14:00] generally speaking, it would be 12 months is generally the response you would get. Uh, in terms of if I sign today, we get delivery in 12 months, Allen Hall: anywhere less than two years, I think is a really short turnaround period. Because if you’re going for a, uh, gas turbine, you know, something that GE or Siemens would provide, Mitsubishi would provide. You’re talking about. Five or six years out before we ever see that turbine on site. But wind turbines are a year, maybe two years out. That seems like a no brainer for a lot of operators. Dan Fesenmeyer: I would say a year to two is safe. Um, my experience has been things, things really get serious 12 months out. It’s hard to get something quicker. Um, that suppliers would like to sign something two years in advance, but somewhere in between the 12 months and 24 months is generally what you can expect. Now, I haven’t seen and been close to a lot of recent turbine supply [00:15:00]deals and, and with delivery, so I, I, I can’t quote me on any of this. And obviously different safe harbor, PTC, windows are going to be more and more important. 20 eights preferred over 29. 29 will be preferred over 30. Um, and how quick can you act and how quick can you get in line? Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s gonna make a big difference. There’s gonna be a rush to the end. Wouldn’t you think? There’s must be operators putting in orders just because of the end of the IRA bill to try to get some production tax credits or any tax credits out of it. Dan Fesenmeyer: Absolutely. And you know. June of 2028 is a hell of a lot better than fall of 2028 if you want a COD in 2 28. Right. And then you just work backwards from there. Yeah. And that’s, that’s, we’ve seen that in the past as well, uh, with, with the different PTC cliffs that we’ve [00:16:00] seen. Allen Hall: Let’s talk service agreements for a moment when after you have a TSA signed and. The next thing on the list usually is a service agreement, and there are some OEMs that are really hard pushing their service agreements. 25, 30, 35 years. Joel, I think 35 is the longest one I have seen. That’s a long time. Joel Saxum: Mostly in the Nordics though. We’ve seen like see like, uh, there are Vestas in the Nordic countries. We’ve seen some 35 year ones, but that’s, to me, that’s. That’s crazy. That’s, that’s a marriage. 35 years. The crazy thing is, is some of them are with mo models that we know have issues. Right? That’s the one that’s always crazy to me when I watch and, and so then maybe this is a service, maybe this is a com a question is in a service level agreement, like I, I, I know people that are installing specific turbines that we’ve been staring at for five, six years that we know have problems now. They’ve addressed a lot of the problems and different components, bearings and drive, train and [00:17:00] blades and all these different things. Um, but as an, as an operator, you’d think that you have, okay, I have my turbine supply agreement, so there’s some warranty stuff in there that’s protecting me. There is definitely some serial defect clauses that are protecting me. Now I have a service level agreement or a service agreement that we’re signing that should protect me for from some more things. So I’m reducing my risk a little more. I also have insurance and stuff in built into this whole thing. But when, when you start crossing that gap between. These three, four different types of contracts, how do people ensure that when they get to that service level contract, that’s kind of in my mind, the last level of protection from the OEM. How do they make sure they don’t end up in a, uh, a really weird Swiss cheese moment where something fell through the cracks, serial defects, or something like that? You know? Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. It, it comes down to, I, I think it’s good to negotiate both at the same time. Um, it sometimes that’s not practical. It’s good. And [00:18:00] part of it is the, the simple, once your TSA is signed, you, you don’t have that leverage over that seller to negotiate terms in the services agreement, right? Because you’ve already signed a t to supply agreement. Uh, the other piece I think is really important is making sure the defect language, for example, and the warranty language in the TSA. Pretty much gets pulled over into the service agreement, so we don’t have different definitions of what a defect is or a failed part, uh, that’s important from an execution standpoint. My view has always been in the TSA, do as much on a warranty claim as you possibly can at that end of the warranty term. The caps and the coverages. And the warranty is much higher than under the services agreement. Services agreement [00:19:00] will end up, you know, warranty or extended warranty brackets, right? ’cause that’s not what it is. It becomes unscheduled maintenance or unplanned maintenance. So you do have that coverage, but then you’re subject to, potentially subject to CAPS or mews, annual or per event. Um. Maybe the standard of a defect is different. Again, that’s why it’s important to keep defect in the TSAs the same as an SMA, and do your warranty claim first. Get as much fixed under the warranty before you get into that service contract. Joel Saxum: So with Windquest, do you go, do you regularly engage at that as farms are coming up to that warranty period? Do you help people with that process as well? As far as end of warranty claims? Contract review and those things before they get into that next phase, you know, at the end of that two year or three years. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. We try to be soup to nuts, meaning we’re there from the proposal to helping [00:20:00] negotiate and close the supply agreement and the services agreement. Then once you move into the services agreement or into the operation period, we can help out with, uh, filing warranty claims. Right. Do we, do you have a serial defect, for example, or. That, that’s usually a big one. Do you have something that gets to that level to at least start that process with an root cause analysis? Um, that’s, that’s obviously big ones, so we help with warranty claims and then if things aren’t getting fixed on time or if you’re in a service agreement and you’re unhappy, we try to step in and help out with, uh, that process as well. Joel Saxum: In taking on those projects, what is your most common component that you deal with for seald? Defects, Dan Fesenmeyer: gearboxes seem to always be a problem. Um, more recently, blade issues, um, main bearing issues. Uh, those are [00:21:00] some of the bigger ones. And then, yeah, and we can be main bearings. Also. Pitch bearings often an issue as well. Joel Saxum: Yeah, no, nothing surprising there. I think if you, if you listen to the podcast at all, you’ve heard us talk about all of those components. Fairly regularly. We’re not, we’re not to lightening the world on firing new information on that one. Allen Hall: Do a lot of operators and developers miss out on that end of warranty period? It does sound like when we talk to them like they know it’s coming, but they haven’t necessarily prepared to have the data and the information ready to go till they can file anything with the OEM it. It’s like they haven’t, they know it’s approaching, right? It’s just, it’s just like, um, you know, tax day is coming, you know, April 15th, you’re gonna write a check for to somebody, but you’re not gonna start thinking about it until April 14th. And that’s the wrong approach. And are you getting more because things are getting tighter? Are you getting more requests to look at that and to help? Operators and developers engage that part of their agreements. I think it’s an Dan Fesenmeyer: [00:22:00] oppor opportunity area for owner operators. I think in the past, a lot of folks have just thought, oh, well, you know, the, the, the service agreement kicks in and it’ll be covered under unscheduled or unplanned maintenance, which is true. But, uh, again, response time might be slower. You might be subject to caps, or in the very least, an overall contract level. Cap or limitation, let’s say. Uh, so I, I do think it’s an opportunity area. And then similarly, when you’re negotiating these upfront to put in language that, well, I don’t wanna say too much, but you wanna make sure, Hey, if I, if I file a claim during warranty and you don’t fix it, that doesn’t count against, let’s say your unplanned cap or unplanned maintenance. Joel Saxum: That’s a good point. I was actually, Alan, this is, I was surprised the other day. You and I were on a call with someone and they had mentioned that they were coming up on end of warranty and they were just kinda like, eh, [00:23:00] we’ve got a service agreement, so like we’re not gonna do anything about it. And I was like, really? Like that day? Like, yeah, that deadline’s passed, or it’s like too close. It wasn’t even passed. It was like, it’s coming up and a month or two. And they’re like, yeah, it’s too close. We’re not gonna do anything about it. We’ll just kind of deal with it as it comes. And I was thinking, man, that’s a weird way to. To manage a, you know, a wind farm that’s worth 300 million bucks. Dan Fesenmeyer: And then the other thing is sometimes, uh, the dates are based on individual turbine CDs. So your farm may have a December 31 COD, but some of the units may have an October, uh, date. Yeah, we heard a weird one the other day that was Joel Saxum: like the entire wind farm warranty period started when the first turbine in the wind farm was COD. And so there was some turbines that had only been running for a year and a half and they were at the end of warranty already. Someone didn’t do their due diligence on that contract. They should have called Dan Meyer. Dan Fesenmeyer: And thing is, I come back is when you know red lines are full of things that people learned [00:24:00] by something going wrong or by something they missed. And that’s a great example of, oh yeah, we missed that when we signed this contract. Joel Saxum: That’s one of the reasons why Alan and I, a lot, a lot of people we talk to, it’s like consult the SMEs in the space, right? You’re, you may be at tasked with being a do it all person and you may be really good at that, but someone that deals in these contracts every day and has 20 years of experience in it, that’s the person you talk to. Just like you may be able to figure out some things, enlight. Call Allen. The guy’s been doing lightning his whole career as a subject matter expert, or call a, you know, a on our team and the podcast team is the blade expert or like some of the people we have on our network. Like if you’re going to dive into this thing, like just consult, even if it’s a, a small part of a contract, give someone a day to look through your contract real quick just to make sure that you’re not missing anything. ’cause the insights from SMEs are. Priceless. Really. Dan Fesenmeyer: I couldn’t agree more. And that’s kind of how I got the idea of starting Windquest advisors to begin with. [00:25:00] Um, I used to sit across the table with very smart people, but GE would con, you know, we would negotiate a hundred contracts a year. The purchaser made one or two. And again, this isn’t, you know, to beat up the manufacturers, right? They do a good job. They, they really work with their, their customers to. Find solutions that work for both. So this is not a beat up the OEM, uh, from my perspective, but having another set of eyes and experience can help a lot. Allen Hall: I think it’s really important that anybody listening to this podcast understand how much risk they’re taking on and that they do need help, and that’s what Windquest Advisors is all about. And getting ahold of Dan. Dan, how do people get ahold of you? www.win advisors.com. If you need to get it to Dan or reach out to win advisors, check out LinkedIn, go to the website, learn more about it. Give Dan a phone call because I think [00:26:00] you’re missing out probably on millions of dollars of opportunity that probably didn’t even know existed. Uh, so it’s, it’s a good contact and a good resource. And Dan, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate having you and. We’d like to have you back again. Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, I’d love to come back and talk about, maybe we can talk more about Lightning. That’s a Joel Saxum: couple of episodes. Dan Fesenmeyer: I like watching your podcast. I always find them. Informative and also casual. It’s like you can sit and listen to a discussion and, and pick up a few things, so please continue doing what you’re doing well, thanks Dan. Allen Hall: Thanks Dan.

In this episode of The Product Experience, host Randy Silver speaks with Teresa Huang — Head of Product for Enablement at global health‑insurer Bupa — about the often‑overlooked world of platform product management. They explore why building internal platforms is fundamentally different and often more challenging than building user‑facing products, how to measure the value of platform work, and practical strategies for gaining stakeholder alignment, driving platform adoption and demonstrating business impact. Chapters0:00 – Why “efficiency” alone no longer cuts it — measuring platform impact in business terms1:02 – Teresa's background: from business analyst to head of product in health insurance6:20 – What we mean by “platform product management” — internal tools vs marketplace vs public‑API platforms7:44 – Why you need to “hop two steps”: address developer needs and end-customer value10:24 – Types of platforms: internal APIs, marketplace ecosystems, public‑facing platforms (e.g. like Shopify)10:55 – Reframing platform work: building business cases instead of chasing “efficiency” metrics13:16 – Linking platform initiatives to core business goals and joint OKRs15:47 – The importance of visualisation — using prototypes and role‑plays to communicate platform value20:57 – Internal showcases: keeping stakeholders engaged with real‑world scenarios23:28 – Success metrics for platforms: adoption, usage, reliability, ecosystem growth26:00 – Retiring legacy services: deciding when low-use tools should be decommissioned28:55 – From cost centre to enabler: shifting the narrative to show value creationOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Most leaders genuinely want a strong relationship with their team, yet day-to-day reality can be messy—especially when performance feels uneven. The trap is thinking "they should change." The breakthrough is realising: you can't change others, but you can change how you think, communicate, and lead.  Why do leaders get annoyed with the "80%" of the team (and what should they do instead)? Because the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) makes it feel like you're paying for effort you're not getting—but the fix is to lead the whole system, not just the stars. In most teams, a smaller group carries a disproportionate chunk of the output, and that can irritate any manager trying to hit targets, KPIs, OKRs, or quarterly numbers.   But treating the "80%" as a problem creates a self-fulfilling spiral: you spend less time with them, they feel it, motivation drops, and performance follows.  In Japan-based teams (and in global teams post-pandemic, with hybrid work and remote collaboration), this spiral gets worse because "relationship temperature" matters. Instead, think like an orchestra conductor: the first violin matters, but the whole section must play in harmony.  Do now: Stop "ranking people in your head" mid-week. Start "designing the system" that helps every player contribute.  Can you actually change your team members' performance or attitude? Not directly—you can't rewire other adults, but you can change the environment you create and the way you show up. The leader move is internal first: adjust your assumptions, your language, your coaching cadence, and your consistency.   In practice, this means you stop waiting for people to become "more like you" and start shaping the conditions where they can succeed. A simple mental shift is accepting that high performers and average performers will always co-exist in any team—Japan, the US, Europe, APAC; startups, SMEs, or multinationals. When you accept the 20/80 reality, you can focus on (1) lifting the 20% even higher and (2) getting strong coordination and reliable contribution from everyone else.  Do now: Identify one attitude you bring to the "middle 60%" that's costing you results—and change that, first.  How do you stop criticism from destroying motivation and trust? By eliminating the "criticise, condemn, complain" reflex and replacing it with coaching language that preserves dignity. Dale Carnegie's human relations principle is blunt for a reason: criticism rarely produces agreement; it produces defence.   And when people feel attacked, they don't improve—they protect themselves, they withdraw, and they tell themselves a story about you. This is especially relevant in Japan, where public correction can trigger loss of face, and in Western contexts where blunt feedback can still backfire if it feels personal rather than behavioural. The point isn't to become "soft." It's to become effective: if the same negative approach keeps producing the same negative reaction, adjust the angle—just a few degrees—so the other person can respond positively.  Do now: Before your next correction, rewrite it as: "Here's what I observed, here's the impact, here's what good looks like next time."  What does "honest, sincere appreciation" look like in a Japanese workplace? It's specific, evidence-based praise—not vague compliments, not flattery, and not silence. Leaders often skip appreciation because they assume "they're paid to do it," then wonder why cooperation is hard.   Yet people are highly sensitive to fake praise, and they'll dismiss it as manipulation.   The fix is to praise something concrete and provable. A practical Japan example is exactly the point: "Suzuki-san, I appreciated the fact you got back to me on time with the information I requested—it helped me meet the deadline. Thank you for your cooperation."   The evidence makes it believable, the detail makes it useful, and the respect makes it repeatable. Do now: Give one piece of appreciation today that includes what, when, and why it mattered—in one sentence.    How do you motivate people who don't seem to care as much as you do? You motivate them by speaking to what they want—because everyone is already focused on their own priorities. If you need cooperation, it's not enough to repeat what you want and when you want it.   Your team member is running their own internal agenda: career security, competence, recognition, flexibility, learning, status, autonomy, or simply a calmer workday. This is where "arouse in the other person an eager want" becomes a leadership skill, not a slogan.   In a Japanese firm, the eager want might be stability and not standing out negatively. In a US startup, it might be speed, ownership, and visibility. Same principle, different cultural packaging. Listen to what comes out of your mouth—if it's all about you, you're making cooperation harder.  Do now: In your next request, add one line: "What would make this easier or more valuable for you?"  What should leaders do this week to strengthen team relationships—fast? Start by changing yourself "three degrees," then run a simple weekly rhythm that rebuilds trust, clarity, and contribution. If you keep approaching lower performers negatively, you'll keep getting the same negative reaction; change your approach first.   Then operationalise it—because intention without behaviour is just theatre. Here's a tight relationship-strengthening checklist you can run in any context (Japan HQ, regional APAC office, or global remote team): Weekly habit What you do Why it works 2x short 1:1s Ask: "What's blocking you?" Shows support, surfaces friction 1 evidence-based praise Specific + concrete Builds motivation without fluff  2021.10.11 GEO Version How Lead… 1 "eager want" question "What do you want from this?" Aligns incentives  2021.10.11 GEO Version How Lead… 1 criticism detox Remove complain/condemn Prevents defensive behaviour  2021.10.11 GEO Version How Lead… Do now: Pick one person you've mentally labelled "difficult" and change your next interaction by three degrees—more curiosity, more respect, more clarity.  Conclusion If you want stronger relationships, stop waiting for people to become easier to lead. You'll get better results by starting with what you control: your mindset, your communication habits, and your consistency. The leaders who do that build better teams; the leaders who don't keep complaining—and they're never short of company.  Next steps (quick actions) Replace one critical comment with one coaching request this week.  Deliver one evidence-based appreciation per day for five days.  In every request, add one line that links to what the other person wants.  Track who you spend time with—ensure the "80%" aren't getting frozen out.  FAQs Yes—high performers still need active leadership, not neglect. Keep lifting the 20% higher while systemising support for everyone else.  No—praise isn't "un-Japanese" if it's precise and evidence-based. Specific appreciation is usually accepted because it's verifiable and respectful.  Yes—criticism can be useful, but condemn-and-complain feedback usually backfires. People defend themselves; improvement requires clarity without attack.  Author Credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー).  Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan. 

This week's Espresso covers news from Mercado de Recebíveis, Clara, BHub, and more!Outline of this episode:[00:30] – Creditas raises $108M Series G led by Andbank[00:40] – Mercado de Recebíveis raises $28M FIDC[00:48] – BHub raises $10M to bring AI to Brazil's accounting market[00:58] – ColmeIA raises $3.4M reaching a $94M valuation[01:08] – Clara raises $70M in debt[01:19] – Unergy raises $5M in a Pre-series A round[01:30] – Cenit raises $1.8M to automate tax management for SMEs[01:41] – Frankles raises $1M led by Südlich CapitalResources & people mentioned:Startups: Creditas, Mercado de Recebíveis, BHub, ColmeIA, Clara, Unergy, Cenit, Frankles.VCs: Andbank, Crescera Capital, BBVA Spark, Covalto, International Finance Corporation, Hi Ventures, Südlich Capital.

It's been a pivotal year for the circular economy, full of big ideas and practical breakthroughs.Before we fully dive into 2026, we're hitting pause for a moment of reflection.Join Fin, Lou, and Pippa who have hand-picked their favourite, most insightful, and memorable moments from the conversations they've had this year.This episode may show condensed snippets, but it is packed with big ideas, practical breakthroughs, and the highlights that defined the circular economy in 2025.Thanks for listening to the Circular Economy Show from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Help us grow our audience in 2026 by sharing your favourite episode with your friends and colleagues.Explore the episodes discussed in order of appearance:Ep 201: Why do circular business models fail to scale? Going it aloneEp 188: “It's a no-brainer”: Arc'teryx on bringing repairs in-storeEp 197: Stop minding your own businessEp 179: How are small start-ups, SMEs, and large corporations working together to change the food system?Ep 185: How can marketers turn ideas into impactful action?Ep 174: Material security in a circular economy | Energy and competitiveness

In this episode, Eric sits down with Tony Gray from the Global Business Development Association to completely reframe what business development really is—and why most companies get it wrong. Tony explains how he built the Business Development Body of Knowledge after years of struggling to "break into BD," why traditional labels like B2B/B2C/B2G are less important than intent and trust, and how purpose, empathy, and truth literally create the brain chemistry that drives deals. He breaks down the difference between sales and true business development, shows how untrained teams cause massive revenue leakage, and shares practical tactics like open-book BD certification, community-led growth, and agile proposal methods that stop relying on overworked SMEs and start producing cleaner, clearer, more winnable bids. Key Takeaways Trust is the first principle of BD – purpose, empathy, and truth drive the brain chemistry that leads to real, lasting relationships and referrals. Everyone in your company is a business developer – if your team can't spot customer pain points and route them back to leadership, you're leaking revenue. Community-led growth beats going solo – partnering with aligned experts and building niche communities gets you into new markets faster than cold outreach alone. Learn more: https://federalhelpcenter.com/ https://govcongiants.org/  Encore Funding: https://www.encore-funding.com/  Tony's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-gray-mba-bdp/ Website: https://www.gbdassociation.org/  

In this episode of The Product Experience, host Randy Silver sits down with product veteran John Cutler to explore why creating great products remains one of the hardest things organisations do. They dive into why so many companies adopt off‑the‑shelf models (“Spotify”, “SAFe”, etc) and still struggle, and how the secret often lies not in what you build but how you build it—specifically the game you design for how you work.Chapters00:00 — The stigma around “how you work”00:54 — Introducing John Cutler (again)01:25 — What John's building at Dotwork02:46 — From fun to formal: doing discovery at scale04:04 — Why process became a bad word05:10 — The “cavalier PM” mindset06:28 — Empowered teams vs. harsh realities08:00 — What great pockets of practice have in common09:03 — Managing up vs. doing the right thing10:24 — Playing the game vs. designing the game11:20 — What makes a great internal game12:33 — Defining success: thriving, surviving, progressing13:46 — Environmental design: why leaders hesitate15:10 — Making intentional design less intimidating16:42 — Tools, rituals, and the power of checkpoints18:23 — The behaviour design playbook20:41 — Removing blockers: access, repetition, reflectionWe're taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here. Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

Operators with 30 years of pattern recognition leave for competitors. Engineers carrying legacy system intelligence depart. Everyone understands the risk. Few solve the execution: Systematically extracting tacit intelligence that experts can't articulate because it operates below the conscious threshold.Dr. Refiloe Mabaso and Wisdom Ndashe architected what many struggle to build - knowledge-capture systems that function independently of voluntary participation. At ATNS, harvesting is mandated by policy and embedded in workflows. Their "Legends and Beneficiaries" program identifies critical expertise five years before departure, mapping tacit intelligence to next-generation operators through structured protocols. The execution breakthrough: embedding capture into SOPs makes retention automatic. Travel with Purpose demonstrates strategic reach - converting unaccounted expenditures into documented intelligence acquisition with measurable ROI. Cost centers become intelligence operations.Paradigm Shifts:

Ron Benegbi, founder and CEO of Uplinq, a unique credit-scoring solution for SMEs, spoke with Rudolf Falat, founder of the Voice of FinTech podcast, about how to make credit scoring for SMEs smarter while working alongside existing solutions.Here is what they talked about in more detail:Ron's background and experienceRon's reasons for starting his businessWhat is Uplinq? What problem do they solve?What is Uplinq's unique advantage? How do they differ from other credit scoring solutions? Business modelTarget customersLocationsThe very first steps in starting this ventureWhere are you in your journey regarding product development, geographic reach, funding, and hiring? Can you share any numbers?What are your next steps for this year and beyond? Where can interested parties contact you? Uplinq site orRon Benegbi on LinkedIn 

The Space Show Presents KATHRYN BOLISH, WEX Foundation, Friday, 11-21-25Brief Summary:The program focused on discussing the WEX Foundation's educational programs, particularly their space STEM initiatives for K-12 students through their LCATS program, which provides free education and mentorship in space-related topics. The discussion covered the foundation's approach to teaching mathematics and programming, as well as their collaboration with NASA and other aerospace companies to develop student projects and curriculum. The conversation concluded with an exploration of the program's impact on student engagement and academic performance, while addressing challenges related to the COVID pandemic, funding, and policy issues in public education.Detailed Summary:David, John Jossy, and Kathryn Bolish, our guest from the WEX Foundation, discussed the WEX Foundation, its projects, and its namesake, Judge Waldo Jimenez. Kathryn explained the power outages at her office causing WIFI issues for this broadcast. We lost audio and video with our guest a few times during the program but were fortunate that we were able to reconnect with a minor delay. We do apologize for the audio/video issues during this discussion.Kathryn discussed her passion for mathematics and her plans to pursue a PhD at UTSA. John Jossy and I welcomed Dr. Ajay Kothari to the meeting and others as they joined us. I provided a formal introduction for Kathryn Bolish, a mathematician pursuing a PhD, who discussed her passion for mathematics and its applications in space travel. They explored the disconnect between theoretical and numerical mathematics in education, with Kathryn highlighting the importance of teaching math theory and logic from an early age to improve understanding and reduce remedial needs. Before commencing with the full program, I announced upcoming guests and program changes, including a fundraising campaign after Thanksgiving which is essential for supporting The Space Show for 2026.Kathryn discussed the importance of teaching propositional logic and set theory to students early on to help them understand math as a tool rather than a monster. She explained how WEX Foundation provides free space STEM education to K-12 students, focusing on lunar exploration. The program, called LCATS, accepts 30-40 students annually for a three-year commitment, meeting bi-weekly Saturdays at San Antonio area universities. Kathryn emphasized the need for teachers to understand basic programming and math theory to effectively teach these subjects. The discussion also touched on the challenges of AI in education, with Kathryn advocating for using AI as a tool for learning rather than for cheating. David inquired about the program's impact on students' general academic performance, including students not in a WEX program but in the class with a WEX student. Kathryn replied that it has led to increased interest and engagement in STEM subjects among participating students.Kathryn explained that the WEX Foundation's LCATS program, which was piloted by NASA in 2017, faced challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and staff changes in 2020. She emphasized the importance of ensuring that the program's content remains relevant to the space industry and highlighted the need to find suitable locations and teachers willing to conduct classes on Saturdays. Kathryn also discussed the foundation's approach to connecting young students with space industry experts, noting that while the experts may initially seem intimidating, the students often view their feedback as valuable learning opportunities. She mentioned that the foundation plans to finalize a comprehensive LCATS curriculum by May 2026, which will then be used to expand the program to other regions.Kathryn discussed the benefits of exposing students to industry challenges, noting that while some SMEs may be harsh, the experience helps build student confidence. She shared an example of a student project that led to a 3D printer prototype for lunar construction, now displayed at a museum. David raised concerns about magical thinking among graduate students and asked how Kathryn addresses it with young minds, to which she responded that embracing the “magic” of unknown possibilities is crucial for innovation, drawing parallels to historical achievements like the moon landing.The meeting discussed the NASA-funded New Worlds program, which trains pre-service educators in lunar habitat design. Kathryn explained that the program teaches students about lunar lava tubes and challenges them to design habitat systems. Ajay raised concerns about landing on the lunar surface, suggesting that the program could help address this issue by developing solutions for landing on uneven terrain. Marshall inquired about the transition from Earth-based biospheres to lunar habitats, and Kathryn mentioned that the program partners with experts in this field to provide students with relevant constraints and knowledge. The conversation ended with a reminder that the show had a strict 60-minute time limit.Kathryn explained that her parent company, Astroport, evaluates student proposals for space-related projects by assessing their feasibility for terrestrial demonstrations before advancing to lunar applications. She noted that while Astroport works with major aerospace companies like Boeing and SpaceX, WEX focuses on space STEM education and collaborates with these organizations through mentorship and partnerships. Kathryn also mentioned that WEX operates from the same building as Astroport and occasionally hosts engineers to help students brainstorm solutions for their projects, while acknowledging the challenges of addressing policy and regulation issues in their curriculum.Kathryn explained that WEX Foundation's space education programs are structured to be self-sustaining and low-cost, allowing them to continue operations despite NASA's education budget cuts. She clarified that while students can propose their own ideas for lunar projects, the program focuses on teaching established concepts like lava tube habitation and letting students develop their own solutions. The discussion concluded with Ajay offering to share a paper about space exploration with Kathryn, who expressed gratitude for the collaborative spirit among the participants.This program featured a discussion with Kathryn from the WEX Foundation, who shared insights about her math-focused educational programs in San Antonio. She explained how her mathematical background supports her work in program management and curriculum development, despite not directly using advanced math in her current role. The conversation highlighted the diversity of her student cohorts and the collaborative nature of her programs, which bring together students of different ages and backgrounds. The discussion concluded with questions about the demographics of her students and plans for program expansion, as well as a brief conversation about the challenges of public education and the role of money in society.Special thanks to our sponsors:Northrup Grumman, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Helix Space in Luxembourg, Celestis Memorial Spaceflights, Astrox Corporation, Dr. Haym Benaroya of Rutgers University, The Space Settlement Progress Blog by John Jossy, The Atlantis Project, and Artless EntertainmentOur Toll Free Line for Live Broadcasts: 1-866-687-7223 (Not in service at this time)For real time program participation, email Dr. Space at: drspace@thespaceshow.com for instructions and access.The Space Show is a non-profit 501C3 through its parent, One Giant Leap Foundation, Inc. To donate via Pay Pal, use:To donate with Zelle, use the email address: david@onegiantleapfoundation.org.If you prefer donating with a check, please make the check payable to One Giant Leap Foundation and mail to:One Giant Leap Foundation, 11035 Lavender Hill Drive Ste. 160-306 Las Vegas, NV 89135Upcoming Programs:Broadcast 4466: ZOOM: Dr. Avi Loeb | Sunday 23 Nov 2025 1200PM PTGuests: Dr. Abraham (Avi) LoebZOOM: Dr. Avi Loeb returns to discuss our latest interstellar visitor and more. Get full access to The Space Show-One Giant Leap Foundation at doctorspace.substack.com/subscribe

Send us a textWhen decisions can't wait for perfect data, you need methods that actually work in the real world. We sit down with Brian Moon to pull naturalistic decision making out of journals and into the field where cops, medics, operators, and executives make consequential calls under stress, time pressure, and uncertainty. The conversation opens with a clear critique: elegant lab studies often miss the work. From there, we rebuild on stronger ground; agency, process, and the lived patterns of true expertise. Brian traces why experience isn't just hours served but exposure to hard problems, responsibility for outcomes, and honest feedback that reshapes judgment. We unpack how experts blend rapid recognition with deliberate checks, using counterfactuals to keep first interpretations from hardening too soon. If you lead training, you'll get specific moves: design scenarios that force ownership of the whole problem; capture tacit cues through structured debriefs; and teach a shared language for uncertainty so teams can flexecute as conditions change. We also push into high-friction topics like use-of-force errors and pathways to violence, showing how process signals, not labels or post-hoc narratives, offer the best chance to prevent bad outcomes.Across the hour, you'll hear how to spot and grow real SMEs, why credentials alone fall short, and how to engineer environments where sensemaking becomes a habit instead of a hope. Whether you work a midnight shift or a corner office, you'll leave with practical tools to clean up your decisions this week and a sharper lens for understanding human behavior where it actually happens: on the street, on the line, and in the moment. If this conversation helps, share it with a teammate, subscribe for more, and drop a review so others can find it. Darwin's People: AMAZONSupport the showWebsite: https://thehumanbehaviorpodcast.buzzsprout.com/shareFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHumanBehaviorPodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehumanbehaviorpodcast/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ArcadiaCognerati More about Greg and Brian: https://arcadiacognerati.com/arcadia-cognerati-leadership-team/