Breakthrough Innovation

Most organizations say they test before they scale, but testing is often the first thing cut when a deadline moves. In healthcare, skipping testing is expensive, and promising research can take years to reach the people it was built for. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Kate Rutledge, an audiologist turned innovation leader who heads up the...

Your customer journey map is wrong — and it was probably wrong before the workshop ended. In a world where AI agents are starting to traverse brand experiences with zero patience for friction, static journey maps aren't just outdated — they're dangerous. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Britt Fox, founder and CEO of Nevam, a platform that tu...

Most leaders think they're engaging a community — but what they're really doing is speaking to an audience. That distinction is quietly killing trust, retention, and growth. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Bryan Woodyard, a C-suite strategist with 30 years of experience across nonprofits, healthcare technology, and global organizations. We...

Performance ratings are supposed to drive improvement — but the research says they're doing the opposite. What happens when the system designed to ensure quality is actually the thing preventing it? In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Craig Randall, creator of Trust-Based Observations and a leadership coach who has trained school leaders across...

Remote leaders don't burn out from doing too much work — they burn out from being the bottleneck for every decision. If your team waits for you before they move, you've got a delegation problem hiding as an engagement problem. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Madi Waggoner, a remote work strategist who has spent 15 years building and scaling...

Most organizations don't have an innovation problem — they have a permission problem. You can run every sprint in the book and still watch good ideas die between the third approval and the fourth steering committee. So how do you build innovation capability that actually sticks? In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Matthias Orgler, a leadership...

Every executive says AI is moving too fast to plan around. Daniel Burrus has spent 40 years proving that the biggest shifts in technology aren't surprises — they're future facts you can see coming, if you know how to look. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Daniel Burrus — futurist, New York Times bestselling author, creator of the Anticipator...

Most organizations are pouring resources into making individuals faster — but that's not what drives breakthrough innovation. The real structural shift is building smarter teams that can make better decisions, iterate faster, and operationalize learning before the competition. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler wrap up their three-part series on the interse...

Breakthrough innovation isn't about catching lightning in a bottle — it's about building the cultural and structural conditions where breakthroughs happen again and again. In this episode, JL Heather and Preston Chandler go deep on the culture side of that equation. This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the intersection of culture and structure in innovation. Part 1 laid out the overarching fra...

Companies are investing more in innovation than ever, AI on top of that, and the results have not moved. The problem was never a shortage of ideas — it is that most organizations are wired to squash the ones they already have. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler go back to the foundation the whole show rests on: culture and structure are two halves of one co...

Are you actually growing, or just functioning well? Most senior leaders don't realize they've crossed that line until burnout forces the question. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather sits down with Adrienne Benton, Navy chaplain-turned-leadership coach and founder of Mobilizing With Impact. We cover why fear of failure is rarely about the failure itself, how purpose and alignmen...

Most leaders say they're committed to developing their best people — but the systems they've built tell a different story. When visibility, access, and opportunity are determined by unexamined structure rather than actual talent, organizations quietly lose their most valuable thinkers. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Dr. Lola Adeyemo, CEO o...

Most organizations are still asking the wrong question about AI. The question isn't how to get people to use a new tool — it's how to prepare them for a world where AI is a participant, a partner, and eventually something far more capable than any tool in your stack. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Robert Feeney, founder of Ringarang, a poc...

Most transformation strategies don't fail because the plan was wrong — they fail because the organization quietly rewrites the plan while everyone's still calling it a success. Understanding why well-funded, well-led transformation initiatives still stall is one of the most critical challenges facing senior leaders today. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler...

Most organizations don't have an innovation problem. They have a prioritization problem. The pipeline is full — and that's exactly what's breaking it. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Noel Sobelman, 25-year innovation portfolio management expert and author of Innovation Portfolio Management: Linking Strategy to Execution, whose client work s...

Most companies building AI-powered health products are racing to ship features. Very few are asking whether their data is good enough — or whether their product actually makes sense to the person holding the phone. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather sits down with Dr. Akvile Ignotaite — data scientist, founder of System Akvile, and creator of Pimsy, an AI-powered skin health pl...

Most CEOs know talent is their biggest asset. Very few can tell you exactly how much their talent infrastructure is costing them right now — not in vague cultural terms, but in actual dollars. That gap is where growth quietly stalls. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, Preston Chandler sits down with DeeAnn Palin — founder of On Point Business Solutions, a two-decade corporate executive tu...

Most organizations don't have an innovation problem. They have a truth problem — and the accumulated cost of every small, tolerated lie shows up as slowed decisions, stalled initiatives, and talent that quietly stops trusting the system. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Thane Bellomo — a 25-year veteran of Fortune 500 boardrooms and high-sta...

Most leaders believe better data and stronger logic win the argument. Behavioral science says otherwise — and the gap between those two assumptions is costing your organization buy-in, alignment, and momentum. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, Preston Chandler sits down with Dr. JonRobert Tartaglione — a Cambridge-trained psychologist, behavioral scientist, and Founder & CEO of Influ...

Most leaders can name the dysfunction on their team. Almost none of them can see it in themselves. That gap is where transformation dies. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Charlie Sheppard — professor of leadership, founder of World Bridge University, biotech co-founder, and creator of the leadership application of the Drama Triangle framewor...

Most leaders are operating with a playbook built for a world that no longer exists. The question isn't whether disruption is coming — it's whether your mindset can keep up with the pace. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Robert Tucker, globally recognized futurist and innovation advisor who has spent more than 30 years advising Fortune 500 le...

Most leaders are trying to innovate inside a governance structure that was never designed for it. Change the structure, and you change what's possible. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Brenna Davis, CEO of Organically Grown Company — a nine-figure national organic food distributor operating under a Perpetual Purpose Trust. We cover how gover...

Most companies aren't failing because of the wrong people — they're failing because they're running the wrong playbook. If your go-to-market engine was built for an enterprise you're not, you're not behind. You're just fighting the wrong battle. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Ben Morrison, founder of Made Simpler and a 20+ year revenue gro...

Most organizations say they care about culture. But if your last three culture initiatives quietly died, the problem probably isn't your strategy — it's the gap between what leadership believes is happening and what's actually true on the ground. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with LaChandra Baker, workforce optimization strategist, three-time...

Most leaders don't fail because they stop caring. They fail because they can't stop adding — more initiatives, more hours, more optimization — until the very effort that built their success quietly starts to undermine it. In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey, Harvard-trained leadership advisor, self-described subtract...