Innovation Ahead by IRI

Learn how The J.M. Smucker Company calculates the return on investment for their sustainability initiatives, balancing value creation and risk management. Rebecca Ott, Director, Sustainability, shares their approach to sustainability metrics, navigating the regulatory environment, and mitigating risk in the supply chain.

Laura Buen Abad, Senior Director of Technology and Marketing, Flexible Packaging, Sonoco shares how they are integrating sustainability into their strategy and technology roadmaps, how it drives innovation priorities, and their approach to life cycle analysis.  

Hear the Chief Information Officer’s perspective on cybersecurity in this thought leader interview. Rod Masney, CIO for O-I Glass, the world’s largest producer of glass containers, shares his thoughts on the current threat landscape, working with external partners, and how best to work with IT on your digitalization efforts.

How does a global chemical manufacturer integrate sustainability into new product development? How do they assess the ROI on investments in sustainability and capitalize on regulatory changes? Listen as IRI’s Lee Green interviews Rick Michelman, President & CEO of Michelman.

How can augmented reality improve communication and bridge the gap between experts and non-experts on projects? How can it enable faster prototyping and improve sustainability efforts? Scroll to the bottom for the recording of Lee Green’s interview with Terri Griffith, Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University and Dave Alpert of Geopogo AR+.

Join IRI’s Lee Green as she interviews Johan Wiklund, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Business. Learn about the links between ADHD and entrepreneurship, the ways that individuals with ADHD can be a great addition to teams, and the accommodations that can be made to get the best out of these individuals. Also discover why recruiting the next generation of in...

Join IRI’s Lee Green as she interviews Dr. Don Kinard, Senior Fellow, Production Operations, at Lockheed Martin. The focus of their discussion will be on digital twins: Defining digital twins; Use cases at Lockheed Martin; Building trust in digital twins and their capabilities; Creating and maintaining the infrastructure needed for effective digital twins, especially in legacy companies; and Maint...

IRI honors Veterans Day with this fantastic panel of veterans brought together to discuss: Barriers that impede a smooth transition from military to civilian employment; Key skills that are developed in the military; Ways that veterans’ experience can help them in industry roles; and Steps that organizations can take to make themselves more attractive to veterans.

IRI’s Lee Green interviews Brennon Marcano, CEO of the National GEM Consortium. The GEM Fellows program aims to increase the participation of underrepresented groups at the master’s and doctoral levels in engineering and science. Learn about how the GEM Consortium is increasing diversity in industry and academia and the ways that they match fellows with the right organizations to maximize success.

IRI’s Lee Green and Randall Wright, Program Director, MIT discuss how companies need to practice reconnaissance to identify innovative thinkers and the next disrupters, how sensors will be game changers, and hidden factories.

IRI’s Lee Green interviews David Caudel, Associate Director,  Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University . They discuss the abilities that neurodiverse individuals bring to the workplace, and innovation in particular, and the (surprisingly simple and straightforward) accommodations that can be made to the workplace to bring in these individuals. They also cover how to train ma...

IRI’s Ed Bernstein and Nancy discuss her work in covering her research into diversity, culture, and inequality, as well as the management of knowledge-based organizations, and the management of scientists and engineers.

IRI’s Lee Green and John Simmins discuss augmented reality, covering the technology itself, ways to ease adoption, and future uses in industry and education.

IRI’s Lee Green and Carolyn discuss Carolyn’s work in establishing an LGBTQ+ employee resource group in the organization, including the impact the group is having on culture, establishing leadership buy-in, and bringing along allies. 

IRI’s Lee Green and Mickey McManus, Senior Advisor, BCG discuss Mickey's time at Carnegie Mellon University, MAYA (Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable), Autodesk, and BCG including topics such as interdisciplinary creation, generative design, building effective human/machine teams, and the marriage of sustainability and synthetic biology.

IRI’s Lee Green and Corinne discuss the impact of belonging to a specific group (women, racial minority) on R&D scientists and engineers’ career trajectories and how having women in leadership impacts organizations’ long-term innovation strategies as well as the tools that diverse R&D teams need to be able to innovate effectively.

IRI’s Lee Green and Sharon Feng, Director of Science and Technology and Global Analytical Science at PPG discuss PPG’s digitalization efforts, including their Fast Forward initiative, the ways that R&D can benefit from digitalization, the value of legacy data, and creating citizen data scientists.

IRI’s Lee Green and Elaine Franklin and Mark Townley of the Kenan Fellows Program discuss their program that brings together teachers and industry to teach skills to students that can be used in local industry. Through their initiatives, they strive to make sure that the Kenan Fellows look like the students in their communities and use project-based learning to bring inclusion to teaching processe...

IRI’s Lee Green interviews Robert Wilkinson, Senior Director of Data Science & Analytics, and Allison Rajakumar, Senior Manager, Data Science & Analytics, Lubrizol Corporation. They discuss Lubrizol’s homegrown virtual testing and data analytics system for product development and deployment, Q.life. They discuss how they overcame data and resourcing issues to create the system and how they...

IRI’s Lee Green and Bernardita discuss the ways that Novartis has integrated inclusion into their innovation program, including bringing together people from across the organization – functionally and geographically – and fostering a sense of psychological safety to ensure staff are bringing their whole self to work and to the work of innovation.  Learn also about Bernardita’s work with the One Yo...

IRI's Lee Green and Mark discuss the challenges and opportunities that Purina has experienced as they work to bring digital into both their products and R&D. They cover a wide range of issues from creating products that will appeal to both pets and their owners to making those tough calls on resource allocation to invest in digital.

IRI’s Lee Green and Janeen Uzzell discuss the value of diversity in R&D organizations and the importance of diversity in innovation.

IRI’s Lee Green and Moises discuss how having a purpose and focus for innovation plays into digitalization efforts and the ways that digital can improve the user experience in surprising and unexpected ways.

Join IRI’s Lee Green as she interviews Lauren Beckstedt and Michael Adams of Brunswick. They will take a deep dive into their digital transformation efforts, expanding on their case study.