Innovation and the Digital Enterprise

Sticky notes might be the key to successful leadership. Christina Garcia, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Echo Global Logistics , keeps a few posted nearby with essential reminders to guide her in difficult moments. When leading teams of engineers attempting to disrupt the logistics space grows challenging, having a reminder of foundational leadership tools can be the key to accurately ide...

Joining a new company and being tasked with adding value and building high-performing teams starts with one key question: what is the organizational structure? Experienced technology leader Dan Kirsche has recently joined Chamberlain Group as the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering after a robust career of leading software engineers. With innovation and team building on his mind, Dan sha...

At the start of summer last year, we had a really inspiring conversation with Christopher Paquette and are excited to reshare it this year, in our “Best Of” series. Originally published 06/29/23. Tasked with accelerating digital transformation at Allstate , Christopher Paquette recognizes the digital potential embedded everywhere. Reflecting on his first year as Chief Digital Transformation Office...

We had a fascinating conversation with Deborah Spence-Cummings in late 2022 and are excited to reshare it in our “Best Of” series. Originally published 12/01/22. Only an exceptional innovator would look at a burgeoning career in operations and pause to examine their reputation and evaluate their goals. With the help of an executive coach, Deborah Spence-Cummings did just that and now serves as the...

OKRs are easy to set up badly. Christine Sandman Stone, CEO and founder of Deliver at Scale , focuses on this key element for success based on her years leading agile transformations. Beginning with her journey, Christine shares her path to leadership and the critical lessons she’s learned—and shared—along the way. In this episode, Christine provides a glimpse into her world guiding teams to hone...

Should we look beyond technology organizations to learn essential lessons on how to innovate and run successful, complex technology organizations? Gene Kim believes so and contains unbridled curiosity for transformation across industries, as seen in his most recent book Wiring the Winning Organization . Gene Kim returns to share new lessons in change-making for leaders and companies tackling an ar...

We had a great conversation with David Heinemeier Hansson in 2023 and are excited to reshare it in our “Best Of” series. Originally published 11/2/23. Profound innovation has occurred across web-based communication technologies in the last decade, and truly accelerated in the years since the start of the pandemic. But David Heinemeier Hansson recognized a massively neglected arena, one we all use...

Today we're sharing another insightful presentation from our most recent Innovative Executives League Summit , where Leon Chism, the Vice President of Engineering at Evolve , delivered a powerful lesson on collecting critical metrics for organization-wide success. As an experienced technologist and executive, Leon leads teams in unparalleled growth and innovation. In this presentation, Leon dives...

Today we’re sharing another insightful presentation from our most recent Innovative Executives League Summit , where Tanya Hannah discusses the roadmap to navigate the ever-evolving tech landscape. As a seasoned transformational business executive, Tanya offers the pillars needed to survive major shifts and thrive in the opportunities presented by them.  In this episode, Tanya shares how crit...

Today we’re sharing another insightful presentation from our most recent Innovative Executives League Summit , where Desiree Vargas Wrigley, Chief Innovation Officer of P33 Chicago and Executive Director of TechRise by P33 , delivered a lesson in stakeholder-centric design. Desiree overviews the challenges Chicago’s underrepresented tech founders face and the process of developing TechRise’s initi...

Today we’re sharing another insightful presentation from our most recent Innovative Executives League Summit , where Maya Mikhailov, Chief Executive Officer and founder of SAVVI AI , discusses machine learning as a powerful toolkit of solutions. Comparing efficiency with and without AI, she highlights how the proper tool makes the difference and cuts through assumptions. Is Chat GPT the AI tool th...

Coupling a charitable mindset and a drive to solve some of the toughest intellectual and scientific problems has led to success for P33 Chicago and founding Chief Executive Officer Brad Henderson. Serving Chicago and embracing the city’s challenges and strengths, Brad envisions the city as a hub for new technologies built on collaborative and dynamic innovation, all while embracing inclusive growt...

Today we’re sharing another insightful presentation from our most recent Innovative Executives League Summit , where Michelangelo D’Agostino, VP of Machine Learning at Tegus , delivered a foundational lesson about large language models. Imagine you are Rip Van Winkle, as Michelangelo puts it, and you have woken up after a long sleep and encountered the current AI landscape. What have you missed? W...

An exceptional company culture builds when steadfast employee commitment meets deep trust by customers. Chris Brown encountered this when he joined Relativity as Chief Product Officer in 2018. Chris joined the team in the early stages of their transition to SaaS and embraced the moment of disruption and opportunity—a familiar territory in his career, which included ten years at Orbitz Worldwide. F...

Today we’re sharing another insightful presentation from our most recent Innovative Executives League Summit , where Mark Achler, Managing Director of MATH Venture Partners , spoke about the central role of trust in a successful company—with customers, employees, and partners.  In this presentation, Mark details three experiences involving broken trust. He shares his journey remaining optimis...

It is essential for companies to approach transformation from many directions, and leadership that embraces that multiplicity will innovate through process. Experienced technology executive Angel Mendez knows these methods intimately from years of working alongside visionary founders and forward-thinking teams. His business and technology journey includes a decade at Cisco Systems steering the acq...

How do you create a frictionless experience for shoppers while keeping shrink under control? CTO of Sensormatic Solutions Subramanian Kunchithapatham (KS) spearheads innovative technologies to solve major retail questions and utilizes over two decades of experience to meet these challenges at the speed of retail evolution and digitization. His work explores shopper experience, inventory intelligen...

Profound innovation has occurred across web-based communication technologies in the last decade, and truly accelerated in the years since the start of the pandemic. But David Heinemeier Hansson recognized a massively neglected arena, one we all use, every day: email. Bringing his experience as co-owner and Chief Technology Officer at 37signals ( Basecamp , Ruby on Rails , and more), David launched...

The first day on the job sets the tone, which is why Dom Scandinaro, SVP of Engineering & Data at fan connection app Cameo , encourages new hires to deploy code to production on their very first day. As an experienced software engineer and technology leader, Dom fosters day-one collaborations when bringing on a new team member. Even during growth periods with competing priorities. In this epis...

For retail businesses, being able to provide real-time, precise inventory is key to exceeding customer expectations. Ronald Blahnik, Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategy, Innovation, Customer Experience, and Retail Analytics of Hibbett Sports , knows that providing customers with what they want, when they want it, has been essential to Hibbett’s growth over the last six...

Second City is an iconic Chicago institution training comedic geniuses across generations, but developing the talents of a VP of Technology is one of its more under-the-radar accomplishments. Arne Saupe, Vice President of Technology at Farmer’s Fridge , learned more than acting and improvisation when exploring this new arena. He discovered lessons in management, failure, team building, empathy, an...

Imagine you are a founder developing a physical product with incredible potential, but the space and resources to advance your product are out of reach and cost-prohibitive. Haven Allen witnessed this hurdle to introducing life-changing HardTech into the world and co-founded a solution: mHUB , a hyper-resourced innovation center in Chicago. In this episode, learn from CEO Haven Allen the impact of...

With a growing family, Tony Newcome took a major risk in returning to his software engineering roots after years in leadership—pay cut and all. Ultimately, the risk was rewarded. During his two decades of experience in the industry, Tony has held significant roles during critical growth moments at ExactTarget and Salesforce, and he currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer at ActiveCampaign...

A distaste for the repetitive is a powerful motivation. Something Kevin Pogany discovered as a teenager writing code for his father’s pharmacy to automate their processes. An early experience that catalyzed a nearly thirty-year career across nine industries pushing for data-driven innovation. Most recently, he has found himself as a Chief Technology Officer within the aerial imagery industry encou...

“You don’t get a chance to be new twice.” Technology and business executive Andrei Girenkov embraces moments of great potential and offers essential advice for achieving success in 2023. Recent Senior Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer at Greystar , Andrei discusses speaking the CEO’s language, enterprise change management, and his journey to law school and beyond. In this episode, And...