Innovation Storytellers

In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Priyank Jain, Enterprise Strategy & Innovation Leader at Atlassian, for a conversation about AI storytelling for business leaders and why the success of any innovation often depends on the story told long before a product is introduced. Priyank shares the personal journey that took him from a childhood ambition of becoming a doct...

Have you ever wondered why some people push bold ideas forward while others hesitate, even when they know they're onto something valuable? In this episode, I speak with Dr. Zakia Ghafari, a behavioral scientist, pharmacist, storyteller, and creator of the WIRE Framework. Our conversation explores a topic that every innovator encounters but rarely talks about openly: fear. Not the fear of technolog...

Could a company best known for TVs, appliances, and consumer electronics become a launchpad for entirely new businesses? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sat down with Sokwoo Rhee, Corporate Executive Vice President for Innovation at LG Electronics and Head of LG NOVA, to discuss why some of the world's largest organizations are rethinking how innovation happens and what it t...

What happens when an insurance company thinks like an engineering lab? And how does a deeper understanding of risk create opportunities for innovation rather than slowing it down? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Dr. Jaap De Vries, Staff Vice President and Principal Innovation Specialist at FM, to explore how one of the world's leading commercial property insure...

What if the biggest challenge with AI isn't the technology itself, but how it makes people feel? Lately, almost every conversation I'm having with clients comes back to AI. Not surprisingly, it's dominating boardroom discussions, strategy sessions, and innovation agendas everywhere. But what fascinates me most isn't the technology. It's the human response to it. In this solo episode, I'm talking a...

What does it really take to turn a promising European startup into a successful US business? In this special fifth-anniversary episode of Innovation Storytellers, I sit down with Simone Tarantino, Managing Director of the Transatlantic Innovation Hub and Managing Partner at HVentures, to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and realities of building bridges between two of the world's most influe...

What happens when elite endurance training, wearable data, artificial intelligence, and peptide therapy collide? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sat down with Tony Medrano, CEO and co-founder of LongevityPlan. AI , to unpack how the future of longevity is being shaped by technology that once felt more science fiction than healthcare strategy. Tony's journey alone feels like...

In this solo episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I wanted to pause the constant conversation around AI capability and talk about something far more human. I'm talking about empathy.  Everywhere I look, organizations are racing to deploy AI faster, automate more workflows, and chase productivity gains before competitors pull ahead. But behind every rollout, every implementation plan, and e...

How do great companies stay distinctive when everything around them is pushing them toward sameness? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Anthony Reeves, speaker, consultant, and author of Eat the Donkey: Why Great Companies Embrace Discomfort, for a conversation about creativity, brand identity, AI, and why discomfort may be one of the most valuable forces in innov...

What does it really take to turn a great idea into something that works in the real world? In this episode, I sit down with Kofi Gyasi, Founder and CEO of NotedSource, and Joia Spooner-Fleming, an innovation consultant with deep experience at companies like P&G and SharkNinja, to unpack what lies behind successful innovation.  We explore why research and validation are often the difference between...

What does it really take for large organizations to keep innovating when speed, disruption, and AI are changing the rules faster than ever before? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I'm joined by two returning guests whose work has shaped how many leaders think about innovation inside large organizations: Dr. Diana Joseph, CEO of the Corporate Accelerator Forum, and Dan Toma, co-...

What happens when innovation shifts from a strategic advantage to a matter of survival? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sat down with Itai Green, Co-Founder and CEO of Global Innovation & Strategy and author of Innovation or Elimination. With more than two decades of experience connecting global corporations with startups, Itai brings a direct and unfiltered perspective on w...

What does real AI implementation actually look like when the hype fades, and the hard work begins? In this episode of Innovation Storytellers, I sit down with Brett Norton, President of Buffalo Construction, and Mike Gadsby, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at O3XO, for a candid conversation about what it takes to move AI from curiosity to business impact. This is not a discussion about vag...

How do you tell a story that people actually believe, trust, and remember long after the meeting ends? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Neal Foard, Founder of Storyfire, to explore what separates a good idea from one that truly lands. Neal brings decades of experience from the world of advertising, where he created campaigns for brands like Budweiser, Lexus, and...

What does it take to turn innovation from a string of promising pilots into a repeatable growth engine that finance leaders can actually believe in? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Alice Ponti, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at VentureFuel, to talk about why so many innovation teams are being restructured, absorbed into the business, or quietl...

In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Rob Bearden, CEO of Sema4.ai, to explore how AI is transforming enterprise infrastructure from the inside out. Rob brings decades of experience from the front lines of enterprise technology, with leadership roles spanning Oracle, Hortonworks, Docker, and Cloudera. He shares how his early exposure to ERP systems sparked a lifelong...

  What happens to storytelling when AI can write, summarize, and generate content in seconds, yet the world still depends on humans to make ideas matter? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Joe Lazer, Fractional CMO at Pepper, former head of marketing at Contently, and co-author of The Storytelling Edge. We talk about his new book, Super Skill: Why Storytelling Is...

How do you bring innovation to life inside an organization whose job is to help other people see risk before it shows up on a balance sheet? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Jason Lee, Chief Intelligence Officer at Moody's Analytics, for a conversation that lives at the crossroads of national security tradecraft, financial crime investigation, and modern data-dr...

If every headline feels like it is rewriting the rules of business, leadership, and even identity, where does that leave the people tasked with driving innovation? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Tommy Knoll, Co-Founder of the Human Innovation Institute, to make sense of a moment that feels both historic and deeply personal.  Tommy and I have worked together in...

What does it really take to move innovation from idea to impact inside a 95,000-person organization? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sat down with Vlora Muslimi, Senior Manager at TD Bank, whose path into innovation did not begin in a lab or a product team. It began in contact centers, in the daily friction of legacy tools, imperfect processes, and frontline employees trying...

What does it really take to close a digital divide in a city as complex, diverse, and dynamic as Long Beach, California? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Lea Eriksen, Director of Technology and Innovation and CIO for the City of Long Beach, to unpack the human stories behind civic innovation. We met in an unexpected setting, a steakhouse in Los Angeles during a...

In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with John Elbing, Business Storytelling Strategist and founder of Standpoint, for a thoughtful conversation on how organizations can tell stronger innovation stories by shifting perspective outward. This interview is the second in The Storytellers Series, where I invite other storytellers I deeply admire, people who bring their own le...

What if the stories you tell about innovation are actually working against you? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I do something a little different. I open a new series by inviting other storytellers I deeply admire, people who bring their own lenses, frameworks, and lived experience to the craft of story. I want you to think about storytelling as an expansive, evolving practice...

Are you an innovator who feels caught between disruption and defensibility, wondering whether corporate innovation has lost its way? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I welcome back Greg Larkin, founder of Punks & Pinstripes, for a candid, often uncomfortable conversation about the current state of innovation within large organizations.  Greg does not sugarcoat it. He argues tha...

How do you bring discipline to innovation without stripping away the creativity that makes it powerful in the first place? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Stephen Parkins, Innovation Strategist and Founder of Culturedge, to unpack what it really takes to turn innovation into a strategic asset rather than a side project fueled by hope and enthusiasm.  Stephen br...