The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

The three most important letters in the alphabet right now are PPE. The personal protective equipment shortage is a major problem. The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic will be multiplied, exponentially, if doctors and nurses can’t get the necessary masks, gloves, and gowns to shield themselves as they treat patients. What’s needed is a fast and effective response—and this requires both innovation...

For some people—too many of ‘em—“automation” inspires little more than fear and loathing. That’s bad news for both companies and consumers. The good news: EPAM Continuum consultants understand intelligent automation deeply, and are skilled at explaining its manifold benefits. No one gets IA better than Albert Rees, SVP and Head of Business Consulting at EPAM Continuum. In this, the premier convers...

Welcome to Adaptive Enterprise, a podcast series in which we match up EPAM subject matter experts with Forrester Research analysts to talk out the major Digital Product Development opportunities of the day. In our first episode, Elaina Shekhter, CMO & Head of Strategy at EPAM, sits down with our guest Allen Bonde, VP & Research Director covering digital transformation at Forrester, to discuss the...

Is there anyone who has done more to illustrate the pathos, drama, and humanity surrounding medical diagnosis than Dr. Lisa Sanders? If you jokingly said, “Dr. Gregory House!” you’ve unwittingly acknowledged Sanders’ deep influence (her work inspired the television show *House*). As a physician, Yale Medical School professor, author, *New York Times* magazine columnist, and host of her own Netflix...

When the *New York Times’* Travel editor, Amy Virshup, announced that her section was going to “offset airplane travel by staff members on assignment,” we were intrigued. “It is, I know, a small gesture. But it’s a start,” she wrote—and we admired the way she was prototyping a real innovation in travel journalism. We were so impressed that we connected with her to see what else she had to say abou...

Rita McGrath, a distinguished professor at Columbia Business school and well-respected author, prides herself in being able to see around corners (her most recent book : *Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen.*) Similarly, we’ve long backcasted our way through the innovation space. So when we got together, for a Resonance Test chat, numerous future-fac...

Love is in the air. Pastry love, that is. *Pastry Love* is the latest volume by Joanne Chang—James Beard Award-winning pastry chef, restaurateur, author—but it’s also the motivating philosophy behind the success of her string of Flour Bakery + Cafés. “The idea of pastry love is really to try to entice people when they come into the bakery to order one of everything because we know that if you eat...

“Organizations are fascinating because they're completely human created,” says Harvard Business School professor Gary Pisano in the just-posted episode of *The Resonance Test.* “They're not natural.” Which is to say: they are *cultural.* Pisano’s new book, *Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation,* makes it clear that innovation is a set of choices a company, a leader, may or may no...

The world has many problems, but few solutions—too few good, effective, *scalable* solutions. MIT Solve seeks to change this. Solve, “a community of cross-sector leaders devoted to identifying and supporting solutions to actionable challenges through open innovation,” is helmed by Executive Director Alex Amouyel, who recently popped over to our Boston studio for a chat with Gaurav Rohatgi, Co-Lead...

Pull up a seat, sit down, and prepare to devour the first course of *Why Now,* a production of EPAM Continuum’s Resonance Test podcast. *Why Now,* which is hosted by our Megan Welker, explores the relationship between cultural trends and disruptive innovations. Our first topic: the rise of alternative proteins. You can’t go out for a meal today without bumping into Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods...

What happens when a renowned futurist joins EPAM Continuum? Here’s what happens: things get *interesting.* You feel this immediately by listening to a just-recorded conversation between our new colleague, David Rose—author of *Enchanted Objects,* former MIT Media Lab savant and Warby Parkerite—and our less-new but equally articulate colleague, Toby Bottorf. What’s special about Rose? It’s not just...

Dr. Bryan Vartabedian is a pediatric gastroenterologist, or a “[g]astroenterologist to small people,” as he describes his specialization on his popular Twitter profile. Pediatrics is a complicated job, he explains, in the latest episode of *The Resonance Test.* In an intense conversation with our Jonathon Swersey, Dr. Vartabedian says: “We really serve two masters: we are morally and ethically obl...

In May 2015, Alan Rusbridger stepped down as the editor of *The Guardian.* He had managed, over the course of 20 years, to transform the British paper into a digital phenomenon—a truly global source of news. His book, *Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now,* details that transformation. In a recent *Resonance Test* conversation, Rusbridger relates how it feels to *not* t...

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is about to turn 150. But hitting that big round anniversary doesn’t mean it’s a fossilized cultural organization. Just the opposite. The MFA attitude is young, vital, experimental. We learned this when we partnered with this storied institution to redesign their membership program. In this episode of *The Resonance Test,* Brandon Tirrell, our Associate Director of Inn...

How about that John Brownstein, PhD, eh? The Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, digital epidemiologist, Canadian, fan of hot peppers and the cinema of Wes Anderson, Brownstein recently skated over to EPAM Continuum’s Boston studio for a chat. The conversation ranged all over the ice, from voice computing (“We think that voice, especially for patients, whether in the home or th...

Nick Dougherty is back! The Managing Director of MassChallenge HealthTech has returned to *The Resonance Test* to report on how his startups and champions have been working together. Since we last spoke with Dougherty, his program changed names—it was originally called Pulse@MassChallenge—and has created some great outcomes in digital health. MassChallenge HealthTech has shepherded approximately 9...

Dr. Eric Topol isn’t playing around. The author of *Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again* wants physicians to become activists—and to use technology to transform medicine. “That’s where we need to see the breakout. Doctors leading this charge, getting organized, and saying: ‘We’re not going to take it anymore and we’re demanding time with our patients!’” Artif...

“Human beings are notorious for wanting multiple conflicting things,” says Megan Burns, setting the tone of this episode of *The Resonance Test*: thoughtful, empathic, honest. One of the founding mothers of experience management, Burns honed her thinking at Forrester Research, producing more than 75 reports. Today Burns is the CEO of Experience Enterprises, but she hasn’t strayed a millimeter from...

Matt Sheehan is a passionate guy. As the President and CEO of Primo Water—North America’s leading single source provider of water dispensers, multi-gallon purified bottled water, and self-service refill water—he brings an undeniable sense of mission to his company culture, the retailers he works with, and thirsty customers. “I don’t care about being right, I care about getting it right,” he says,...

Sunandini Chopra spends her days working for IBM Watson Health (genomics and oncology). Her free time, however, belongs to AI for the Rest of Us, “a platform that facilitates discussion, problem identification and problem solving to create a positive impact on public health by leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence.” Platform? It’s a community. A discussion group. A gaggle of brai...

You can call Gary David all kinds of things. Sociology professor. Ethnographer. Professional noticer. Professional outsider. A *Storage Wars* guy. He is, in short, someone with a very particular view of social science and how it translates into organizational behavior. In a recent *Resonance Test* chin wag with our Toby Bottorf, David offers up a collection of smart, tart *bon mots.* In the course...

Legendary business author Tom Peters has long insisted on putting people first. Be excellent with customers and employees, and you’ll be reap the rewards. In an insightful and rollicking conversation with Jon Campbell, EPAM Continuum’s Head of Experience & Service Design, Peters sounds off on a variety of (always human-centered) topics. “I am an arch enemy of agile, if you capitalize the A, becaus...

If you want to study service design, you just might want to learn from Maurício Manhães. Manhães is both a professor of service design at the Savannah College of Art and Design—SCAD to its friends—and a truly affable human being. His friendly, informed approach leaps out from the first second of this dialogue with his long-time service design buddy, EPAM Continuum’s Jon Campbell. These two vets co...

And now for a Very Special Episode of *The Resonance Test.* This particular conversation, straight from our archives, has our Toby Bottorf chatting up Thomas Thwaites, author of two thoughtfully bizarre books: *GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human* (you read right!) and *The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch* (sounds awesome, no?). It’...

Heather Figallo, the Head of Design, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Southwest Airlines, wants to “raise the expectations of the type of experience you should have when you’re traveling in commercial aviation.” So do we. The digital wayfinding project EPAM Continuum did with Figallo and her crew was very successful and we learned a lot from it. “I’ve never had something with 96% customer satisfac...