The Innovation Day Podcast

It all started on vacation in Mexico when Carmen Sandor fell in love with a brand of mescal and decided to import it to Canada. While the mescal didn’t work out, it started Carmen on a journey that led her to start her own brand — a green-tea-flavoured vodka called Green Owl. Launched during the pandemic as Carmen’s side hustle, within a year the brand was being carried in over 150 stores and is n...

Aron Levitz and his team have over 100 projects in production all over the world, stories mined from the more than one billion pieces of content uploaded to the Wattpad and Webtoon platforms. Combining community, creators and technology, Aron is helping to integrate Wattpad and Webtoon after a $600 million acquisition from South Korea-based Naver. It is an incredibly exciting moment in time for th...

Friends since elementary school, when Mikayla and Naomi discovered a shared desire for better style, inclusivity and sustainability in the world of outdoor apparel, they made the big decision to leave their jobs—Mikayla a National Geographic explorer, Naomi a fashion marketer— and start Alder Apparel. Alder launched during the pandemic; a time when the need to get outside was more acute than ever,...

In 2013 Elon Musk published the Hyperloop Alpha   paper.  Just a few weeks later Hyperloop TT was founded and started down the long road to commercialize the concept. Fast forward to today and Hyperloop TT is one of the front runners to get hyperloop to market; and it has been a wild ride. Hyperloop sounds almost too good to be true—safe, reliable, super-fast, and modelling that shows a hyperloop...

If you’ve paid even a little attention to the news lately you’ve noticed the flurry of all-electric announcements by major global automakers. Ford, GM and Volvo, amongst others, are aiming to make the vast majority of their fleet fully-electric within the next 15 years. In this episode, we talk about the EV revolution with Hugues Bissonnette, the Country Manager for Polestar Canada. Polestar joine...

Almost everything has changed in some way or another over the last year and a half, and the world of presenting and experiencing art is no exception. In this episode we talk to Rosemary Thompson, VP Corporate, Public Affairs and Marketing at the National Gallery of Canada, about helping to lead Canada’s premier public art institution through the practical and social change that has come about thro...

LA-based Bureo started as many companies do; with an opportunity and an idea. The opportunity was a start-up program in Chile, and the idea was a skateboard made from recycled fishing nets. While the Bureo team is still on the ground in Chile, and you can still buy one of those skateboards, a lot has changed since 2013 when David and his partners wrote that first business plan. They’ve recycled mi...

In 2005 Maayan Ziv founded AccessNow, a platform to crowdsource and share accessibility data for locations around the world. In a time when there was an app for pretty much everything, Maayan still found it difficult to find information that would help her, and others living with a disability, navigate a world filled with barriers. Fast forward to 2021 and AccessNow has more than 1,000,000 data po...

With a great idea and literally buckets of cigarette butts he collected off of California beaches, Taylor Lane and his friend Ben designed a surfboard that won an international design competition and kicked off a journey that would take them around the world. In this episode, Taylor tells host Neil Follet the improbable story of a surfboard made of cigarette butts, the documentary film he’s nearly...

David Lavin founded The Lavin Agency over 30 years ago, and his business has grown to be North America’s largest “intellectual talent” agency. In David’s words he works with “smart people”, and in this episode he takes us on the journey from his very first booking, to dominating the market. He shares what happened when COVID meant all his bookings were cancelled, how he managed through that crisis...

Chris Barth is an author and a Lead Strategist for Contagious Communications, a strategic intelligence business.  He’s also an urban farmer, growing vegetables on a plot of land in downtown Minneapolis. Running the farm with his wife Ashley, and now his very young son Rhys. Chris speaks with Neil as he is about to start his third planting season. Chris and Neil talk about the trend of urban farmin...

In this episode host Neil Follett speaks with Jacie DeHoop, co-founder of TheGist, a growing sports content platform targeted at the more casual fan. Jacie shares how the Gist came to life, talks about leading a growing business with her best friends, and reflects on the challenges a sports-focused business faces when sports are cancelled due to a global pandemic. For anyone who’s ever dreamt of s...

In his latest book, The Soul of an Entrepreneur: Work and Life Beyond the Startup Myth, best-selling author David Sax takes us from Silicon Valley all the way back to the roots of entrepreneurship. Host Neil Follett talks to David about why the start-up myth is a myth, what drives and connects entrepreneurs, and the process of writing his new book. If you are an entrepreneur, know one, or have eve...

LaRayia Gaston, founder of the non-profit Lunch on Me can now add published author to her long list of accomplishments. In her new book Love Without Reason, The Lost Art of Giving a F*uck, LaRayia lays out a personal, powerful and accessible blueprint for being more connected to those around you, and to yourself. In this episode Neil and LaRayia talk about her book, her many business ventures and...