The Innovation Show

Our guests are Silicon Valley design veterans: One created the first Apple mouse The other designed the award-winning Apple PowerBook and the original Hasbro Star Wars action figures! 13 years ago they founded the STANFORD LIFE DESIGN LAB The course - the most popular at Stanford - has led to a global franchise and a New York Times and worldwide bestselling book: Designing Your Life, published in...

GRAMMY-recognized #1 hit songwriter, Cliff Goldmacher shares how to explore, shape and sell our ideas by teaching us how to write songs. Doing so helps develop the essential skills of: lateral thinking, creativity, communication, empathy, collaboration, risk-taking and the diffusion of ideas for better innovators. It is a pleasure to welcome the author of: "The Reason For The Rhymes: Mastering the...

One of my favourite episodes of all time. This genre-shattering attempt to answer the question of human behaviour by looking at it from every angle. Our guest starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance....

One of my favourite episodes of all time. This genre-shattering attempt to answer the question of human behaviour by looking at it from every angle. Our guest starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance....

Your business's success depends on how you prepare for the future. While business leaders of the past looked in the rear-view mirror to predict the road ahead, we must look at the greater forces affecting the social, business and economic world today—megatrends.  Our guest today is here to share a fresh, holistic way to think about tomorrow by preparing for it today: He calls it DRIVE. The DRIVE f...

When facing a rhino that's about to charge, doing nothing is seldom the best option. Yet all too often that's exactly what happens. Danger rarely comes as a complete surprise; instead, it follows many missed opportunities for taking precautions, reading and responding to warning signals. The impulse to freeze is hard to overcome. Sometimes the grip of denial is so strong that we do nothing at all;...

The Nocturnal Brain: Tales of Nightmares and Neuroscience with Guy Leschziner You can survive longer without food than without sleep. The fact that sleep is fundamental to life is unarguable, but in modern society, at least until recently, we have taken for granted that sleep simply happens, and is a necessary evil to allow us to live our waking lives. Recently, however, there has been a shift in...

The Digital Age will raise the question of how humans will stay relevant in the workplace. To stay relevant, we have to be able to excel cognitively, behaviourally, and emotionally in ways that technology can't. Our guest believes, this requires us to become Hyper-Learners: continuously learning, unlearning, and relearning at the speed of change. To do that, we have to overcome our reflexive ways...

Startups have changed the world. In the United States, many startups, such as Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, have become household names. The economic value of startups has doubled since 1992 and is projected to double again in the next fifteen years. For decades, the hot centre of this phenomenon has been Silicon Valley. This is changing fast. Thanks to technology, startups are now taking root everywh...

There are two stories you hear about making a living as an artist in the digital age, and they are diametrically opposed. One comes from Silicon Valley and its boosters in the media. There's never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you've got a laptop, you've got a recording studio. If you've got an iPhone, you've got a movie camera. GarageBand, Final Cut Pro: all the tools are at you...

The context of business has changed so rapidly over the past few decades that it may be time for a new lexicon. At the very least, it's time to challenge some of the established thinking about strategy and competition that used to drive business advantage - but no longer does. In this episode, strategy expert and Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath takes on one of most fundamental and...

Despite decades of research illustrating the benefits of enlightened leadership, the high-performance workplace is still not the norm. Our guest has spent 20 years investigating this paradox, and in this book she forms a penetrating critique of why such strong evidence has had limited impact, and provides an alternative practical approach that any employer can implement to overcome these challenge...

Building a business requires more than just a good product and talented people; it requires you to take a hard look at how you show up as a leader. Open, Honest, and Direct helps you dive into the heart of your business and your people, identifying changes you can make to transform the way you and your managers lead. Part business book, part personal-development guide, this is a how-to full of pra...

Great ideas don't just happen. Innovation springs from creative thinking—a method of the human mind that we can study and learn. In The Art of Ideas, our guest brings together business concepts with stories of creativity in art, politics, and history to provide a visual and accessible guide to the art and science of new and useful ideas. He details how to spark your own ideas and what to do while...

What separates your mind from the mind of an animal? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future - all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the pre-eminent species on Earth. But in recent decades, claims of human superiority have been eroded by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut she...

Our guest today argues that everything is changing fast, apart from how we behave. Our ways of thinking and making decisions have changed little, with the traditional wisdom being that improvements are best done incrementally, just as big, established corporations will increase profits incrementally and governments will change laws incrementally.  But the problems we now need to solve require a re...

Rob Fitzpatrick is author of "The Mom Test, How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you" His book shows us how customer conversations go wrong and how we can do better. They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn'...

The world around us is changing rapidly. There is now more pressure on established companies to innovate. The challenge most companies face is how to develop new products for new markets, while managing their core business at the same time.  The principles and practices outlined in this book provide companies with a blueprint of how to manage innovation while they execute on their core business. ...

More agility. More energy. More genius. Why do some companies always seem to have the best ideas, the most engaged people and the most profitable growth? Based on 10 years of research, today's book goes behind the scenes of some of the world's most innovative companies and decodes the tools, hacks and approaches that help their managers systematically spark ingenuity, agility, and profitable creat...

We've reached a point in time when everyone wants innovation, but most people don't know how to actually attain it. It's not easy, which is why there are so many failed brands and companies. In our era of AI, rapid change, disruption, and possibility, there are so many great opportunities within our grasp. However, smart, successful people consistently miss out. Their capabilities are limited by s...

Being awarded a leadership role within an organization may feel like an amazing accomplishment, but that is only half the battle. The second, and arguably most important half, lies in building and maintaining a highly effective team. However, according to a recent survey conducted on UK workers, managers are failing miserably at this task, and are instead fostering feelings of hate and resentment...

As a business leader, you need to make decisions that set your company up for success, now and in the future. The challenge is In this fast-changing world, the rules of strategy are being rewritten and the go-to solutions you once relied on are no longer enough. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. As emerging technologies like AI and blockchain become ubiquitous, they will unleash unpreceden...

Innovators need to communicate their concepts. Organisations have 5 generations working together in the workplace. We must be able to respectfully challenge ideas. This is why I asked our guest Gill Hasson to join us. Every day, you have the opportunity to interact with people in different areas of your life; in public, at work and at home, with colleagues and clients, with friends and family. You...

Our guest's Business Model Canvas changed the way the world creates and plans new business models. It has been used by corporations and startups and consultants around the world and is taught in hundreds of universities. After years of researching how the world's best companies develop, test, and scale new business models, he has produced his definitive work.  Todays book explains what every organ...

Review us on iTunes , it helps grow the show. Today's guest teaches business leaders about the importance of relationship building in the digital age. He argues that in spite of (and because of) the advances in tech, we've become a less connected society. We have dramatically evolved away from face-to-face communication, and the skill of building rapport is evaporating. This means that customer pe...