David Edelman is a Harvard Business School Fellow and Executive Advisor at BCG. David spent over 30 years as a chief marketing officer at Aetna/CVS, as well as building consultancy businesses in digital and marketing transformation while with McKinsey, Digitas, and BCG. He now teaches marketing at Harvard Business School and serves as an advisor to top executives in startups, private equity, and larger enterprises. In this discussion, we dive into David’s book, Personalized: Custom...

Rebecca Homkes, is a high-growth strategy expert and CEO and executive advisor. She is a Lecturer at London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Digital Transformation and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with th...

William Duggan is lecturer of strategy and innovation at Columbia Business School, and the author of four books on innovation: Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (2007); Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation (2012); and The Seventh Sense: How Flashes of Insight Change Your Life (2015), and his most recent work: Corporate Innovator: A Guide Through the Labyrinth, published in 2024.In his book, Bill covers employee-driven innovation. Bill dives deep into a dilemma ...

Frederik Pferdt is Google's first Chief Innovation Evangelist and author of "WHAT'S NEXT IS NOW: How To Live Future Ready.” During his time at Google, Frederik played a pivotal role in shaping one of the world's most renowned creative cultures. He founded Google's Innovation Lab, where he trained tens of thousands of Googlers to develop and experiment with cutting-edge ideas. For over a decade, he also taught groundbreaking classes on innovation and creativity at Stanford University.&nbs...

Brian Evergreen, author of Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, named a Next Big Idea “Must-Read” and for which Brian was shortlisted for the 2023 Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Building on his experiences working at Accenture, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft, Brian advises and speaks to organizations around the world, guest lectures at Purdue University and the Kellogg School of Management, sharing the unconventional and...

Cristina Alaimo, is the Assistant Professor of Digital Economy and Society at Guido Carli University in Rome, Italy and soon to be Associate Professor at ESSEC Business School in France. Her research focuses on innovation catalyzed by data-based services and the consequences it has on organizations and society. Cristina also studies the broader ecosystem of data exchanges in which digital platforms are embedded and how these new platform ecosystems emerge and evolve. In her recentl...

Stephan Meier, is Chair of the Management Division and the James P. Gorman Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School whose work lies at the intersection of behavioral economics, business strategy, and the future of work. Customer-centricity has long been at the forefront of conversations that involve optimizing profit, with the idea that happy customers lead to increased revenues. But a new theory is quickly gaining traction—that employee-centricity is just as important....

The world has undergone a transformation in the past century, as the industrial revolution turned many luxuries into everyday commodities. Then, at the turn of the century, the advent of the internet compounded this supply and demand shift. Now, we are entering yet again a new era as we see technology once again propel us into a new radical shift we call: Proximity. Full disclosure, in this episode, we follow a different format to present the findings a book I co-authored with Rob Wolco...

Matt Beane, is an Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has conducted extensive field research with robots and AI seeks to uncover systematic positive exceptions that we can use in the workforce. His award-winning research has been published in top management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review, and he has spoken on the TED stage. Curiously enough, 2012 he was also selected as...

Christopher Marquis, the Sinyi Professor at the University of Cambridge Judge School of Business. Chris writes a regular column for Forbes and his work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Fortune, TIME, Foreign Policy, and Harvard Business Review. He is also author of Better Business: How the B Corp is Remaking Capitalism and Mao and Markets, which made the Financial Times “Best Book of 2022,” list. Christopher takes on topics that are, or should be, important...

Bruce Vojak, is Managing Director of Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, LLC, and serves on the Advisory Board of Midtronics, Inc., JVA Partners, and the Board of Directors of Micron Industries Corporation, and is a Senior Fellow with The Conference Board. Further, he has co-authored five book chapters—in addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations—on innovation. He is the author of No-Excuses Innovation: Strategies for Small- and Medium-Sized Mature Enter...

Min Jung is a vice director of the Center for Synaptic Brain Dysfunctions at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea and a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He is also the author of A Brain for Innovation: The Neuroscience of Imagination and Abstract Thinking. Min’s work gives us scientific insights into the actual foundation working of the brain, specifically how the brain generates innovative ideas...

Cathy Hackl is a globally-recognized tech & gaming exec, futurist, & speaker focused on spatial computing, virtual worlds, augmented reality, AI, & gaming platforms strategy. She’s the co-CEO of Spatial Dynamics, a spatial computing and AI solutions company. She is also a top tech voice on LinkedIn, and a fun fact, she was the first person ever to open the NASDAQ market in the metaverse with an avatar. Cathy is a powerful voice on spatial computing and immersive technology, g...

Amy C. Edmondson the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, renowned for her research over the last 20 years on psychological safety and teaming. Her award-winning work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Psychology Today, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and more. Named by Thinkers50 in 2021 as the #1 Management Thinker in the world, Amy’s TED Talk “How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team” has...

John Winsor is a prominent figure in strategic marketing and product innovation, known for his deep understanding of future work trends and open talent strategies. His expertise in collaboration, co-creation, and open innovation has made him a key influencer in innovation, disruption, and storytelling. He founded and chairs Open Assembly, an organization pioneering the adoption of open talent and freelancing. At Harvard Business School's Laboratory for Innovation Science (LISH), as...

Jeanne Liedtka is the Professor of Business at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business,  where she teaches both MBAs and executives, as well as consulting on innovation, organic growth and design thinking. Jeanne, has served as Associate Dean of the MBA Program at Darden, Executive Director of the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation, and Chief Learning Officer at United Technologies Corporation, and consulted with a diverse set of...

W. Russell Neuman is Professor of Media Technology at New York University, a founding faculty of the MIT Media Lab, he served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.   His books like The Digital Difference: Media Technology and the Theory of Communication Effects and his most recent book EVOLUTIONARY INTELLIGENCE: How Technology Will Make Us Smarter are rooted in the view that human intelligence and human communication are intertwined. Language...

Tobias Dengel is President of WillowTree, a TELUS International Company. WillowTree designs and builds digital experiences for the world’s largest brands, and they sit at the forefront of this breakthrough. Tobias understands voice technology's profound, wide-ranging implications for every industry, including marketing, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, media, and more. He counsels leaders in all these fields about how their companies must adapt to the coming age of voice. He is the...

Sukhinder Sing Cassidy is the leader of the growth and performance of Xero globally. With more than 25 years’ experience in Silicon Valley as a CEO, digital leader and board member, she has experienced building and scaling global companies including Google, Amazon, Yodlee, Joyus and StubHub. She currently serves on the board of publicly traded fintech, Upstart with previous experience serving on the boards of Ericsson, Trip Advisor, Urban Outfitters, Stitchfix and J.Crew.  Working across such...

Jayshree Seth is a Corporate Scientist at 3M who currently holds 80 patents for a variety of innovations, with several additional pending. Jayshree was appointed 3M’s first ever Chief Science Advocate in 2018 and as is using her scientific knowledge, technical expertise and professional experience to advance science and communicate the benefits of science and the importance of diversity in STEM fields to drive innovation. She has a MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Clarkson University,...

Jean-Manuel Izaret, or, JMI as he often prefers to go by, is a BCG managing director and senior partner and the global leader of the Marketing, Sales & Pricing practice based in San Francisco. His work as a BCG Fellow focuses on the topic of pricing model transformation. JMI has worked on pricing issues across industries, including consumer goods, retail, high tech, financial services, and industrial goods. JMI has a talent for condensing the intricate and vast topic of pricing into...

Sheena Iyengar is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, where she has taught since 1998. A graduate of both Wharton and Stanford, she is one of the world's experts on choice and innovation. Famously known for her “Jam Study,” which transformed the way we think about products offered in the marketplace and how we curate them for customers, you may recognize her from one of her Ted Talks, which have collectively been viewed nearly seven million times. Sheena is a...

In this episode, David Lancefield, a catalyst, strategist and coach, explores how strategy and culture not only intertwine, but directly develop each other, and how to encourage the right set of behaviours in doing so.