Conversations with the leaders running corporate innovation.
Dan Toma and Cris Beswick interview C-suite leaders, practitioners and thinkers from Patagonia, Google, Disney, DBS, DuPont, Roche, HP and beyond — on the strategy, culture, and discipline of innovation-led growth.
All episodes
- Karuana GatimuDirector, Customer Advocacy – AI & Collaboration · Microsoft
The hidden barrier to AI adoption: culture, not code.
Getting impact from AI and collaboration tools isn’t a technology challenge — it’s a people challenge. Karuana Gatimu on turning tools like Teams and Copilot into measurable impact: internal champions, peer-to-peer learning, storytelling and executive sponsorship, and why trust and culture matter more than deployment.
- Ivanka Janssen & Simon LaubscherCOO & CTO · Head of Innovation · Swarovski
Heritage meets innovation: lessons from Swarovski.
How Swarovski is modernising one of the world’s most iconic luxury brands while preserving the heritage and craftsmanship at its core — AI, leadership, transformation, innovation metrics, and why the future belongs to organisations that can balance tradition with continuous reinvention.
- Mihai DigaEx-CTO · ADG Group
Systems thinking: the key to successful healthcare innovation.
Healthcare doesn’t have an innovation problem — it has a complexity problem that can only be solved through systems thinking. Cutting through the AI hype to explore what real transformation looks like in highly regulated industries.
- Thomas Hoff AnderssonManaging Director & COO · Munich Airport
Finding growth outside the core in a highly regulated industry.
How Thomas is enabling Munich Airport to find new growth opportunities beyond its traditional core operations — in an industry defined by tight regulations, razor-thin margins, and a highly complex network of stakeholders.
- Phil McKinneyEx-CTO Hewlett-Packard · CEO Cablelabs
The role of leadership in building a ‘no surprises’ culture.
Former HP CTO and best-selling author Phil McKinney on how great leaders build cultures of transparency and trust in highly volatile environments — the ‘no-surprise rule’ and why surfacing bad news early fuels smarter decisions and innovative solutions.
- Charles ConnChairman · Patagonia
From a plan to a series of experiments — a new approach to strategy.
Strategy as a living, evolving process built on continuous learning, not certainty. How organisations like Patagonia break strategy into small, testable steps, stay responsive to change, and build feedback loops from the frontlines to the boardroom.
- Alexa DembekChief Technology & Sustainability Officer · DuPont
Setting goals for innovation investments.
Clear goals allow leaders to be more efficient with resource allocation, shift the company’s culture from thinking about growth instead of projects, and create the pragmatism that connects innovation with the company’s strategic agenda.
- Andrea KatesPartner · Get To NEXT
The elephants in the room holding organisations back.
Cris and Andrea have a rant about the stuff most leaders ignore — and unpack why most corporate leaders are stuck when it comes to innovation. Practical, no-nonsense insight from the ‘practitioner’s practitioner’.
- Nicole StrojHead of Organizational Innovation · Raiffeisen Bank
Why every innovation-led company needs a real strategy.
Dan and Nicole discuss why an innovation strategy is essential, how to connect one with the core business, and how to prioritise various strategic options in the context of large organisations where conflicting personal agendas can get in the way.
- Darren ThayreHead of Innovation & Global Strategic Initiatives · Google
Getting pragmatic with innovation investments.
From why teams shouldn’t be discouraged from building business cases early on, all the way to how executives need to approach sunsetting initiatives that don’t work — and how they need to think about investing for the future.
- René Carayol MBEAuthor, Speaker & Executive Coach
Leadership, inclusion, and building innovation capability.
From Pepsi Board Director to becoming one of the world’s most successful executive coaches, René on the shifting nature of leadership, inclusion, and why understanding SPIKES is key to building corporate innovation capability.
- Claude SilverChief Heart Officer · VaynerMedia
Flipping the traditional HR script.
How Claude and her team at VaynerMedia are rewriting HR — why ‘paying attention’ is the key to helping people move forward and love what they do, and why enabling people to be good ‘Vayner Citizens’ has become the creative engine that powers the business.
- Chris Baréz-BrownFounder · Upping Your Elvis
Love, humanity, and energy at work.
Cris and Chris on why we as humans are simply not designed for the world of work, and work isn’t well designed around humans. Also on leading for innovation and Chris’ pioneering work around mental health.
- Farizko NurditamaCOO · Digital Amoeba by Telkom Indonesia
Measuring an innovation system — and improving it.
What it means to measure a company’s innovation system, why companies should do this as a prerequisite for improvement, and what Telkom Indonesia learned from assessing theirs.
- Halvor LandeCEO · Aprila Bank
How rapid experimentation gave a challenger bank its edge.
How challenger banks are gaining an edge over incumbents through rapid experimentation, and how this approach helped Aprila better understand customer needs — leading to early profitability.
- Eva McLellanManaging Director · Roche Slovenia
Becoming a resilient, future-proofed organisation.
What it means to be a resilient, future-proofed organisation and how leaders can approach transforming their companies — with hands-on advice from Eva’s transformation work at Roche Belgium.
- Paul CobbanFormer Chief Data & Transformation Officer · DBS Bank
Innovation culture at the centre of transformation strategy.
The DBS Bank journey — from ignoring the advice of global consultancies and taking a counterintuitive approach that even involved a Bollywood actor, to the three mission-critical things leaders looking to build a culture of innovation need to focus on.
- Matthijs van LeeuwenChief Innovation Officer · Sunway Group
Innovation in a conglomerate spanning education to real estate.
The peculiarities of being the CIO of one of Malaysia’s biggest consortium companies — with businesses ranging from education to banking and from real estate to food processing — and how innovation strategy and capability development is approached in that context.
- Alexander HanengSVP Digital Innovation · Norwegian Post
Driving innovation in a 150-year-old commodity business.
What it takes to drive innovation in a company with more than 150 years of history and a commoditised core — actionable insights and dos-and-don’ts for anyone in a similar innovation role.
- Dan CockerellFormer VP of Magic Kingdom · Disney
Leading a human-centred, customer-focused organisation.
Dan Cockerell’s career at Disney, leading the most popular theme park in the world, and what he learned from Walt Disney about leading a human-centred, customer-focused organisation — and what it takes to make innovation part of organisational culture.