IN STUDIO - RECENT GUESTS

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On Air: October 31, 2017

Hugh Molotsi,

Hugh Molotsi
Senior Faculty, Lean Startup Co.

Hugh Molotsi is a Senior Faculty member for Lean Startup Co. training program and is the founder and CEO of Ujama, a neighborhood ride sharing service for families. Hugh also advises and invests in startups and is an active practitioner and teacher of Lean Startup Methodologies. In 2015, Hugh concluded a 22-year career at Intuit where his last position was Engineering Fellow and Vice President of Innovation. During his Intuit tenure, Hugh worked on QuickBooks and several other small business offerings. Hugh has been a serial innovator and helped launch several new businesses at Intuit including Intuit Payments. Hugh is passionate about grassroots innovation and “giving voice to good ideas” wherever those ideas may come from.

For our full interview with Hugh, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: October 31, 2017

Luis Perez-Breva,

In this clip, Luis explains what he sees as wrong with “idea tournaments.”


Luis Perez-Breva

Director, MIT Innovation Teams Program 

Luis Perez-Breva, PhD, is an expert in the process of technology innovation, an entrepreneur, and the the author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong. (MIT Press 2017).

Currently Perez-Breva directs the MIT Innovation Teams Program, MIT’s flagship hands-on innovation program jointly operated between the Schools of Engineering and Management. During his tenure, i-Teams has shepherded over 170 MIT technologies to discover a path to impact. He co-led the Innovation Pillar of the MIT Skoltech Initiative, and collaborates with MIT’s innovation initiatives in Portugal, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi. He has taught innovating as a skill worldwide to professionals and students from all disciplines; and gotten them started innovating from pretty much anything: hunches, real-world problems, engineering problem sets, and research breakthroughs.

He is a serial innovator with successes in emergency cell phone location technologies currently deployed worldwide, and a fully automated portfolio allocation and trading system; and numerous other stories to share from his trial and error adventures to conceive artificial intelligence technologies that tackle real-world problems and drive them to market.

Dr. Perez-Breva holds degrees in Chemical Engineering, Physics, Business, and Artificial Intelligence from Spain (Institut Quimic de Sarrià), France (Ecole Normale Supérieure), and the US (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). As an innovator and entrepreneur he has worked on cell phone location for emergency response and national security, genetics, healthcare intelligence, automated portfolio allocation, and developed several non-profit organizations, including building a new university centered around innovation. In 2011, the government of Spain recognized his career achievements with the Order of Civil Merit of the Kingdom of Spain.

For our full interview with Luis, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: October 17, 2017

Brian Blum,

Brian Blum
Author, “Totaled: The Billion-Dollar Crash of the Startup that Took on Big Auto, Big Oil and the World”

Business and technology journalist Brian Blum loves to tell the stories of the world’s most fascinating entrepreneurs and the companies they create. Combining deep research with the ability to translate complex concepts into conversational language, Brian can bring your story – and the story of your company – to life.

Brian writes regularly about people, business and technology for The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Israel21c, The Jerusalem Report, Hadassah and the AIM Group, as well as for a number of universities, publicly traded companies and non-profit organizations. His personal blog, This Normal Life, has appeared online weekly since 2002.

Brian knows the hi-tech world first-hand: his Internet publishing startup Neta4 raised $3.2 million in 1998. He subsequently served as entrepreneur-in-residence for Jerusalem Global Ventures, and was an assistant vice president of marketing for telecommunications provider Comverse.

Before there was the Internet, Brian was producing multimedia CD-ROM titles. His first book, Interactive Media: Essentials for Success, was published by Ziff-Davis Press.

Brian Blum has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College and a master’s degree in Instructional Technology from San Jose State University.

Brian is an engaging and lively presenter who has spoken at conferences, forums and roundtables around the world, lectured at universities in Israel and the United States, and served as the international president of the IICS (International Interactive Communications Society), the largest professional association for the multimedia industry.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Brian lives today in Jerusalem with his wife and three children. In his spare time, he produces the eclectic indie music show “Brainwaves,” which appears weekly on several Internet radio stations.

For our full interview with Brian, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: October 17, 2017

Blake Irving,

In this clip, Blake tells about the changes he made at GoDaddy to move away from the public image created by its racy ads, and in doing so reach out more to women:

Blake Irving
CEO, GoDaddy 

Blake Irving is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of the GoDaddy group of companies. Before coming to GoDaddy in 2013, Blake served Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Yahoo!

For our full interview with Blake, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: October 10, 2017

Tony Ulwick,

In this clip, Tony explains how focusing on the “jobs to be done” of Bosch’s circular saw customers helped them to identify a niche of customer needs that hadn’t been well-served in the past:

Tony Ulwick
Founder and CEO, Strategyn
Tony Ulwick is the CEO of Strategyn, a pioneer and world leader in outcome-driven innovation. Since 1991 he has served as a consultant to Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, AIG, Chiquita Brands, and dozens of other leading corporations. Mr. Ulwick’s innovation practices were recognized by the editors of the Harvard Business Review as some of the best business ideas of 2002.

For our full interview with Tony, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: October 10, 2017

Terrence R. Curtin,

Terrence R. Curtin
CEO, TE Connectivity
Terrence R. Curtin is Chief Executive Officer of TE Connectivity, a $12 billion global technology leader in connectivity and sensor solutions that enable a safer, greener, smarter, and more connected world. Each day more than 7,000 TE engineers across the globe collaborate with customers to solve their toughest problems and turn ideas into innovations that move the world forward – from autonomous vehicles, next generation aircraft, and smart factories to advanced medical devices and connected homes.

Terrence views the convergence of technology, free trade, and diversity as a unique opportunity to build a more connected, sustainable, inclusive, and productive society. To create maximum value for TE’s stakeholders, he is focused on enhancing the experience for the company’s customers, optimizing TE’s operations, removing obstacles to unleash the potential of TE employees, and cultivating a diverse work environment where global collaboration and innovation thrive. Through this approach, he believes TE will continue to be a partner of choice for customers looking to address their most critical challenges in the harshest of environments.

 For our full interview with Terrence, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: September 12, 2017

Jay Peters,

In this clip, Jay explains how a focus on design actually ended up hurting LEGO back in 2004…


Jay Peters, Managing Director, PARK USA

Jay Peters is the Managing Director of PARK USA, a world leading design & innovation management consulting firm, and Managing Director of Grow USA, a world leading professional education provider in Design Management & Design Leadership. Collectively PARK & Grow endeavor to deliver on their shared mission to Empower Design Leaders. Jay consults, coaches and educates clients from major leading global brands such as LEGO, Nestle, Sony, Kimberly-Clark, Novo Nordisk, BASF, Unilever, Honda, Roche and many others; as well as (non)governmental organizations and academic institutions on using design and innovation lead practices to maximize value across the triple (profit, planet & people) bottom line. Jay has lived and worked extensively across Europe and the USA, and holds a bachelor degree in Product Design and marketing Minor from Southern Illinois University and a Master’s Degree in Business Design from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy.

For our full interview with Jay, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: September 12, 2017

Richard Milne, Correspondent, the Financial Times

Richard Milne
Nordic and Baltic correspondent, Financial Times

Richard Milne on the latest stories in innovation management, from successes at LEGO to struggles at Volkswagen.

Listen to Clip

For our full interview with Richard, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.


On Air: September 5, 2017

Walter De Brouwer,

Walter De Brouwer
Founder and CEO, doc.ai
Walter De Brouwer is the founder and CEO of the Palo-Alto based computational linguistics company doc.ai. Doc.ai is building a robo-doctor, via medical dialog systems for personalized healthcare, a conversational AI that follows biological blood markers across the phenome and the genome.


For our full interview with Walter, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.

On Air: September 5, 2017

Jeff DeGraff,

In this clip from the show, Jeff explains how the VW emissions scandal fits into his Innovation Code framework of Artists, Engineers, Athletes, and Sages:


Jeff DeGraff

Author, The Innovation Code  
Jeff DeGraff’s life reads like an innovation playbook. The pages are speckled with failures followed by great successes all because of the mantra adopted at an early age from icon Walt Disney: “Keep moving forward.” Jeff knows how to innovate because he has been through the wringer and rolled with the punches, each time adding a new, better, and cleverer play than the last to his dossier. Jeff’s creative and direct take on making innovation really happen have made him a world renowned thought leader and have prompted his clients and colleagues to dub him as The Dean of Innovation.

Jeff has advised many of the world’s leading corporations, using the Competing Values Framework that he co-created, on how to grow, change and ultimately move forward to see positive results. Jeff’s clientele list reads as a ‘who’s who’ of the business world, boasting Eaton, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, General Electric, Prudential and Pfizer, all as happy customers.

Clients call Jeff when they want to achieve a cultural change that leads to sustainable innovation and growth. Time and time again, clients have been enthralled and inspired by Jeff’s speaking abilities and unorthodox view of innovation. He commands the room as he combines theory and practice to instill the mindset needed to make innovation truly happen. Jeff’s ideas have gained such a following that he created the Innovatrium, an innovation institute in the heart of the University of Michigan’s campus.

For our full interview with Jeff, download the Innovation Navigation podcast.