Kevin Bazner
President & CEO, A&W Restaurants, Inc.
Kevin Bazner is a 40+year veteran of the restaurant industry and has been with A&W Restaurants, Inc. for a total of 25 years.  In 1988, Kevin took over the International Division of A&W, based out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he and his family lived for seven years.  Kevin remained Managing Director of A&W International until 2000 when he was made President and COO.  He continued to serve in this position until Yum! Brands’ purchase of A&W in 2003. Following Yum! Brands’ acquisition, Kevin stayed active in the franchising industry as a consultant, investor and ultimately as President and COO of Smoothie King Corp. 

Kevin returned to A&W as President and CEO in October 2011, when a partnership of international and domestic A&W Franchise Partners purchased the concept from YUM! Brands.  Kevin is committed to the long-term development of the iconic 98-year-old chain and continues to head the day-to-day operations and development of A&W’s domestic and international markets. Under his leadership, A&W sales have dramatically turned around and are out-pacing the industry. After years of declining unit counts, the brand is again growing, with both existing and new franchisees opening restaurants. Today, A&W has nearly 1,000 units worldwide.

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

In this clip, Benjamin explains how the needs of 19th-century transcontinental train systems influenced the structures of modern American businesses:

Suhail Algosaibi
CEO, FALAK Consulting 
Suhail Ghazi Algosaibi is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, startup investor and mentor, author, marketer, consultant, TEDx speaker, and activist based in the Kingdom of Bahrain.  Suhail’s personal mission is to make Bahrain and the world a happier place by helping people unleash their potential.  He takes particular pleasure in empowering young adults through the magic of entrepreneurship.

He is the founder and CEO of FALAK Consulting,  a passionate and obsessive management consultancy consisting of innovators and problems solvers obsessed with finding a better way.  Falak’s purpose is to build stronger economies and happier societies by unlocking business and human potential. It is a business with a higher cause and reinvests some of the proceeds back into the community through the Learn and Grow initiative.  Suhail is also the founder of Ghazi Algosaibi Holdings, and it’s two divisions, Safeen Books and Safeen Properties.

Suhail is a dedicated student of reconciliation and peace-building and is passionate about promoting civil dialogue in Bahrain.  He is the Founder and Chairman of the Bahrain Foundation for Dialogue (BFD).  He is also a proud member of Entrepreneur Organisation (EO) and Young Arab Leaders (YAL).  Other memberships include the networking group Tumouh, and Oqal, the Saudi angel investing group.

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

In this clip Greg tells how the story behind the innovation of penicillin requires so much more than the simplistic “action hero” story that is commonly told:

Greg Satell
Author, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook For Navigating A Disruptive Age
Greg Satell is a popular writer, speaker and innovation advisor, whose work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc. and other A-list publications. Greg helps organizations grow by identifying the right strategies for the right problems and overcome disruptive threats to their business and their industry. He applies rigorous frameworks, identifies strategic resources and works with enterprises to build an innovation playbook to tackle the challenges of the future.

In this clip, Todd talks about innovation “competitions,” and what they can learn from Lorne Michaels (creator of Saturday Night Live) on the necessity of constraints in creativity.

Abhi Dhar
Co-founder and CEO, Packyge, Inc
Abhi is co founder and CEO of a Naperville, IL based startup called Packyge. Packyge intends to be a culture rich, customer empathetic, diverse organization; that scales quickly to run the preeminent mobile centric local retail marketing platform and is currently in pre-launch, building the product and raising angel/seed funding.

Abhi has spent 20 years in various corporate environments in the USA and as an expatriate in the UK. He has been working in the digital space since 1998 and specifically in the mobile space since 2009.

For the last 8 years Abhi was at Walgreens (+Boots Alliance) and was most recently the CIO of Walgreens and at the same time the Chief Digital Officer of the group. Abhi’s responsibility spanned digital consumer experience, digital marketing, product management, innovation, developer evangelism and engineering. Simultaneously Abhi looked after the end to end technology/IT function for one of the largest chain store organizations in the world.

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

In this clip, Ric explains how the challenges faced in making a metal 3D printing system differed from those of a typical technology startup:

Ric Fulop
CEO and Co-Founder, Desktop Metal 

Ric Fulop is the CEO and co-founder of Desktop Metal, a company committed to accelerating the transformation of manufacturing with end-to-end metal 3D printing solutions. Founded in 2015 by leaders in advanced manufacturing, materials science, and robotics, the company is addressing the unmet challenges of speed, cost, and quality to make metal 3D printing an essential tool for engineers and manufacturers around the world.

Prior to founding Desktop Metal in October 2015, Ric was a General Partner at North Bridge, a VC fund with $3 billion under management, for five years following a fifteen-year career as an entrepreneur. Fulop is the founder of six technology companies, including A123 Systems, Boston’s largest IPO in the past decade and one of the world’s largest automotive lithium ion suppliers with revenue exceeding $500M in 2016. At North Bridge, Ric led the software and 3D investing practices, and was an early stage investor and board member in Dyn (acquired by Oracle for $600 million), Onshape, MarkForged, Salsify, Lytro and Gridco.

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

Author, The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite

Duff McDonald is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business and Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase, and the coauthor of The CEO, a satire. A contributing editor at the New York Observer, he has also written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York, Esquire, Fortune, Businessweek, GQ, Wired, Time, Newsweek, and other publications. He lives in New York.

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

In this clip, Robbie describes a case where losing a talented and valuable member of his Xbox team actually strengthened the team as a whole. 

Former President, Microsoft 
Robbie Bach joined Microsoft in 1988 and over the next 22 years worked in various marketing, general management and business leadership roles. He played an important role as a marketing leader in the successful development of the Microsoft Office business, and subsequently led the creation and development of the Xbox business where he served as the Chief Xbox Officer. Bach retired from Microsoft in 2010 as the company’s President of the Entertainment and Devices Division.

Robbie now works as a Civic Engineer with corporate, philanthropic, and civic organizations who are driving positive change in our communities. He guest lectures extensively at schools such as UCLA, the University of North Carolina, Notre Dame, Santa Clara University, Seattle University, and the University of Washington. He also speaks to corporate, civic, and trade show audiences across the country. In 2015, he completed his first book, Xbox Revisited: A Game Plan for Corporate and Civic Renewal. For more information, see www.robbiebach.com.

As part of his civic commitment, Robbie serves on the national board of governors for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and for the local Boys and Girls Club chapter in Bellevue, WA. He has served as chairman of both of these boards. He is also a member of the United States Olympic Committee board of directors, the board of directors for the Puget Sound chapter of Year-Up, and the board of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC. His corporate responsibilities include being co-owner of Manini’s, Inc., a gluten-free pasta and flour company, and serving on the board of directors for Sonos Inc.

He was an Arjay Miller Scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he earned his MBA, and a Morehead Scholar at UNC where he earned his degree in economics and was also named an Academic All-American on the Tar Heel’s tennis team.

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

In this clip, Sarah explains how recognizing Gatorade’s existing business strengths was essential when steering the company into the uncharted waters of additional, non-drink products:

Listen to Clip

Executive, activist and entrepreneur, Sarah Robb O’Hagan has been described by the media as everything from “Superwoman undercover” to the “Pied Piper of Potential.” She is a high-energy combination of disruptive business leader, fitness fanatic, and cheerleading mom, and has been named one of Forbes‘ “Most Powerful Women in Sports” and one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business.”

As Chief Executive Officer of the fast growing indoor cycling company Flywheel Sports she is currently leading the transformation of the business through digital content and services. Prior to this role, Sarah became an internationally recognized re-inventor of brands, having served as global president of the $5Bn sports brand Gatorade, where she successfully led the business through a major repositioning and business turnaround, and global president of the luxury fitness company Equinox, where she reinvented the offering through a significant technology transformation.

Sarah has also founded a movement she calls Extreme Living. Provoked by the cultural shift that gave us kids with shelves of participation trophies, unfounded expectations of success, and suppressed potential, she has created a manifesto for change. Her book, Extreme YOU: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick Ass. Repeat. to be published by HarperCollins in April 2017, provides people of all ages with the tools and support to discover their most exploitable traits, take big risks, deal with big failures and kick ass all the way to success. It is an inspiring and fiercely practical roadmap for individuals, teams and businesses who want to get the most out of their own unique capabilities.

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