Scott Kirsner, CEO of Innolead - Navigating The Future of Innovation Teams

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi! I'm Shannon, Lucas, and I'm the co-CEO of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalysts to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast move, fast, break, burnout, where we speak with catalyst executives about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations. And today, I'm super thrilled to have my friend Scott Kearsner here, the CEO of Innolad. He spent more than 2 decades as a business journalist and contributing editor at the Boston Globe Wired Magazine, Fast Company in the New York Times.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: His focus is on now on how innovations and sorry innovations that matter get introduced to the world, and it's taken him to the White House, Sundance Film Festival, the United Nations and into the really cool innovation labs in some places like Google and Disney, general motors Delta, and more, I have to say, I know few people in the world who know more about both the vision and the brass tacks of innovation in large organizations than Scott. Which is why I'm so grateful to have you here today. Hi, Scott.

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Scott Kirsner: Hey? Thanks for having me on.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So fun, all right, so I'd love for you. I gave you like the high snippets, but I'd love for you to introduce yourself and hear about your catalytic journey, maybe sharing a few career highlights that you're proud of.

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Scott Kirsner: Well, that's a great opening question. Thank you for asking it.

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Scott Kirsner: I always felt like I was going to go into some kind of journalism media publishing type of job like it just was always my trajectory growing up and being on the newspaper in high school and college.

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Scott Kirsner: I got a great job at the Boston Globe in the mid nineties, helping them figure out what their digital publishing strategy should be, and really executing on the Strategy Building, the the 1st website for the newspaper, and this is at a time it was owned by the New York Times Company. So you know the globe was part of a larger public company. And my 2 co-founders and in a lead are are people that I met in that era, you know, in the mid nineties trying to figure out

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Scott Kirsner: what should newspapers do online? What is the business model? How do you sell ads? How do you build community, all of like the key questions for digital publishing.

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Scott Kirsner: And you know, we had that experience of doing it inside a large company where often you're scrapping for resources. There were other teams, you know, in New York that were doing similar things with a different approach, you know, maybe a little more brand sensitive because they worked for the New York Times, and we were in Boston working for the Globe. We could kind of be faster and more experimental, I think

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Scott Kirsner: and a lot of that experience, you know, we kind of lean on now. You know, as you mentioned, I did a lot of writing and journalism, and just had fun traveling around the world, going to cool companies and cool events. And then in 2,013, we started in a lead, you know, kind of with that

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Scott Kirsner: context in mind, right of like, there are lots of people with lots of different titles who are catalysts and change makers, and since you already said shit, I can say shit disturbers inside established organizations, and there was just like nobody.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, there were a lot of consultants serving those people. But there was nobody that was like the unbiased source of information and research and connections

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Scott Kirsner: that was out there that, like, you know, wasn't trying, you know. Like, wasn't Mckenzie trying to sell you a million dollar consulting project? And like, I know you, you know, you probably took pitches from all these consultants when you were in corporate roles?

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Scott Kirsner: You know, and and we just kind of had a little bit of that journalist mindset of. Could you provide information that people would trust and gather data that people would trust

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Scott Kirsner: to help all these people who were like all in very similar roles? You know, to what we had experienced. You know, way back in the early days of the the web.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, I just, I do have to put a plug in for in a lead, because when I was in the corporate world I was a member for years, and I really appreciated that safe container and that sort of you know, learning based co-learning, based community that you bring together. And I'm excited that we're gonna get to talk about some of your new research that's come out. But I just want our listeners to understand really the value that you provide to that ecosystem.

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Scott Kirsner: Thanks for saying that I mean we met very early in the life of in a lead, I think, when you were still at Vodafone, you know, and stuff happen as a you know, agent of change there and I'm trying to remember what year it would have been, but maybe, like 2014.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Probably, yeah.

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Scott Kirsner: Like the second year we were working on in a lead.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I didn't realize you were so new then you were already crushing it out of the gate. So that says a lot about how you move through the world, Scott. All right, we have a sorry go ahead.

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Scott Kirsner: No, no, no, I was just gonna say, like 2013 was like, very much our lean, startup year of like, is there something here, could we build it? And then, yeah, by 2014, we felt like, okay, we've we've figured out there's people who need this.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And sorry. One more shout out, and I never do this, but also the events that you convene are always just such a great place of learning and community building and stuff. So if you guys get a chance, go to the intellect impact all right. So we had the conversation because I've known you for a while, but I was like, do you identify as a catalyst? So I'd love to hear sort of your definition of a catalyst and what it means to be a catalyst executive.

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Scott Kirsner: Well, I mean, I love that. You guys have been defining this term. And you know the

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Scott Kirsner: anthropology of being a catalyst in a larger organization. And I do feel like, you know, you've kind of taken ownership of the word in a big way.

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Scott Kirsner: You know, we.

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Scott Kirsner: I think I tend to think about catalysts as people who are in some way going against the grain and bringing in new ideas, and they're often a little more externally focused than their colleagues. And they don't last long in big companies. Frankly, you know, big companies can drive them crazy.

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Scott Kirsner: just because I always like to say. You know there's so many incentives to be in the office and be in meetings and be present on zoom in large companies, and so few incentives to be like on a ui university campus or at a conference or at a startup pitch day.

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Scott Kirsner: You know there's almost no incentives for that stuff. People think you're goofing off and like. That's the stuff that catalysts often view as important. Right is like gathering signal

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Scott Kirsner: from the outside world. And I guess the last thing I would say about catalyst is gathering signal is such an important

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Scott Kirsner: job. And it's, I think, what they're good at right like seeing patterns that others in the company don't see understanding trends just

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Scott Kirsner: picking things up like when they go to their kids soccer game, or they go to a backyard barbecue like they will just hear things they're like, oh, we should be moving, you know. We should be building something around that.

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Scott Kirsner: you know that dynamic

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Scott Kirsner: and like, we have some data that's probably like 7 or 8 years old. Now, that basically says

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Scott Kirsner: the problem in large companies is not the gathering signal and understanding what's happening. It's the doing something about it. It's like creating the mechanisms to act on those insights. And I think to me that's like the heart of what is so hard about being a catalyst. Right is, you see, stuff happening, and you want to act on it. And the organization is like.

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Scott Kirsner: hey? Can you talk to us after the big annual trade show, or can you talk to us after the earnings call? Or can you talk to us after we finish, you know, version 3.1 8 of our product.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yes, yes, I do, painfully, though. Scott. Yeah, I'm wondering. So the combination of you as a catalyst, and the way you've been able to blaze this amazing trajectory for yourself? How has being a catalyst, been able to support your trajectory in being an executive and a CEO and co-founder? Now.

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Scott Kirsner: That's a really good question. I mean.

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Scott Kirsner: I

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Scott Kirsner: I feel like, you know, mostly I've been. You know, I had a phase in my life post like leaving the Boston Globe, whereas really just an independent journalist, and I don't know that I would call myself a catalyst at that point, except for the commonality of like.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, being able to work to survive as a journalist is, you have to sort of have that signal gathering ability, and, like just being able to see like, Oh, there's a story here that nobody else really sees, or there's something important about this company. And I wanna write about them before other people do

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Scott Kirsner: but then you're not really trying to like affect any kind of organizational change, really? I think it was not until. And so I spent, you know.

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Scott Kirsner: 10 or 12 years like writing articles and writing books and

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Scott Kirsner: it was really not until we started in a lead that I I think

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Scott Kirsner: you know. Now I kind of view myself as a journal, and

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Scott Kirsner: you know I I think that, like most entrepreneurs like you have to be a catalyst all the time, and you're not really encumbered by a lot of structure and a lot of process around you which makes it much easier to say like, Oh, let's try something new like last year, the 1st half of last year we're like, well, what would happen if we put a bunch of interleaved content, like our best content into an Llm. And let people chat with it. Would that be help more helpful than

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Scott Kirsner: emailing someone on our team or using the search box on the website. And, like, you know, we don't have a general counsel as a you know, as a startup, and nobody could tell us not to do it, and so we just did it. And like

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Scott Kirsner: I I just think, you know, I almost hesitate to use the word catalyst when you're, you know, a sub 10 person company, right? Because you can be so nimble. You don't have risk and compliance departments, you know, jumping on you for everything you suggest.

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Scott Kirsner: And

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Scott Kirsner: yeah, I don't. I don't delude myself into thinking that like, oh, I'm doing the same thing with our little media and Events company that somebody's doing inside, you know. Vodafone, Ibm. Starbucks, Marriott, Bmw. You know that scale of company. We try to understand it and understand what those catalysts go through, but I don't really think

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Scott Kirsner: like

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Scott Kirsner: I don't think I'm the same. You know. I'm in a even a similar role to them.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Fair, and a lot of our listeners are in big organizations. But I would say, just because you found an environment where it's easier to see the signal through the noise, do the sense making, and then actually do the doing, and then even get to play and pivot on it. Those are all the classic catalyst traits that follow us, no matter where we go. But I'm glad that you found a place where you get to have your own sandbox to play in, and don't have to hash it out with legal 10 times.

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Scott Kirsner: Yeah. And I, I also just think you know, some of it is

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Scott Kirsner: you know, some of it is about like finding the right size organization, you know, like I, I really empathize and relate to sole proprietors like, you know, that is so hard. I kind of feel like small team is really like my context, where I enjoy working, and I can go to like meetings at bigger companies where I might be a contributor.

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Scott Kirsner: As you mentioned. I still write a column for the Boston Globe, and I can go to meetings at the Globe and try to

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Scott Kirsner: contribute and chime in here and there. But like, I just feel like once it's a 510,000 person organization. That's just not my milieu. You, you know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, well, and you're providing a ton of value. So normally, we ask the following questions, sort of on a more personal basis. But I'd be remiss if we weren't tapping into the great wisdom that you have been bringing to the world. You shared with us a preview of your latest research report the future of the innovation team, which, of course, is near and dear to my heart, but also to a lot of our listeners.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So I'd love to just start off with. Can you share one or 2, or even the top 4 challenges if you want, and maybe like double click a little bit and help us understand why they're on the list right now.

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Scott Kirsner: Yeah. Well, this is all data from, you know, gathered in Q, 2 of 2024, so relatively fresh, and I think to me one of the most interesting questions. You know. There's the info about AI and team size and budgets, and we you know what are your metrics

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Scott Kirsner: in the report. But to me the most interesting question just is about what is the biggest, what are the biggest pressures on you and your team in 2024, and the 5 things that rose to the surface are, can you have more impact on revenue growth, please?

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Scott Kirsner: You know, can you help our company move faster, become more agile, is, in second place, help the company culture be more innovative, which feels very closely tied to that second place, pressure

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Scott Kirsner: do more with less which you and I have talked about. You know, if you put a nice positive spin on that, it's like the power of minimalism, you called it. In this Linkedin live we did earlier this year, but often do more with less is like, Hey, here's $5,000 like, Go build a product.

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Scott Kirsner: And then the last one is helping the company understand and adopt new technologies, especially AI right now. And I guess the question I would ask you is like.

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Scott Kirsner: if someone put you in a corporate role and said, Can you do all 5 of those things, please? Even if you had a team of

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Scott Kirsner: 10 people, let's say, which is

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Scott Kirsner: decent size right now for a corporate innovation team.

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Scott Kirsner: Could you do all 5 of those things? Or would you say, like actually pick 2, you know. Pick 2 and try to move the needle on those.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I think it's a really great question. And when we work with organizations on the catalyst programs, we force them to prioritize because they'll be like, we want these 5 things. And I'm like, that's cool. And when we come to decision making, I need you to prioritize them. Because choices I make to deliver Number One are going to impact how much I can deliver on Number 5. So I think it's really true. And I think that there's an interesting conversation sort of going

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: to the culture piece, because, as you mentioned, really like 3 of the top 4, in my opinion, are sort of like cultural process things. And so tipping it back to you a little bit because you guys have some other sort of places. Insights that you landed is like

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: is that the role is the culture building, the role of people who are leading specifically innovation. You say, trying to change the culture is a tar pit. Don't get stuck in it, and yet these are the demands that are being put on us. So I'm wondering what your takeaway is from that.

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Scott Kirsner: I just feel after 10 or 11 years of watching people try to have impact on culture as a 10 person team, you know, inside a 10,000 person company

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Scott Kirsner: that you can put on some fun events, you know, and you can make some swag, you know, and everybody has suddenly has a stress ball that says, you know, innovate at Acme Company or whatever.

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Scott Kirsner: and that can make people feel good in these brief ways. But I just I just really honestly believe that company cultures.

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Scott Kirsner: If the founder is still alive, you know, if it's company like Meta, where you've still got, you know Zuckerberg walking the halls, or it's

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Scott Kirsner: Spacex and Elon musk is hanging out.

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Scott Kirsner: You know that founder is the biggest influence on culture, and

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Scott Kirsner: you know that same is true of small startups when the founder is still around, like they really are, are shaping the culture like through their behavior. And what they talk about in meetings, and how they how you know how they behave.

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Scott Kirsner: you know.

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Scott Kirsner: When when their colleagues around them, and I just think that when the in every other company where there still isn't a founder founding team member. You know, the culture just accretes like stalactites and stalagmites over the years.

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Scott Kirsner: and so like, if you imagine you're in this cave like where there's just all these limestone structures around you

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Scott Kirsner: like, what are you as the catalyst or the change agent gonna do to like turn that cave into an architectural digest, you know. Living room, you know, that looks like you know. Looks like, you know, Eames created all the furniture like it's 1 thing, and you're you're gonna try to turn it into

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Scott Kirsner: something totally different.

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Scott Kirsner: I I think that

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Scott Kirsner: you know that sort of culture impact. Cultural impact just takes such a long time in the way that, like stalactites and stalagmites don't form overnight, and companies have such short attention spans that I I just feel like it can be diluted to say like, and for my next 3 year stint at this company, you know, I'm gonna change the culture. So we're more agile. And people don't feel like it's a slow moving, you know, analysis, paralysis kind of place.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So I don't disagree in a lot of ways, I guess. What's your advice for people then? Because, as they're saying, the 100 people that you interviewed. They're saying the pressures on their team is to help the company move faster, become more agile, help the company culture before become more innovative. Are you saying it's a fool's errand, and they should leave their job.

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Scott Kirsner: For some. Maybe it's like the key is like finding out what the context that you're gonna be happy

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Scott Kirsner: in is, you know, and we do see a lot of people who seem happy in large companies until the moment that the large company is like, you know, we don't really need you and your team anymore.

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Scott Kirsner: And

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Scott Kirsner: you know, often they go. You know, they go into consulting advisory work.

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Scott Kirsner: you don't typically see like somebody from a Giant Utility Company. Then wind up at a 10 person, you know y combinator startup next.

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Scott Kirsner: So I think the one thing is thinking about. Well, where you know. Where do you function

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Scott Kirsner: best? And I don't know. I just always think, you know, in some ways, you know, Evp and Svp. Titles come with that curse of like, you know, great options, packages, and all kinds of perks and great salaries, and that can really keep you from going to join like a medium sized company, where, like, you might be a lot happier right? Really having ownership of.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, or being closer to like the gears of power at a 2,500 person company, but you know you could just never take that pay cut. So

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Scott Kirsner: I just think there's

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Scott Kirsner: you know.

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Scott Kirsner: I am saying that.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, if you're not talking about a timeframe of like years or decades, and the decade where it really scares people, and, you know, publicly traded, or all kinds of large companies.

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Scott Kirsner: You know, the question to ask is like, What does the endpoint really look like of

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Scott Kirsner: more agile, or help us be more

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Scott Kirsner: innovative.

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Scott Kirsner: maybe you could convince yourself that, like having a once a year idea challenge, or even having the business units all run their own idea challenges and make sure that that stuff gets in. The pipeline

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Scott Kirsner: is an impact on the culture. And

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Scott Kirsner: you know, maybe it is like, if that really is generating stuff that moves the needle in some way like makes customers happier, more loyal, or delivers more revenue growth. Like.

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Scott Kirsner: okay, you probably are changing the culture

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Scott Kirsner: in, you know, in a concrete

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Scott Kirsner: way. But

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Scott Kirsner: You know a lot of times. People are truly trying to boil the ocean, you know, and like you've probably seen people where they like travel around every branch office of the company all around the world, and they're like, what can I and my team of 10 people do to impact the way people are working in Singapore. And you know, Senegal and London.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Oh, yeah, that was I lived that life. That was that was definitely. That was definitely something. I tried what I hear you say, which is, you know, when we're like coaching with leaders is at least getting the clarity on what the trade offs are for you. Right? So are you gonna be able to make incremental progress pro progress

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: with, you know, in a large organization. And is that satisfying cause you're getting other things like maybe the rewards and renumeration, or whatever versus might you be interested in being at a 2,500 person organization and have more impact. But there's potentially financial trade offs versus the total freedom that you have to be like, hey? And we're gonna put all our stuff in an Llm. And have AI take a shot at it. And so it's like the clarity. And and then cause it's when you

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: want something else, and you're stuck in this, that it becomes really untenable. Right?

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Scott Kirsner: Yeah, I I do think it is. And and just, you know, there's a there's sort of a problem, I think, in this innovation space, which is

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Scott Kirsner: I think a lot of the consultants and trainers frankly like, because they have to work in short time frames. And they have to say, like, here's a project that's 3 months or 6 months or a year, right? Like

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Scott Kirsner: they are viewing things through too narrow of a time lens when really like. Honestly, if I got together with a group of innovation consultants for dinner tonight, you know, in Boston.

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Scott Kirsner: They would all agree with me that, you know, years and decades like the commitment of resources. And

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Scott Kirsner: you know, C-suite support needs to last over decades, probably before everybody in the in the large company believes that like, oh, this is actually a real capability that's

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Scott Kirsner: gonna be here today tomorrow and in 2,035, not just like the idea challenge that pops up for a couple of years and then disappears. You know.

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Scott Kirsner: Because the company decides they don't want to keep giving out, you know $1,000 and apple watches every year whatever they give out as prizes.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think there are a handful. There's not a lot. But I think there are a handful of exceptions like what Satya did at Microsoft, and how quickly he did that culture change! But then goes back to the point that you were talking about about the executive support. So before we move off of it, if someone is in a role and they are being asked to help the company move faster and become more agile or help the company culture be more.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Have you seen what are the like? Top? 3 things that you've seen work, the move, the needle even.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: maybe incrementally.

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Scott Kirsner: I mean, I think when I hear more agile and move faster. To some extent, you're either like gotta be hacking away at some bureaucracy and some things that slow people down right, maybe creating some test beds or playgrounds where people can run experiments without having to go through all of the hoops and stage gates of like a national product launch, you know, at a Png or whatever, and like. You can imagine how many checks and balances

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Scott Kirsner: are involved in that process. So like hacking away at the the bureaucracy is one thing, and sometimes it's bringing in like

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Scott Kirsner: new technologies and new tools, you know, maybe that are outside of the standard. You know, Microsoft Salesforce Oracle

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Scott Kirsner: you know.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, big tech infrastructure and getting people using tools that you know that. Help them.

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Scott Kirsner: gather insights, prototype things.

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Scott Kirsner: you know. Test things a little bit faster.

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Scott Kirsner: But you know, I think if you're asked to do either of those things right? The key question would be like, Well, what is my metric that I'm trying to move the meeting like, how do we.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Maybe that are.

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Scott Kirsner: Company is more innovative.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, in July of 2025 than it was in July of 2024, or that we are more agile.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, because companies run on data and.

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Scott Kirsner: You know as much as like. I love all the consultants who are like. You need to be a better storyteller, and you know stories are important, and people love to listen to stories like. It's true in meetings that people love to listen to stories. But then, like you know, at annual reviews and company offsites, and

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Scott Kirsner: you know.

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Scott Kirsner: any kind of you know, business oriented meeting. Eventually the spreadsheet comes up or the chart comes up, and it's like. Let's look at the metrics here.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Scott Kirsner: And I just don't know how you operate. I mean, that's part of the reason why, every time we survey people and you ask what is senior leadership care about? It's largely like, is innovation driving revenue? Or is it helping reduce costs and make us more efficient? Everything else.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Complicated. Totally yeah.

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Scott Kirsner: Like complicated is right and

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Scott Kirsner: and sometimes you you hear about things like perception in the market, you know. And how do people view, our brand can also be important, which you can measure in certain ways, right like with net, promoter score things.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Sort of, yeah, yeah.

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Scott Kirsner: Customer surveys.

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Scott Kirsner: But yeah, I think you know, a key question with any of these objectives is like, what are my metrics, and what is my timeframe? You know where you're expecting to see, you know, real outcomes and changes in those metrics.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Spot on. And it's a really interesting pivot and an interesting thing that I'm curious to hear your take on, which is, you also talk in the report about the death of the lab.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: The innovation lab is done. And so there's this, you know, because you're like, well, you could create like this hacking container, where they can do stuff and avoid the bureaucracy. But at the same time there's this like death of the innovation lab which I agree with, and actually, interestingly, this year. And we had this conversation again on the Linkedin live like innovation's kind of become a dirty word, sort of like sustainability did right? It's like.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: because there's this perception, of what value are you providing? And so I'm just wondering if you have thoughts about, then where catalyst or innovation. Leaders might find themselves in the business outside of an innovation lab

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: to be successful, delivering the things that the business is asking them to to deliver.

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Scott Kirsner: Wow! That's a really good question. It's funny that you brought up sustainability cause I just saw on Linkedin somebody who got sustainability added to their title. So like now they're like, I think, a Vp or Sep of innovation and sustainability. And I kind of read that. I laughed because it's like the 2 things that innovation and sustainability have in common are really ambitious goals.

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Scott Kirsner: And really, you know, lacking resources, you know, or really squeezed resources. Right? Like, you know, okay, we're gonna be net a net 0 company by 2035 and you know, we have 2 people working on it, and a college intern. And you know

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Scott Kirsner: it's very similar like, that sounds very similar to a lot of catalysts and innovation leaders, I think.

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Scott Kirsner: But

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Scott Kirsner: you know

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Scott Kirsner: the question you asked is hard, which is, I I think, most many innovation labs are going away like when we were at we did an event in Silicon Valley. And one things we like to do is go and visit innovation labs. I mean, we did an part of an event at your innovation Lab and Vodafone when that existed. And what we found right now is in the valley. Most of the innovation labs that have survived are actually building stuff. It's like car companies and aircraft companies. You know, we actually need a garage.

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Scott Kirsner: you know. To work on trucks or airplanes or cars. Or what have you?

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Scott Kirsner: And then I think outside that maybe there's a small number of innovation labs that have survived. You know, we talked to somebody from visa. From this report. We're like, you know, visa and mastercard, and you know, to some extent, I guess American express to right like they're really multi party systems where, like, they care about merchants, and they care about banks, and they want to bring everybody together and get them excited about the future of payments. And so

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Scott Kirsner: I think, if you really are a true ecosystem player that you know, that depends on a lot of those relationships for your revenue growth, maybe an innovation lab. You know, where you can show people cool prototypes or visions of the future is still surviving. We just have, like a hard.

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Scott Kirsner: a hard time finding them. And so I do think we are in this phase, and we have been in this phase since 2,000 of trying to figure out

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Scott Kirsner: how to make innovation happen on Zoom and on teams. And you know

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Scott Kirsner: in these, in with Moreau boards, and in these much more virtual

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Scott Kirsner: places, and I think the upside of it, you know, when I talk to people who are, you know, doing more like online presentations where they used to bring everybody the company together for an off site is more people can participate. You know, you can actually get better engagement from a global company.

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Scott Kirsner: If you're asking them, let's say for input on, you know, hey, here's 5 startups we've we've evaluated. And we might want to partner with them like, Give us some input, on which one you like.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, doing that at, you know, headquarters in Topeka, you know, is very different from doing it online where everybody could

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Scott Kirsner: chime in. So

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Scott Kirsner: I do think we're still in this era, like the reason your question is so hard is like we are still in this era, figuring out like if there isn't a place that people are going to.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, on a daily basis.

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Scott Kirsner: to work together and potentially bring in like outside collaborators and voices like, what is, you know? What is the

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Scott Kirsner: collaboration like? Where does collaboration and co-creation happen?

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, super interesting. I think, like spot on about the like. If you have to make things so like jlabs for me is like a great example of like. They are paying for space to incubate around their core competencies and bring in that ecosystem approach. But those are few and far between. Like, if you're doing digital technology, it's a different conversation.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: You know, some of the places that I've seen sort of people who have innovation histories. Or you know our catalyst leaders go, or like chief growth officers, or something in a growth capacity. Certainly all these new AI roles that are opening up. You don't always have to be a technologist to be helping to lead that strategy sort of fizzling out sort of now, but was a place was maybe digital transformation. And then the the Cx sort of

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: insights cause. That's another place that you know, but also like, How are you impacting? Do any of those resonate. And are there other places where you're seeing maybe today more current that that innovation leader Slash catalyst, might pivot to.

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Scott Kirsner: AI is the big one. I mean, it's just such a big priority to figure out

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Scott Kirsner: every you know, everybody I talk to who, I think, knows anything about anything is says like, this is a huge. This is going to be a huge, you know, 20 year transformation of business.

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Scott Kirsner: Some of the tools are gonna work better than others, and some places you apply AI are gonna deliver Roi faster than others. But like to imagine this is like another thing like, you know the coming of smart watches or blockchain, or you know, AR glasses. It's just not. It's not the same. I mean there, you know, there's so many different flavors of AI

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Scott Kirsner: that there are a lot of companies where they're like, yeah, we've been doing air for the last 10 years. We just called it machine learning, or we just called it computer vision. And you know, yeah, we got rid of people who were like inspecting the widgets as they went down the line. And now we have a camera that does it

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Scott Kirsner: equally as good or or better.

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Scott Kirsner: So the AI thing is big like we, we did a podcast with Steve Blank. You know, who's like a super well known author, you know, advocate of the lean Startup approach has been in Silicon Valley for like the last 40 years. And

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Scott Kirsner: you know, he's just like, Yeah, this is, you know, this is real. This is like the change that you know that the Internet and the microchip brought, and so like.

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Scott Kirsner: don't don't sleep on it. I I kind of feel like I don't quite understand the people who are like, Oh, this is really over hyped. And there's gonna be another trend next year. I just think maybe they've been a little bit brainwashed by.

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Scott Kirsner: you know.

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Scott Kirsner: by maybe, like the media and the analyst firm's desire for there always to be another trend.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Break, now.

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Scott Kirsner: Publish white papers and thought leadership about. And so there can be a little bit of a boy who cried, Wolf. Dynamic happening technologies.

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Scott Kirsner: you know.

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Scott Kirsner: the one experience I had was like networking of computers, you know, both right before the Internet and during the early Internet days. And like

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Scott Kirsner: that was a pretty big change, and I think business are some business still trying to get used to that change right? Like we all have local merchants where I still could not

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Scott Kirsner: order something from my local hardware store and pay for it, and have somebody deliver it, you know, to my door, right like I have to walk over there and like search through the aisles and stuff. So yeah, I think it's AI is a big thing that people should be learning about and experimenting with the tools, and just becoming.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, becoming an internal expert on.

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Scott Kirsner: And I think I just would put a period at the end of that sentence. I mean, there are other.

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Scott Kirsner: you know. Innovators often get pulled back into bit line of business roles or functional roles because it's a promotion, and that's where the action is. And so like we'll always.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, we'll always see that. But I do think the center of the action right now is AI strategy and AI policy and

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Scott Kirsner: you know, making sure that you don't. You know you don't really get left behind because you, under invested in AI.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I totally agree, because I also think that human brains I love the book abundance because it talks so much about how human being human brains can't understand really exponentiality.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and I think that the change is going to just be on this insanely exponential curve. And so I think we were all kind of underestimating the impact that this is going to have. And I think it is a really smart place. And interestingly, I think it goes to like it is one of the one of the places, one of the technology, one of the tools that's going to help

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: catalyst innovators have an impact on growth and drive agility sort of hand in hand.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So I think again, if this is what the business is asking of you, and you're not paying attention to AI. You're missing a trick to be able to deliver what the business is asking for. But it does lead into an interesting question, which I kind of wish, now that I had started with, which is.

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Scott Kirsner: Well, there's always editing Shannon, you know. We can.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: We're just having a conversation.

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Scott Kirsner: Thank you. Guys.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's all good, it's all good.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Given the AI. And taking a step back when when I was more in the corporate world, sort of pre pandemic doing innovation. It really did feel like

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: it was a capacity that organizations needed to future proof themselves.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and I was always having to make the case of change and the pace of change accelerating, and all of that. And obviously the pandemic has like I, we don't need to have the Vuca conversation anymore. We don't need to have that conversation. And so I'm wondering, like, what is the role in your mind of innovation, particularly in large organizations. Now, because it's like there's not a single part of the organization that doesn't need to be able to adapt to change really fast.

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Scott Kirsner: All that is true. I mean my hypothesis in 2024. And like, we talk about this a lot internally and like we've been talking about this a lot with our advisors and corporate, you know, who are working in corporate roles is like

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Scott Kirsner: institutionalizing. This function is really important and making sure that people think it's here to stay, and that it's resourced and respected in a way that it's here to stay

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Scott Kirsner: is super important, and everything else follows from that, you know. And

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Scott Kirsner: but that is Job number one is like, I don't think this needs to be as big as the marketing function or the human resources function or the sales and biz dev function, but like it does need to be thought of as like something that's important in here to stay. And then what is its role? Its role is always to be kind of hedging your bets and trying to see around corners and trying to

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Scott Kirsner: get close to customers, you know, today's customers and future customers or potential customers.

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Scott Kirsner: And yeah, maybe even working on company culture. If that's what your C-suite

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Scott Kirsner: cares about. And if you found some metrics that you know that seem reasonable to you.

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Scott Kirsner: I do think that's a big part of the role. And then, in the context of AI. You know, most companies

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Scott Kirsner: separate from like understanding the technology landscape. And what's emerging? I think most companies haven't really set out a vision. For like, where do we want to get with AI,

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Scott Kirsner: you know, and for that reason

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Scott Kirsner: it's really scary to people, you know, because your mind everybody's mind when you start talking about AI and the potential goes to like, wait, am I gonna have a job in 2 years or 5 years or 10 years like

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Scott Kirsner: you know. I think

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Scott Kirsner: man manufacturing and factory line workers and those widget inspectors have been worrying about this for a while. But now, like every knowledge worker is worrying about this. And so

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Scott Kirsner: I think innovation people and catalyst can help to like.

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Scott Kirsner: Let's shape that vision. Of what kind of company are we trying to be.

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Scott Kirsner: And some of that may be like preserving roles for humans, even when AI could do it cheaper. Because actually, we think our brand, you know, presents better when you feel like, you know. Like, if you're 4 seasons right, the phone rings once and someone picks it up like, that's better than like, Hey, I'm the AI chat. Bot, how can I help you, you know.

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Scott Kirsner: So yeah. So I think contributing to that vision is really just going to be an important part of the

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Scott Kirsner: important part of the role.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's a great segue to the follow-up question that I had, which is, you know, we work with organizations where one of their core values out of 3 or 4 is innovation. And the implication is there's innovation with a capital I and innovation with a little I. And I'm wondering what you see, is like the rest of the employee. Base employee base is

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: responsibility or yeah relationship with lower case innovation. And how innovation leaders can help bridge that, or bring them along.

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Scott Kirsner: And when you say lower case, I do. You mean kind of like incremental, like improvements to processes and to products and things like that?

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Sure. Yeah.

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Scott Kirsner: One.

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Scott Kirsner: I mean, I think, with both lowercase and upper case. You know.

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Scott Kirsner: thinking about this as a network where everybody has something to contribute, you know, like often there can be. I think you've probably written about this in the past and made the point that, like salespeople, should love innovation, and innovators should love salespeople right? Because they're always talking to customers. They want to have something new to talk about with customers. They hear the explanation of why the customer decided to defect to the rival like, I think there's all those kinds of relationships.

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Scott Kirsner: even, you know, sometimes with legal and compliance people, you know, there can be great partnerships where, like, you find the one legal person that's like, yeah, I really do wanna understand. All of our risks of, you know, potentially hoovering in somebody else's intellectual property into our Llm. And

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Scott Kirsner: you know.

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Scott Kirsner: and and so there are people in legal risk and compliance that want to be at the cutting edge and helping build the new stuff.

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Scott Kirsner: So I think, whether it's small, I or big eye, you know, when you, when you totally are on an island, and you don't have those give and take relationships. You get into trouble.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Totally agree and total shout out, for, like the legal and the procurement, people like innovators, you need to have great relationships with them, Scott. I could talk to you for hours and hours, and I'm so grateful, really, again, for the research that you bring into the world. We really need that independent neutral convener of insights around this

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I do want to end with. Do you have one or 2 favorite inspirational catalysts you want to share with us.

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Scott Kirsner: Inspirational catalyst, like people into like humans. We're talking about.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: unless you have some dogs or friends. I don't know.

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Scott Kirsner: So it's such a good question. I mean.

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Scott Kirsner: I've been

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Scott Kirsner: I've been working on this nonprofit project here in Boston, called the Innovation trail, which is kind of looking at like.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That's so cool.

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Scott Kirsner: Yeah, all you know, Boston's an old city. And so I I love history and innovation so kind of looking at all the just different breakthroughs, and

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Scott Kirsner: I mean some of the people that are my favorite catalyst are really people from the past, you know, like Alexander Graham Bell really wanted to help deaf people, and that was the driver of the research that led him to invent the telephone in Boston, the 18 hundreds

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Scott Kirsner: in particular, like people who just

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Scott Kirsner: we're working in places that you just never would have expected. You know.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, black children of, you know, freed slaves who would like. There's a particular guy, Louis Latimer that I find really inspiring, who taught himself how to be a patent draftsman, and drew the patent for the telephone like, with no formal education, and was working in a patent office. And

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Scott Kirsner: you know, later went on to work with Thomas Edison, and obviously like just a lot of the women who were like

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Scott Kirsner: early professors at Mit and Margaret Hamilton, who was one of the 1st

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Scott Kirsner: computer programmers who worked on the Apollo spacecraft.

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Scott Kirsner: I just love that, you know not the people who are like the discoverers or inventors or 1st patenters, but, like the people who are just.

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Scott Kirsner: you know, really working in systems that did not welcome them with open arms and still were catalysts, despite all those headwinds. That's really what inspires me.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amen. That is super inspirational. Well, put those people in the show notes. I didn't realize that Alexander Grimbell was in Boston. That's a good fun fact for the day.

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Scott Kirsner: For sure. Yeah, he was like, not a professor, but I think he was like a adjunct instructor at my Alma Mater Boston University, which is just down the street that way.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Awesome, Scott always a pleasure. Thanks for making time for us.

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Scott Kirsner: No thanks for all the great questions I really enjoyed. It.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: To our listeners. Thanks so much for listening. If you'd like to learn more about how to create bold, powerful change in the world, check out our book, move fast, breakship, burnout, or go to the website. catalystconstallations.com dot.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And if you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, take 10 seconds to rate it on itunes, spotify stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts of course. If you have other catalysts in your life, hit the share button and send a link their way. Thanks again.