Innovation Answered

In this episode, we connect with Dr. Sokwoo Rhee, EVP of Innovation at LG Electronics and Head of the LG Nova Innovation Center in Silicon Valley.  We talk about Dr. Rhee's past as an entrepreneur and Presidential Innovation Fellow, and also the goals of LG Nova — collaborating with startups and new partners, and making investments. Two areas of interest: healthcare and cleantech. Dr. Rhee also serves up advice about getting (and keeping) the backing of senior leaders.

In this episode, we talk to Laura Northridge, Senior Director of the AI Innovation Lab — previously just the "innovation lab" — at Harvard Business Publishing. As is the case with many corporate innovators, she’s helping shape AI strategy and policy for the Boston-based nonprofit, an affiliate of Harvard Business School. It’s one of small number of organizations we’ve been tracking where the innovation lab shifted its focus entirely to AI earlier in 2024.  Harvard Business Publishing is best known for the Harvard Business Review — in print and online — but it also publishes business books, learning materials, and the famous Harvard Business School case studies. 

In this episode, we talk with Steve Blank about why celebrating innovation heroes is symptomatic of a problem in large organizations. Steve is a serial entrepreneur, author, and educator and leading advocate for the methodology of customer development and the lean startup approach. In a recent Substack piece, Blank writes about an innovation awards ceremony he attended at a government agency: "I'm constantly puzzled why thoughtful and astute CEOs and agency directors never asked, why is it that innovations require heroics to occur in our organization? Why don't we have a repeatable process for innovation? What are the obstacles in the way of delivering needed innovation with speed and urgency in our organization? And why is it that after each one of these [innovation] awards we give out, we don't go back and fix the parts of the system that made creating something new so difficult?" Blank talks about the role of senior leaders, and the concept of an innovation doctrine. And he touches on the significance of AI: "I think this is as important as anything we've seen in tech in probably the last 50 years," he says.

In this episode, we talk about generative AI, speech interfaces, and evolving the customer experience for one of the world’s top luxury car brands: Mercedes-Benz. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Mercedes made a major splash with a new virtual assistant that leverages advanced software and generative AI — along with on-screen visuals — to provide more proactive support and a more intuitive way of interacting with the vehicle. One of the people behind that project is James Liu, the head of customer experience for the Mercedes-Benz operating system. "I always joke with my team that we're the last layer of light and sound waves between all of our technologies and the customer," Liu says. "Practically speaking, my teams are responsible for HMI concept, UX design, front-end engineering, speech, and the AI platform."