The Hasbro futurist shares the origin story of Project Zambi, a cute little elephant born from a crowdsourcing effort that blends passion with social responsibility.
The Innovation Story Studio features a diverse collection of stories organized by Innovator, Theme and Channel. Navigate using the menu below.
John Abele
As a leader of the Grunion expedition, Abele recently rediscovered the WWII submarine his father disappeared on in 1942.
Randy Antik
What do you do when you’re told your child will never graduate from high school? Randy Antik talks about finding the one doctor who could help and helping that doctor scale his approach to reach millions of kids a year.
Paola Antonelli
The MOMA senior curator gives her take on the design process and it's ability to understand the increasingly complex nuances of consumer preference.
Robert Ballard
As a child Bob Ballard was spellbound by “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea”. Fiber optics and telepresence helped the oceanographer discover the Titanic and reach his dream of walking on the bottom of the ocean.
Dave Balter
Balter is the founder and CEO of BzzAgent, Inc., one of the advertising industry's most recognized word-of-mouth marketing and media firms. Balter currently serves as Chair of the The Word of Mouth Marketing Association International Committee.
Steve Bendt & Gary Koelling
This duo shares their experience creating Best Buy’s successful Blue Shirt Nation employee engagement program.
Chris Benedict
Benedict doesn't just do "green" architecture. She recently completed a 38-unit new construction project that uses 85% less energy than standard designs...and she did it without subsidy or special grants.
David Berry
Principal at Flagship Ventures and dishes about the status of VC funding in earliest days of financial market crash.
Alph Bingham
"Crowdsourcing" pioneer Alph Bingham talks about designing a research business to produce quick solutions to problems. As a co-founder of Innocentive they took challenges from Fortune 500 companies and posted them as contests for the world to solve.
Eric Bonabeau
The founder and Chairman of Icosystem Corporation, Bonabeau is one of the world's leading experts in complexity. His book Swarm Intelligence has been a scientific bestseller for eight years and provided the inspiration for Michael Chrichton's Prey.
Rick Borovoy
"Your choices make choices." Rick Borovoy, co-founder and CTO of nTag Interactive explains that technology needs a singular idea and solid core to support the needs of the greater community.
Deborah Brooks
In an interview with Bill Taylor, Michael J. Fox Foundation co-founder Deborah Brooks talks about how the fund began and what has driven their success in years since.
Bill Buxton
Leading designer and Microsoft principal researcher questions why the design of most technology doesn't incorporate important social, cultural and historical perspectives.
Charlie Cannon
Charlie Cannon is an architect by training who uses design thinking as "urban acupuncture" to catalyze community improvement. For the past six years he has developed and refined tools of collaboration in the Rhode Island School of Design's Innovation Studio Program. The Program aims to develop ecologically sound infrastructures such as eco-industrial parks, power plants and municipal waste systems through interdisciplinary teamwork.
Robin Chase
Chase is the founder and CEO of GoLoco, a service that helps people quickly arrange to share rides between friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Prior to GoLoco, Chase co-founded and was CEO of Zipcar, the world's largest car-sharing company.
Clay Christensen
Clayton Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His research and teaching interests center on managing innovation and creating new growth markets.
David Cicilline
By restoring trust in city government, Mayor David Cicilline has transformed Providence, Rhode Island's City Hall into a more transparent, efficient, and innovative 21st-century organization.
Jay Cohen
Under Secretary Jay Cohen, vice Rear Admiral, USN Retired, serves as the Under Secretary, Science & Technology Directorate with the Department of Homeland Security.
Carol Coletta
Coletta, President and CEO of CEOs for Cities, is helping city leaders such as mayors, corporate CEOs, university presidents and foundation officials, to improve urban competitiveness.
Curt Columbus
Cars, televisons, ipods and other modern technology have put our society into social isolation. Curt Columbus believes in putting the audience back into the center of theatre in a "democratic space".
Curt Columbus
Trinity Rep artistic director reminds us of the important of theatre in community and democracy.
Matt Cottam
Cottam is a co-founder of Tellart and serves as the company's CEO and creative director as well as being a part-time faculty at RISD. Cottam's current research and course topics at RISD involve design for Search and Rescue and Disaster Medicine.
Mark Cuban
Cuban is an active investor in leading and cutting-edge technologies and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Prior to his purchase of the Dallas Mavericks, Cuban co-founded Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet.
Steve Denning
Author of several books, including "Squirrel, Inc: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling," and "The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations," Denning works with clinets like GE, IBM, the World Bank, UNDP, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Federal Treasury, on strategies to enhance knowledge management and organizational storytelling.
Diane Hessan
Diane Hessan truly understands the customer. As president and CEO of Communispace she is facilitating conversations between companies and customers through private online communities.
John Donoghue
How do you turn thoughts into action? Neuroscientist John Donoghue's pioneering work has decoded brain waves and is helping people restore lost functions.
Peter Durand
Graphic Facilitator Peter Durand aptly manages to listen, draw and capture the essence of stories. Although it was the frustration of presenting his work that drove him to create "The Missing Link" a software package and web archive of conference visualizations.
Marc Ecko
Global brand-maker shows how fame and community can unite to create a platform for educational reform.
Sarah Endline
How does a kid from rural Michigan get thinking about global economics and social entrepreneurship? Meet the mastermind, chocolatier and chief rioter of sweetriot.
Paul English
Paul English is the co-founder & CTO of Kayak.com a travel search engine. Recently, English has gained recognition as the founder of gethuman, a consumer movement, with the goal to change the face of customer support in the United States.
Dean Esserman
Nationally recognized as a leader in public safety innovation, Providence's Chief of Police has revamped the city's crimefighting force and sucessfully replaced the department's traditional methods with a new community policing concept.
Dean Esserman
Nationally recognized as a leader in public safety innovation, Providence's Chief of Police has revamped the city's crimefighting force and sucessfully replaced the department's traditional methods with a new community policing concept.
Felice Frankel
A science photographer at MIT, Frankel uses photography to communicate complex ideas. Her work has appeared on the covers and inside pages of Nature, Science, Wired, Newsweek, Scientific American, and Discover Magazine.
Jason Fried
Fried is the founder and CEO of 37signals. He spearheaded the concept, design, and development of Basecamp, 37signal's web-based project management tool for designers, freelancers, and creative services firms.
Jason Fried
37signals founder expounds on the unexpected sources of inspiration for his company.
Max Geiger
The host of Spike TV's "Deadliest Warrior" talks about how the show determines hypothetical winners between historical warriors through simulations.
Peter Gloor
"Don't be a star, be a galaxy." Peter Gloor talks about his work mapping social networks by creating visualizations of the seemingly intangible relationships between people, ideas and organizations.
Per-Kristian (Kris) Halvorsen
Intuit's chief innovation officer sits down with BIF-5 co-host Bruce Nussbaum to talk about what it takes to drive innovation capability across a company.
Dan Heath
Heath is the co-author of the best-selling book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. A consultant at Duke Corporate Education, Heath designs and teaches executive education programs for clients such as Microsoft and Home Depot.
Mark Hellendrung
What do you do when you're looking for a new business venture, you're nostalgic, and you love baseball and good old fashioned beer? The answer was simple for Hellendrung: re-launch Narragansett Beer.
William Herp
Herp is the president and CEO of Linear Air, a company offering private air travel to executives and families with superior and personalized service. Linear Air offers flexibility and convenience not offered from big name airlines.
Hugh Herr
Hugh Herr had both legs amputated below the knee after a mountain climbing accident. When a doctor told him he would never climb again, Hugh set to work building artificial legs and feet to accomplish the task.
Jeffrey Hollender
In an interview with Bruce Nussbaum, Seventh Generation President candidly reflects on real-world sustainability and how his company overcame a major image crisis.
Tony Hsieh
Zappos.com wunderkid talks about his company’s customer-centric approach to killing the competition.
Jack Hughes
Hughes is founder and chairman of TopCoder. TopCoder is the recognized leader in identifying, evaluating and mobilizing effective software development resources.
Natalie Jeremijenko
Blending biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering, the artist shares some creative experiments from her environmental health clinic.
Frans Johansson
Author Frans Johansson discusses the premise behind his bestselling book "The Medici Effect". He believes that all new ideas are a combination of existing ideas. The more random ideas people and teams bring together the more possible combinations for innovation are produced.
Frans Johansson
Medici Effect author talks about innovation at the convergence of risk, passion and luck.
Steven Johnson
Johnson is the best-selling author of five books. His most recent work The Ghost Map. Johnson is a contributing editor to Wired magazine and is a Distinguished Writer In Residence at the New York University Department of Journalism.
Dean Kamen
Inventor Dean Kamen talks about education and the growing problem of kids in the US falling significantly behind in math and science. Dean has responded by creating FIRST an annual robotics contest which has shown dramatic change in the achievement of the students who have participated in the program.
Saul Kaplan
BIF-4 opening remarks from Saul Kaplan, founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory.
Saul Kaplan
Inspiring opening remarks from the founder and chief catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory.
Larry Keeley
Nothing happens unless you have an innovation intent. Larry Keeley uses the Helsinki Municipal Lighting Project to demonstrate the power of using a new innovation in this case the LED light bulb.
Randall Kempner
As Vice President for Regional Innovation at the Council on Competitiveness, Kempner has directed economic development and innovation initiatives nationally and in countries throughout the world.
Kathleen Kingscott
Director of Innovation Policy at IBM, Kingscott is putting innovation at the forefront of the national agenda.
Joshua Klein
Technologist and author Josh Klein recounts his unexpected foray into publishing and how he got his first novel published...for free.
Josh Koppel
Josh Koppel sees things that others don't. No, not ghosts, but visions: Ideas, concepts and, ultimately, new products capitalizing on emerging digital technology that is changing our ways of communicating. "I think about things I'd like to see in the world, and then I make them," says Koppel.
Josh Koppel
Josh Koppel developed a product called TuneBook to display album art in iTunes, only to have it stop working when iTunes 7 was released. Josh discuses how this set back was the catalyst to create a new product and a new method of distribution, the ipod.
David Kusek
David Kusek is a co-developer of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) standard that opened up electronic music to literally millions of people.
Cat Lainé
Deputy Director, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, describes the simply genius of empowering people to change their communities.
Stephen Lane
Lane co-founded Item Group and over two decades has built up a dynamic and entrepreneurial design and development firm. Steve focuses on defining and executing new initiatives, both corporate and long-range planning, capitalization and strategic partnerships.
Jim Lavoie
As CEO of Rite-Solutions, Jim Lavoie is creatively inspiring employees as a source of innovation for the companies software development efforts. With his vision, strategic outlook, and understanding of the commercial market, Jim's main responsibility is charting the course for Rite-Solutions. With his charismatic presence, he helps create the culture that separates Rite-Solutions from the typical IT firm.
Jim Lavoie
Jim Lavoie, CEO of Rite Solutions insists that there is no greater killer of innovation than getting management involved.
Jonah Lehrer
Wired contributing editor and author of "How We Decide" and "Proust Was a Neuroscientist" shares his intriguing research about the human brain and how/why we decide the things we do.
Liz Lerman
Liz Lerman was determined to memorialize her mother's passing in dance, but quickly found that there were no elderly dancers to portray the characters. That's when she started teaching dance in a senior home and ultimately led to her founding of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.
Ellen Levy
Levy is currently the founding Managing Director at Silicon Valley Connect. She also serves as the Deputy Chair for the Global Health track within the Clinton Global Initiative; she is the Network Advisor to venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Dennis Littky
Co-founder and director of The Big Picture Company and The Met School, Littky is one of the most successful school reformers in the country. He's created a new education model based on the belief that schools must be personalized, educating every student equally, one student at a time.
Dennis Littky
Education maverick and a few of his kids talk straight about transforming education.
James Ludwig
Vice President of Global Design, Steelcase Inc., talks with Bruce Nussbaum about design and the Gen Y generation.
John Maeda
In this onstage interview with co-host Bruce Nussbaum, the RISD president digs into his viewpoint that innovation has lost its appreciation of "thinking for thinking’s sake."
Roger Mandle
As president of Rhode Island School of Design Roger Mandle often asked himself can one be an administrator and an artist at the same time. As he discusses the art of innovation Roger shares that RISD has become his medium and students his audience.
Roger Martin
The dean of the Rotman School talks about how today's MBA programs create nothing but "jargon spewing economic vandals" and the imperative for change.
Matt Mason
Matt Mason has written and produced TV series, comic strips, and records, and his journalism has appeared in VICE, Complex and other publications in more than 12 countries around the world. He is the author of The Pirate's Dilemma.
Greg Matthews
With cool project work to back him up, Humana's Director of Innovation demonstrates the power of social media as a tool for innovation.
Nell Merlino
The women's rights activist and pioneer shares a moving story about helping women break through the economic barriers that keep them from earning more.
Christopher Meyer
CEO of Monitor Networks and author of It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology and Business, and Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy, Meyer is enabling free agent networks of innovators that will change the way we think about human capital.
Denise Nemchev
Nemchev is President of Stanley Bostitch, a Division of the Stanley Works. The Stanley Works is a worldwide supplier of tools, hardware and security solutions for professional, industrial, and consumer use.
Jacqueline Novogratz
Founder and CEO of Acumen Fund talks with Bruce Nussbaum about social entrepreneurship and Acumen’s work to fundamentally change what it means to “invest.”
Oedipus
After more than two decades in radio, Oedipus, now VP for Alternative Programming for Infinity Broadcasting, has had a front seat to the industry's turbulent evolution.
Neri Oxman
By letting materials tell their own stories, the form-finding (not form-making) artist, architect and material ecologist shares a few brilliant examples of her work.
Bob Panoff
As the project leader behind BIF's Rhode Island Wireless Wireless Networks, Bob Panoff has experienced first hand what it takes to launch and lead a collaborative innovation project - one that brings public and private sector players together to solve a complex problem.
Terry Pierce
Dr. Terry Pierce is the Special Advisor for Disruptive Innovations for Under Secretary Jay Cohen, Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate DHS S&T.
Lewis Gordon Pugh
First person to swim at the North Pole talks about his using extremes to accelerate the conversation about global warming.
Jeneanne Rae
Jeneanne Rae explains how a train rocked her world. Tasked with the Amtrak Acela project while at IDEO Jeneanne highlights the importance of customer service by describing the methodologies employed to look at the entire customer journey from trip planning, ticketing, and train ride.
Andy Robin
Former Seinfeld writer Andy Robin delivers a funny take on the importance of collaboration (including caffeine and chocolate) in the creative process.
Clay Rockefeller
As nearby mill buildings were turned into a shopping center, Clay Rockefeller and his partners purchased a mill and pursued an alternative model for artist live/work space with a community-centered, affordable and sustainable approach.
David Rockwell
Artist and architect joins Bruce Nussbaum for a conversation about his pioneering work and the blurring of lines to make the ordinary exceptional.
John B. Rogers, Jr.
Can you crowdsource the design of a car? Locol Motors CEO shares his unique collaboration between small-volume manufacturing and car-loving communities.
Ivy Ross
How do you help a creative team that does not know each other learn to work together and produce the next great idea? Ivy Ross shares her experiences of starting a new job at Old Navy and rapidly getting the team up to speed by fostering connections, relationships and trust.
Carne Ross
Hear the incredible story of how and why this former British senior diplomat and founder of the Independent Diplomat is reinventing diplomacy for the 21st century.
Deb Roy
Deb Roy directs MIT Media Lab's Cognitive Machines group…and suffice it to say that he takes his home work with him.
Mary Pat Ryan
There is nothing greater than using your employees' passion to create new ideas. As an executive at Sirius Satellite Radio Mary Pat witnessed her employees' passion of music translate into innovations for the company.
Michael Samuelson
Vice President, Health and Wellness Services for Blue Cross Blue Shield Rhode Island, Samuelson's recognition of "wellness" redefines the boundaries of our current healthcare system.
Michael Samuelson
Returning storyteller and Health and Wellness Institute president shares an intensely personal story about breast cancer and the need to be your own advocate.
Juan Fernando Santos
Santos is the creative director for Studiocom, where his responsibilities include leadership for the design team, user experience concept creation and strategic consulting for highly engaging interactive experiences.
Richard Satava
Satava shares some wild insights into his crazy world at the intersection of medicine, military and robotics.
Leonard A. Schlesinger
What if we were all entrepreneurs? The Babson College president tackles the question, gets personal and takes on the challenge of re-organizing our institutions.
Bob Schwartz
GE Healthcare's GM of Global Design asks himself 'why does it have to be this way?' and shares inspiring examples of meaning making in the company's work.
Euan Semple
Semple is a well-known writer, thinker, public speaker and independent advisor on social computing for business. As the former head of Knowledge Management for the BBC, Semple pioneered the use of weblogs, wikis and on-line forums, enabling the staff to work more effectively.
Patricia Seybold
Amazing social entrepreneurship story from the "Outside Innovation" author who shares insights from The Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme.
Bill Shannon
DaVita Chief Wisdom Officer delivers captivating story that gives new meaning to the famed Three Muskateers motto 'all for one and one for all.'
Michael Singer
Michael Singer has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His works are part of public collections in the United States and abroad, including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Michael Singer
Artist Michael Singer eloquently describes his work of rethinking infrastructures to create spaces that serve more than one purpose. Michael shows one of his projects, a power plant that is using its roof and vertical spaces for urban agriculture.
Don Stanford
When Don Stanford became Chief Technology Officer of a Rhode Island-based startup called GTECH Corp. in 1979, it had just seven employees and sales of less than $1 million. By the time Stanford retired in 2002, GTECH had sales of more than $1 billion and an unassailable 70 percent market share.
Bill Struever
As CEO of Struever Brothers and Eccles & Rouse, Struever played a key role in Baltimore's revitalization. Today he is considered a leading expert in urban revitalization, adaptive reuse of economically obsolete industrial buildings, and Brownfields development.
Jane Fulton Suri
A proponent of the "empathetic economy" Jane Fulton Suri from IDEO is changing the world of product design. By using post-disciplinary teams, teams that go beyond a single discipline, IDEO finds new inspiration in its collaborative work.
Don Tapscott
The leading business strategy authority brings fresh focus to Gen-Y through the story of one over-achieving millenial who doesn't read books (and it's ok).
Bill Taylor
In 1993, Bill Taylor co-founded Fast Company magazine. In the pages of this publication, Taylor and his colleagues set the agenda for a business revolution that has changed the way leaders think and talk about competing, working, and winning.
Bill Taylor
Author Bill Taylor talks about his best selling book "Mavericks at Work" and the stories that inspired him.
Stephen Trachtenberg
The always humorous former president of George Washington University shares a handful of lessons related to challenging assumptions and finding new opportunities.
Helmut Traitler
In this conversation with Bruce Nussbaum, the Nestlé Vice President of Innovation Partnerships gets under the hood and tinkers with the concept of open innovation.
Alexander Tsiaras
Alexander Tsiaras shows his pioneering work in anatomical visualization. Alexander sees himself as a storyteller for the human body working with artists and technologists.
William Tsiaras
Bill Tsiaras is one of the few physicians in the country board certified in both ophthalmology and internal medicine. His ability to take a more holistic approach to medicine is helping him tackle diseases such as macular degeneration.
Alexander Tsiaras
Creator of the Anatomical Travelogue discusses release of new web module that makes medical informational globally accessible via mind blowing illustrations and animations.
Alan Webber
What do you do? Author and co-founder of Fast Company magazine reflects on his career, what's next and the importance of doing meaningful work.
Harry West
Design Continuum's Vice President for Strategy and Innovation, West uses the study of human behavior to design better products.
Tim Westergren
As a musician Tim Westergren realized that we all have a genome in our head that determines the music that we love. Tim went about figuring out how to describe and catalog music through the Music Genome Project and ultimately created Pandora.com to create play lists of music for people based on their tastes.
Alice Wilder
Alice Wilder is passionate about listening. As the head of R&D for kid's show Blue's Clues she has learned the importance of listening and watching children. Kids want to be heard and to express themselves. As an advocate for education she challenges communities to watch children learn and to witness first hand what sparks their attention.
Alice Wilder
Educational psychologist and Blue's Clues creator discusses her creative approach to getting kids excited about learning. (Hint: Ask a lot of questions.)
Melissa Withers
Adding fresh thinking to the higher education debate, BIF's Executive Director shares the latest research from BIF's Student Experience Lab.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Wladawsky-Berger is vice president of Technical Strategy and Innovation at IBM, responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments that are critical to the future of the IT industry.
John Wolpert
Talks about helping companies find new talent.
Richard Saul Wurman
RSW offers an update on his 19.20.21 project.
Richard Saul Wurman
Richard Saul Wurman's nearly half-century of achievements includes the publication of his best-selling book Information Anxiety and his award winning ACCESS Travel Guides. Wurman created and chaired TED conferences from 1984-2002.
Richard Saul Wurman
The legendary information architect offers a handful of delightfully disconnected personal stories about weight-loss, dressing in white and his latest book 33.
Jocelyn Wyatt
Within the context of her own personal journey, IDEO social innovation lead shares her process for building social enterprises in the developing world.
David Yaun
Yaun reflects on changes at IBM and the ongoing challenges of running an innovation program that delivers long-term results.
Ethan Zuckerman
The activist, academic and co-founder of Global Voices shares a story about building cultural bridges, xenophilia and a little video game called War of Warcraft.
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