The Podcast
Why you should watch it ☝️
Mike Tedasco spent 11 years at PayPal, including five years running innovation for a 20,000-person company — a role he created by doing the work before the job existed. His approach was deliberately counterintuitive: never formally define innovation, never force it on the people most resistant to it, and start smaller than you think you need to. The result was a culture where a finance guy built a campus robot for no particular reason, and that was considered a win.
What makes this episode worth your time is that Mike isn't describing a well-funded innovation program with a mandate from the top. He's describing how to build momentum from nothing — brown bag lunches, stolen furniture, a chalkboard instead of a whiteboard, and a hack for getting $25,000 speakers to show up for the cost of 100 books. The specifics are funny. The underlying model is solid, and it applies whether you're at a company of 20 or 20,000.
The conversation also shifts into AI, where Mike has been focused since leaving PayPal. He shares what it felt like to use GPT-3 for the first time as a non-engineer, what his current research at San Diego State is turning up about how people perceive AI-generated creativity (the results challenge the narrative), and what actually keeps him up at night — which isn't job displacement or hallucinations. It's AI companionship, and he makes a compelling case for why that's the right thing to worry about.
In this episode:
Why Mike deliberately avoided defining innovation for his team at PayPal
How a finance employee building a campus robot became one of the best culture moments
The "innovation curious vs. innovation resistant" framework and why you should only focus on one
The book hack: how to get big-name speakers for the price of 100 books
How PayPal Beacon failed despite brilliant technology — and what that taught Mike about timing
How the blockchain team got started through hackathons, planted seeds, and patient leadership
Mike's first GPT-3 moment, and why it hit differently as a non-engineer
New research on AI-generated creativity: do people actually rate it lower when they know it's AI?
AI companionship, anthropomorphism, and the WALL-E problem we're already building
Here’s a teaser…
Where to find Mike Todasco 👇
Find Kate on Linkedin and on Substack (link below).
What You Missed on Sunday
Here’s what we covered in Sunday’s newsletter edition…
Starbucks Built a Better Bank
I’m no fan of Starbucks. I’d rather skip my daily cuppa than suffer through a grandé double nonfat mochachino (extra whip). Or whatever the blackened sludge is that gets poured in a cup.
But damn, Mr. Schultz can build and innovate a business. And for that, the chain gets my infinite respect. Starbucks has bucked a rule that I’ve shouted from the rooftops since the very first Innovate, Disrupt, or Die article: big companies succumb to efficiency over innovation.
Starbucks proves that this does not have to be the case. And they did so by turning efficiency into an innovation lever.
Here’s what you’ll find:
This Week’s Article: Starbucks Built a Better Bank
Catch our previous podcast episode:
How did this edition land for you?
