The Podcast
Why you should watch it ☝️
Robyn Bolton, founder of MileZero, joins Danny to talk about her path through P&G's Swiffer launch, a stint at the consulting firm founded by Clayton Christensen, and two decades of trying to get big companies to actually act on the innovation they say they want. They cover why innovation is a leadership problem more than an idea problem, how to set realistic three-year milestones instead of promising a $250 million business out of nowhere, why big companies generally can't disrupt themselves and need startups and corporate venture capital to do it for them, what a real culture of innovation requires versus what a hackathon can actually deliver, and why Robyn thinks 2025 has been the hardest year for innovation she's seen.
Takeaways
Innovation is rarely an idea problem. Organizations are full of ideas — the real bottleneck is leadership incentives that reward the safe, measurable bet over the uncertain long-term one.
A realistic three-year plan for an innovation team looks like: quick wins in year one, qualitative progress in year two, and a path to real (if small) revenue and profit by year three — not a mandate for a $250 million business built from nothing.
Big companies generally can't disrupt themselves. The move is staying connected to the startup ecosystem, including corporate venture capital, so they're ready when disruption happens instead of trying to manufacture it internally.
A culture of innovation takes years of consistently modeled behavior. An event can kick it off, but it can't create it — and running one with no follow-through plan just breeds cynicism.
Here’s a teaser…
Where to find Robyn Bolton 👇
Find Robyn on Linkedin or…
What You Missed on Sunday
Here’s what we covered in Sunday’s newsletter edition…
The Uncanny Valley Has Gotten Worse, Not Better
Fifty-six years ago, a Japanese roboticist sketched a graph explaining why almost-human things feel wrong. This week, I found that graph playing out in three places at once: a TikTok feed where nearly six in ten videos served to new viewers are AI slop, a workplace survey where two-thirds of knowledge workers say they're nostalgic for pre-AI work and keep using the tools anyway, and a legal citation tracker that just passed 1,200 fake cases across US and Canadian courts.
This week: why the gap in that graph is closing fast, why the standard for "good enough" is dropping even faster, and what that trade is actually costing the people who assumed someone else already checked.
Here’s what you’ll find:
This Week’s Article: The Uncanny Valley Has Gotten Worse, Not Better
Catch our previous podcast episode:
How did this edition land for you?
