Episode 14: Challenges bring to light what innovation is important, with Vlora Muslimi, TD Bank

Episode 14: Challenges bring to light what innovation is important, with Vlora Muslimi, TD Bank

The most powerful source of innovation in an organization is not the strategy, the technology, or the dedicated innovation team. It is the hidden innovator inside every employee. The agent in the contact center watching the same friction repeat. The cashier at the branch trying to ease the crowd. The new hire who spots a broken onboarding process before anyone else does. In this episode of the Activate Innovation Lounge, Iliriana Kaçaniku sits down with Vlora Muslimi, Senior Manager of the ID8 program and colleague innovation at TD Bank, to understand what it really takes to awaken that hidden innovator. Vlora has led an enterprise program across a workforce of over 100,000 people, collected more than 100,000 ideas, and watched over 10,000 of them come to life. Last December, TD lit Toronto's Union Station with 10,000 individual lights, one for every employee idea brought to life, each one activated by human movement. Vlora shares how ID8 began as informal idea-sharing, evolved into challenge-based innovation, and why the promise of implementation is the engine that keeps it all running. If you lead innovation, with or without the title, this conversation is a blueprint. What You Will Learn * How ID8 started organically from employees fixing things "side of the desk," and what made leadership formalize it * Why the people closest to the friction are the best source of problems worth solving * The shift from an open idea box to challenge-based innovation, and what triggered it after the pandemic * Why the promise of implementation has to be real, or participation dies * The difference between "small i" incremental ideas and "big I" ideas, and why their paths diverge * Why the internal crowd often beats an external one, thanks to tacit knowledge * Why the best solution to a problem frequently comes from outside the team that owns it * The critical role of leadership, and why it must cascade through every layer * How AI can assist the innovation process without replacing human creativity

Episode 13: How to Activate the Hidden Innovators in Your Organization, with Jan Fischer (bonus)

In this bonus episode of the Activate Innovation Lounge, Iliriana Kaçaniku [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilirianakacaniku/] continues her conversation with Jan Fischer [https://www.linkedin.com/in/janfischer-innovation/] of Innosabi [https://www.innosabi.com/], an innovation management platform that has helped enterprises run challenges, source ideas from employees and customers, and build communities of practice around innovation. What started as a quick exchange after their original recording turned into a second session worth publishing on its own. Jan and Iliriana go deep on three threads. How to gamify innovation in ways that recognize not just the people who generate ideas, but the people who shape them and the quieter contributors who rate them. How customer co-creation, done early enough, can turn strangers into co-designers of a product. If you lead innovation inside an organization, or carry the work without the title, this conversation will give you specific, operational language for activating the innovators you already have.

Episode 12: Marta Jakab on Why problems matter more than ideas in corporate innovation

If you’re a leader who got excited and enthused to invite everyone in the organization to share ideas about innovation, please hold on, and don't do it.  It may feel like the right thing to do, it may give you the excitement that you haven't felt for a while. It may make you feel energized because you are finally permitted to tap into the brilliance and wisdom that is already inside the organization. You may wonder why stop when I just got the permission and the mandate? Because if you collect ideas that don't solve anything, instead of inspiring those internal innovators that you aim to activate, you will disappoint them, erode the trust, damage your own leadership.    Just  calling for ideas is the wrong place to start.  My guest today has spent her entire career inside corporate innovation. From very first idea management platforms to more elaborate intrapreneurship programs, which she’s built herself from the ground up. She has designed what she calls a marketplace of problems. And she has seen, firsthand, the difference between organizations that perform innovation and organizations that actually do it. She is Marta Jakab [https://www.linkedin.com/in/martajakab/], a software engineer by training and an innovation leader by calling who has helped corporations master implementation of innovation and intrapreneurship programs.  Marta [https://www.linkedin.com/in/martajakab/] says she speaks 8 languages. I say she speaks 10, including innovation and intrapreneurship.  But I think her favorite language could be the 11th one. The one of problem solving. I am your host Iliriana Kacaniku, an innovation strategist at heart, and this is the Activate Innovation Lounge, a podcast dedicated to all leaders with or without innovation in their title who want to activate innovators, innovation, and innovation culture in their organization. Let’s welcome Marta Jakab [https://www.linkedin.com/in/martajakab/] to the conversation.

Episode 11: How leaders can (and should sustain) grassroots innovation

In the first part of this conversation, Alexis Samuel laid out what he calls the Baker's Dozen. Twelve building blocks for activating grassroots innovation in a large enterprise. From the CEO's call to innovate to psychological safety. From branding a program to measuring how it generates its return on investment. It was a masterclass in the architecture of innovation at scale. Especially for corporations. But who are the people, that is the employees, that respond to such calls? Why do they respond? Do they all engage with such initiatives? That is the human story inside the architecture. And that is what this second episode is about. Today, we move from strategy to people. From building the system to understanding what it feels like to be inside it. We talk about who the grassroots innovators really are, what activates their curiosity and drive to engage with innovation calls, and what makes them stop participating.  I personally learned something new about this last one. Alexis Samuel spent 35 years in the corporate world ensuring excellent delivery of IT services. He never held innovation in his title. Yet he activated innovators throughout his career, and in his last chapter he shaped a program to activate grassroots innovators across a global company with over 250,000 employees. He is not your common go-to person when it comes to innovation. Yet his wisdom is priceless. I am your host Iliriana Kacaniku, an innovation strategist at heart, and this is the Activate Innovation Lounge, a podcast dedicated to all leaders with or without innovation in their title who want to activate innovators, innovation, and innovation culture in their organization. Chapters 00:00 Understanding Grassroots Innovators 07:12 Motivation and Engagement in Innovation 12:36 Hackathons vs. Extended Innovation Challenges 19:41 Setting the Stage for Successful Innovation 25:35 The Role of AI in Innovation Processes 36:19 Leveraging External Ecosystems for Innovation 41:07 The Future of Innovation Programs 46:43 Sustaining Innovation Through Leadership Changes 53:10 Activating Grassroots Innovators 55:18 The Future of Innovation Programs

Who knows best what needs to be solved?

There is a tension in how organizations think about activating employee innovators. Who knows best what needs to be solved? The leader who sees the business from the top? Or the employee who lives the friction every day? Alexis Samuel [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexissamuel2367/] spent over 35 years ensuring excellent delivery of global IT services for large technology enterprises. He activated thousands of grassroots innovators without ever holding innovation in his title. His answer is clear: go to the people doing the work. Ask them what can be done better, what needs to drop, what can be automated, what can be eliminated. Simplify, combine, automate, eliminate. That backlog becomes your innovation agenda. And today, it also becomes your AI roadmap. The employees closest to the friction are the ones who know where it lives. Now a question for you as a leader: Have you ever watched your team solve the wrong problem brilliantly — because no one asked them which problem actually needed solving first? What does it take in your organization to surface the right problems before jumping to solutions? Drop your answer in the comments. In the next episode of the Activate Innovation Lounge, Alexis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexissamuel2367/] unpacks this and several other sharp ideas on activating grassroots innovators at scale — including how AI fits into every stage of the process. Part two goes live this Friday. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.