Total Innovation Podcast

48. Gina Lucarelli: Grassroots Innovations: UNDP Accelerator Lab Network

Gina built the world’s largest network of social innovation labs at the United Nations and currently teaches at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.  The innovation lab network that she built was the United Nation's largest investment in sustainability innovation (115 countries). Her work is taught as a Harvard Business School Case Study (Fall 2022), received the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award, the 2023 SXSW Innovation Award, Apolitical's Public Service Team of the Year (evidence-based policy-making) in 2019, was covered in the MIT Sloan Review (Summer 2020) and depicted in For Tomorrow, an award-winning documentary on grassroots innovation available on Amazon Prime. A ride or die optimist, she has 20+ years of experience in the global sustainable development sector working on civic participation, human rights, entrepreneurship, reducing inequalities, climate action, food systems, informal economies and sustainable development across the board. She writes, speaks and represents the United Nations on sustainability innovations regularly, including through a new course she designed for the Masters in Design Engineering program at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Graduate School of Design (Integrative Frameworks: Innovation in Global Problem Solving).

47. Martin Eriksson: The Decision Stack: How Strategic Alignment Unlocks Organizational Momentum

Martin Eriksson has spent three decades helping organisations figure out why they're stuck — and what to do about it. He's been building digital products since 1994, built SaaS before anyone called it SaaS, and has worked his way through companies of every size and stage: The Financial Times, Monster, Huddle, Covestor, Cazoo, and most recently as Product Partner at EQT, one of the world's largest private investors. Along the way, he's advised over 150 companies on the thing most of them were missing: not better tools or frameworks, but the connective tissue between their strategy and the people doing the work. Today, Martin works as a board member, strategic advisor, and leadership coach — helping founders, CEOs, and product leaders build the clarity their organisations need to move at pace. His most recent book, The Decision Stack: How Strategic Alignment Unlocks Organizational Momentum [https://www.thedecisionstack.com/], distils everything he's learned about what it actually takes to align an organisation from vision to execution. As the founder of ProductTank, co-founder of Mind the Product — together, the world's largest product community, active in over 200 cities — and co-author of Product Leadership [https://www.productleadershipbook.com/] (O'Reilly, 2017), he has helped define the product management discipline and shaped the practices of a generation of product leaders.

46. Vladislav Belousov: How to be a successful solver

Vladislav grew up in Russia. He left to pursue a doctorate in Italy. He has worked in industrial automation, certified himself across robotics and control systems, served an internship at Bosch Rexroth, and built a career working on the kind of complex engineering problems that most people would find impenetrable. And then, sometime in 2024, he heard a rumour. About a place — almost mythical in the telling of it — where companies with genuinely hard problems would post them openly, and pay strangers to solve them. He was suspicious. He went looking anyway. And then he won. Three times. On problems ranging from glass recycling robotics in Italy, to crop protein vulnerability at elevated temperatures for the Gates Foundation, to reinforcing underground electrical substations. Three wins, from a standing start, in under two years.

45. Fernanda Torre: Governing in the Age of AI and Sustainability:

Fernanda Torre is a recognized expert in sustainability-driven innovation and CEO of the consultancy Next Agents, whose mission is to create value for people and the planet—both now and into the future. She is also the co-founder of One Global Action, an international initiative that fosters capacity-building and collaborative innovation to tackle major sustainability and ESG challenges. Fernanda serves as Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of the Boards Impact Forum, the Nordic chapter of the World Economic Forum’s Climate Governance Initiative, where she co-leads training programs on Board Oversight of Sustainability and Responsible AI for Value Creation. She is the co-author of the book AI Leadership for Boards: Leading Responsible AI for Value Creation [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-04087-9], published by Springer Nature, which explores how boards can shape innovation, risk oversight, and strategic renewal in an AI-powered world. Fernanda is affiliated with the House of Innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics and teaches at the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship (SSES), where she leads programs on strategic innovation, foresight, and entrepreneurship. With an award-winning background in graphic and experience design, she has worked across industries and institutions, including Stora Enso, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and Karolinska Institutet. She holds an MBA with distinction (President’s List) from SSE, an MFA in Experience Design from Konstfack, and a BA in Graphic Design from the University of Porto.

44. Sonia Ferreira: Inside Maersk’s Innovation Ecosystem

Sonia is a global executive, board member and strategic advisor with over 20 years of experience across Europe, USA, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Bringing a blend of commercial strategy, technology leadership and innovation expertise, with a focus on enterprise-level decision-making, long-term value creation and responsible growth. She's led and overseen digital transformation, product innovation and global commercial initiatives across multiple industries, supporting organizations as they navigate scale, complexity, risk and disruption. Contributes a forward-looking perspective on innovation, AI, sustainability and ecosystem partnerships, grounded in practical experience operating across mature and emerging markets. Sonia serves ona number of boards and advisory councils including Stanford Seed, Harvard Business Review and the European Innovation Council, contributing to governance, strategy, and long-term value creation across global organizations.. Recognized for sound judgment, constructive challenge and the ability to operate effectively at board level across cultures and geographies.