Intentional Discovery

Data Centers: The Tower or The Wall

Between two stories sits one idea: technology is never neutral. It takes on the character of whoever designs it, builds it, and runs it. The tower and the city are built with the same stone. What changes is who decided and who participated. Connections to The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft [http://www.innovationatmicrosoft.com] This piece connects directly to four frameworks from the book: * Innovating With Everyone — Nehemiah didn’t hold a stakeholder meeting — he called his neighbors together and gave each family a section to own. The seven-company coalition that designed the Regenerative Data Center operated on Pattern #3’s central premise: engage early, engage widely, engage with empathy. Meet people where they’re at and move forward together. * Top-Down, Bottom-Up, Outside-In — The windowless hall is a pure top-down artifact — decisions made in rooms far from the plain, ignoring the ground-level feedback and community signals coming in. The Regenerative Data Center inverted this deliberately: designed from the bottom up, with hundreds of outside-in voices, human and otherwise. * Aim for Positive — A data center that takes from the county’s water, pulls from the county’s grid, and returns a number on a tax form is aiming for less bad. The Regenerative Data Center aimed for abundance — heat returned to homes, power that steadies the grid, ecology restored, economy supported — mutual benefit by design, not compliance. * Language as Strategic Tool — Leo XIV’s encyclical is a masterclass in strategic language: naming “Babel” and “Nehemiah” rewrites what builders optimize for before they pick up a stone. “Mutual benefit by design” and “each neighbor builds a section” work the same way — deliberate terminology that reframes what a coalition believes is possible, and then makes possible. Sources 1. Leo XIII. “Rerum Novarum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital and Labor.” Vatican, May 15, 1891. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html 2. Leo XIV. “Magnifica Humanitas.” Vatican, May 15, 2026. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html Written with AI assistance. The thinking — and the stretch of wall — are mine. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit innovatingoutloud.substack.com [https://innovatingoutloud.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Intentional Discovery

In December 2020, I was one year into my time at Microsoft and four months into intentional discovery for my mission, creating the Data Center of the Future. Listen to the full episode to hear behind the scenes stories of what is possibly THE most important practice of innovation as a discipline. How AI, as it's packaged today, erodes it. And why you should make the space for it no matter how hard it may be. --- Don’t miss this week’s live Innovating Out Loud webcast [http://www.regenerouslabs.com/innovatingoutloud]with special guest Jayshree Seth — Corporate Scientist and Chief Science Advocate of 3M. She’ll be sharing her experience and frameworks bridging the gaps between research and practice, business and technology, and data and wisdom. Thursday, May 28th at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET. --- Connections to The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft [http://www.innovationatmicrosoft.com] Intentional Discovery: purposefully exploring with the goal of ultimately having an impact on the world, residing in Pasteur’s quadrant (of the Stokes framework by the same name). The 200 interviews, the catalog of parts, the journey map from dirt to data — that is intentional discovery in practice. Because intentional discovery is a foundational practice of repeat innovation, it connects to many other frameworks in the book. Here’s a short list: (see the full piece on Substack) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit innovatingoutloud.substack.com [https://innovatingoutloud.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

You Don't Need A Cheerleader

Last week I signed up for an expedition to Antarctica. I get terrible seasickness. I hate small planes. Antarctica has never appeared on any version of my bucket list. I signed up anyway. ---- Innovation culture talks constantly about the courage to change. It almost never talks about the voice that tells you not to. Over nineteen weeks, this series has mapped a lot of terrain: systems, tools, collaboration architecture, AI as thinking partner, expert perception, incentive structures, the ecology of innovation at scale. I’ve spent most of that time one level above the person doing the work. This week I’m inside. Not to get philosophical — to get practical. The gap between knowing what good innovation practice looks like and being able to sustain it under real conditions lives right here. In the space where either one or both voices show up. ---- Connections to The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft [http://www.innovationatmicrosoft.com] * Behavior is the Barrier: The barrier isn’t always in the organization — sometimes it’s in the practitioner. The first voice is Behavior is the Barrier operating internally. The innovator who can’t quiet it becomes the bottleneck in their own work. * Cognitive Inertia: The first voice is cognitive inertia in first person. It doesn’t resist change in others — it resists change in you. The second voice is the compelling force that doesn’t come from policy, incentive, or peer pressure. It comes from accumulated internal evidence. * The B2Me Journey — Applied Inward: B2Me, applied outward, is the journey a stakeholder takes from unawareness to advocacy, guided by the innovator. The second voice runs that journey internally. When the first voice fires the fear response — are we even doing anything worth doing? — the second voice doesn’t lead with logic. It leads with emotional reset: not every day is a breakthrough. We worked. We learned. Recovery before rationale. The internal B2Me journey is the same architecture as the external one. IOL is produced with the help of AI, specifically Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and a team of custom personas developed by Regenerous Labs [http://www.regenerouslabs.com/innovatingoutloud]. All insights, editorial choices, and final content are mine. Mistakes too. Say It Ugly, Build It Better. Onward! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit innovatingoutloud.substack.com [https://innovatingoutloud.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

"This is the future. I'll Get You the Money."

We’ve all given the presentation that flopped. The content was right. We knew the material. We rehearsed. And we walked out of the room knowing — somehow — that it didn’t land. The post-mortem is honest. Nothing was wrong with the vision. The argument was sound. The slides were clean. The case was the right one to make. And still... Listen to the full piece on Substack or Apple Podcasts. And then try the next experiment: CORTX Reframer. www.regenerouslabs.com/reframer [http://www.regenerouslabs.com/reframer] Take a deck or script you’ve been working on, run it through, and tell me what you find. Say it ugly, build it better. Onward! Connections to The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft [http://www.innovationatmicrosoft.com] Behavior is the Barrier — Seventy percent of transformations fail for human reasons, not strategic ones. This piece is the pattern made personal: every presentation that flopped, every pitch that didn't land, every meeting where the right argument got the wrong response — the gap between knowing your audience and writing for your audience is where most of it lives. The Knowing-Doing Gap — Knowing what to do and doing it are not the same. Holding three or four audience models in your head while you decide what goes on a slide is expensive cognitive work, so we shortcut and write for ourselves. The reframer pays the cost so you can act on what you already know. Language as a Strategic Tool — Same vision, different register, different decision. The reframer doesn't change the case. It changes which version of the case the listener's brain can actually run. The lenses moving is what this pattern looks like in practice. Start With Who — The reframer's first move is to ask who is in the room before it touches the content. The pattern most often applied to assembling the team applies just as much to addressing the audience. Different listeners need different stories — Start With Who, then build the case. Innovate Upstream to Succeed Downstream — The decision happens in the room. The conditions for it are made before. The reframer is upstream work — done before the pitch, the renewal call, the board meeting — that determines what's possible downstream. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit innovatingoutloud.substack.com [https://innovatingoutloud.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Serious Play is Serious Innovation

Last week on Innovating Out Loud, we sat down with Leo Chan — keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator — to take play seriously as a tool for innovation. Leo treats creativity as a muscle that atrophies without use, and play as the discipline that keeps it strong. We worked through what LEGO Serious Play actually does (it lets people think with their hands instead of their mouths), why teams that jump straight to solving pain points collapse divergence before it can do its work, and why showing up as yourself is the precondition for the joy that makes better thinking possible. Taryn drew the through-line: courage to be yourself unlocks play, play unlocks creativity, creativity unlocks innovation. The conversation didn’t argue that work should feel less serious — it argued that taking play seriously is how the work gets sharper. Key Takeaways * Creativity is a muscle. Without practice it atrophies. Play is the workout that keeps idea-generation strong. * Think with your hands, not your mouth. LEGO Serious Play turns the model into the basis of knowledge — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — and uses metaphor to carry meaning words can’t. * “What Might Be All the Ways” (WMBATW) — Leo’s stretch on “How Might We.” It treats divergence as a discipline, not a phase to rush through. * Stress shuts down the prefrontal cortex. Conformity is a stressor. Being yourself isn’t indulgence — it’s a precondition for the cognitive state innovation requires. * To bring play into risk-averse rooms: build relational equity first, acknowledge the elephant, and promise the outcome. You won’t win everyone — focus on the ones willing to come along, and let the result speak. Watch the replay for the exercises you can run Monday morning — and the moments where the polished answer gets set aside. Say it Ugly, Build it Better. Onward! Never miss the live session - register at www.regenerouslabs.com/innovatingoutloud [http://www.regenerouslabs.com/innovatingoutloud] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit innovatingoutloud.substack.com [https://innovatingoutloud.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]