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Kate O'Keeffe

Senior Director

Customer and Partner Innovation

Kate O’Keeffe is Cisco’s Senior Director of Customer and Partner Innovation. She brings a wealth of experience in innovation and entrepreneurship to her role, driving new customer solutions within Cisco’s engineering organization.

Prior to her current role, Kate was founder and leader of Cisco CHILL, a co-innovation catalyst designed to drive disruptive innovation with and for Cisco customers. Her passion to solve bold problems that don’t yet have answers grew out of her long-term desire to find better, faster ways to approach big global issues such as environmental and population challenges. With CHILL, she developed a unique methodology that leapfrogged traditional innovation processes to spark broad industry change. During the three years of CHILL innovation, a full 70 percent of ideas progressed to further stages, resulting in two start-ups, seven patents, and more than 20 joint projects and internal growth initiatives. She continues to drive the CHILL co-innovation methodology in her current role.

Previously Kate was the global leader of the Services Innovation Excellence Center at Cisco, where she was responsible for driving sustainable innovation capability for Cisco Services. The practice is based on an Innovation Maturity Model, devised to provide a clear pathway for businesses to build sustainable, measureable innovation capability.

Prior to Cisco, Kate led innovation for an Australian-based corporation in the utilities sector.

As a native of Melbourne, Kate proved her entrepreneurial chops as a fashion designer by founding, building, and exiting a successful shoe business, Cinderella Bella.

She holds a Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and is the recipient of numerous industry awards and recognitions, including the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize: Innovating Innovation Challenge. Kate was also named one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business” and included in the Anita Borg Institute’s annual Women of Vision awards. Most recently, Kate was named one of the Upstart 50 2018 by the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal.

She is co-author of “Managing Multiparty Innovation,” which was published in the Harvard Business Review in November, 2016.

Articles

November 15, 2018

INNOVATION

How to Turn Customer Obsession into Customer Success

3 min read

Most enterprises see the importance of putting customers at the center, but first you have to understand who your customers are.

October 2, 2018

INNOVATION

Intelligent Chatbots: Have a Conversation with Your Data

3 min read

No longer sci-fi, AI-powered conversations can help you navigate a tsunami of data, just by asking.

August 24, 2018

INNOVATION

Experience Design: Meeting User Needs, One Good Conversation at a Time

4 min read

New technologies can be exciting. But great design starts with the user, not the technology.

July 12, 2018

INNOVATION

Prototyping for Impact: Hunt Zombies, Kill Your Darlings, and Prototype Like a Star

4 min read

Impact prototyping speeds innovation outcomes—but you might have to hunt a few zombies.

June 22, 2018

INNOVATION

Innovating Business Sustainability

2 min read

Business sustainability is an area ripe for sweeping, cross-industry innovation.

May 31, 2018

INNOVATION

Techno Panics 2.0: What Do Paint Rollers and Self-Driving Cars Have in Common?

2 min read

Paint rollers and self-driving cars have a lot in common – they represent a huge leap forward in productivity and innovation, and they force us to confront our fears about change.

May 17, 2018

INNOVATION

Taking a Learning Journey to Innovation

3 min read

Where can industry-wide multiparty innovation truly make a difference? Exploring cutting-edge startups with our customers to learn and set the stage for innovation.

May 3, 2018

INNOVATION

Innovation Leaders: Always Learning

3 min read

Innovation leaders work together to explore new approaches to the old problem of sparking innovation in sometimes sluggish corporations.

April 19, 2018

INNOVATION

Message to Women: Disrupt the Ordinary, Be Yourself!

3 min read

Thought-provoking and inspirational day for 3,400 women (and some outstanding men!) to Disrupt the Ordinary at the 39th Annual Simmons Leadership Conference.