Using Rapid Multi-party Innovation to Solve Wicked Global Problems
Keeping conflict minerals out of their global supply chain is a “wicked problem” for electronics manufacturers. Here’s how Cisco’s CHILL is exploring potential solutions.
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.
Keeping conflict minerals out of their global supply chain is a “wicked problem” for electronics manufacturers. Here’s how Cisco’s CHILL is exploring potential solutions.
Unlike a traditional product development cycle, CHILL has created a model where it’s faster, easier and cheaper to try something than to spend endless hours debating.
Its up to us to ensure equal opportunity for future generations. Make the commitment and take the time to mentor and encourage younger women and minorities, and consciously foster inclusion. The tide is turning, lets fill the glass!
But what happens after the lab? What happens when the lights go out, the “I’m In” paddles are put away, and the executives go back to their regular jobs?
The truth is, we don’t know what the future will bring. Because we haven’t finished creating it yet. It’s a work in progress, and many people are asking, what kind of future will it be?
Whatever you think the future might bring, one thing is certain—it will be about transformation and choice.
Analytics can democratize knowledge and drive new insights—so that every worker becomes a knowledge worker. It can help keep workers safe, and make workplaces more inclusive.
From the cubical farm to the borderless office, the workplace has changed significantly. What’s the next stage in workplace evolution?
Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are disrupting many industries and causing sweeping economic changes in certain segments. But they are also creating opportunities.