Corporate Unplugged

“In the wake of this pandemic, it's this impossible stretch between on the one hand restoring normalcy and making sure that the operations continue, and at the same time thinking ahead, looking forward and really adjusting to the new reality that we're going to experience in the wake of this crisis.”And what will this new reality look like for you? A more beautiful business that allows more human-centred growth strategies? Then Tim Leberecht, the German-American championing a more humanised future in the age of machines is the passionate voice you should listen to. “We're moving from the binary world in a binary way of running business to a non binary way of running business that is fluid, that is ambiguous, that is fuzzy.”Tim is an author and entrepreneur and the co-founder and co-CEO of The Business Romantic Society, a firm that helps organisations and individuals create transformative visions, stories and experiences. He's also the co-founder and co-curator of the House of Beautiful Business, a g

Laurent “Larry” Leksell is the co-founder of Elekta, a global company that is pushing the boundaries of radiation therapy to provide access for advanced, high-quality cancer care. While studying at the Stockholm School of Economics, Larry jumped into entrepreneurship with his father who had a passion in cancer research. Larry now sits as a chairman and principal shareholder of Elekta while he fulfills his passions of philanthropy, entrepreneurship and art.In this podcast:Founding Elekta with his fatherHis life dedication to solutions for cancer His passions for philanthropy, entrepreneurship and artCancer care innovation and resourcesEntrepreneurship expectationsLong-term business solutions  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Markus Lehto is a Utopian, an expert generalist. He’s also the co-founder of Joint Idea and Lifeworks Labs and the co-founder of the global community - Love Mafia. Born in Canada with Finnish traditions and culture, life took him on a path across the world as a professional in consulting, investment banking and real estate development. He's based in Istanbul and is pursuing entrepreneurial ventures in design and architecture, investment, community building, learning and tech development. In this podcast:Why we need to rethink our Anglo Saxon worldviewCreating Lifeworks LabsWhy seeking his own truth is his passionBecoming an expert generalistRedefining what the good life meansWhat decentralisation meansWhy we need to break in order to growCultivating serendipityWhy the world needs loveLinks:Joint Idea  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Business leaders should be ready to be challenged by young people. I feel we have ended up in this patriarchal system with CEOs and leaders who do not want to be confronted by the young generations.”Meet Zakaria Bekkali, a 22 year old with a wise head on young shoulders. Zak is a graduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he’s been awarded a postgraduate excellence scholarship for a Master of Public Administration with a specialisation in social impact. He also holds a Bachelor in International Politics and Government from Bocconi University in Milan, as well as having studied at Princeton University during his undergraduate senior year. In this podcast:Transformational momentsWhy insecurity was a driver for himThe synergy between business and communityEquality of opportunityGive opportunities to young peopleWhy feminine isn’t another word for weaknessRadical vulnerability for collective healingLinks:Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economics  See acast.com/p

Maria Konnikova is a New York Times best-selling author, journalist and psychologist who in 2018 while researching her newest book, The Biggest Bluff, became an international poker champion and the winner of over $300,000 in tournament earnings, inadvertently turning herself into a professional poker player. In this podcast:The role that luck plays in our livesWhat Maria has learned about life from playing pokerWhy we shouldn’t take life for grantedWhere she gets her inspiration to write fromHow COVID-19 is revealing our true coloursThe power of language and communication in businessHow chance affected her lifeThe value of human connectionsLinks:The Biggest Bluff  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ma Steinsvik is passionate about emerging technologies and believes in the power of digital transformation and AI in order to scale business transformation towards a circular economy. Because an augmented circular future will lead to a better world. Ma is a European business leader, futurist and investor, and the CEO of Bulls Holding, an international agency for film, literary and art-based brands, influencers and editorial content, and Chair of the Board of R&B Licensing, a global 360 agency for literary and design based properties. She is an acknowledged international keynote speaker on technical leaps and their impact around the world. Ma discusses the foundations of business, of being a part of something big and giving back. And how even now, while the whole world is going through one of the toughest times in living memory, we still see people who, when they have their own lives secured, do what they can to contribute and give back to society. “When I invest in companies I'm often so st

What is design and who is it for? This loaded question is asked of Ayse Birsel, named by Fast Company as one of the Most Creative People in Business. Ayse is a beautiful blend of East meets West, born and raised in Turkey but who now calls New York home. “The combination of East and West, being Turkish living in the States, really allows me to see two sides of everything, which is a great quality, actually a superpower for designers, especially when those qualities are often in opposition to each other.”And there is no better person to pose this question to: Ayse is a designer and innovator who has designed hundreds of award winning products and systems for Fortune 500 brands. She's known for bringing new solutions to old problems and for her humanistic design approach. She's also the author of Design The Life You Love, and gives lectures on Design The Work You Love to corporations. She's also the co-founder of Birsel Plus Seck, the award winning design and innovation studio and consults for a

We’ve all suffered from ‘Not Enough Syndrome’ at some point in our lives. “In our relentless pursuit for external validation, we've lost sight with the fact that validation actually comes from within always, and I think that actually applies to business and products.”Tara Schuster was told early on to pick a lane and stick with it. She couldn’t be or do more than one thing, but luckily for the rest of us she rejected this notion and has since become an author, playwright, and accomplished entertainment executive, currently serving as Vice President of Talent and Development at Comedy Central. In her first book, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies, which lies at the intersection of self-help humour and memoir, she shares hard-won lessons in learning to love and care for yourself.“I think we are very good at being mean to ourselves and treating ourselves with such little care. I mean shocking because we'll treat a guest 10X better than we'll treat ourselves.”This episode is as brutally honest as her book

With everything going on globally, taking your physical mailbox online is probably one of the smartest decisions you could make. Not just to protect yourself, but to protect the environment too. It’s such a smart move that today over 3.7 million Swedish people, almost half of the grown up population in Sweden, have Kivra. That’s roughly 25,000 companies and organisations that rely on Kivra, the digital mail company, for important letters, invoices, doctor’s appointments, salary specifications and so on. Anna Bäck is an entrepreneur and innovation leader who’s been leading a number of startups in China and Sweden, and most recently driving innovation and disruption as a design leader within McKinsey.This is an incredibly interesting conversation, learning about Anna’s influences and transformational points in her life that have led her to where she is today - to a business model that goes hand in hand with doing good and driving a more sustainable future.This is an inspirational podcast with an inspi

You might think it an impossible task to find inspiration in these troubled times. But according to Jen Grace Baron, co-founder and Chief Inspiration Officer at InspireCorps, an inspiration strategy firm that partners with organisations to drive business growth and also innovation, it’s precisely during times like these when we are most likely to find inspiration. “Some of what people find most inspiring in their whole lives, are some of the hardest times that they had been through or had survived.”Inspiration is a complex entity, something that is hard to define in itself without using the word ‘inspiration’. It’s not a smiley thing that works just in the good times, it’s not something that we do only when it’s convenient, inspiration is a critical foundation for healthy humans. Inspiration is especially critical during times of crisis, such as the one we are enduring right now. “We found that during times of crisis, the ways that we act in the world change, right, all of how we're thinking an

WD-40 Company has one of the highest employee engagement rates in the world (93%). And no wonder, at its helm is Garry Ridge, Chairman of the Board and CEO. Garry has been with the company for almost 33 years, having worked his way up through the managerial ranks to the top position, he knows what great company culture looks like, so much so, he not only practices what he preaches, he teaches it to the next generation of leaders too. Having realised that micromanagement as a leadership technique isn't scalable, if Garry wanted to take the blue and yellow can with the little red top to the world, he knew he’d have to set his employees free, to give them freedom to do their best work. So when he became CEO, he went back to school and worked hard to create an extraordinary workplace culture in WD-40 Company. “In 394 BC, Aristotle said, ‘pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work’. And I really believe that that's something that we need to do, to build an economic environment for our companies

When Roberto Verganti first appeared on Corporate Unplugged, his episode quickly became one of the most listened to interviews on the show. Two years on, Roberto, Professor of Leadership and Innovation at Politecnico di Milano, currently founder and Director of The Garden-Center for Design and Leadership at Stockholm School of Economics, joins Vesna for another illuminating conversation, this time about meaning, purpose, innovation and real leadership. Why a reappearance? Because the subjects Roberto has been researching and writing about for the last couple of decades are more interesting and relevant today than ever before, and his ideas, insights and work need to be shared with an even wider audience. If companies and leaders want to make an impact, they need to provide meaning to their customers through their products and services. Companies should be thinking: ‘If they don't need what we do, it's our problem. It's not their problem.’ And the best leaders are the ones who have learned to sa

What makes a really listenable podcast? Is it a great production value? A plethora of interesting guests? A personable host? Whatever it is, Kristoffer Triumf, host of popular Swedish podcast Värvet, has figured the podcast magic out. Kristoffer is a popular podcaster and host of Värvet, Sweden's favourite podcast. What makes the podcast so incredibly relatable is that he has very deep dialogues with a very diverse crowd of people - from filmmakers to artists to business leaders, Kristoffer has interviewed over 400 people so far, and counting. He originally set out to chat particularly with comedians, but has since broadened his horizons to a much wider audience, and he’s been richly rewarded for his diversification in guests - Värvet has had around 90 million downloads to date. Besides having a voice that you can’t help but be drawn to, he has also developed the art of really listening to what his guests are saying. He leaves time for them to truly reflect on his question before answering, mea

Do you often find yourself wishing you were more persuasive? Would you love to know the secret to making great decisions? Do you want to do more good and work for a business that does good in the world? Then you want to listen to Zoë Chance, the persuasion expert. Zoë studies and teaches behavioral science to help great people become more influential. At Yale School of Management, she works with executives and has developed a popular MBA elective called Mastering Influence and Persuasion, aka "Doing Uncomfortable Things That Make You a Better Person." Her course ‘How To Make Behaviour Addictive’ is also heavily in demand.“The key insight that I’ve learned… is that the primary drivers of all of our decisions and all of our behaviours are unconscious.... we can't just reflect on those. We only perceive the conscious, rational processes of decision making. It's our gut first reactions that are actually very hard to change. And then, consciously, we look for reasons to be able to do those things that we alre

The idea that the smallest innovation can cause the biggest disruption doesn’t just apply to products and things, it applies to people too, says Whitney Johnson, the world renowned expert on disruptive innovation and personal disruption. This is a person with 1.7 million LinkedIn followers, the one who was selected as a Top Voice in 2018, so she knows a thing or two about disruptive innovation. But Whitney hasn’t always been so influential. The best selling author and frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School’s Corporate Education began her career working on Wall Street as a secretary. Quickly realising she wasn’t going to make the money she needed, she began to take night courses and was able to transition from being a secretary to an investment banker. “For people who worked on Wall Street, like that just does not happen, that divide is so wide. And so for me, that was kind of a disruptive moment.”Today, Whitney is recognised as being one of the world's most influential management thinker

What would you do if you were misdiagnosed with an autoimmune disease as a teenager, subsequently spending 10 years undergoing major surgeries, having 3 organs removed and over 40 hospitalisations, and then once in remission find yourself sabotaged, sexually abused and harassed early in your career in Silicon Valley? Some people might shy away from the spotlight after all this, but Robin Farmanfarmaian is not most people. Far from it. Robin is a professional speaker, entrepreneur and angel investor working with cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence software, device and pharma companies poised to impact 100 million patients. She’s currently the CEO and co-founder of ArO, a dynamic vision correction company. In her role as keynote speaker she covers multiple topics and has written and published two books - “The Patient as CEO: How Technology Empowers the Healthcare Consumer” and "The Thought Leader Formula: Strategically Leverage Your Expertise to Drive Business & Career Goals".Why has she cho

What if you knew that mastering the art of public speaking was easy? That you could transform your business, your career and your life by getting to grips with this one skill? That you could find yourself a member of a global community with a hub (and a welcoming home) in every city around the world?Well, that’s just what Eric Edmeades is on a mission to do. Eric is an author, serial entrepreneur and international business speaker. He has logged thousands of hours on stage, even sharing it with the likes of Tony Robbins, Richard Branson and Bill Clinton. Eric’s been involved in a variety of businesses ranging from mobile computing to Hollywood special effects, and now he has turned his attention to his latest project, creating a global movement called Speaker Nation.“One of the greatest gifts that I ever gave myself was overcoming both my fear and my lack of confidence around communication. I changed my life by overcoming my nervousness and working to cultivate skills and learning how to engage an audience an

Reynir Indahl isn’t just a man who talks the talk, he is a man who walks the walk. Having had a wobble as he turned 40, questioning what he was doing and what impact he was having on the world, Reynir, much to his family and friends confusion, turned his back on his successful career in finance in order to focus on being a solution to the world’s most significant challenges. Drawing on his Harvard education, Reynir founded Summa Equity in 2016, a purpose-driven, Nordic private equity firm managing €1.4 billion, to invest in companies looking to solve global challenges.“The world is developing rapidly. This poses new social and environmental challenges. By investing in companies that actively work to solve these challenges, creating a prosperous society for everyone, Summa is part of the solution.”This isn’t Reynir’s first time on Corporate Unplugged, he originally sat down with Vesna in 2018 to discuss Summa Equity and the work it was doing, and now feels like the right time to catch up with Reynir

Jan Broman, along with his brother, founded Fotografiska as a meeting place to inspire a more conscious world, using photography - portrait, fashion, nature and documentary photography, for example, to initiate conversations. Not just conversations about the here and now, but what the photos represent and the world around us. The renovated former Customs House, built in 1906 in the heart of Stockholm, is home to Fotografiska, now considered one of Scandinavia’s most important and powerful artistic magnets. Since opening almost ten years ago, Fotografiska has hosted some of the biggest names in photography from Annie Leibovitz to Gus Van Sant to Martin Parr. But Fotografiska is anything but a regular museum or art gallery. At its core it is a dedicated hub of human interaction, a creative space that nurtures thoughts and discussion and encourages the exchanging of ideas. As Jan says, “What we have become is more like a place where conversation can take place. And it can be inspired by what we do

If, like us, you are captivated by the inspiring actions of a select few individuals who are devoted to save the planet, then you want to listen to this podcast with Ulf Stenerhag, the Swedish entrepreneur who doesn’t believe passion is driving him in his quest to bring about change for the future generations, but a sense of compassion and responsibility.Because that is the kind of man Ulf is: understated, not a self publicist. In fact, for his latest venture, Wayout, they haven’t actually launched it yet publicly, because they’re too busy just getting on with, well, getting on with it. “We are, let's say hard, hard working people, working more on deploying, rather than to shout about it. And there is also a reason for that, we want to make sure that everything works out fine before we go very, very public.”But Ulf shouldn’t fear failure. This is a guy who is the CEO of Thurne Teknik, a Nordic Tech Trade company with many years of experience in leading international and industrial sales organisation. A m