{"podcast":{"title":"Innovation Storytellers","slug":"innovation-storytellers-3701797","podcast_index_feed_id":3701797,"rss_url":"https://innovationstorytellers.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"https://susanlindner.com/","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/a/7/5/5/a755d4cc9a3cd33116c3140a3186d450/Cover-InnovationStories_1.jpg","author":"Susan Lindner","episode_count":100,"summary":"Did you ever wonder how an innovation got to its finish line? How innovators saw the future, made a product, and created change – in our world and in their companies? I did. Innovation Storytellers invites changemakers to describe how they created their innovation and just as important – THE STORIES – that made us fall in love with them. Come learn how great innovations need great stories to make them move around the world and how to become a better storyteller in the process. I'm Susan Lindner, the Innovation Storyteller. But I wasn't always. I've been a wannabe revolutionary, an epidemiologist at the CDC and an AIDS educator in the brothels of Thailand helping to turn former sex workers into entrepreneurs. Trained as an anthropologist and the Founder of Emerging Media, I've spent the last twenty years working with innovators from 60+ countries. Ranging from cutting edge startups to Fortune 100 companies like GE, Corning, Citi, Olayan, and nine foreign governments, helping their leaders to tell their stories and teaching them how to become incredible advocates for their innovations. Great innovation stories make change possible. They let us step into a future we can't see yet. I…","last_synced_at":"2026-06-16T14:17:09.638531+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/innovation-storytellers-3701797"},"episode":{"title":"246: 100,000 Innovative Ideas  at TD BANK","slug":"246-100-000-innovative-ideas-at-td-bank","published_at":"2026-02-17T05:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/innovation-storytellers-3701797/246-100-000-innovative-ideas-at-td-bank","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/innovation-storytellers-3701797","url":"https://innovationstorytellers.com/podcasts/","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/innovationstorytellers/2026_Storytellers_Vlora_Muslimi__.mp3?dest-id=2720171","summary":"What does it really take to move innovation from idea to impact inside a 95,000-person organization? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sat down with Vlora Muslimi, Senior Manager at TD Bank, whose path into innovation did not begin in a lab or a product team. It began in contact centers, in the daily friction of legacy tools, imperfect processes, and frontline employees trying to do their best work under pressure. With more than 15 years of experience across digital, omni-channel, and contact center operations, Vlora now leads a centralized innovation team responsible for harnessing grassroots ideas from across the enterprise. We are not talking about a handful of suggestions. Her team reviews between 16,000 and 18,000 ideas annually, and TD recently celebrated surpassing 100,000 employee-submitted ideas. Behind those numbers lies a disciplined approach to listening, triaging, matchmaking across business lines, and, most importantly, storytelling. Vlora shares how her early operational experience shaped her belief that innovation fails when it creates friction for either employees or customers. Solve only for one side, and the solution will not stick. That philosophy now guides how her team evaluates ideas, connects contact centers with technology teams, and prioritizes initiatives that balance business value with human impact. We spend time unpacking the emotional side of innovation, especially the heartbreak of ideas that do not move forward. What surprised her most was that employees were not asking for every idea to be implemented. They were asking for transparency. Who got selected? Why? What can we learn? That insight sparked a stronger internal storytelling engine, one that highlights winning ideas, shares lessons from the journey, and build…","meta_description":"What does it really take to move innovation from idea to impact inside a 95,000-person organization? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show,…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2241,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/innovation-storytellers-3701797/episodes/246-100-000-innovative-ideas-at-td-bank/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/innovation-storytellers-3701797/246-100-000-innovative-ideas-at-td-bank.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}