{"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":"How to Scale Innovation Using a Repeatable Growth Playbook CFOs Love","slug":"how-to-scale-innovation-using-a-repeatable-growth-playbook-cfos-love","published_at":"2026-03-31T04:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/innovation-storytellers-3701797/how-to-scale-innovation-using-a-repeatable-growth-playbook-cfos-love","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_Alice_P.mp3?dest-id=2720171","summary":"What does it take to turn innovation from a string of promising pilots into a repeatable growth engine that finance leaders can actually believe in? In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I sit down with Alice Ponti, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at VentureFuel, to talk about why so many innovation teams are being restructured, absorbed into the business, or quietly shut down altogether. Drawing on leadership roles at L'Oréal, Diageo, AB InBev, and now at VentureFuel, Alice shares what she has learned about building systems that connect strategy, governance, execution, and adoption to deliver measurable business value. Our conversation examines the growing pressure on innovators to speak the CFO's language and prove their relevance through repeatable, sustainable growth. Alice explains why great ideas alone are never enough, why innovation fails when teams keep reinventing the wheel, and how the strongest organizations build playbooks that can scale across markets, functions, and product categories. She also reflects on the importance of bringing R&D and marketing together early, so technical brilliance can be translated into products people actually want. We discuss AI, and why so many organizations are now repeating the same failure patterns that have haunted corporate innovation for years. Alice offers a sharp view on why most AI pilots stall, what leaders should actually be measuring, and how companies can move faster from experimentation to enterprise adoption. This is a conversation about discipline, storytelling, execution, and the very real opportunity for innovators to reclaim their place by showing how their work drives growth in terms that the wider business can respect. If you care about the future of innovation, the rol…","meta_description":"What does it take to turn innovation from a string of promising pilots into a repeatable growth engine that finance leaders can actually believe in? In th…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2623,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/innovation-storytellers-3701797/episodes/how-to-scale-innovation-using-a-repeatable-growth-playbook-cfos-love/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/how-to-scale-innovation-using-a-repeatable-growth-playbook-cfos-love.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}