The Committed Innovator

McKinsey holds an innovation competition every year; compelling evidence shows that most organizations can benefit from doing same. McKinsey & Company regularly holds an internal competition, the Innovation Olympics, in which our own teams bring their best business ideas to an internal competition. In the most recent cycle over 2,000 McKinsey colleagues competed, with the goal of creating a bottom-up innovation mechanism that surfaces great ideas and put them to work for our clients. In this episode, McKinsey innovation leader and senior partner Erik Roth speaks with our current winners about the process. Part of the team joins us—Iris Roelens, John Law-Lund, and Suryansh Soni—to describe how and why they decided to use machine learning to draw on McKinsey knowledge and create digital agents that could serve as virtual consultants. This is an edited transcript of their conversation. You can follow the series on your preferred podcast platform.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Adopting AI remains a challenge for most, and the fact that the world of AI is advancing soincredibly rapidly doesn’t help. Nathaniel Whittemore aims to make both adoption andkeeping up with change a lot easier. He is the founder and CEO of Superintelligent, the AIenablement platform that offers interactive tutorials that provide practical AI education andclear paths to business solutions. And is also the host of the podcast, AI Daily Brief, thatseeks to keep its listeners up to date with AI as it evolves. In this episode of The CommittedInnovator, McKinsey innovation leaser and senior partner, Erik Roth, speaks with Whittemoreabout the intersection between Whittemore’s two companies, the challenges of adopting andscaling AI for enterprises, and what he sees in store for AI in 2026. This is an editedtranscript of their conversation. You can follow the series on your preferred podcast platform. Related content Taking fear out of innovationThe essentials of innovationReconfiguring work: Change management in the age of gen AISee www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Andrey Khusid, founder and CEO of Miro, shares the journey from digital whiteboard to an AI-driven innovation workspace. He highlights how Miro enables remote collaboration, making the innovation process seamless. Andrey discusses his decision to keep Miro cloud-based and the significance of templates in easing user adoption. He emphasizes balancing top-down vision with empowering grassroots ideas and reveals how AI can accelerate project outcomes. Plus, he reflects on the lessons learned during COVID and the importance of staying close to customers.

The Ocean Cleanup's Boyan Slat discusses the promise and challenge of technological innovation at planetary scale. The problem of ocean pollution from plastic waste is growing and intractable, and can feel insurmountable to many consumers. For Dutch innovator Boyan Slat, however, not only is the problem solvable, it’s an imperative. In addition to harming habitats and wildlife, improperly discarded plastics can cause health problems for humans. The founder and CEO of Rotterdam-based The Ocean Cleanup, Slat seeks to both clean up the worst of plastic pollution in oceans, and to stop the flow of plastics from rivers into oceans. McKinsey innovation leader Erik Roth speaks with Slat about the challenges of starting and evolving The Ocean Cleanup, how the organization has found success, and what it takes to continue the effort.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

In this episode of The Committed Innovator, we talk with John McDonald, the founder and CEO of Mercer Street Hospitality, which owns Lure Fishbar in New York City and Chicago, among other restaurants and bars. McDonald spoke with McKinsey Senior Partner and innovation leader Erik Roth about maintaining success and equilibrium in the notoriously difficult hospitality industry. Related insights: What’s on the menu? Revenue growth techniques for restaurants Cooking up extraordinary growth for restaurants during a downturn Taking fear out of innovation How to take the measure of innovation Fielding high-performing innovation teams Explore our collection of Committed Innovator episode transcripts on McKinsey.com: Strategic Growth & Innovation See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Jelena Joffe Weil, founder and leader of the Venture Innovation program at AWS, discusses pivotal strategies for connecting startups with large enterprises. She highlights the importance of collaboration in innovative ventures and shares insights on overcoming challenges from pilot projects to full-scale implementation. The conversation also explores change management in adopting new technologies, including a fascinating case study on NASA’s remote health monitoring for astronauts. Lastly, she emphasizes patient-centric strategies in healthcare innovation.

In this episode of The Committed Innovator, McKinsey innovation leader Erik Roth speaks with the founder, president, and medical director of the Child Mind Institute in New York City, Dr. Harold Koplewicz. At a time of increasing concerns globally about child and adolescent mental health, the institute is working to use advanced imaging technologies and AI to help revolutionize diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, and psychological and learning disorders. See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

McKinsey innovation leader Erik Roth speaks with Shiprocket cofounder and CEO Saahil Goel about how he built his e-commerce logistics company into a highly successful platform that is helping launch new entrepreneurs all over India. See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Rapid technological innovation heightens opportunity for investors. Serial entrepreneur and investor Wes Nichols shares the factors he looks for in but choosing the right start-ups and entrepreneurs to back. Nichols is best known for starting MarketShare, the marketing resource allocation software solution. Today he is a partner at March Capital, the growth-stage venture capital firm that focuses on enterprise technology companies. See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Innovation in online gaming requires keeping up with a broad mix of changes, including digital advances, audience desires, and artistic trends. In this episode of The Committed Innovator podcast, McKinsey innovation expert Erik Roth talks with Mihir Vaidya, the chief strategy officer of Electronic Arts, about these unique aspects of innovating in the gaming industry.  See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information