Today is the first in a 3-part series with Dave Blakely, an extraordinarily talented, sharp-witted and humble man whom I’m so happy to be collaborating with and indeed his company Mach49 where he is Executive Vice President. We talk innovation, creativity, design and the vagaries of the human condition.

Check out some of the amazing work Mach49 does driving growth and building new ventures with some of the greatest brands around.

Dave was a leader at design agency IDEO for many years and has advised organisations on innovation and design thinking as wide ranging as NASA, Google and Eli Lilly over a decades long career. He has sailed the Silicon Valley seas, studying engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, working in a Hewlett Packard spin off as well as teaching at Stanford's renowned d.school.

Show notes

• Loving building new things
• Designing the robot arm
• Learning and leading at IDEO
• Vets accidentally jabbing themselves with cattle needles
• What Mach49 does better than IDEO
• Translating research ideas into big ideas at Stanford’s d.school
• Rory Sutherland’s ‘Make it Pink’ boardroom strategy
• When did Dave last stand up and fart in front of clients?
• Unusual rituals, violent extremists, unique food packaging in the Philippines and getting in and out of a space suit
• Andy Grove’s innovation cliché at Intel
• Predictions for the Metaverse
• How does Dave remain sufficiently illogical?

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Podcast music: Tamsin Waley-Cohen's Mendelssohn's violin concerto