The Action Catalyst
Genius at Scale, with Jason Wild | (Innovation, Leadership, Culture, Strategy)
17 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What misconceptions about innovation does Jason Wild discuss?
When people think of innovation, they immediately jump to ideas. What's the next killer app? What's the acquisition? What is the cool AI tool? But what we've learned is that innovation is less about ideas and more about leadership. And it's really how do you go from whiteboard to reality? And where do great ideas come from? And how do you scale those ideas?
Chapter 2: How does leadership influence the innovation process?
And that there's a glamorous side of innovation, but there's also a really soul-sucking, difficult, challenging part emotionally, intellectually about innovation. Top leaders, meaningful conversation, actionable advice, bulldoze complacency, ignite inspiration, create impact. Produced by the Southwestern family of companies. This is the Action Catalyst.
Are you interested in advertising with The Action Catalyst? Our listeners could be hearing about your brand right here, right now. For details, shoot us an email at info at theactioncatalyst.com. Today's guest is Jason Wild, the founder and principal at Wild Innovation and a former leader at Salesforce, IBM, and Microsoft, as well as co-author of the new book, Genius at Scale, out now.
Okay, so I have got good news and bad news about our time together. What would you like first? I'm an optimist.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of culture in fostering innovation?
Let's start with the good news. The good news is I hope we're going to have some fun together. You ready for the bad news? I think so. I have to be candid. I am an insult to my generation when it comes to technology. I have read your bio. I was trying to do some prep work. I understood about every third word. And just so you know, that third word was like and, the, at.
So I am going to completely disappoint. Well, I don't know about that. And I've got some good news, too. I'm not really a technologist.
even though i spent like 30 years of my career working for technology companies i have a liberal arts undergraduate degree an mba i was a child actor so in many situations my role was to be the person dropped into the pool of technologists and help people make sense of what really matters to world the world work and life so we we could talk about lots of things stephanie but Don't worry.
And one of the first pieces of advice and coaching I got was you're self-deprecating to a fault, Jason. So, Stephanie, don't be like me. You may think it's self-deprecation and then you're like, oh, no, she's just got a lot of self-awareness. OK, so let's start with walk me through what you do. Well, thanks. Thanks for asking. And my mom has been asking me that for years, too.
And the fact that she keeps asking me, clearly I'm not giving a good enough answer. I actually feel like I've been really blessed. I've been fortunate and privileged to have one of the best jobs in the tech industry for many, many years. And what has been that?
It's been leading embedded strategy and innovation teams, first at IBM, then at Salesforce, and then eventually at Microsoft, where in total I spent almost 20 years leading projects on the ground around innovation in 40 countries. So from Uganda to Washington, D.C., from NATO to Disney,
Really trying to help leaders and innovation teams think and work differently and focus on the what and how of whatever matters to them. Because I think one of the things that I learned the hard way was when people think of innovation, they immediately jump to ideas. What's the next killer app? What's the acquisition? What is the cool AI tool?
But what we've learned is that innovation is less about ideas and more about leadership. And it's really how do you go from whiteboard to reality? And where do great ideas come from? And how do you scale those ideas? So I've kind of really dedicated my career to that in different forms. So helping to build cultures of innovation inside of large organizations is
Or advising and leading teams working on some strategic questions of the board or the C-suite where they thought it was important to collaborate with some other people and get a different perspective to hopefully co-create the future. And probably done at least 350 of those innovation projects in my career.
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Chapter 4: What are the ABCs of innovation according to Jason Wild?
Like Amazon. You know, literally, you could say Amazon is selling millions of SKUs of products. But what they're really selling is convenience. Well, Amazon said, let's create an experience, right, end to end, where people in their pajamas can order what they want and it can be delivered within hours. So what they're selling is convenience.
So when people talk about bots in the warehouses of Amazon, yeah, that's true, but they're missing the bigger point, which is this integrated logistics system that enables our preferences to be delivered within a day or two in the way that we want to, meeting us on our terms. And how we're buying is about who do we believe? Where does trust come from? Word of mouth.
Right now we're seeing kind of commerce being integrated into gen AI as search is dying a quick death. So those are the three questions that I think are relevant to anybody that you can look at, look at yourself in the mirror and say, who is our customer? And is that really the customer? And should it be a different customer? What are we really selling?
And when we talk about a partnership or a new product, Does that align with and support what we're selling? Or does it do something that could be a distraction or something else? So that's one of the things, the power questions. And that's just one example to really deeply inspect who you are. And then it should make every other decision much easier in that context. Okay.
So I have two more questions. You mentioned earlier in the call about being a child actor. Yes. What? Yeah. Yes, believe it or not, I co-starred in movies with Mr. T, Jane Fonda, Chris Christopherson. I'm dating myself, clearly.
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Chapter 5: How can organizations effectively scale their innovative ideas?
Absolutely, I love it. These are names I know. Yeah, I mean, up until my teenage years, my brother and I were both child actors. My brother actually was in Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, which is one of the TBS Superstation favorites. Many people that I meet have seen them more than me. And my brother. And once we got out of that, we got very, very close to making it a full career.
And I learned so much. But one of the things when you're rejected like 300 times before you're 15, it kind of prepares you really well for the corporate world. I think number two, really valuing authenticity. You know, Hollywood is kind of the capital of everything. But not everybody's fake.
And one of the things that was interesting to me is the best actors, the best actresses don't come across as actors. The best salespeople don't come across as salespeople. The best technologists don't come across as technologists. So there's something really human about that. And, you know, you think about like the core of acting is emotionally connecting with an audience and storytelling.
So once I embraced that in the mid part of my career, I put my teams through improv training. and did all sorts of things that I thought would be useful to helping us be more present, more focused on our audience, which is our customer. The first half of my career, I ignored it, thought it was irrelevant.
But the more that I kind of embraced it, I realized that many of those things were a big part of why I've been successful.
in what i do so i guess what i'd say is is that we've all been in those like big meetings and conventions where somebody gets up on that stage and they talk about something and literally like the hair on the back of your next thing so and then somebody else who like talks about the same thing and you're like checking your phone and falling asleep what's the difference between those two people they're great at storytelling and you know but storytelling is a science you have to
pick the right moments if you're in the middle of a crisis mission critical so like let me tell you a story you should get fired you have to have the right emotional intelligence and the right dosage of when where and what stories to tell but when you get good at that there's a reason stories have gone viral across humanity because we're programmed to be moved by great stories Absolutely.
Okay, quick question. If somehow, for some reason, you could no longer do what you're doing, and economics didn't matter, if you could have any other job in the world, what would it be? Probably be a tour guide of the Baseball Hall of Fame because I love stories. I love baseball. My grandparents met at Wrigley Field in 1935. So Chicago Cubs are in my blood. Baseball is a part of me.
And I play on an old man baseball team, believe it or not, over 40 league. So my dream job would be the little tour guy in Cooperstown. I love it. Jason, this has been awesome for me. It has been really fun talking with you. Thank you. And educational too. Oh, it's been awesome as well, Stephanie. They were great questions and enjoy the conversation.
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