Innovation playbooks that work. In this episode of the Burn The Playbook Podcast, Marc Crosby sits with Tendayi Viki, partner at Strategyzer and author of Pirates in the Navy, to break down how large companies build a repeatable system for real innovation instead of theater. You’ll learn how to run sprints, scorecard bets, and connect sales, R&D, and leadership so ideas turn into revenue.

What you’ll learn

• What an effective innovation playbook looks like and why “traditional” playbooks stall
• How to define innovation outcomes, not activities
• A simple cadence and timeline for sprints (6–12 weeks) that actually ship learning
• How to blend bottom-up rebels with top-down support
• Ways to stop one-customer projects from trapping your roadmap
• How to use AI without speeding in the wrong direction
• The scorecard question every leader should answer tomorrow morning

Tendayi's Bio

Tendayi Viki is an author and corporate advisor specializing in securing buy-in for
innovation, transformation and breakthrough ideas. With a PhD in Psychology and
an MBA, he helps leaders and teams bridge the gap between how organizations
plan change and how people actually experience it. As a Partner at Strategyzer, he
has worked with global organizations like Symrise, Novartis, Unilever and Pearson. A Thinkers50 Innovation Award finalist, he was also named on the Thinkers50 2018
Radar List for emerging management thinkers.

Chapters
00:00 Cold open
00:31 Intro and guest setup
01:07 Tendayi calls in from Harare, Zimbabwe
01:42 Why traditional playbooks freeze innovation
04:01 What “innovation” means beyond a workshop
05:26 Timelines: day workshop vs 6–12 week sprint
06:48 Sales, customers, and avoiding innovation theater
08:12 Pirates in the Navy: rebels plus relationships
10:25 “Show me when it hits the bottom line”
13:17 Culture: bottom-up and top-down at the same time
14:53 Connect sales and R&D with a continuous loop
17:20 The single-customer trap and how to test for scale
19:19 “Moneyball” innovation: start without budget, plan funding early
21:47 AI hype vs. real transformation
24:04 Can AI accelerate in the wrong direction? Guardrails
30:23 Burn it or Build it: rapid-fire takes
40:33 One action to start tomorrow: innovation scorecard
41:40 Where to find Tendayi and Strategyzer

Who this helps

• Manufacturing and industrial leaders with flat growth
• Business unit heads under quarterly pressure
• Sales and product teams tired of “throw it over the wall”
• Corporate innovators who need executive air cover

Guest

• Tendayi Viki, Partner at Strategyzer; author of Pirates in the Navy and The Lean Product Lifecycle
• Website: https://tendaiviki.com
  
  
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tendaiviki
  
  

Host

• Burn The Playbook Podcast — Digital Rebels Consulting
• Site: https://DigitalRebelsConsulting.com
  
  
• Host: Marc Crosby

• Website → DigitalRebelsConsulting.com
• Linktree → https://linktr.ee/digitalrebelsconsulting
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• Email → marc@digitalrebelsconsulting.com
• Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/burn-the-playbook/id1828969451
• Burn The Playbook Website → https://www.buzzsprout.com/2522863

Views expressed are our own and do not represent any organizations

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