In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Sylvia Acevedo, a trailblazer with experience spanning NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to executive roles at Apple, Dell, and IBM, and serving as the CEO of the Girl Scouts.

1:56: The Trailblazer’s Playbook: From a Dirt Road Town to NASA and the C-Suite

4:33: Sylvia’s Origins: A Girl Scouts Model Rocket and Lessons in Failure

8:31: Breaking Big Goals into Smaller Pieces

11:25: “Don’t Leave a Cookie Sale Until You Hear No 3 Times”: Lessons in Tenacity from the Girl Scouts

14:01: “Girls Like You Don’t Go to College”: Becoming One of the First Hispanics to Earn a Graduate Engineering Degree from Stanford

18:06: Innovating Above and Beyond at IBM

21:23: A Mental Checklist to Reach the C-Suite

30:50: Building Back Better after Failure at Autodesk

33:58: “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”: The Link Between Personal and Professional Growth

36:58: Family Tragedy, and Sylvia’s Transition from Technology to Education

39:05: The Power of Influence in Changing Opinion

42:09: Leading the Girl Scouts: Empowering Girls in Civics, Technology, and Entrepreneurship

46:11: Historically Women’s Colleges and the Girl Scouts: The Role of Single-Gender Spaces

48:49: Leadership in Chip Manufacturing

53:07: The Story of Sylvia’s Name, and Bilingual Systems Thinking

54:46: The Power of Taking Even Small Actions

Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.

New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.

Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?

• Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

• Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube.

• Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky.

• Connect with Rita on TikTok.

• Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.

• Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, sits down with Don Tapscott, CEO of the Tapscott Group, Chairman and co-Founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, and author of “You to the Power of Two”.

00:00: Introductions and Don’s Expertise in Blockchains and Identic AI

3:04: Predictions about the Web, Revisited 20 Years On

5:20: Blockchain and The Transition from the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value

7:27: A Personalized Future with Identic AI

11:18: The 3 Phases of Digital Identities

13:10: Digital Feudalism: How Digital Conglomerates Own Our Digital Identities

18:14: “What’s the Ghost in the Machine?”: When AI Gets Embedded in Daily Life

20:06: The Jobs Question: How AI Will Affect the Nature of Employment

26:00: From Firms to Individual Contractors: When Units of Value Creation Become Smaller

31:12: The Need for a New Social Contract in the Age of AI

37:29: Rebuilding the AI Stack Around a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure

42:155: Movement Building for Self-Sovereignty over a Digital Future

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, speaks with Peter Capelli of Wharton and HR Strategist Ranya Nehmeh. Their book, In Praise of the Office, is a research-based assessment of the benefits and drawback of both in-person and remote work.

1:10: WFH, RTO, WFM: Acronym Soup Around Where We Should Work

3:01: Working From Home in the Early Days in the COVID-19 Pandemic

5:52: What Has Not Been Working Well, From Employer Perspectives

7:29: Generational Differences: Why Junior and Senior People Have Different Experiences with Remote Work

9:31: The Allen Curve: Poor Information Flows and Shrinking Networks

12:38: Cubicles, Long Tables, and Hot Desking: How the Physical Office Has Evolved

15:37: Why CFOs Loved Remote Work

19:50: Individual Contributors Can Thrive in Remote Work Settings

22:57: Where New Hires Get Lost in Remote Work Settings

24:10: The Intentionality of a Hybrid Setup

26:14: Why Anchor Days Fall Short

28:15: Collaboration and Learning: When KPIs Don’t Measure What Makes Work Happen

32:03: Cohorts, Friendships, and The Social Elements of Work

34:30: Identifying When Remote Work Has Become a Problem

38:30: What Leadership Misses

43:00: Blowback to the Book: How Capelli and Nehmeh Struck a Chord

46:13: Understanding Where People Land on the RTO Debate

49:40: Case Studies: Netflix and Toss

57:07: Gen Z’s Return to the Office

Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.

New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.

Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?

• Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

• Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube

• Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky.

• Connect with Rita on TikTok

• Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.

• Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com