Total Innovation Podcast
Welcome to "Total Innovation," the podcast where I explore all the different aspects of innovation, transformation and change. From the disruptive minds of startup founders to the strategic meeting rooms of global giants, I bring you the stories of change-makers. The podcast will engage with different voices, and peer into the multi-faceted world of innovation across and within large organisations.
I speak to those on the ground floor, the strategists, the analysts, and the unsung heroes who make innovation tick. From technology breakthroughs to cultural shifts within companies, I'm on a quest to understand how innovation breathes new life into business.
I embrace the diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, and experiences that inform and drive the corporate renewal and evolution from both sides of the microphone. The Total Innovation journey will take you through the challenges, the victories, and the lessons learned in the ever-evolving landscape of innovation.
Join me as we explore the narratives of those shaping the market, those writing about it, and those doing the hard work. This is "Total Innovation," where every voice counts and every story matters.
Brought to you by The Infinite Loop – Where Ideas Evolve, Knowledge Flows, and Innovation Never Stops.
Powered by Wazoku, helping to Change the World, One Idea at a Time.
Total Innovation Podcast
8. Balaji Bondili: The Pixilated Future of Work
Balaji is a Product, P&L and Innovation leader with extensive experience ideating, incubating, developing customer-centric products and operating innovative product businesses. Deep industry expertise in Life Sciences, Healthcare, Innovation, Future of Work and Contingent Workforce. Currently teach product innovation and intrapreneurship at Harvard and Stanford.
His work has been recognized in a series of Harvard Business School case studies focused on helping executives build non-traditional businesses within large companies. He frequently teach seasoned professionals to sophomores at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton among others on how to think about this process while maintaining personal identity and a sense of agency in the process.
Additionally, Balaji supports his wife, Meghna, as she starts her own company (Butterfly Voyage), tries to load the dishwasher properly (good luck wine glasses), and builds insanely awesome Legos with his daughter!
Balaji's expertise aligns with Wazoku's work in the healthcare and life sciences sector, where innovative thinking and customer-centric approaches are essential. Wazoku has supported organizations in this space by helping them leverage innovation to address complex challenges, enhance patient care, and streamline operations. To learn more about how Wazoku has helped drive innovation and growth in the health and life sciences sector, visit this page on Wazoku's website.
Welcome to the Total Innovation Podcast. I'm your host, Simon Hill. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with the visionary behind Deloitte Pixel. He spearheaded a transformative approach to consulting by integrating freelance talent and digital platforms into Deloitte's traditional consulting model. With a background rich in entrepreneurial spirit and deep expertise in client services, he has navigated the challenges of driving innovation within one of the world's largest consulting firms. And with that, we welcome today's guest, welcome Balaji Gondili. How are you?
Balaji Bondili:Simon, thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you and your audience about topics where I can help them, and topics where I can take them through my journey, so that they can find some use in it.
Simon Hill:Yeah, well, welcome, and I, uh, I know the audience will be slightly jealous if they could see your background right now because you're coming in live from Cephalonia. So, uh, we will, uh, we will not spend too much time on that. But as a, as a fellow Deloitte alumni, I'm excited to tell this, to tell this story. But for folks that are not familiar with you or with Deloitte Pixel, could you just set the scene a little bit for us? Tell them a bit about you, your background, and maybe explain what Deloitte Pixel is for the audience.
Balaji Bondili:Sure, I started my career at Deloitte about 20 years back and majority of it was doing client service work in growth strategy, innovation strategy, running venture capital funds for our clients doing and later moving into into technology, data analytics and finally into AI about seven years back. After running a venture capital fund for one of our really large clients, I decided that there has to be a different way to get work done beyond hiring hundreds and thousands of people all over the world. For Deloitte, we have to do things differently as quality of talent is widely available. Beyond the catchment pools that we are seeing so I recommend it to the firm that we need to start a business around crowd sourcing specifically competitive crowd sourcing where where different people around the world use their capabilities and knowledge to compete for outcomes. And we become an integrative layer across multiple such crowdsourcing platforms so that our clients can get the creativity and the optionality of crowdsourcing, but they get the repeatability and consistency of Deloitte both in the same place. Uh, the firm agreed with that, funded me, and then pretty quickly we became, we started doing a ton of crowd sourcing work, we were doing about 300 to 350 projects a year, and then, uh, we realized that our team was also starting to grow big, uh, as and when we were doing more crowd sourcing projects, so we realized that's, that isn't the model that we wanted to scale, uh, kind of trying to solve, trying to make the same mistake that the firm was doing, which is just scaling, uh, Based on demand. So we decided we need to start using freelance marketplaces as sources of project managers who can then run the crowdsourcing challenge so we can have a small core team but have really big impact. So we started working with multiple freelance marketplaces and over a period of time. Also started becoming a source of capacity and insight and perspective to many of our large, um, uh, client projects. And in the end, um, my last role, one of my last roles in the context of Deloitte pixel was, um, I took over converting all of our use of non employees, which comes in different textures, contingent work for. Or freelancers, independent contractors, crowdsourcing, all of that into a profit pool so that we can make those capabilities extremely easy to access for our, uh, for, for Deloitte employees and also our clients. And finally, I was just talking to Simon about what happened to Deloitte Pixel. We actually sunset the brand a couple of years, a couple of years back. We decided that the best way to scale. This type of a model is not to sell a distinct entity, a distinct brand called Deloitte pixel versus integrating all of those processes into the core of the firm and into the mainstream fabric of the firm so that the work happens without the need for educating, educating. The executives and clients constantly about this new technique versus they are using this technique as a part of their daily work. And then we're scaling the use of the models that Deloitte Pixel pioneered at the firm, actually at a much significant and larger scale than we had originally planned for. Simon, that was a long introduction for you.
Simon Hill:No, it was a perfect trailer for the conversation that we're going to dig into now, right, which just sets the scene beautifully. And I think. Um, it would probably be useful, Balaji, to, to, to double click on quite a few aspects of that, you know, as, as we were talking before we came on air, that, that journey from, you know, a very interesting idea that would definitely disrupt the core operating model. As I said, I also worked at Deloitte. I know the rigour that goes into selecting people that will work at Deloitte, the type of talent that we're looking for. You know, and therefore. Proposing to a firm that's very much built around the identity of its workforce that you can use freelance talents and contingent working and everything else is a real business model. And I guess sort of organizational psychology challenge that must have been. You know, you present it like I got support from leadership and that was that. Was it really like that? Or did you face a lot of, a lot of resistance from the firm in those early days? And if so, how did you, how did you build from a, from a foundation of, of an idea that feels like it would be very challenging to a, a business that has had an identity for so long.
Balaji Bondili:Yeah, it was a, it was a pretty significant challenge. So we actually addressed that across three different ways. First is we, we were very focused on going to the leadership of the firm and connecting why a successful crowdsourcing freelance And seeing business is going to help the firm scale. For example, um, about five or six years back, the biggest talent that we were struggling to access was data scientists and, and resources in the analytics professions. And what we realized is, uh, as and when more people are leaving traditional workforce to become independent contractors, becoming crowd workers, The smaller pool that we're going after is directly showing up in our increased wage bill, and we have to come up with a strategy that we will be wherever people are agnostic of whether they are Deloitte employees or somebody else's employees or independents. So we have to connect directly to what was the burning need and the problem that was keeping up our CEO in the night directly to the solution. So that was the strategic alignment that we had to, we had to create. The second thing that we had to do is to for every new partner or director or client that we talk about, we talk less about this mechanism and technique is different so that they have to get educated about the technique so that they can use it. We spoke more about the impact to the outcomes. How is this faster? How much is this faster? How much is this cheaper? How much is this better? And it's less about the how, but more about the impact. It is like when we all started using the Internet on Netscape, we didn't have to go through how does TCP IP protocol works. We started using the browser. We didn't want to inundate our users with this is the, this is why this is different. We want them, we wanted them to understand the value of it. So we, so we took the, uh, clear differences of this model. And then connected it as a strength to the strategy and then with the users, we actually we actually reduce the visibility to the differences by saying all you need to do is you need to come to us with your problem. This is the outcome you're going to get if you are interested. We have a cool methodology in the back end, but don't bother about it. You don't need to be educated to use this model, so we didn't have to beat them on their head that this is different. We had to educate them. This works. This works better than what you're using right now. Let me pause there.
Simon Hill:Yeah, which which which definitely makes sense. I was going to ask you like how transparent you were. With those customers on the other side that you were, you know, this was Deloitte's core team plus, you know, augmented capability from, from the outside. And then also how you manage that. Because whilst we both know that it can be hugely effective. The nervousness and sort of risk management piece from both sides, right? You know, there's lots of, lots of work goes into structuring contracts around the types of work that, that was being done that can feel more risky when you're passing externally. So, you know, I'm sure that I was wondering where to take this conversation. That's kind of like, do we take it more operational? Do we take it more into leadership and resistance? Do we take leadership and also resistance or another direction? Maybe we unpack those each individually, right? I think first of all, How, how obvious was this to the end customer? That it was, you know, Deloitte plus plus and how did you position and package those things? And then we can sort of dig into the other bits of leadership and resistance.
Balaji Bondili:Yeah, uh, we did, we did, we dealt with clients at the level that they were, which is if they were innovative clients, client executives that were fascinated by a new model or technique that you're doing, then we would get them. As much access as they want, they would talk to crowd workers, they would participate in challenge design, they would participate in challenge evaluation. You can come in at whatever level you want. And there are clients at the other extreme that is like, I don't really care if it is crowdsourcing or whatever you're doing, or if it is magic. I need better outcomes or I need a better price or any better speed. So it was, we were dealing with clients at where they were versus thinking about, this is what clients need. And we have to deliver our perspective of what clients needed. I would say majority of the clients were somewhere about curious about the, the technique, but more focused on the outcomes. And as such, that's the amount of information or transparency they got.
Simon Hill:How well educated were clients in general? You said they, they, in many cases, they may not have even cared, right? It's about better outcomes, better price, better speed. I was actually going to ask you whether it did lead to a better price or just better margins from a, from a business perspective. It's probably a bit of both. But, um, but did they understand, um, In many cases, or where do you feel like the market is maybe maybe not was because it's obviously moved a bit more, but is today in terms of understanding of some of these capabilities and open business models
Balaji Bondili:to it's a big and in a varied question, right? Um, I would say at least when when we were working on it at some point in the longevity of either an engagement or a surprising, let's say, for example, we were doing a digital design project or an algorithm development. Project right and the client might have started with saying I don't particularly care. I just need you to hit a really high optimization point for that algorithm or I knew I need you to hit a really high, high fidelity design for for this, you know, um, online banking application, but I would say at least 80 percent of the clients would always come back and say, Hey, Oh, this is fascinating. Tell me a little bit more about how you got to these many optimization points across seemingly 20 different techniques or five different high fidelity mock ups or prototypes. And they would get a little bit more interested to serve their curiosity, but then in in most cases, It would be, uh, like watching something awesome on national, national geographic, but then go back to the real life. The curiosity never made them feel like this is a technique I want to keep using, but they would, they were attracted with the outcomes, outcomes that we got. So as a, as a, as a, as an As an impact of that, I would say 30 percent of our clients would come back and say, I want to use crowdsourcing as a mechanism. 70 percent of the clients would come back and say, I want to see those type of, those types of metrics and impact. So it's kind of different in the way clients dealt with it.
Simon Hill:Which makes sense. I think there's an obvious contextual Play within, within those client arenas. I'm part of me wants to really drill into the pixel story because it's about, you know, a passion area of crowdsourcing, open talents, contingent work. However, I'm going to drill the other side, which is, it's also a story of internal innovation, business model disruption, um, and taking something from an early idea through incubation into bedding it into the business, as you eloquently described in your introduction, right? You've kind of taken. And Sunset is the Deloitte pixel brand and folded it into the operational core because that was the way that you felt it would be best served to to the business and to long, long term survivorship and success of that idea going through. Can we talk a little bit about that journey? Because that's the innovation journey that, you know, our audience is struggling with, right? How do I get from idea to something that's fully embedded in the business core or was transformed the business core in some way, shape or form? Can you unpack that a little bit for me from? The different angles and aspects and throughout that journey, recognizing that's a pretty big question, but I think there's there's a lot of meat to pull on on that.
Balaji Bondili:Yeah, that's a that's a seven year journey across maybe thousands of projects and maybe, you know, many nights of worries. Um, but at least to the highest level, I'd say the first phase of. Of of experimentation, or at least the first phase was just seeing. Is there enough depth in this concept? Is there enough, uh, meet in the in this in the solutions that are available in the market to to even start exploring this space? That was the advent of top quarter. That was the advent of click resistance and writing the article about, you know, consulting is going to die because of crowdsourcing. So there was enough of a of a Of, of visibility to the option that crowdsourcing could have an impact on the, on the, on the consulting space. But then at least my point of view was it could have a negative impact. If the firm doesn't participate early, it could have an extremely positive impact if the firm participates really early and then kinda shapes the solutions in the market in a way that it, they don't feel like they have to compete with Deloitte. It should feel like they need Deloitte to scale because we have the access to clients. We have the trust factor. There are multiple other benefits of the firm like Deloitte has, whereas the models that that crowdsourcing companies like Topcoder, Innocentive and others were deploying at that time, we didn't have access to that, right? So there's a, we had to make sure that there is, there is a combination there between the strengths of the external model. That'll actually make both of them more successful. I didn't want to get into that market to say I'm going to disrupt the top quarters of the world. I'm going to start my own community. Neither did I want to say companies like top core are my competitors and I'm not going to ever work with them. So we had to build an ecosystem model where in the end, I think by the time we finished Deloitte Pixel, we had 60 or 70 different partners. That became a part of a part of the ecosystem and then the way we would do it as every time we find a new vendor or a new company to work with. We had a very tightly defined experimentation and exploration process where we would find a client project that is ongoing and then we would do the same project in parallel. Like a redundant project so that we're not putting it any putting any client team or a client project at risk. So we would have the funding to run a redundant project on the side and then go back to both the firm and the client to show this is the outcomes of a typical traditional project. This is the outcome of a crowdsourced exercise. These are the benefits of it. This is where it worked. This is where it doesn't work. So over a period of time when we did it, You know, similar experimentation for 60 different vendors with a really big corpus of where what works and what doesn't work. And if you look at a set of client problems and solutions, where can you apply crowdsourcing and where you cannot apply crowdsourcing? And I think that that's really helped us talk the language of the projects to the people because sometimes adoption challenges don't happen because the solution doesn't work. Adoption challenges sometimes happen because you're not able to frame the solution that works in the language and in the process of what people are used to. If you're If you go to a, and you've been a Deloitte, if you go to a case team, there's like 10 or 15 people sitting, traveling every weekend and sitting together and whiteboarding and solving a problem and you say, okay, I have a cloud based solution here. It can also solve that same problem and you're not able to translate these two processes together. That's when adoption fails. So we had to all of this experimentation. This redundant experimentation. We were able to go back to the next next project to say this is how this process could deliver better outcomes for your project in the context of what you're doing. So maybe in week 4 when you typically do this project, this part of that project. This is when crowdsourcing is most effective, but it's not effective in week 6 when you do this step. So it's very contextual in a way that. People, people then having that conversation basically can see the fact that you're saying, no, it doesn't work here and it works here. It increases the trust. So we did just out, um, capability assessment in the beginning and a hell lot of experimentation and redundant experimentation for each vendor in the, in the early experimentation phase. And then the moment when we saw that things were working, let's say in algorithm optimization or digital design or primary research. When it was working, that's when we would double down and go to the firm to say we can deliver better outcomes for the clients and for the firm. Now, let's commit that we take 20%, 10 percent of whatever volume of all of that work and it has to move to the crowdsourced or freelanced fashion. And when that happens, let's say 10 percent of now digital design is happening through crowdsourcing. In the last phase. We would actually take out the pixel from that and just digital design just happens through either freelancing or crowds. So it's a way of respecting the process, respecting the stakeholders and not coming with the innovation bluster that happens sometimes that you are incumbent. You're traditional. You're kind of boring. I'm cool and interesting. It's a, it's sometimes a much more respectful and a collaborative approach, even though you are pushing against the orthodoxies, but there's a way to push against the orthodoxy so that they don't feel like you're pushing against the people you're pushing more against to get to better outcomes for everybody. I know that was a long answer to that seven year history.
Simon Hill:It was a big question as well. So I apologize for, uh, Very open ended seven year question, and it was a it was a good answer, actually. And there's a lot. There's a lot in there. I did a an episode recently with Greg Sattel and on change management and his focus on, you know, focus on the points of resistance within the organization to maximize change. I'm sure in those early days, you know, it feels like a You know, a project that was funded and we ran some experiments and, you know, it grew and grew and grew and then folded into the business. I'm sure it was not a linear line of success, but I'm also sure you met a lot of resistance. There's a lot of different embedded characters inside many large companies and Deloitte is no exception. So you talk a little bit about. The resistance that you face, which is often fear led in many ways, right? You, you alluded to that earlier around these articles of crowdsourcing will be the death of consulting or whatever. And people that have built their entire careers around something that, that is, that is having doomsday scenarios thrown at it. We'll find it hard to embrace the, uh, you know, the sort of turkeys won't vote for Thanksgiving or Christmas type of type of, um, of, of mantra. But how did you, how did you combat that? Maybe your answer is through experimentation, but was that Was that maybe in the sort of Greg Sattel Ilk of, you know, go and work with those, with those points of resistance, or was it sort of work around them and provide the evidence bank?
Balaji Bondili:If you, if you think about like, um, if you plot clients or Deloitte partners on a bell curve, right, there's a, the, there are two, two parts of the bell curve that are the most important to focus on, which is the two ends. The right side of the bell curve. Uh, are the most resistant partners where with the declining curve, that's where the people that would never try crowdsourcing, right? So I would say there's one third of people that are, that are open to experimentation, that love experimentation, that have a built a brand around trying new things, taking new ideas to our clients. And there's the other third that are, we know exactly what we're doing. I don't need any new shit from you. I know how to, how my clients work. We have been embedded in their business for a long time. I know how to do this right. The first choice that we made is to completely ignore the last one third. Do not even spend one second focusing on the people that don't want to be convinced initially. Yeah. Because sometimes. What happens is innovators become egoistic to say, I'm going to take on that challenge and convert them because like, I really feel like I need to convert them to prove to myself that this thing works, takes way too long. It's too negative of a process. They're in a negative mindset. You are in a different mindset. It's not helpful. So ignore the last one third immediately. Your biggest focus is to, is to identify who the first one third are. It's not very clear and apparent in any firm as to who are the people that are open to innovation. So we have to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and people that are typically communicating, people that are writing articles, people that have a brand that they're a little bit edgy in the firm. They're not a perfect fit. They do. They live in their own world a little bit in some way. We had to use the network to find who those people are, and they were the first people who, who are always open for experimentation and who also have a higher, uh, threshold for failure. They're a lot more comfortable with absorbing friction. They're a lot more comfortable going to the clients and saying, let's try this. I'm not completely. Really confident this will work, but I think we learned something, something interesting about this from this process. We spent most of our time finding who those people are, enabling them to have conversations with our clients, and then selling work through them. And then I want to finish the last bit of that with, with the middle one third. Typically what happens with that middle one third is if the first one third start seeing success in this, that's the proof point that they've been waiting for. We can go knock on their shoulder on their door any number of times they won't take our call, but the moment they see an innovator partner that they've, they've tracked their career, they now say, Oh, okay, it worked for him or her. I'm going to use it too. And it's an easy, clean ripple that goes into that two third. The last one third are, we'll see when the two third moves. Majority of them would say now, okay, it is not, it's not an extreme case. Some, some out of the world, out of the ordinary situation looks like most of the firm is now using, I'm going to use it too. So that's the path that we took.
Simon Hill:I'm going to assume within that though, that there was a very, because of the sort of hierarchical nature of consulting firms, that right at the top of that, there was very strong leadership buy in for wanting to test a model that could disrupt quite significantly and would feel threatening to the organization in some way, shape or form. Is that correct?
Balaji Bondili:I wouldn't say so. I think most consulting. In firms, including Deloitte, um, and they never believed that they could be disrupted. I would say majority of the time when they heard concepts like outsourcing or freelancing, it is at least with pixel, the term that I, that, that we used in the case study as well is benevolent neglect. It is like what you do when, when a child is eating sand at the beach. It's fine, you can eat some sand. They never thought that crowdsourcing would truly disrupt it. Could there be a couple of people that thought so? Yes, but most people, most intelligent, learned partners didn't really think that there was a true opportunity. Or they didn't see enough signals or evidence that this, this is coming and it's truly disruptive.
Simon Hill:Do you think, therefore, that this type of change can only be driven inside of organizations? If there's someone, I know you featured as a corporate explorer within the work of Andy Bins and the ChangeLogic crew, do you think it requires that type of person that's willing to stick their neck on the line and smash through doors and take chances that might, you know, might fail and might lead with a bloody nose or worse? That that's the only way that this change can happen?
Balaji Bondili:Unfortunately, that is where we live right now, but I, but I, I tell Andy and Mike and when I go to HPS to teach as well, I said, I tell the same thing, uh, heroes journeys are not scalable, actually, the fact. It is, it is, you cannot have just one person that like fought through across all the odds and then built a business. The fact that you're, you're showcasing that person shows that your organization does not have the capability to build new businesses. So yes, celebrate that hero's journey, but understand why did that person need to be a hero in your company to make this business happen. I think there, there is, I do hope and wish that, um, at least with AI and new businesses being generated, it shouldn't feel like, um, somebody needs to, needs to take on this gauntlet. Because in the end, everybody understands this. Corporate explorers or companies, people like me and others in my position, do not get the upside of, of solving that problem. We still get a biweekly paycheck and maybe a little bit of stock. And that is the reason most people make that cost benefit analysis and then leave the firm, leave the incumbent large companies and start their own businesses. And I think there's a problem there that sometimes these heroes journeys kind of hide behind that companies don't know how to truly innovate.
Simon Hill:Yeah, there's obviously a lot to unpack there. I'm conscious of time, so I'm going to start winding us in, and maybe that thematically does bring us to the last bit of the journey from, from a pixel perspective, which is you folding this into the core business, sunsetting the brand and walking away from it. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, I guess, taking your baby and, and, and sort of handing it over to the core business. How, how did that come about? How did it. Was it effective? Like, you know, taking innovations and bringing them into the operational core is not an easy thing. We know that despite all good experimentation, things often die at that stage. Um, and now you look back at, what is it, eight months, 24 months after that fact, like, how, how do you reflect on the success of that for, and the long term, therefore, future of the, the thing that you created?
Balaji Bondili:Yeah, it was, uh, let's start, let's start from a selfish point of view, just as a person. I mean, it was, it was a very difficult time when, you know, the team and I made the choice that for the model to scale. Pixel pixel as a brand is has become now a barrier. It isn't like if you think about offshore team businesses or any other, um, new talent sources, there's a point in which, you know, it becomes less about, um, work happening in offshore, but it's more about the process through which work happens offshore. So we, we decided that it's less, less about people needing to understand Deloitte Pixel and people needing to scale Deloitte Pixel. It's about the model that need to scale. And I think we've been, we've taken that journey as we were respectfully innovating and understanding how it fits into processes so that let's say now when you are, you know, you have a big client project. In AI or analytics that sold, it's almost as though the resource managers who, you know, typically are the ones who source talent project team members for that project now have a view into the freelance talent pool, have a view into continuing talent pool and the employee talent pool so that they can now create a team that's a lot more robust. Then primarily defending depending on the FT talent pool and when that's exhausted starting a whole process to go find a freelancer set of freelancers or staffing firm workers that doesn't happen anymore. So as such it is the moment you've taken the. Taken the process from educating a partner who just sold the project to say, Oh, you can use freelancers or contingent workers to now taking it to the HR person or the recruitment resource management person. Most of the time, the partners don't even know. There are contractors, freelancers, card workers working on the project. So it actually makes the mix adoption scale faster so that they can focus on the, all they need to focus on is, is, is there a team being launched to get the work done? And the answer is often better and faster because of the open talent models. So when we made these choices, it was painful personally because I had connected my identity. To the brand of pixel, but I also knew that it was, it was, it was time to let it go and make it, uh, I think it was Kareem Lakhani who some point said, uh, from Harvard business school who said the, the, the most important thing about innovation for scale is it has to make, it has to become boring. We're effectively made pixel boring and made it a part of the mainstream operations of the firm. And this is the right way for it to scale. And also. You know, Jenny, I was coming through at that time. I won't. I was excited to go try on and try my hand at something else. So it was an opportune time to sunset it and then move to do something else. And then I took on the role of kind of the chief head of innovation for our strategy and analytics business.
Simon Hill:Well, listen, Balaji, first of all, congratulations. Not many people see a journey through like that and are, you know, able to take the baby they've created and make that very difficult and emotional and challenging decision to do. But probably is the right thing, right? Which is to start to fold it into the operational core and let it scale and test what happens at scale. Um, And I guess that the world now can benefit from some of those experiences. As you said, you teach a class at Harvard Business School, but I also know you've, you've now spread your wings and moved outside of Deloitte. And maybe we can just as we close, talk a little bit about the work that you're doing now outside of Deloitte and how folk might be able to benefit from it. Um, come and gain some of that amazing experience that you've got for their own benefits. Um, you just talk a little bit about that and maybe where folk can find you and then we'll bring things to a close.
Balaji Bondili:Perfect. Um, I think what I'm doing right now is I'm working on a startup in the, in, in, in the open talent space, but it's a long journey. But in parallel, I'm helping, um, startups, you know, usually larger CDC to see these, these size startups, um, We in finding approaches in which they can expand their account for prints. So you're a million dollar. Account account or 25 million account, how do you scale that? And primarily ensuring that your value proposition is super strong to the clients that you're selling. When I was at Deloitte, I was the primary buyer for, uh, for freelance marketplaces, many contingent firms and crowdsourcing. So I've gone through the experience of what a good value proposition looks like. Versus an ordinary value proposition looks like some helping a bunch of startups and the last spaces through the work at at Harvard and working with Andy bins and others that change logic were attempting to see how we can help companies create substitutive businesses. Specifically focused on AI as the wave of AI is coming through and given that I have some journey of how to navigate large company antibodies at risk and legal and these types of journeys. There's there's a bunch of work that's happening to help companies make that journey in a in a in a manner that. It's where you can predict some of the issues versus, um, running headlong. And when you, when you, when you face those issues, that's when you start finding solutions, there's a method, whole methodology for the ambidextrous tech, dexterous organizations that can be deployed early on so that you can have a smoother path. And those are the few things that I'm working on right now. And LinkedIn is the easiest space, uh, easiest place to find me. If you just. Look, Balaji, you'll find me pretty easily, and I'm very responsive, responsive to have any conversations with anybody just to see how we can help them.
Simon Hill:Well, with that, thank you very much, Balaji. And thank you, everyone, for listening to today's episode of the Total Innovation Podcast. We hope you've enjoyed a very open and expansive conversation with Balaji and gained valuable insights into the creation and growth of Deloitte Pixel. Balaji's journey highlights the power of innovative thinking, the importance of strategic Leadership, but in this case, actually real changemakers inside the organization willing to get those bloody noses that we spoke about and drive real change within established organizations. If you found this episode inspiring, please share and subscribe for more conversations with industry leaders who are pushing the boundaries of innovation until next time. Stay curious, keep innovating, and Balaji, thank you very much for your time today.
Balaji Bondili:Simon,
Simon Hill:it was a joy. Thank you
Balaji Bondili:very much.
