The Company Road Podcast

E71 Silent Revolutionaries: Firing up corporate innovation without getting fired

• Chris Hudson • Episode 71

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"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is in that little extra. It's about focusing in on the right things and fixing them...it's more about solutioning in that space."

– Dr. Munib Karavdic

Dr. Munib Karavdic, an award-winning innovation executive, intrapreneur, and CEO of Wave Design. 

In this episode, Munib shares his journey from pursuing a PhD in E-Commerce in Australia to leading corporate innovation and eventually founding Wave Design. He discusses key turning points in his career, including the moment he shifted focus from technical E-Commerce to innovation and customer experience. He explains how he navigated corporate resistance to change, drove design-led strategies, and influenced leadership to embrace innovation.

If you're an intrapreneur looking to make an impact, this episode is packed with insights on how to push boundaries, challenge the status quo, and create meaningful change.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

  • The journey from academia to corporate leadership and entrepreneurship
  • The challenges of introducing innovation in large organisations
  • How small, incremental changes can have a big impact
  • Why human-centred design is crucial for business growth
  • Strategies for influencing leadership and navigating corporate structures
  • The importance of intrapreneurship and how to drive change from within
  • How large organisations can work with start-ups effectively
  • The future of corporate innovation and leadership in Australia


Key links

About our guest 

Dr Munib Karavdic is an intrapreneur and award-winning innovation executive. He is an expert in design and innovation, helping leaders and organisations drive growth and confidently navigate change.

As a senior executive and Conjoint Professor at UNSW, Munib has led award-winning teams, developed customer-centric strategies, and mentored the next generation of innovators. He combines commercial acumen with human-centred design to create transformative strategies, products, and services across industries.

With a PhD in e-commerce and a career spanning corporate leadership and academia, Munib is passionate about turning ideas into impactful solutions.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneuship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.


For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/

Chris Hudson:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Company Road Podcast, where we navigate the fascinating world of entrepreneurship and innovation. And today I'm really excited to introduce a highly distinguished guest whose expertise in design and innovation and growth strategies has really left an incredible mark on both academic and corporate landscapes, Dr. Munib Karavdic, thank you very much for joining us on the show, Dr. Munib.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

It's pleasure to be with you, Chris.

Chris Hudson:

Thank you. Munib you're an esteemed intrapreneur and award winning innovation executive. I'm just going to introduce you a little bit. So you're also CEO of Wave Design and Wave Design, for those that don't know, is a pillar of the design and innovation industry here in Australia. And Munib is a senior executive and conjunct professor at University of New South Wales. And you've led award winning teams and crafted customer centric strategies. And you've driven growth across many, many organizations. So you've got commercial acumen and human centered design, and you're really all about transforming ideas into impactful solutions. And you've also got a PhD in e commerce and a wealth of experience in corporate leadership and academia. So I'm really excited to get into the conversation today Dr. Munib. And I think maybe we start with a conversation around your journey as an intrapreneur and some of the significant moments that may spring to mind things that shaped your career. So what led you to corporate life and how did you end up doing what you do?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Well, the first significant moment in my life, it was when I came to Australia with my family, and I came here to do my PhD and I did a PhD in e commerce so to be honest when I started, it was very much about supply chain management, we are talking about 95, 96 with only few Australian companies had a website. And then I had a very, very nice PhD supervisor who told me Hey, you know what? It's supply chain. A lot of people write about that. Did the research about supply chain management might be better idea to focus on new technology. There is something called internet. And and why don't you actually start building this academic Paradigm. There is still not theory about e commerce, we call it a paradigm. And then he intrigued me with that. And I started digging in deeper, but then, with the, always with new things, you're facing challenges. And a lot of people didn't understand the internet or e commerce and saying, well, I remember I was told why are you doing this? Because we are in academia, we do serious research. Internet is very much where people are reading news, playing games and watch porno and my response was, they're making money. They start making money on that. It means that there is an indication that money will be there. So, it was actually very difficult for a period of time because then suddenly e commerce becomes buzzword like, today where everybody's talking about AI. And just reminded me today while we were 25 years ago, when he's completely talking about commerce, cash, e card, e this, e that, it was unbelievable. And until 2000, when actually these.Com bubble burst. And that was the critical moment would help me to actually go and focus on, collect the data and then test my hypotheses, which are based very much on Schumpeter's creative destruction, which is the innovation theory established back in forties. But what is actually then, a turning moment for me during the PhD. It wasn't actually that I completed PhD, but what I learned from that. And one of the many learnings that I had was if companies, or if we want to move our life from a physical world into digital or a virtual world, we need to reimagine product, service, and experience and processes, so it is impossible to get it right if we try to literally move physical experience, like what we have here today is mimicking physical experience. Not just in the studio, but I don't think it's a great experience for audience. Same with many other things when you go shopping and whatever you do on the internet. And even worse, a lot of companies are now thinking, Oh, I will turn off my phone, a number in my call center, and I will put some internet engine that drive this and people become frustrated and that's why You can see, you can read a lot of unsatisfied customers because of the fact that companies try to save money in turning internet as a service tool, but which is not right. And I'm talking about back in 2019. So which 1999 or 2000. And we talked 24 years ago, and that was the moment that I realized that I don't want to go into e commerce and technical aspect of e commerce. I believe that reinventing experience, products and services requires innovation, and that was the moment. And then instead of actually going, being full time in academia, I continue my work at Incorporated World and then I was trying to promote innovation as part of the growth options for corporations, especially established, I started working with Macquarie bank, then St. George bank, and then end up at AMP with as executive director for growth innovation. But during that journey, I was always pushing new things to actually develop and focus on innovation. And you can imagine you always have a pushback and the company that I didn't have a lot of pushback was macquarie and no one them. Well, I was in Macquarie, I finished 2001 for four or five years and we had 900 employees. Today, they have a more than 20, 000 and that's what's telling you magnitude of the open mindedness and the kind of supporting ideas and creativity in the organization. So that was a big moment. And then another big moment was with St. George, when the learning was that. We had some growth initiatives which were quite innovative at the time, building some franchise model for lending in the states that St. George didn't have a strong presence like, Victoria, Queensland, and WA. And then we learned that when you actually do it in business case and you finish that and you got the money and you hand over to team to implement. And then because I was head of growth strategy at the time I was actually ordered the guys to do is post implementation review. And what we found that people who were implementing didn't follow exactly the requirements, essential requirements for that particular approach. And then I decided that next project I'm going to do end to end on my own and I've navigated through blank sheet of paper with a product and it was quite innovative product and right for the launch, where we launched that to Australian market and very much New South Wales market. And then acquired St. George and they established Bank of Melbourne. And that product was key feature to demonstrate how Bank of Melbourne is innovative. By kind of, launching that product in Melbourne at the time. So that was learning that how important is actually not to hand over, that to transition when you have an idea, a concept very well developed. You don't hand over that, you transition that and navigate through just having different mix of capabilities and skills that people need. Obviously, when you come to the IT implementation, you need people from IT, but you never actually lose that aspect of design and understanding end users, and then taking insights with you as long as you go through the process, including these insights into IT and technology, because very often. Technology is just doing kind of programming, hardwiring, coding, and things like that. But it is important to have in mind, even when they do that, to have in mind that they are doing that based on insights that they hear from people. And the third one is with AMP, when we actually, I had an unbelievable support. From leadership to actually establish design, the innovation function and then we actually started to really focusing entire organization on human centered design, and then have a customer centric focus to the point that we design new system and platform for financial planning called goals based advice, which is basically designed for people goals and then advisors would use digital means to actually engage with clients and customers. And then to the point that customers will have a very clear picture of what they need to talk to with financial advisors before they even joined them and before they started the first meeting. And then what actually helped us to significantly increase acquisition from the first meeting. The acquisition rate was very poor, but because of these kind of not known expectation from both sides. So what we discovered that through our insights and find out, that it is important that we prepare both supports customers as well as financial advisors before they meet. And when they meet, they have a friendly conversation and it's kind of massively increased acquisition rate for them. And then also we did a lot of insurance products, claims, it designed a new claim system. We designed new transactional banking product, which is also quite a good feature at the time. And then we got all for all of these initiatives that had a good design award there that we were the first financial services organization to get a good design award in Australia. It was probably 2014 or 15, I can't remember that. And then pinnacle of that was actually the team that we built. And then in the processes and frameworks to the point that we had a senior design, design lead sitting into investment committee and then making decisions with other kind of functions to make sure that it is customer centric that have a design kind of all these aesthetics and everything what is necessary for product or whatever we approve money for. It was, that was very important. And then the, all our designers were almost all capital expenditure projects involved designers in that work and it was always starting from problem framing, understanding the problem, and then working through end users and understanding user and go and testing that with end users and figuring out, is this the right thing? We had a lot of prototypes which didn't work, but that's the cold point. We didn't spend a lot of money on prototypes before we actually have a full blown system launch and especially for example, with these goals based advisors require a lot of technology there. And we launched that I think on 30 practices across Australia to see how it's going to work and we learned from there. And then fourth milestone is then when I realized that when we did it with AMP we had a established innovation lab once without leadership known that and then I introduce them to them. They all like love that and they gave me money to build another one innovation lab in the building. And then suddenly we got a lot of interest from other Companies like AMP, like, you know, top AEC listed company, Telstra, Qantas to Optus well many companies came to our lab and to learn what we achieved there. And we got a design Management Institute award for best practice in establishing design innovation team in an organization. And it was really at that moment was an eye opener for me and thinking probably it's now time that I spread my wings and then help other organizations in Australia to build and innovate design innovation programs. And because we talk about growth. Because innovation is creating growth. Design is helping create innovation. So it's all kind of line up with each other. And then I thought that's the way. And then that's the reason I resigned at AMP, left very comfortable position and then decided to go into challenging role in building Wave design. And eight years down the track I still believe in that. And we are, our key proposition here is to make an impact with the organizations together and which means we're not just coming in and help companies to either solve the problem or build innovation or define the growth options. We actually get their subject matter experts together with us. And then once we finish our work, we train them to the level that they can handle that. And remember what I told you, what I learned at St. George, transitioning, we upskill people to the point when we leave with all of these tested concepts or prototypes, they can continue with their IT or implementation team that without any challenges while they are doing that. So making sure that what is actually projected from customer insights and then what a desirability level is going through feasibility and viability as well. So we have a Couple of companies we did it and which means It's working and it requires leaders to recognize that and then believe in that and then the crucial thing in all of this is It is significantly less risky doing in that way, rather than saying, here is my business case, put 10 million and then have a leap of faith that will be executed. As it's actually written in business case, and I can tell you, I've been writing business cases, monitoring, and then having post implementation review many of them. And I can tell you hardly, probably only 40 percent of those business cases were executed in the way how it was actually put in the paper. And the main reason for that. Is that they all work on unvalidated assumptions and that was great challenge with this approach you validate assumptions and you go through the process and then there are a lot of theory was that say. If you make a mistake in the very early stage of idea development for every dollar invest, you'll lose 1. and I can tell you, building small paper prototype, as you know that, would cost 50, not even that. So, paper prototype will cost you 10, 000, but including people, work, and things like that. But if you go and start it working and then fail, close it to launch, it will, for every dollar you invest, you're losing 10. But if you actually finish that hard wire, put in the system and code it and everything and you launch it. For every dollar you invest, you're losing a hundred dollars. And then that's the kind of problem. And then we work on that one from day one with the leap of faith, whatever we put in the business case, we believe that we'll deliver that. But when you start launching that, that creates problem for the organization. And I remember I was listening radio and the one. GM for when the company is saying, they're asking him, what happened to your product? Why it's not going well in the market and his response was, well, I don't know. We actually run the survey and then we got a response that 80 percent of people said that they will highly likely buy the product. And that's the catch. But well, let's launch it and expect that to happen. But what people say and what people do are two different things. And that's why it's important to go through these journeys slowly and then prototype this and test these prototypes to make sure the people, what they actually saying they actually doing. Not just saying it is probably a long introduction of these, my four phases of life here in Australia, but there are significant milestones for me.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Good answer. Very comprehensive. And I like the way in which you tell the story from your beginnings and all the way through. And there's a wealth of experience in there that I'd like to go into, but it feels like maybe unifying theme across all of that is maybe to do with you more at a personal level. And I'd love to get your point of view on you as a person and what drives you forward through some of the experiences that you've come across in your career because it's not something that everyone could endure. And I wonder on a personal level, what's driving you?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Well, it's a very good question. And actually I was asked by AGSM. Four or five years ago, of my experience navigating innovation through complex organizations, I was asked to actually create a product called intrapreneurship. And then intrapreneurship is quite interesting. Not many people talking about that. So a lot of people talk about that. Entrepreneurship. And then it's very cool. Suddenly you have a startup, you have a t shirt with the name of your startup. You have a hat and you look cool. And because you're going to pitching and things like that, which is all great. And I don't want to minimize that. But the point here is we don't give the justice for people who are really fighting very hard in very complex organizations. thing you have here in startup, then you have a three or four or five people and it's very easy to make this call. But the problem here is when you have a four, five or 10, 000 people or 100, 000 people, Procter and Gamble would have a 400, 000 people globally. And that's the catch how you navigate that. Then what these companies have. This is a market reach very technology expertise, money, a lot of things. And what they have a problem is that culture that we try to actually pigeonhole people on for that function. They got a job description for, and we're saying, look, you are an accountant and all you do is just accounting, and then we're not actually helping people. To think broadly or actually start releasing their creativities because to some extent we are all born equally creative and then our lives are Push us out of creativity for example somebody born australia Would have a much better prospect for creativity than somebody who was born in developing countries for example, poor nations, like they don't have enough money, like, Afghanistan or in Africa, because surrounding is not actually there, but it doesn't limit that. In some way, they're creating some challenges with it. And that's the kind of key point now a new modern world with innovation, how we actually bring people back with creativity. Because people are They are creative to find a partner. They are creative to establish family. They are creative buying houses. They have hobbies outside the work, they are very creative people. As soon as they walk in the organization, we say, No, you are doing this. And that's it. And we think that is most efficient. It's not about efficiency, it's about effectiveness. And then it's a significant difference between these two terms. Efficiency is doing faster, no matter what. But effectiveness are you making impact? Are you creating some effect? And then we measure this value through doing faster and I remember when I started here, constantly, it's too slow, too slow. But you know, when you are going fast, then you are making a lot of mistakes. And a very long way to answer question, I was very inspired with the fact that it is important to navigate your idea or different thinking through the organization. And then as you can imagine, you don't go to CEO and say, Hey, I'm okay for innovation, I will drive this for you. You don't go there. You're actually trying to find them some, friends and champions who will actually follow you if you want to do that. And then I was surprised when I started talking to people, how many people actually turn up and say, Hey. I'm here to help call me and la la. And we actually, somehow I was lucky that I managed to get some funding to test some innovation. And fortunately, we really deliver innovation. And that was actually proven that's working. And I established this subject to actually help people, MBA students to navigate innovation to organization. And when I talked to them, my first advice for them, which is not applicable for everybody, but it was me how I look at that to the point that I was confident that it is important to focus on innovation and change and design to the point that I will challenge. Every day leadership and people in the organization to the point that they fire me. And fortunately or unfortunately, they didn't fire me. And they probably, if they fired me, I could get some redundancy and things like that. But they didn't. And then sometimes you go there and there are some ways how you challenge that. But you also have people who are. Behind you champions who are with the same mindset and same desire to change or create something new. And you can see those people that they work in company for salary, they don't own any shares in the company, but they feel excited because they're thinking I'make my life in office much more interesting rather than just focusing on what I was asked in pigeonholed for.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah, okay. it sounds like you've you've obviously taken it from your experience and you've now shared that with a number of people through your academic work and obviously you've helped a number of organizations through that. Was there something at the core of your own experience that meant that you felt either confident or brave enough to take that forward in the corporate world when you first came into it?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

I think it was well, well, a long time ago when I graduated, I accidentally introduced some policy in, I was actually graduate and then there was some changing the policy and how people are. And it was very accidentally I put like something around innovation saying we should probably reward people who are bringing new things and either generating revenue or saving the cost for the company. And then I was going around through for some mechanical engineering company and I was talking to some people and the guy was saying to me, we're having coffee. This is really crazy. We're spending this much money on this small spare part, but I can make it manual and then we will save a lot of money. And so look, did you know that we have in our policy, if you save money You will get this percentage of saved money for your, but it's a bonus. And he said, I didn't know that. And the guy started actually doing that. And then suddenly he did it and then tested and we've started actually installing this mechanical device instead of electronic device. And then it was announced that he got up. Nice bonus because he saved company probably with probably a couple of million dollars He we didn't get it two million dollars But got a nice bonus and everybody was shocked when they heard that and they said oh we didn't know this exist from that Moment everybody started doing stuff And a lot, not everybody, but people start actually experimenting, trying to figure out some things. People stay after work to do some stuff. Because in a chemical engineering, you can stay there and you can test it and you can quickly find if it's working or not. That was the moment that I realized that if you actually have some right policy and then try to actually create some mindset that people will actually, people would like to put their creativity on the table and it's one thing is money, but the other thing is even more important is recognition. And then guy, for example, that guy was talking, he become very popular in the organization and everybody was asking him, Hey, what do you think about this? What do you want to take to the point that he said, well, I can't do my work properly because people are annoying me with their questions and asking him to support them to do stuff like that. That was one of the moment and the second moment was the PhD results when I mentioned to you, when I realized that, we need to focus on innovation in order to actually transition from physical world into virtual world, whatever we want to do, we can't transition everything and then as we say, we can't actually have a perform all jobs Remotely, you have to go physically in the office or, factory or whatever. Same with physical versus versus digital. There are two moments well defining moments in my career that I realized how important is to focus on innovation. And that will give you growth. Like, that's the whole point. Sooner you start doing that, the better chance you have for growth.

Chris Hudson:

A lot of people ask, where to start in a sense, and I'm hearing from your story that And I can relate to this totally as well. It feels like almost a constraint. So in the case, in the story that you described where there was a bonus involved if somebody could say the company money, that was written down in a policy somewhere and that was made known to you. And then obviously that became a thing. And I wonder where the constraint, because it's so present. In a lot of large organizations and corporate government, wherever you work, but it feels like constraint can obviously be a starting point for what to push against and what to work within what's been your observation around working with restrictions. In that sense.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Yeah. It's a very good question. I think as I mentioned earlier, and I was actually just finished writing paper for a service design network, a touch point. They have a published paper, how to establish design service design function in complex organization. And one of the first point I was making and saying, you need to demonstrate the value of that. And then demonstrating value, you don't need to have an entire board. support recognition. You don't need to have a leadership recognition. You just need to have a one enthusiastic leader with small budget willing to make the difference. The catch is to find that person. And once you find that person as usually you don't spend a lot of money to create movement. And then you'd set with small amount, you demonstrate that if it can create value and then you start working on it. So one example from when one of the companies that I work for, we found that we are sending 50 cents or 2 check to customers while processing that check cost 20. And then, you know what, we talk about millions of customers sending these checks. And then it's very well known fact that 30 percent of addressees of Banking or financial services, customers are wrong because people are moving and they don't update addresses or they're changing other things. And then you get these mailed back and then you need to send again and we talk about 5 cents, 20 two,$2,$10 below$10 and nonsense. So we found solution for that and we first realized this is really problem. And then, we had a campaign called Done Things We Ask you to do. And then people say, this is really dumb and people saying, and we changed it. And guess what? We kind of immediately saved 600, 000 a year, just not doing that. And then when we went and asked finance guys to actually put these numbers together and projections and they put on and they went to leadership and say, well, it's really actually 600, 000. That means that we contribute the bottom line. And then people say, Oh, really interesting. Or what can we do more of these things? And then suddenly things started moving. It's this very small thing, which wasn't actually, didn't cost us much money to implement at all. Just change the policy. Then just inform when one of these checks that you are sending informed and that you will not send check again. So you will have some other options for them.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. I think this is where innovation obviously gets a bad rap sometimes because it's considered to be superfluous. It's over and above the means of the core business. And it's usually associated with something that's net new to what that business is delivering as a new venture or new pursuit in some way. But what you're also saying is that, incremental innovation or, even something that's a bit reductionist in how it's focused, because it's taking something, simplifying it, make it more effective, not efficient. Yeah, but efficient as well, probably and it's just about focusing in on the right things and fixing them. And it's more about solutioning in that space.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Spot on Chris and several times I've been invited to CEO Institute to talk to actually have a innovation workshop with CEOs non-competing ceo. They have their cohorts and every month they met together and they discuss different topics and themes, and one of them was innovation. And I had a one slide, which I was trying to explain to them that a lot of people, I've found working with Wave and talking to leaders, a lot of leaders are saying, we have a problem, we don't know how to define innovation. And this is a serious problem because when you're sitting in a leadership group, everybody has their own definition of innovation. And it's not helpful. And then what I was saying that innovation, a lot of people mistakenly believe that innovation must be jaw dropping, like something, wow, it's all significant. And I have a picture moving from analog phone to a smartphone, which is really yes, revolutionary, absolutely. But I have another picture in, in the cosmetics retail shop where you have a shopping bags, sorry, shopping cards with white and black color. And the white color was saying take this shopping cart if you need assistance. Black color was saying, take this one if you don't need assistance. Yeah. So, and then when you look at that saying, well, so what, but you know, how often you actually annoyed in the shop, you want to do something on your own, you browsing around and somebody is coming and say, can I help you? Because people don't know if you need help or not. When you take one of those colors, people have a very clear picture. if you need help or not, and that's innovation too, that's small thing didn't cost you just ordering shopping carts, two different colors. It costs you marginal. funding just to have a different colors and that's it. But you're helping people and your staff internally enormously and creating pleasant experience and that's service innovation.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. So it doesn't have to be this big, million, million, million dollar. Arm of the company and there's a head of innovation and they only got sort of VIP projects. It can actually be very day to day. We've been talking about innovation. We've also talked a bit about entrepreneurship. I'm curious as to, what you teach, but also what your view is around where we've got a lot of intrapreneurs listening to the show is about that what are we saying people should be focusing on in their roles to get some of the impacts that you've been describing, do you think?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Yeah. It's very interesting you mentioned this entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship and it's interesting tension. And then well, I've been witnessing this hype about entrepreneurship and startups and when I worked in large organization, they're saying, well, we need to actually invest in startups. And I said, why do you need to invest in startups? And the answer was, oh, we need to learn how they come with the newer things, how they navigate things, how they build product service systems and things like that. And I said, hang on a minute. Like, you're telling me that you are going to learn from five people, organizations had 10, 000 employees, massive leadership, and you're going to learn how five people navigate that without anything, and you have everything. And then these two worlds are not comparable. And that was one of the key challenges that I had personally. The other thing, what I realized that a lot of companies are trying to avoid the inevitable repositioning, then they need to transform themselves to be more nimble, more agile, more innovative, more intrapreneur based and things like that. Then more creative. When you have these in creativity expressing the organization, and then after that makes sense to say, Hey, in my kind of concept that I have here, I need these three aspects to buy and let's search the market, find the startup and see how we can actually slot in a startup into it. But in startup will actually work nicely. If your organization is prepared to receive that startup at the moment, what you have is actually big companies are just finding interesting startup. They swallow this up and they kill it.

Chris Hudson:

Oh, I

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

I haven't seen successful integration of startup in Australian corporate world.

Chris Hudson:

Ever.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

If you have seen them, tell me which one is that. And even worse neobanking, and government is saying we will establish neobanking because we want to strengthen competition in banking sector. As soon as you have a startup started creating interesting ideas and creating new things, the big banks just follow that and the government approved it. And what kind of competition are we talking here? And then immediately they swallowed the startup AI, we know a few of the banking startups are swallowed by big banks. And because government allowed it. Instead of actually strengthening regional banks or allowing them all, leave these new banks to build and create bit among themselves or something like that. We just follow them and then what happened, you integrate, if you look UBank and NAB. What is there is Ubank brand, everything else is NAB and then NAB's culture, they're revealed and that's it. You

Chris Hudson:

can't do much about it. Can't do much about that. There's a ferocious commercial engine, obviously that's driving a lot of decisions and I'm wondering if that's the driver, to what extent we feel like we can control it or take a sidestep here or there to bring things into a new perspective. I feel like sometimes that's the status quo is immovable and you're often trying to step either around it, but you're still having to deliver against the target that you've been set because that's the broader commercial goal. So. Yeah, it feels like as an intrapreneur, within a company of 10, 000 people, what is your remit in terms of influence and how can you do that in a way that feels fulfilling to you in a way that you feel you're contributing, have you got any perspectives on that?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Yeah. So we, when we work with one of the companies. We had a great, great concept and everybody agreed that's fantastic. And then because the tradition, which because of the legacy in that company, it was really hard, almost impossible to break through, to actually implement this innovation. And at one point we have a team, internal team, very enthusiastic doing stuff. And they, people are really. And I had a meeting with leadership and I suggested, I said, look, why don't we actually create startup from this company, from this project, and then offer people redundancy who working there and ask them to put this redundancy as a kind of in capital in the new company. And we invest into this as well. And then. People will be employed by the startup and they will own partially that startup together with that organization. And I thought that's potentially good model to test and see. And then in the end, when it's actually successful, if it's proven in the market, then you bring all of them back. To the company and then all people who are there, they will be really familiar with the environment with people, how they work and things like it would be much easier to integrate that into existing business, and to my surprise was actually, when I asked why not, answer was we want actually our company brand to be seen as innovative brand. Rather than actually have a lot of running start, but then in the end, we didn't implement it. We didn't actually put it in the market because of the constraints of the complexity of the organization and things like that. And didn't end up seeing and as innovative company as well. So it's hard and we need probably more leaders who are keen to take this risk and say. I'm going to do this and then we'll see how it happens.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah, leadership was a point I was going to raise probably because, the leaders that are making the decisions at C- level now were not always at that level, obviously. And so what conditions do you think we're setting up in terms of those that are rising up and emerging leaders? Do you feel like the conditions for intrapreneurship are right for the next wave of leaders to emerge and to be able to make those decisions that you were describing with a bit more conviction, a bit more courage?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

I think there are multiple factors here. And then I look at that from several perspectives and first, in my view, and the biggest challenge we have is that we are so focused on digging the dirt and shipping that overseas and mining sector, which is fantastic. Well, it's a point to say we are fortunate that we have this is such a rich in mineral resources that we can live on that, but they will not be here forever. That's number one. And number two, these resources should be boost for our thinking in the way where we go. But we actually have opposite situation. A lot of people are happy where they are now. And we are probably victims of our own growth. Because we had like 27 or 30 years of unprecedented growth, but never had a recession. and then the leaders are saying, why are you asking me to change something? Why would I change? And it's working. I'm fine, I'm happy. But if you look at just one sector, like manufacturing sector, I'm helping these guys from AU Manufacturing Media, we help them to establish this campaign to select 50 most innovative manufacturers in Australia three years ago. And then it's really going well, we did a pro bono work helping them to actually, because I'm really passionate about manufacturing because I believe that manufacturing in Australia, it could be very advanced and because we have expertise and we have a universities very well, very good reputation globally. And we can actually create a manufacturing environment where we're just doing some highly And smart manufacturing outcomes. And if you look at that, for example, I'm not sure if it's back in the nineties, that manufacturing contributed 12 percent to Australian GDP. Today, it contributes only 6%. And I'm really glad that government is actually having this what I call this National Reconstruction Fund which is really boosting this innovation in manufacturing in Australia and then future of Australia made, which is another very good, and if you look at that between these two big initiatives, we are talking about. 25, 30 billion government money, but he put actually then private money and other companies that should create massive environment. But probably with these initiatives, big initiatives, it takes time because after many, many years thinking, well, we are happy with the resources and we never leveraged a mining boom back in 2000, early 2000. And then build this environment where we have a fantastic creative environment where people start moving on it. And that's the number one problem in culture. And then government started now to boosting that thinking. But, you know, the state environment in Australia and corporate world is that. Boards in many cases are very conservative. And if you look at that, when I finished my PhD, I was thinking, I will do a Australian Institute of Company Directors course, and I would like to be non executive director or a board member And then I completed this course and I realized, I was thinking I would push innovation, I would create a thinking and things like that. But I realized that it's nothing to do with innovation. It's all about a compliance and make sure that everything is in order from compliance perspective. Otherwise you are at risk. And your assets are at risk and things like that. And I was thinking, no, no, I'm too loose to be a board member. And that's the problem with our board culture If you compare board culture in America and here, you can see the difference. Like, you know, entire board culture is on entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs. While in Australia is more looking for compliance, follow up what law is saying, and if it's that thick, move on, tick a box, and we move on. So that's the second impendment slowing us down. And the third one is very much leadership. And then when you u look at a lot of surveys, as you can imagine. And so one of them was saying, I think BCG did this while ago, interviewing 3000 CEOs globally. And they asked them what are the Three most biggest priorities on your agenda. And then 75 percent of leaders, innovation was top three priorities on their agenda. But when they ask how committed are they to innovation? Only half of them committed and committed to innovation means. I do have a framework and strategy how to do that. I have a very clear roadmap to the implemented. I have a processes, methods, tools, people governance, funding KPIs. I have that in place, and if I have that in place, I'm committed leader. And as I said half of those leaders, and I believe in Australia is less than half are committed to innovation. They talk about innovation, but there is no commitment, you need to demonstrate that. It's one thing you are going out in your town hall discussion and say, we would like, we have to be innovative company, blah, blah, blah. But then when people are asking how much money you dedicate to innovation and say, we will find out. Which means I'm not committed. And that's the serious problem. But for that requires leadership mindset shift and what we found, it's very interesting. Actually, when we have a discussion internally, my team, and we often talk about who is our competitor, and then some of my team members would say this company, that company and things like that. And I was telling them, you know what guys. None of those companies are competitors. In my view, leadership mindset is our key competitor. Because the question here is how we convince leader. That it is important to think some things in different way and take your business in different way. And then not many leaders will do it, but when we find that leader and then when you start working to them, it's kind of heaven, like, you know, you just enjoy doing that. And currently, we are working for your clients. The leaders are absolutely dedicated for it. Yeah. And you will see, I can't tell the names of the companies, but you will see the impact. I don't want to say yes, we are helping them, but it's not about us. It's about leaders. And if you have a leader who is keen and then they will exhaust everything from us and saying, give me this, give me that, what about this, what about that, move this, move that. And you will see the impact. We already have seen few companies that we work with very ambitious and open minded leaders and we can see the impact.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. So I think it's around. Obviously we started the interview with really an interesting perspective on who you surround yourself with. And you as an entrepreneur have decisions to make in terms of your career, who do you align to, who do you avoid? And it's the same with social circles, but it feels like there's a real. Importance around where to place your effort and almost hooking your carriage to the right train because if you don't, then, you're down a path of either staying the same or into a leadership situation, which probably tips either towards more conservatism. So for the intrapreneurs out there, I'm thinking that, as a tangible piece of advice, it's really around assessing. Have the conditions around you and the environment around you and understanding whether the leadership is there to make you feel comfortable, to push you, to inspire you, to question what you're doing, or is it there to keep you down and in one place? And I feel like that is a good starting point, but a lot of people out there will feel quite powerless in this situation. Yeah.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

But I can tell you, Chris, for your audience, tricks that I use. It's not just accidental kind of thing. So there are well defined approaches how you do that. So one of them is prioritizing stakeholders and then, or influences well, whichever way you want to put it, but when you prioritize them and you have some certain methods, how you do that. And once you have a clear picture, who are your essential influencers or essential stakeholders then you actually create some communication and interact with them. And they don't need to be told that they are essential influencer or stakeholders, but you would have a clever strategy and you communicate some things to them on regular basis. So for example, you might say, Chris, Is kind of, driving this business and he's key influencers for potential innovation, but he doesn't know that he has that potential or he can drive business in that direction. And then one simple trick could be, I will just send Chris one article, which is talking about innovation from prestige journal or whatever, written in simple language and then say, Hey, Chris, well, look at this. If you want to have a chat over coffee and see how do you feel about it? And suddenly, you started. And some people will say, we'll just delete. But you know, true people, true leaders will start actually thinking, you spark them with something and they will jump on it. Some of them, probably 80 percent of them will jump if you just go dedicate, but it's not just, here is the article, read it. If you actually put a little bit more effort and explain why is that important for him. For Chris, if I put it and say, Hey, I would say, Chris, look at this and I think from your perspective, it will be for this and this and that. And then you can't actually get an email and just say, well, I would delete this. But you will go and say, Hey, I'm just curious because he was actually thinking about my business and connection to this article. That's one small thing, but let alone bringing friend and say. Hey, I'm bringing in person who is really expert in innovation. Who wants to come? A brown bag lunch. Come to see what people are talking. And then you start actually sparking slowly and creating, and then I bet after that session, you will have a three or four champions coming to you and say, Hey, Do you need help? And this is kind of your creative movement. Sounds like, voluntary movement, but yet if you don't have a leader who is strong, you can go bottom up. And then ideally you would have a leader who would say, Hey, here is my strategy, my view, how I do that roadmap. Here's the money. Here's the people do it. But if you don't, and if you still burst on creativity and keen on creativity. There are ways to do that.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that it's also like running a lot of experiments and almost pre typing what you think the response is going to be. You know, the situation that you described, I had it in a previous company. I tried to invite, I think I've invited one leader to an event that I thought would be really exciting for them. They were not interested in that. I tried another one where I was sending stuff to the CEO and you can almost get an immediate read. And I think it's almost like a bit of a research technique for an intrapreneur because you can really sound out based on that response. Like you say, the three people that turn up with their lunch and listen to you or your friend talk for an hour, that's going to give you a sense as to how much engagement or interest there is really quickly. So I think that's very practical. Thank you.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

That's right. But look, there is no written rules. There are some techniques. How to do that. And then you try to navigate that and influence other people, but very often it's really dependent on enthusiasm. As I said, if you don't have a leader and you don't want to give up on the organization. And I told you, I decided to push boundaries to the point that they fired me and they didn't find me and they lack actually quite opposite. They like it and although it was annoying for them at the beginning and thinking like, what this guy wants to do with, you know, clear. And then suddenly when things started getting clearer, when we announced that we have a couple of million dollars contribution to bottom line from these programs and they all started getting very serious about it.

Chris Hudson:

That's a good point as well. How comfortable do you think pay you? Entrepreneurs should be with pushing things so far that they would get fired. Do you think that would be an expectation or do you think that doesn't?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

No, no, that I had a strong push when I was talking to my MBA students and say Well, you must be paying your mortgage, you paid more your mortgage, your family, probably kids went out or things like that, and that's how you're thinking. But it is not. This is more about my confidence that I believe in that it will work. But even if I lose job here, I will find job somewhere else. That's more about me. Like, you know, you have an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur is very confident, saying, I'm going to actually bring this idea, and I'm pushing that. even if it's not working, people are pushing hard. And we know that. The biggest problem with entrepreneur is that people fell in love with their ideas and then they can't actually see it if it's not working, if it's not actually solving problem that people are looking for. Similar here in entrepreneurship is actually you need to love it and you need to actually be enthusiastic about that to the point. That's so what? If you know all of these techniques, how it works, how you engage people, how you engage followers or influencers or stakeholders, how you navigate your colleagues around this looking for funding and things like that. Well, that's the kind of way that will give you comfort that wherever you go, you will succeed. And then you just need to find leaders who will actually support you. As simple as that, and that was my belief and probably overconfident potentially. I don't know. I didn't test it. I would tell you a different story if I test it, if they fired me and I couldn't find the job. So who knows?

Chris Hudson:

And you can test that as early as an interview. You can put yourself forward to that extent to really see what response you get even at that stage, to know whether the organizational fit will be there or not. Yeah. That's

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

right. That's right. That's right. To be honest when I was at AMP, when we started actually getting a lot of big guns in the town, coming to see that and then so all senior executives and they would say, oh wow, this is really fantastic. I got a call from Headhunter saying, well, these guys want to talk to you. But I didn't, didn't want to go because I found these leaders

Chris Hudson:

Yeah.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Buying in and I was thinking, well, I don't want to go until I exhaust my old options and I did.

Chris Hudson:

Sounds like the right decision, and then you were able to obviously move on and up and see what happened after that. So fantastic. Hey maybe we finish on one question, which is probably still around intrapreneurship, but it's also maybe pointing to the future and where you see things going. Is there anything in that area that you want to just share with the audience before we close?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

I think the technology. It's always double edged sword, sometimes he's playing good kind of role. Sometimes he's playing very annoying role. But I think in this particular situation is that we will actually technology will finally I wouldn't like to say force it, force us, but actually we'll push us into territory that we need to think more creatively in the larger organizations and because we're getting to the point that wasting a lot of time investing in technology that are not actually serving purpose or don't have a end user experience, which is quite Annoying. And you have a lot of news in the papers these days, people aren't happy. If you look at these superannuation companies, that you have ASIC is forcing superannuation companies, CBUS to actually get serious about customer experience. So and how you get there is if you have a creative people actually thinking about customer experience. So more and more, those things, and then these renewable energies and things like that, it's actually pushing us more and more that those big companies need to get serious. They can't rely on small startups anymore. They need to actually transform themselves and get serious about this innovation and the program that they are working. The situation that people are just calling innovation for innovation's sake, but more and more companies and leaders, I can see they are getting behind that. And they really would like to, and then in today's social media, like, the latest I exposed, you can't pretend anymore that you are, I'm innovative guy, but if you don't see in the companies, people will call this out and customers will call this out.

Chris Hudson:

And

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

there are a lot of things in my view and as I'm linking up with the smart manufacturing, it will be inevitable. If we want to have a smart manufacturing in Australia, you need to build, build the kind of profile and capabilities of intrapreneurs, not entrepreneurs. Well, you can have entrepreneurs in absolutely, but it usually, the Steve Jobs was saying. The reason why he was fired from Apple in the first place was because he didn't recognize that he is not actually leading startup. He didn't recognize that he's leading very serious corporation, big corporation. He was in mindset that he's still running startup and he was making a decision on his own. He's doing some stuff, go at this way and things like that. And then when he pushed out from Apple, then he realized, he is the one of the key kind of advocates of intrapreneurship because he said every entrepreneur, when they reach some certain scale, They need to shift into intrapreneur, which is much more complex job that you need to navigate through this process. So the more people we have, and I can see there are courses in Australia in intrapreneurship courses are people are running. And and then I think the term intrapreneurship might be quite clumsy because it's very often people mix up with entrepreneurship. When I say I'm an intrapreneur, I say, Oh yeah, you have a startup. So no, no intrapreneur. And they say, Oh, okay, I got it. So it's confusing this now. A lot of people called it corporate innovation or something like that. So it might be better distinction between entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. But I think I think you can, you might say I'm, and. Corporate corporate entrepreneur. So anyway, so quite confusing, but I think the future here is we will need more of those people in corporate world, which will create strong link between business and technology, and then which will work together in the function of end users. And I really like to finish this on a very interesting quote from one American football coach when he was actually talking to his team. And he was saying the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is in that little extra. And that's what actually innovation and intrapreneurs will create ordinary companies into extraordinary.

Chris Hudson:

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dr. Munib and you've brought a whole wealth of stories and perspectives into the podcast episode today. And I just can't thank you enough for coming onto the show and for sharing those with us and the audience, obviously. So thank you so much we'll leave it there. If people want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch with you?

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

LinkedIn or email me at munib@wave.Design and any time and probably LinkedIn might be the best channel to do it. And Chris, thank you very much for inviting me and I can see you are experiencing similar things, what we have been experiencing, which is very interesting. And I hope we'll, at some point we will start cooperating or collaborating and things like that. But I really hope that. This story to your audience will resonate with your audience, and I hope we will have more intrapreneurs in the corporate world.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah, definitely. I'm with you on that. Thanks so much, Dr. Munib. Thank you. We'll leave it there.

Dr.Munib Karavdic:

Thank you. All the best.