Ideagen Radio
Ideagen Radio
2025 Global Leadership Summit: Ed Soo Hoo Talks Now, New, and Next
What if the difference between stalled change and a moonshot is your mindset? We sit down with Lenovo’s Ed Soo Hoo to unpack why the best leaders aren’t defined by titles or toolkits but by authenticity, service, and the courage to “blink first.” From four decades across startups and global enterprises, Ed maps a clear strategy for building momentum: protect the core, stretch into adjacencies, and seed the future—running all three in parallel like NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Along the way, he shows how cross-trained teams, shared deliverables, and the right “boosters” turn vision into velocity.
We dig into the Sears cautionary tale and the JFK playbook to illustrate how over-focusing on the present can cost you the future, while smart portfolio design can unlock outsized value. Then we zoom out to two audacious, practical ideas tailored for the AI era: Energy-as-a-Service to stabilize growth amid constrained grids, and a national mental fitness initiative to rebuild resilience, attention, and judgment at scale. Ed’s take is refreshingly human—technology should serve people, not the other way around—and he makes a compelling case for reviving face-to-face connection and embracing serendipity as a catalyst for innovation.
If you’re navigating rapid change, this conversation offers a blueprint you can use today: adopt a servant mindset, structure work across Now–New–Next, rotate talent to compound learning, and tell stories that move people from compliance to commitment. Ready to lead with courage and design for the long game? Follow, share with a colleague who needs this spark, and leave a review with the idea you’ll put into action this week.
Welcome to Idea Gen TV. I am honored and privileged, as always, to have with us the great Ed Suhu, CTO for Global Accounts, Innovation and Transformation Executive at Lenovo. Ed, welcome.
SPEAKER_01:George, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:You know, Ed, it's a transformational moment in time, as you and I have discussed in detail pre-interview. And what a moment to be alive on this planet with all of the exciting technological advancement that's literally happening second by second, millisecond by millisecond. Ed, you've spent over 40 years, hard to believe when you're only 40, but 40 years leading innovation in technology. Ed, what does effective leadership look like today in this fast-changing planet?
SPEAKER_01:You know, uh thanks, George. Leadership is is kind of an interesting word, uh, leader, etc., right? And I find it that over the you know four decades, it's better than saying 40 years, but four four decades plus, I found that leaders are almost not a title. It's actually a mindset, and they come out of nowhere. I and to me, over the last you know, few years, it's in watching all of these phenomenal, fast-paced changes. And it's not just technology, right? It's societal changes, it's multiple things that are happening. And great leaders stand up and stand out. And to me, that's where the game is played, where you're authentic, uh, you have humility, you basically look out for others. And I think a great leader is always about having a server mindset, and when you do, that's when leadership really shines.
SPEAKER_00:You know, mindset, uh, servant leader mindset, so critical, and it's so interesting that you would choose that as the example of what effective leadership looks like being a leader yourself.
SPEAKER_01:It's fascinating because you know, some leaders they have the qualifications, the credentials, right? And they go through those qualifications and credentials through tool sets, skill sets. Great leaders have mindsets, and that's the difference. It's not the the background or the school you went to or all those things, it's the ability to almost react in a kind of a realistic manner, and it doesn't have titalism, it doesn't have all the things that sometimes we get trapped in by.
SPEAKER_00:I love the way you you've uh you know landed on great leaders have mindsets. Seems elementary, doesn't it? But it's so profound, simple yet profound. And so that lesson is something that we will take away right at the onset of this interview. Good. Ed, you often talk about helping clients think about the now, the new, and the next. How can organizations stay innovative without losing focus on what really matters right now?
SPEAKER_01:This is the hardest part, I think. And as we think about now, our current business, business as usual, what I call KTLO, keep the lights on. No matter what, you got to keep that going. At the same time, given what we touched on earlier, George, things are moving so fast, changing so quickly, dynamically, globally, geopolitically, etc., we have to be more adaptive, more agile. And that means taking who we are, what we do, using that as our baseline and our strength, and then to do kind of a yoga-like approach, downward dog and stretch. Stretching, I tried yoga once, downward dog hurts like a son of a gun. What I found though is that the more you do it, the better you are able to extend capabilities, mindsets, discipline, and new opportunities. And I think this is where the game is played with now to move to new, to have adjacencies, extensions without breaking the now. And then to learn from both of those to go to the next. And a great example of that is was shared in the book uh by Adam Grant, Think Again, where he talked about Sears Robuck being a retail giant, and they actually dabbled with some investments of uh Discover Card, All-State Insurance, Dean Whitter, and Caldwell Banker Real Estate. And that portfolio, I think in the early 90s, was valued at about 16 billion dollars, not bad. But then Sears ran into the headwinds of a lot of competition. So they went back to their paradigm, their mindset of uh who they were, who they thought they were, which is the now. So they said, I'm a retailer. So they divested themselves of all those assets because it wasn't core to their business, core to their paradigm. And what was fascinating, and you think about it, those four assets today is about a value of about a half a trillion dollars. What some companies miss is by focusing way too much on now, a little bit on new, and not even contemplating next. You have to do all three at the same time, and that's building platforms, teams, and mindsets for each of those vectors. And that's what happened when John F. Kennedy said in May of 61, we're gonna land a man on the moon and bring him back before the end of the decade. He said that in May of 1961. Russia had Sputnik, Leica the Dog, and Yuri the cosmonaut, and we had Bubkus. So he had to pull together the best of the fresh eyes and wise eyes from NASA and engineers, designers, architects, you name it, they were all there to come together to create now, new next. And they were called Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, all at the same time. That's how you move from the proclamation of May 61, Man to the Moon and Back, February 20, 1962, John Glenn Friendship 7, and July 20, 1969, Aldrin and Armstrong landed on the moon and came back. Is tying all those three missions now new next at the same time? That is the new criteria for businesses today.
SPEAKER_00:Incredible. Uh, with moonshots and how that all came together in the analogy with what's happening today.
SPEAKER_01:It's fascinating, George, because the program was about providing the mission, right? Moon and back. But to do that, you had to do that in stages, and each of the stages had to deliver propulsion, navigation, and life support. All three missions had to do that, and then they used the same astronauts, all cross-trained across all three missions. That is the magic. Because the astronauts could actually go Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, they were all cross-trained, they all had the same kind of deliverables. The differences were the boosters. Atlas and Redstone repurposed military rockets for Mercury, Titan II for Gemini, and Saturn V. How do you look at the boosters in your strategy of now, new, and next to get you where you want to go?
SPEAKER_00:Exactly right. So profound, Ed. You've shared ideas like energy as a service, in addition to flexible energy solutions. What steps do you believe that are really critical and necessary to turn these ideas into actual real-world impact?
SPEAKER_01:To me, it's like a business coming up with a grand idea, and it's always a chicken or the egg, right? Uh, who goes first, who pays for it? Like it's what happened to the smart chip for credit cards. Um, everyone kept saying, well, uh, is the merchant going to pay for it? Is the bank going to pay for it? Is the user and there's this uh this stalling mentality, right? We're waiting for someone else to blink first. And I think I advocate that this energy as a service is to change the way we look at energy, the way we store it, collect it, manage it, and reuse it in an ongoing basis because we're running into an energy shortage. We have a massive demand for data centers because of the AI phenomenon. The thing is, there's not enough energy to really do that. So, how do we sort of look at energy as a service as a public and private enterprise and or project that we can pull together? And this is what I kind of shared with a number of folks is how do we pull this off so that every business can have energy as a service to collect, store, manage energy. And perhaps at midnight every night, all excess energy is sent back to the grid to be reshared, reused, and repurposed. It's really taking advantage of some very interesting scenarios of the idea, but then to have public and private partnerships really drive it. And I I think this whole blinksmanship is where we fall short.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and in such a great point, because in addition to that, you've suggested a modern mental fitness initiative similar to JFK's physical fitness campaign. Ed, what would that look like? And why do you believe it's so important today?
SPEAKER_01:So I'm gonna read from John F. Kennedy's uh he believed that a nation's strength was tied to the vigor of its citizens, and he stated a country is only as strong as its citizens. And he said, I think mental and physical health and mental and physical vigor go hand in hand. This is the time. I think we've walked away from a lot of things, and technology has been a boon and a bane at the same time, and I think it's time for us to not so much walk away from technology, but to rethink how we use it. And I want to have technology help us become mentally fit with certain types of programs and um insights and perspectives, and it's like exercising, you just have to keep doing it every day. And uh a really good exercise regimen is that you have to confuse your body so that you have the kind of growth that you want, right? There is uh there's all sorts of other philosophical scenarios like Pilates and so on, weight training, cross-training. All of these things are going to be part of what I call a mental fitness regimen that I would love to propose to companies to go to, let's say, RFK and Health and Human Services. What does this program really look like, public and private? How do we get this into K through 12, like John F. Kennedy did? He gamified physical fitness, mental uh uh and health and vigor. I think we need to go back to that. I think we have to go back to humanness or humane capabilities to prepare for these journeys that uh we're gonna be experiencing over the last over the next two or three decades. And relying on technology alone to get us there will not be enough. I believe that mental fitness is the key to our strength as a country, as a society, and we owe it to everyone to kind of prepare for this. And I I would love to have a conversation with organizations in the government, uh, with RFK to you know take what he uh his uh uncle did, JFK, for the physical fitness side. Let's let's focus on the mental fitness. And I think that's to me, that's a phenomenal investment for us to kind of consider.
SPEAKER_00:So profound, it's it's really difficult to contemplate you know the impact that you're describing. It's it's just that um impactful.
SPEAKER_01:And and yeah, it's important because I want it to be part of another uh initiative, which is to go back into the world again, be face-to-face, get off of all of these, you know, uh engines that we use and rely on to help us think we're communicating and connecting. We're not as much as we can and should. Face to face, I think is really important again. We not we have to go, uh, like you mentioned about your grandfather, go outside, find me. I will, I'll go outside. I want to find people, I want to have fun conversations again, and to rediscover almost childlike conversations. And then, you know, uh, you know, you my title is chief technology officer. I'm really not a technologist, I'm more of a uh provocateur, and it comes from being able and willing to be an accidentalist. I love accidental conversations, and this is where things uh are I learned from stretching, uh learning uh new ideas, concepts, and I think this is what we should be thinking about going forward. We need technology, but I want technology to serve humanity, not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00:Ed, again, profound perspective. And so after decades, decades of working with and across the startup spectrum, in addition to global companies, what Ed is the biggest lesson you have learned about leading people and driving meaningful, lasting change?
SPEAKER_01:What I found is something I've been advocating for a few uh decades, and that is to blink first. In negotiation schools, they teach you whoever blinks first gives up a price, whatever, loses. I absolutely disagree with that. I think if you really want to kick off something with someone or something about something, you give up something of value. See how they react to it. And then once the once you see the reaction, you'll know where they where their heads are at, and how do you start to you know reposition or rethink. And I think this is the key uh for around you know, a number of conversations I had with a number of folks. The other is try to become a great listener, and from that, turn that into becoming a great storyteller. We have so many people who rely on all of the frameworks of different types of uh capabilities and methodologies and the like, but they couldn't tell a story to save their life. And it's storytellers that move people, change people, to get people to stand up and rise and to become a great storyteller, to be able to listen and to blink first. I think those are the three criteria that really helped me as I expanded uh a lot of conversations all across the world, regardless of time, place, or language. It's universal, right? And when you start thinking about it, small things matter. It's not a big bang, it's not a big thing that you come up with and so on. It's the small things that matter, much like Einstein's magical formula that he loved, which is compound interest. Imagine contributing day in and day out, small things, and over time it increases value. And to me, every day that I get up, I always make sure that I give something away. And I never expect anything back. As a matter of fact, I I never ask for anything back, and I think that's really important for us to have as a mindset is to be a giver, to be a listener, and to be a great storyteller.
SPEAKER_00:Great leaders have mindsets, not toolkits, mindsets, mindsets, and it's important.
SPEAKER_01:You know, when Patton was talking to his team, how to get ready, he got he said, train like you fight, and fight like you train. There is no difference. This is life. Live it, drive it, believe it. And when you do, great things happen.
SPEAKER_00:Ed Suhu, CTO, Global Accounts Innovation, and Transformation Executive at Lenovo. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your inspiration, and most importantly, thank you for all you're doing to impact the planet.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, George. I appreciate your giving me the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:How can folks find out more about you and your work at Lenovo?
SPEAKER_01:You know, the best way is uh LinkedIn. So just find me on LinkedIn, just type in my name, Ed Su Hu, and Su Who is two two separate words, and you'll find me. And by all means, if you have a chance, um link to me. Um, I always take calls, I always blink first, and I'll always wax poetic. So more than happy to uh answer any um request to link and happy to chat anytime.
SPEAKER_00:We'll close again with Ed's quote Great leaders have mindsets, not toolkits. Ed Suhu. Thank you so very much. Thanks, George.
SPEAKER_01:Really appreciate it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.