Today we’re speaking of all things sweet in life, with French trained pastry chef, and Group Head Pastry Chef at Black Star Pastry, Arnaud Vodounou.

Arnaud describes how his six year long training in Paris, covering all the basics of pastry making, gave him the foundation to be confident, flexible and creative in his craft today. A kind of intensive training that is rarely seen today.

Lars Behrendt joins us for this episode of Looking Outside, discussing the bureaucracy, ego and over-perfection that gets in the way of great innovating … in other words, Innovation Bullshit.

Jo and Lars discuss why innovation without execution is bullshit, and why no one but the customer is the real expert in what a good idea is. Besides, as Lars says, real market feedback is the fun part of innovating. He makes this shift in process successful only by getting absolute commitment upfront in a fast, iterative process where skepticism is left at the door and a safe bubble is erected with risk-averse people unwelcome. Why? Ultimately, people in the process who are ‘trying to find a problem, will create a problem.’

In Episode 3 of Looking Outside we’re joined by the very pragmatic and undoubtedly original Costas Papaikonomou, Co-Founder of Happen Group, a global innovation agency, and author of the Grumpy Innovator book series.

Together Jo and Costas explore the pitfalls of innovating in a silo, the risk of disrupting your own brands through transformation and the benefits of gaining insight from other categories.

To kick off Looking Outside we’re joined by talented and bold marketer Rose Jia, Head of Growth Marketing at Amazon Grocery.

Together Jo and Rose explore the tried and true practice of Marketing, and how organizations can stretch beyond familiar predefined pathways (and results) from marketing by employing a new mindset.