36: Tesla - How to Shatter Myths and Realities of Innovation

Today’s episode features one of Tesla’s top materials experts, Michael Pilliod, who runs the glass division. We’ll explore how a globally watched “failure” became a learning experience that would change everything. He even brought the steel snowball to the show [watch the YouTube broadcast of the podcast] as a lasting memento of that moment. Some are wondering, “How does this guy still have a job?” Would you survive that public misstep?  We explore how the culture of Tesla allows for very public triumphs and defeats and urges innovators to keep going. Mike’s background as a Product Designer at Apple through the age of the iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch as well as an Engineer at GE prepared Michael for that moment, and the ongoing successes that follow. 

Om Podcasten

Did you ever wonder how an innovation got to its finish line? How innovators saw the future, made a product, and created change – in our world and in their companies? I did. Innovation Storytellers invites changemakers to describe how they created their innovation and just as important – THE STORIES – that made us fall in love with them. Come learn how great innovations need great stories to make them move around the world and how to become a better storyteller in the process. I’m Susan Lindner, the Innovation Storyteller. But I wasn’t always. I’ve been a wannabe revolutionary, an epidemiologist at the CDC and an AIDS educator in the brothels of Thailand helping to turn former sex workers into entrepreneurs. Trained as an anthropologist and the Founder of Emerging Media, I’ve spent the last twenty years working with innovators from 60+ countries. Ranging from cutting edge startups to Fortune 100 companies like GE, Corning, Citi, Olayan, and nine foreign governments, helping their leaders to tell their stories and teaching them how to become incredible advocates for their innovations. Great innovation stories make change possible. They let us step into a future we can’t see yet. I started this podcast to shine a light on our generation of great innovators, to learn how they brought their innovation to life and the stories they told to bring them to the world.