Total Innovation Podcast

50 episodes. 4 seasons. One stubborn question: what does it take to make innovation work? Simon Hill looks back at the lessons so far. One stubborn question: what does it actually take to make innovation work? In this special milestone edition, host Simon Hill steps out from behind the interviewer's chair to look back at the conversations, characters and ideas that have shaped the Total Innovation Podcast so far. From Aidan McCullen and the polyvalent players of Toulouse Rugby Club, to ...

This is final episode of this season and the closing chapter in the Expected Value Story. In this episode, we look at the future of innovation. Innovation without adaptation is just novelty. The future belongs to those who can continuously evolve their innovation system. Over this season, we've followed Freya and her team as they've moved from good intentions and busy innovation to clearer decisions, better evidence, and real value. But no system ever stands still. The world keeps chang...

In this episode, we move to Act 4, where the spotlight moves from frameworks to people. Freya's team can score ideas, prioritize bets, and balance the portfolio. But now they face the harder challenge, embedding innovation into the culture itself. We'll see how they bridge the gap between potential and performance, turning XV into realised value, and we'll explore the table of justice, a transformative way to judge decisions by evidence, not emotion. This is where innovation becom...

In this episode, we explore chapter 10, Lines of Trust, which takes us beyond governance and into the invisible systems that make innovation work or fall apart. Freya and her team have built structure. The XV model, the fit radar, the S-curve, and a new three-tier governance system. On paper, it's perfect. But in practice, something's missing. When one small decision crosses an unseen line, Freya discovers what no framework can capture, that governance only works when people believe in ...

“Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in cycles” In this chapter, we're diving into one of the most powerful and often misunderstood forces shaping innovation performance, the S-curve. Innovation doesn't happen in straight lines, it happens in cycles. Technologies evolve, markets shift, and every idea follows a natural rhythm, from emergence to acceleration, to maturity and eventually decline. Understanding this rhythm changes everything. It explains why confidence fluctuates, wh...

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” Albert Einstein Innovation has no shortage of frameworks, toolkits, or canvas templates. But too often, those tools complicate instead of clarifying. They add noise instead of structure. They create motion without meaning. Act II is about changing that by introducing a coherent system, not just more frameworks. This episode marks the beginning of Act Two, operationalizing innovation value. We follow Freya's team as they p...

After a summer break, welcome back to season three of the pod. It's going to be a special season. I recently launched my latest book, Expected Value: The System to Prove, Measure, and Scale Value. And thanks to our sponsor Wazoku, across this season, you'll hear the full audio version of the book. It's a story, a system, and a toolkit designed to finally answer the question that every innovator faces. How do we prove, measure, and scale the value of the innovation work that we do? Each episod...

Marco is an award-winning lighting architect whose work spans cathedrals, museums, theatres—and now, refugee camps. He was the winning solver in the International Rescue Committee’s “Phosphorescence Technology for Lighting” challenge—a challenge we heard so movingly about in our conversation with Carla Lopez from the International Rescue Committee in an earlier episode in this season of the podcast. This episode is all about light: not just the technical or aesthetic side, but light as dignit...