The Co-Creation Mandate: How Partnerships Accelerate Innovation & Talent

In this episode of Coffee With Digital Trailblazers, we dive into the art of co-creation and what it really takes to build strong innovation partnerships.

Participants

• Isaac Sacolick
• Juanita Olguin
• Jay Cohen
• Joanne Friedman
• Heather May
• Joseph Puglisi
• Martin Davis
• John Patrick Luethe

Summary

Our guests share honest insights on how companies, startups, and nonprofits can work together to drive progress—while still protecting intellectual property and managing risk. We talk about how to onboard partners the right way, set clear expectations, and avoid common collaboration pitfalls. You’ll hear real-world stories, from using drones in agriculture to building shared AI labs that spark breakthrough ideas. The panel also touches on preparing talent for an AI-first future, shifting mindsets toward collaboration, and creating space for creativity and trust to thrive.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everyone. Welcome to this week’s coffee with Digital Trailblazers. We’re just having a fun discussion as I am here at my home today and we’ll be broadcasting next week’s session here from my home and then after that I will be in Berlin the week of first November 1st through 8th and currently planning to do the November 7th coffee hour from Berlin and hoping it all works out. But we’re all joking here because the 11am time slot in the Eastern time zone is 5pm over in Berlin and we’ll just need to figure out if we need to rebrand the coffee hour to something more appropriate like beer or Oktoberfest for digital trailblazers or something like that. We have a full house today, some special guests that I’ll announce in a few seconds seconds just waiting for everybody to be able to join in our conversation today which is going to be about the co creation mandate, how partnerships accelerate innovation and talent readiness and I’ll just give you a sense of how I’m picking topics out a little bit now. I’m looking at things that are have always been part of digital transformation efforts, whether it’s we did a session a few weeks ago around innovation versus governance and how do you balance the two.

We’ve done sessions around change leadership and how change management is changing because of the speed and the capabilities of AI.

And I wanted to cover the notion of the co creation mandate, the idea partnering because we’re still have this, I would say antiquated mindset that when it comes to new capabilities it’s a build versus buy decision.

And I think that low code environments really sat and created a gray area between those two extremes.

Over the last 15 years we’ve had to help our organizations break through the mindset that when we bring in partners when we’re not necessarily outsourcing, we are also looking for other opportunities to partner to develop capabilities together.

Chapters

• (00:00:00) - Coffee With Digital Trailblazers
• (00:02:31) - What is the Co-Creation Mandate?
• (00:04:01) - Meet the CIOs of Star CIO
• (00:04:59) - What are the Key Differences Between Working With a Partner and Working Alone
• (00:07:33) - Co-Creation and Continuous Innovation
• (00:09:23) - Co-Creation vs. Single-Team Innovation
• (00:11:35) - Co-Creating: The Legal Hurdle
• (00:14:50) - Martin on Co-Creation
• (00:16:39) - In the Elevator: Co-Creating
• (00:17:47) - In the Elevator With Startups
• (00:18:55) - Is the Robot a Good Fit for Your Company?
• (00:20:26) - Robot-based manufacturing
• (00:21:52) - Co-Creation in the AI Industry
• (00:23:16) - What Do Companies Need To Do To Onboarding a Partner?
• (00:24:57) - Co-Leadership and Innovation
• (00:27:26) - Co-creation and the Business Cycle
• (00:33:35) - Coffee With Digital Trailblazers
• (00:35:37) - Top Executives: Why we're Accelerating Innovation and Co
• (00:37:05) - How to Bring New Innovation to the Company
• (00:39:42) - Co-Creation: Accelerating Innovation & Talent Readiness
• (00:43:25) - How To Identify the Right Partner to Accelerate Innovation
• (00:47:08) - How to Choose the Right Knowledge Ecosystem Partners
• (00:49:47) - Culture fit for innovation partners
• (00:53:38) - How to Find a Partner for Innovation
• (00:54:39) - Co-creation and Resilience
• (00:57:03) - Projects & Collaboration: The New Paradigm
• (00:58:22) - IT and HR Alliance: How Partners Can Accelerate Innovation