Itai Green Podcast Transcript
Itai Green joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Itai Green. Itai Green is a globally recognized thought leader, strategist, and speaker specializing in corporate transformation and open innovation. With 25 years of professional experience, including 15 years as a startup founder and executive, Itai has dedicated his career to helping organizations navigate and thrive in an era of accelerating disruption.
He is the author of the acclaimed book Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change: An Executive Playbook 2026, published by US publisher Business Expert Press. The book serves as a practical manifesto for modern business leaders, providing proven frameworks for ecosystem mapping, venture clienting, and leveraging emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and generative AI to maintain a permanent competitive edge.
Well, good afternoon, Itai. Welcome to the show.
Itai Green: Thank you very much. Great meeting you, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it, really do. I know you travel the globe. You’re a globetrotter. You were recently in Italy and travel Europe all over. I’m in Kansas City, so I appreciate you making the time.
If you don’t mind, we’re gonna jump into your first question. You’ve spent 25 years straddling two worlds, 15 years as a startup founder and executive, and the rest advising global corporations on transformation. What experiences from building companies yourself most shaped how you now counsel large enterprises trying to innovate faster than their own bureaucracy?
Itai Green: When you are a startupist, you are living in a totally different environment than a corporate. You don’t have time. You are running out of cash. You have to move fast. And as an entrepreneur, I was experiencing, unfortunately, also really, really bad times where the startup owed me a lot of money and the startup that I was running owed a lot of money to the employees.
So time is an issue. And when you are a startupist, when you are an entrepreneur, you understand that. But when you are a corporate employee or a corporate executive, you’re not necessarily familiar with the stress that the potential partner you are dealing with, a startup, is in. And I want to tell you, in most cases, or let’s say many cases, the corporate is negotiating, is dealing, is partnering with a startup which is under stress, which is totally different, not the situation of the corporate, although these days it’s a little bit different, but it’s totally different stress.
And I think that a corporate that is into collaborating with a startup has to realize that there is no other way than to speak the startup lingo, to move fast, to truly tell the startup whether it’s interesting and then move fast or not interesting and not waste their time. So I think being in both parts, truly– I truly realize the stress that the startup is in, and if the corporate is in– if my client, the corporate, is into it, is interested, then we have to make the effort to move faster than ever.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And you should know this best. Obviously, there needs to be some sort of translation, being in a startup versus a corporation, that translation is important, especially for the startup to make sure that messaging gets across to the corporate side. As you know, there is a lot of stress as a startup.
Some days you’re wondering how you’re gonna, pay your employees, you pay your staff, that sort of thing. So I totally get it. So thank you for sharing. And Itai, your new book, “Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change”, frames innovation not as a competitive advantage, but as a survival imperative.
What’s the moment or pattern you keep seeing across organizations that convinced you the stakes had truly shifted from nice to have to existential?
Itai Green: I think that in the last three and a half years since GPT came to our life, and GenAI and Gen– Agentic, et cetera, it is clear that the pace of decision-making in corporates is by far slower than the pace of technological change.
And once you realize that, together with the deep understanding that your competitors are not stupid, you have no other option than to innovate with external partners. Otherwise, you are dead. You might be dead today, might be dead in a couple of years, but everything is super fast as never before. And the corporate, which is interested in remaining relevant, has no other option than to change its DNA, to move faster, to be open to collaboration with entrepreneurs, with external partners, because otherwise they’re not gonna exist.
And everything is super fast. So either you succeed fast or you fail fast. But it’s n– like never been before. We are living in a time where the mindset of C-level executives has to change, and it h- it has to impact the whole corporate. Otherwise, I really feel sorry for CEOs these days.
It’s really tough. It’s really tough. But you need to know how to handle it And you can look at Salesforce that just changed their business model. They reacted to what surrounds them. So you cannot kind of blind your eyes and say nothing has changed. It’s not the case. It’s not the case. And it’s tough, but it’s feasible.
It is truly feasible to overcome these challenges by partnering, by collaborating, by willing to fail, also to fail. I mean, in some cases, you’re not always collaborating with startups and succeed. Of course, it’s a part of the game, but the bottom line is a success if you do it in the right way.
And in my book, I was providing the readers, and soon it’s gonna be also the listeners with an audiobook, I provided them with executive playbook. It’s not about theory, it’s about best practice, it’s about tools, it’s about exactly the way to make things happen, and it is based on a lot of experience of corporates running open innovation around the world with startups.
And I think it’s super practical, and it’s if you read and understand and make it, it’s easier than you can imagine. You just need to make it in the right way. It’s not an inno-innovation theater; it’s innovation that makes your strategy happen.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. You’re absolutely right. You can’t stay stagnant. You have to learn to be able to move on a dime and pivot innovate. Of course, you need to make sure you have a good strategy because your competitor, as you said, is not stupid. But I really love you highlighted some things from your book, and I know your book’s very easy to read, it’s practical, and I highly recommend people reading your book to stay ahead of the game.
So thank you. Itai, you’ve noted publicly that corporate mindset is often the biggest barrier to innovation, bigger than budget, technology, or talent. What does that actually look like inside organizations, and how do you break through it without triggering the immune system response that kills most change efforts?
Itai Green: In the last decade, I’m running open innovation within corporates around the globe. I face that the human factor is the issue that make innovation either succeed or fail, the internal human factor. And at the beginning, like 10 years back, it was difficult to explain truly the sense of urgency, so C-level executives and mid-level will cooperate, will collaborate with the process of open innovation.
In the last three and a half years, it is easier to explain the sense of urgency because every, every employee, every manager, every executive, every leader see the pace of change, and there is no other way than to collaborate with the pa- this pace of change. Otherwise, you lose your relevancy, not as only as a company, but as an individual, as an employee.
And I must tell you that, of course, people are different. And I think that, and even in the last few years, when you read a-analysis and reports by McKinsey, BCG, and others, they tell you that eighty percent of the issue is the human factor, not technology. Technology is there. Technology is on the shelf.
Technology is easy to implement. The barrier, the challenge is the human factor. And the way to overcome it is by Engaging the people by educating. Ninety percent of managers, of executives are willing to learn, are willing to learn something new, and open innovation is new. And of course, there are always ten percent that are kind of, NIH syndrome, not invented here, whatever is not invented by them is n- worth nothing.
But our goal is to engage people and make them with a FOMO, with a fear of missing out, be open to new things, to new technology, be open to collaborate, be the first one to work with a startup. And the way to o– to make it is in an efficient way is by I’ll tell you the, the process that I’m running.
Really, it’s gonna be really short. I mean, I meet the senior executive, the VP, the CEO, the chairman, whatever. For one hour, I collect the three challenges that bother them the most according to the strategy of the company. After two weeks, I get back to them with a list of fifty startups, five zero. They allocate another one hour of their time to rank their level of interest in each and every startup, in each and every technology.
And at the end, we meet the VP and the one that reports to or the CEO and board members, whatever, we meet for a one-day innovation boot camp. At this boot camp, I start it always with a one or two hours lecture to engage them, to tell them what surrounds them, how to make it, how to truly run open innovation in a proper way with practical tools.
After one or two hours of my lecture, they are engaged, they are stressed, they want to learn. And then ten different startups are getting into the room one after the other for thirty minutes. Ten minutes pitch, twenty minutes Q&A with the VP and its people and so on, ten, fifteen people in the room. And the ten we meet are the ten that were ranked with the highest level of interest of the VP or the CEO or the chairman.
So they are engaged because they provide them with a challenge, they rank the level of interest, they meet the– those that are mostly interested, they’re mostly interested in. So at the end, they need to take a decision with how many out of the ten startups that are relevant to their three challenges they want to proceed to a second meeting.
Would you like to guess with how many on average after hundreds, hundreds of boot camps, with how many they want to proceed to a second meeting? Seven And they continue, and at the end of the funnel, they end up with two or three pilots which end up in one or two integrations. This is the statistics, and when you do that process, which is a very easy, simple process, across the company with all the business units, all the corporate units, all the…
Everyone, procurement, legal, CISO, technology, business units, whatever, everyone, board, CEO, everyone, after six months, you have a completely different company. The people, the leaders understand what innovation is. They understand the sense of urgency. They’re engaged. They’re open-minded. They move faster than ever.
It happens. And it’s not complicated. You just need to do it as in the playbook because the playbook is based on experience, and that’s the whole thing.
Brian Thomas: Amazing. Thank you. And I really love how you kind of unpack that, that boot camp that you do hold really to engage and get their level of interest in there.
At the end of the day, you want them to be successful and I do wanna highlight one thing. You talked about the human factors being the biggest challenge, and again, that’s where you focus on that engagement, that education to get staff fully involved to embrace the innovation. So thank you. And Itai, last question of the day.
As disruption accelerates, whether it’s geopolitically, technologically, or economically, what does the innovation-ready organization of the next decade look like, and what industries or types of companies do you believe are most at risk of the elimination your book warns about if they don’t act now?
Itai Green: I think that the companies that will, let’s say, survive and win the situation will overcome th- this really chaotic time, are those that are not afraid to try.
They are not afraid to fail. They are the first door an entrepreneur knocks on with an idea when the entrepreneur is still in the garage. Those companies that are the first one an entrepreneur knocks on. This is the challenge. When you are there as a corporate, when they knock on your door before they do on other doors, like, of your competitors, you are in a good situation.
You are positioned in a very strong situation, is very strong positioning in the ecosystem as an innovation leader, as the one that is willing to listen, is willing to consider, is moving fast. This is a reputation to build. And I want to tell you, every company is under risk. Every company. We used to think that only companies that are traditional, that are not techy, but these days the disruption can happen to anyone.
I mean, Wix, Wix with five thousand employees, which is a tech company, was under a true threat of a single entrepreneur startup called Base44 that in six months was able to do what Wix with five thousand employees do for ma– does for many years. So five thousand people were under threat by a single entrepreneur startup.
Wix was smart enough to analyze the situation and write a check and buy this company and this talented entrepreneur. And thanks to that, this initiative of Base44 jumped from one million dollar ARR to
one hundred million ARR in a year
And I think this is an example that not only banks, insurance companies, health, manufacturers, agriculture companies, which are traditional businesses, not only they are under risk. Also tech companies, SaaS companies, everyone. Technology is here moving very fast. Is a threat or an opportunity depends on the way the executives are managing the situation.
I’m aware we are in a tough time. We are in a challenging time for many companies. You have to be the one an entrepreneur knocks on when they have an idea. And I want to tell you something. In a crisis time, and it doesn’t matter whether the crisis is from geopolitical, financial crisis like in two thousand and eight, Lehman Brother, or let’s say COVID crisis or any crisis or a SaaS crisis or the time that we are now at, that with AI, many talents are getting fired, right?
This is a crisis time. A crisis time is the best time to run open innovation, is the best time to start a new venture, a new entrepreneurshi– new startup, because these talents are not sitting at home doing nothing. They are building the next Wiz, the next Wix, the next Waz, the next startups that will grow and become unicorns.
And the challenge is to make these talents knock on your door as a corporate before they do so with others. So the opportunity these days of a crisis time is a real challenge. You just need to make it in the right way
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And you definitely impact those threats and opportunities, depends how you looked at things, and I like the example you shared around a CEO was able to make a decision and purchase the startup knowing that that was a threat to their business.
And again, every business today, and you talked about it, doesn’t matter where, what time they’re ripe for disruption. And you, as a leader, startup or big corporate, you need to be able to be able to pivot in a moment’s notice. So I appreciate you unpacking those insights for us today. And Itai, I just- And
Itai Green: the best way, if you, if you don’t mind, and the best way not to be surprised by an entrepreneur that is building a competition to your company, the best way is not to hire McKinsey, BCG, and so on, because all these companies are based on open data or on open sources.
They, they learn what surrounds them on the web, any website, databases, et cetera. But the startups that are gonna challenge your company, McKinsey are not familiar with them. They are still in the garage. They don’t have any appearance on any website. They are boot- bootstrap. They are below the radar, and the only way to be familiar with them before they are online is by positioning your innovation door, your innovation manager door as the first one for entrepreneur to knock on and ask for an advice and consult, and it is by far cheaper and more effective than hiring all these strategic companies, which are great and with smart people, but not with regard to innovation and to prevent from being surprised.
Being surprised is a true threat. You have to know about what surrounds you in the ecosystem before your competitors.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing, and I really appreciate the insights. And Itai, it was such a pleasure to have you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Itai Green: Thank you very much. Thank you, Brian, for your time and for hosting me here.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Itai Green Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
