Human Innovation | The Jens Heitland Show

Human Innovation explores leadership where decisions, responsibility, and scale intersect.

Hosted by Jens Heitland, CEO of Heitland Media Group and former Global Head of Innovation at IKEA Centres, the show features long-form conversations with CEOs and senior leaders from international organizations.

Each episode focuses on how leaders think, decide, and navigate complexity, not just what they have built. The conversations move beyond surface level success stories to examine judgment, trade offs, and the human realities of leadership at scale.

© All Content 2020-2025 - The Jens Heitland Show - Produced by Heitland Media Group

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EP 184: Corporate Innovation - How can human innovation change business results? - HIQA Live with Jens Heitland

The topic of the episode: Corporate Innovation - How can human innovation change business results?

Questions I answered in the live show:

Because of covid it is all about saving costs right now in our company. How can I still innovate?

Everyone talks about innovation in our company but all we do are small improvements rather than real innovation. How to change that?

I am a new leader in an organization and responsible for +100 people. How do I motivate people that are long term in the company to innovate themselves?

How could I measure our innovation efforts differently? I am working in finance administration and am responsible for producing the weekly reports. How can we measure innovation?

I don’t have an innovation question but hope you can help me. I am working in a large organization and would like to hire a new person but don’t have the head count. How can I get a new headcount approved?

I am a manager with 5 direct reports, 5k employee company. My manager has no idea how to lead people. He is micromanaging me and the other managers. I am considering leaving the company but want to give it another last try, any idea what I could do?

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EP 183: Innovate through Neurodiversity - Steve Hill on working with autistic IT Consultants and neurodiversity as leaders

Steve Hill is Commercial Director at Auticon UK, a unique, multinational IT consultancy and social enterprise, which exclusively employs autistic adults as IT consultants. Previously Steve was Business Strategy & Development Director within the Predictive Analytics and IoT sector of McLaren Applied, leading the strategy around “Intelligent Fleet” and "Intelligent Operations" as part of the Intelligent Transport programme.

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EP 182: Corporate Innovation - How to engage the organizational silos? - HIQA Live with Jens Heitland

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: Corporate Innovation - How to engage the organizational silos?

Questions I answer in the show:

What can I do as a leader in mid management to encourage my team to work better with other teams when innovating?

Other departments work against us, how do I turn this around as a leader?

The other departments (marketing and Finance) are not supporting the innovation efforts despite that it is a clear goal in our company strategy. What can I do as a leader?

Our innovation team works a lot but we don’t get recognized from the organization. What should we do to improve ourselves?

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EP 179: The Art of Leadership - Jimmy Burroughes on Leadership training, culture and performance

Jimmy Burroughes The Expert for ways of working helps leaders to change and nurture the culture.

Jimmy shares his story from his leadership development inside the Army and we explore leadership from different angles. We talk about leadership training, leadership culture and performance.

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EP 177: Nobody cares about innovation - Lemuel Lasher on corporate innovation and a global innovation marketplace

Lemuel Lasher International Executive, Investor, CEO of Boehme Eckhart LCC and Chairman of the Board of LEO - Leading Edge Only joined me to connect the dots of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Lem shared his story being Chief Innovation Officer at CSC, the setup, structure and how he changed the innovation culture in CSC. We talk about how he is helping organizations to innovate and the 4 critical questions he is asking before he agrees to support a company. Furthermore we talked about LEO and the opportunities of a true global innovation marketplace. And last but not least he shares a dirty little secret about innovation.

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EP 176: Incredible good content - Marina Specht on innovation in Marketing, leadership and mindset.

Marina Specht CEO of McCann WorldGroup Spain. She spent the first half of her career as an entrepreneur, building a successful branded content agency. The last 15 years she focused on digital marketing, data strategy and digital business transformation, driving innovation and bottom line growth for Fortune 500 companies

Marina was awarded:

#Ad Age Women to Watch 2016

#PWC Women to Watch 2017-18

#Top 100 Leading Women Spain 2021

Marina shared her story and the superpower behind her success, and of course we talked about the innovation and changes in marketing and businesses over the last decades.

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EP 175: How do I manage stakeholders - the human way? - HIQA with Jens Heitland

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: How do I manage stakeholders - the human way?

Questions I cover in the show:

  • How do I manage stakeholders - the human way?

  • How to map stakeholders - the human way?

  • Why should you build a relationship with your stakeholders to innovate?

  • How to collaborate with stakeholders - the human way?

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EP 174: How to write a book as entrepreneur - Andrew Dupy on the importance of writing a book as an entrepreneur.

Andrew Dupy Chief Relationship Officer at Leaders Press, Author of the Book Don't buy the watch, joined me to connect the dots of innovation and entrepreneurship

Andrew shared his story, how he wrote his book and we explored the process of writing a book with the Leaders Press and the great potential for entrepreneurs.

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EP 173: How to transform a business the human way? - HIQA with Jens Heitland

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: How to empower people to innovate?

Questions I cover in the show:

  • How to transform a business the human way?

  • How to lead a business transformation the human way?

  • How to communicate a transformation the human way?

  • How to involve employees in a business transformation the human way?

  • How to ensure long term success in a business transformation the human way?

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EP 172: Future Impact Today - Sid Mofya about startups, investing personal development and music.

Sid Mofya, Executive Director at Draper Venture Network - a global alliance of our member funds, who are present on all continents, former Kauffman Fellow and musician joined me to connect the dots of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Sid shared his story growing up in Sambia living in the UK and Tanzania before moving to Silicon Valley. We talk about which problems startups should solve, how startup founders develop, funding of startups and dive a bit into education and music.

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EP 171: How to empower people to innovate? - HIQA with Jens Heitland

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: How to empower people to innovate?

Questions I cover in the show:

  • How to empower people to innovate?

  • How to delegate to innovate?

  • How to build trust to innovate?

  • How to collaborate to innovate?

  • How to support personal and professional growth to innovate?

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EP 170: What is the magic zone in human innovation? - HIQA live with Jens Heitland

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: What is the magic zone in human innovation?

Questions I cover in the live show:

What is the magic zone in human innovation?

Why do you call it the magic zone?

How does the magic zone play a role in my human innovation system?

How can I lead in the magic zone?

How do I engage with the community with the magic zone?

How do I impact a business with the magic zone?

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EP 169: From intern to startup founder - Michael Wilkinson on his forming moments, startup funding and what he learned in a high paced startup environment

Michael Wilkinson Founder and COO @ Everything has an incredible background from starting as an intern at crowdcube.com where he successfully managed 100+ fundraises totalling £50m+ in his first assignment then launching his own consulting business supporting startups in fundraising and today being part of the founding team of Everything - the financial experience that younger generations actually want.

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EP 167: How do I lead myself? - HIQA live with Jens Heitland

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: How do I lead myself

Questions I cover in the live show

  • How Do I lead myself

  • Why do so many people don’t know what their superpower is?

  • How can we find our superpower?

  • What is our Ambition and how can we find it?

  • What are strategies to keep my ambition?

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EP 164: Website Strategy - Ebonee Williams on websites for business and people

Ebonee Williams Website Strategist joined me to connect the dots of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Ebonee helps women to succeed with a strategically built website. We explored her personal story working in fashion creating Ads for Mercedes Benz working as a journalist for ABC news in New York and how she thinks about websites, email marketing, traveling and more.

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EP 165: The window to the world - HIQA- Katharina Mormann interviewing Jens Heitland

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

Last week I was interviewed by Katharina Mormann from Aragón Exterior here in Zaragoza Spain

Aragon Exterior is the Foreign Trade and Investment Promotion Agency of the Regional Government of Aragón, Spain.

Katharina established a Webinar / Podcast called La Ventana al Mundo - the window to the world

Enjoy the Q&A Moderated by Katharina Mormann

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