Enterprise architects and master distillers on what innovation means.
Mike Walker's V-Next: The Future is Now is an interview show about innovation that puts enterprise architects and master distillers in the same feed. Its conversations cover department silos, workplace incentives, AI-created whiskey, bourbon and healthcare during the pandemic.
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V-Next: The Future is Now is an interview show about innovation, hosted by Mike Walker, and its guest list refuses to stay in one industry. The episodes here pair Walker with one guest at a time. He opens warmly, sets up the guest's work, and points to vnextpod.com for show notes and links. In one conversation he introduces himself as covering enterprise architecture and technology innovation at Gartner, and enterprise architecture is one of the show's main threads. Tom Graves, introduced as an EA thought leader and prolific blogger, says his real focus is how people learn to make sense of change and adapt to it. His wish list for architecture tools is concrete: something like a mix of Evernote, OneNote, a live whiteboard, audio recording and photo capture. He also argues for keeping a thesaurus instead of a dictionary, since silos form around the separate languages of finance, HR, compliance, IT and marketing. The conversation with Chris Lockhart, an enterprise architect, strategist and consultant, comes at organizations from the human side. The point is blunt: incentive drives behavior, and hoarding information to look influential runs against what an enterprise architect is trying to accomplish. There is even a story about a conference presentation built around photos of Star Wars toys. Then the show moves into other industries. Tierney Morgan, an industry advocate for Microsoft's worldwide healthcare team, talks about the pandemic from the manufacturing side. She compares biological products to farming: they grow, they develop, and they have a limited shelf life. The lesson she draws is about collaboration, and about keeping science first instead of chasing speed alone. The spirits conversations are the show's most surprising turn, and Walker says so himself. He tells Marianne Eves that a show usually concerned with artificial intelligence, blockchain and quantum computing might surprise people by talking bourbon. Eves is introduced as a master distiller and consultant, and as the first female master distiller for bourbon since Prohibition. Angela D'Auxio, whose title is chief nose officer, is asked whether technology breaks the rules of an industry thousands of years old, and Walker brings up the German purity law as a comparison. Alec Lee, co-founder of Endless West, describes innovation in spirits as honoring the craft that came before while making something new, and he calls technology central to his company. Walker's register throughout is friendly and eager: 'super cool', 'phenomenal', and often an open invitation to come back. A listener drawn to the whiskey thread could play 'Is Molecular Whiskey the Future' and 'The World's First AI-Created Whiskey' back to back. One more curious about organizations could start with 'Enterprise Architecture: Bridging Strategy, Innovation, and Change with Tom Graves'.
Made for: Suits a listener who thinks about how organizations handle change and wants to hear the same question put to enterprise architects, a healthcare industry advocate and whiskey and bourbon distillers.
What sets it apart: It won't keep innovation inside the IT department. Conversations with enterprise architects about silos and incentives sit beside conversations with master distillers about AI-created and molecular whiskey.
Listen to Mike Walker discuss the latest innovation techniques, emerging technologies, and conversations with innovation experts that are either dealing with being disrupted or disrupting themselves.
A vaccine loading dock and molecular whiskey in one queue? Mike Walker makes your curiosity feel reasonable.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Tom Graves presents enterprise architecture as a practical craft for interpreting change and bridging divided working languages.
Enterprise architecture comes across as a practical way to help people understand change and adjust without losing the detail of how work actually gets done.
A grounded review of vaccine logistics, where science meets shelf life, cold handling, and loading-dock pressure.
Technology's part in vaccine manufacturing and distribution gets a practical, grounded treatment as Mike Walker speaks with Tierney Morgan of Microsoft's worldwide healthcare team.
Deep tech with systems consequences.
Big questions, carefully held.
Hexagon's conversations on digital twins, mining and measurement.
Tom Graves says enterprise architecture must be "a mile wide, a mile deep, but thin."
A major health system asked Microsoft to do in three weeks what others said would take three years.
On VNEXT, Mike Walker and enterprise architect Chris Lockhart examine innovation through consulting, strategy, and enterprise architecture.
Alec Lee explains how Endless West creates molecular whiskey from natural sources without fermentation or barrel aging, using a process that can reduce water, land use, time, and cost.
MacMira master blender Angela D'Orazio used AI to evaluate whiskey combinations without removing traditional distillation or barrel maturation.
Host Mike Walker interviews Marianne Eves, the first female master distiller since Prohibition, about innovation in bourbon distilling.
Host Mike Walker interviews Gartner's Brian Burke about the 2020 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle and how to apply it in organizations.
An interview with Arun Ghosh from KPMG about using blockchain to digitize and secure pharmaceutical supply chains.
Host Mike Walker interviews David Havera, CTO of Blockchain for GE Aviation Digital Group, about how blockchain technology is transforming aviation safety, security, and efficiency.