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Why Large Company Experiences are the Secret Ingredient S12 Ep34

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney
— 2 min read
The Innovators Studio podcast cover art: Why Large Company Experiences are the Secret Ingredient S12 Ep34

While many companies recruit for start-up experience, large company experiences can be a secret ingredient to success. The ability to call on executives who have the experience of understanding scale, managing remote staff, complex manufacturing, global markets, selling to large organizations and much more is invaluable.

In today's show, we discussed:

  • Barry's career at IBM and the breadth of experiences that large organizations provide
  • The shifting role to being a Board member after leaving a large organization such as IBM
  • How to coach and mentor executive teams to success
  • How to translate large company experiences into something that start-up companies can apply
  • Three lessons that Barry would give to a 20 year-old self:
    1. Get out and talk to real customers who use your produce/service early in your career.
    2. The importance of hiring a team that can fill in what your bad at. Look for diversity of thought.
    3. Don't be afraid of putting yourself out there. Try something new and take some risk.

[shareable]Don't be afraid of putting yourself out there. Try something new and take some risk.[/shareable]

Background on Barry Rudolph

Barry serves as the Chief Executive Officer of VelociData, Inc. Prior, he  served as Vice President of Strategy and Stack Integration for IBM Storage, responsible for establishing the overall strategy, driving all decisions on portfolio investments for the storage business, and integrating with other areas within IBM including IBM's Global Services and Software organizations.Earlier, Barry served as Vice President for IBM's Disk, SAN & NAS Storage Systems, where he was responsible for all aspects of the Disk, SAN and NAS storage business within IBM, including profit and loss, product portfolio investments, go to market strategy and execution and customer support. During his career at IBM, he held numerous senior level positions in a variety of functional areas, including operations, engineering, product development, test and assurance, program management, field support and, direct manufacturing until his retirement from IBM in 2010 after 32 years with the company.

He has been a Member of Industry Advisory Board at GreenBytes, Inc. since August 2013. Barry serves as a Director of VelociData, Inc. He served as Director of Dot Hill Systems Corp. from February 20, 2012 to October 6, 2015.

He holds a Bachelor degree of Science degree in Engineering, a Master's of Science in Electrical Engineering from San Diego State University, and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

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Phil McKinney is an innovator, podcaster, author, and speaker. He is the retired CTO of HP. Phil's book, Beyond The Obvious, shares his expertise and lessons learned on innovation and creativity.


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