Welcome to the Tech for Non-Techies podcast

Every company wants to be innovative, but how do you balance the risk of innovation with the need to keep the lights on? Listen to this interview with Kapil Kane, Head of Innovation at Intel China, to find out.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Most tech innovations die because they do not have a solid business case. As much as non-techies need to learn to speak tech, techies need to learn to speak business. “No matter how smart you are, if you are not able to get your idea across in the language of a lay person, you are missing out a lot,” says Kapil.
• To structure creativity within an organisation, Kapil advises learning from Apple, where teams often worked on projects that other teams did not know about. This meant that they could focus on their work, while upper management connected the dots.
• The innovation accelerator at Intel China Kapil set up brings in revenue, but that is not the only benefit. It serves as a training ground for ambitious people “If...

How do you get to the top of a tech company as a non-technical professional? How can you drive innovation, when you’re not building the technology yourself?

That’s what you’ll learn from this interview with David Wells, ex CFO of Netflix and chair of the board at Wise.

Learning notes from this episode:

• “It’s called tech, or working in tech, but the entire economy is going to be this. So calling it tech is a little bit apocryphal at this stage,” David says.
• “Tech jargon distances people from the actual understanding of the concepts.” Learning core technology concepts is not as hard as the jargon has many believe.
• Learning what data scientists do and how to work with them is the best skill set to develop for business people in tech. “Data science is the analysis of the lifeblood of the company and you have to ask fundamental insight questions against it. You do not have to build the models yourself, but you are at an advantage if...

Jennifer Byrne studied Psychology at university and went on to become the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft US. Listen to this episode to learn how this liberal arts graduate transitioned into tech and became one of the most senior people in the industry. 

Learning notes from this episode:

• "You have to understand the difference between acquiring digital context versus digital fluency. Context means seeing the bigger picture of how things connect together, but not necessarily understanding the detail," says Jennifer.
• Jennifer says that it is impossible to know everything about technology, even when you are at the top. Instead, she says understand the broad context of how tech products get made and do deep dives into areas that interest you.
• As a CTO you have to think strategically: what problem are we solving? How can technology be applied to this problem? 
• Good CTOs must connect technology strategy to drive business decisions.

Follow Jennifer...

Product managers combine user perspectives, business needs and technology capabilities in one job. But, what they do day to day varies widely. In this episode, you’ll hear how what PMs do differs between Apple and Amazon from Souvik Bhattacharya, who has worked at both.

This episode is for product managers, founders, investors and those who want to understand tech companies from the inside.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Founders play the product management role in their start-ups, and venture capital funds often employ former PMs as investors.
• What Product Managers do day to day depends on the life cycle of the product. For example, in the launch phase the PM role also includes product marketing.
• Software vs. Hardware Product Management is incredibly different.  Hardware products, like those at Apple, take years to develop and incremental updates are typically not an easy option Software Product Management is much faster as changes can be made virtually and...