What do you do when you’re handed $50,000, six months, and a mandate to build a video application for a media powerhouse like NBC? For Kior Shroff, this wasn’t a hypothetical. It was day one on the job. In this episode of Innovation Impossible, host Danniel sits down with Kior, a seasoned innovation executive with experience at Johnson & Johnson, Comcast, and several high-performing tech teams. What unfolds is a powerful masterclass in navigating constraints, championing entrepreneurship, and building sustainable innovation inside large organizations.
How Resourcefulness Beats Budget in Innovation
Kior opens with a story that sounds impossible. He launched a high-traffic video platform with almost no budget. But through strategic bartering, he secured a cutting-edge platform from a partner in exchange for user feedback. With just $45,000 and some clever UX design, the team launched a product that racked up over 3 million video views.
“It’s not about resources,” Kior shares. “It’s about being resourceful.” This story becomes a recurring theme. Form alliances, lean into internal champions, and never underestimate the power of a small pilot with a big return.
Getting Early Adoption Right: Make Users Your Marketers
Once the platform launched, Kior took a federated approach by inviting departments across Comcast to use the tool and giving them admin rights and visibility. The result? A flood of content, enthusiastic adoption, and organic marketing. Entire departments became internal influencers, spreading the platform’s reach from the inside out.
You want to make sure your first segment is super happy and they will become your marketing department for you.
Building an Innovation Funnel That Actually Works
Innovation isn’t magic. It’s structure. At Comcast, Kior helped design an innovation funnel: a transparent, stage-gate system for gathering, evaluating, and funding new ideas. The funnel didn’t just help prioritize investments. It built a culture of participation. Anyone could track their idea’s progress, see success criteria, and get paired with executive sponsors for support.
His advice: keep a simple checklist, focus on ideas that support the team’s goals, and make the process part of everyday work.
What Happens When Innovation Falls Short
Even the best systems can fall short. Kior recalls a time when a massive learning management system launch failed not because of the technology, but because they overlooked admin readiness. “Change management can’t be an afterthought,” he reflects. “If your backend team isn’t trained or empowered, it impacts the entire user experience.”
Retrospectives, he says, are crucial but with one rule: “Name the process, not the person.” The goal is learning, not blame.
Four Culture Shifts That Power Innovation at Scale
So, how do you foster a culture that welcomes trial and error in a risk-averse enterprise?
Kior outlines four keys:
- Hire adaptable, growth-minded talent.
- Decentralize decision-making to stay close to the customer.
- Invite external speakers to inspire new thinking.
- Celebrate noble failure even ideas that didn’t work but moved the team forward.
“Innovation happens at the edge of chaos,” he says. “Not too rigid, not too messy. Somewhere in between.”
Startups vs. Enterprises: Same Mission, Different Mechanics
While startups thrive on speed and people, large enterprises rely on process and scale. Kior contrasts the two worlds and shares how enterprise innovation often depends on aligning with executive strategy and navigating organizational complexity. Still, the same principles apply: start small, stay close to users, and iterate fast.
Frameworks like design sprints, agile methods, and the innovation funnel, he says, can give even the largest teams the nimbleness of a startup.
Innovation Isn’t Just Product—It’s Everything
One of Kior’s most powerful insights? Innovation isn’t just about the product.
Think about pricing, positioning, partnerships, the supply chain, post-sale service—there are so many ways to innovate beyond the tech itself.
think of pricing think of positioning think of partnership think of value chain think of supply chain think of advertising there are so many different ways you can innovate and you should encourage people who are coming up with ideas to innovate on all of those fronts not just the product itself
If you’ve ever felt boxed in by process or overwhelmed by scale, this episode is for you. Kior’s stories are a testament to what’s possible when structure meets creativity, and when teams commit to continuous improvement, even in the most complex environments.
