Innovation Across Worlds: From Sneakers to Stem Cells
Exploring innovation, competition, and survival across radically different frontiers
This week on unNatural Selection, we’re excited to release two new episodes that demonstrate the extraordinary range of innovative leadership — and the unifying patterns that emerge across disciplines as different as athletic footwear and pediatric surgery.
Athletic Footwear: Reebok • Bill McInnis
In Episode 13, we sit down with Bill McInnis, an award-winning innovation leader and former Head of Future at Reebok, where he helped reinvent what performance footwear could be — from speed-focused running shoes to groundbreaking 3D-printed cleats. Bill’s journey spans from elite sports to space exploration, and his perspective on designing for human performance is rich with insight into how ideas survive the pressure of the market, competition, and consumer expectations.
Cell Therapies: MGH • Allan Goldstein
In Episode 14, produced in partnership with Mass General Brigham’s World Medical Innovation Forum, we speak with Dr. Allan Goldstein, Surgeon-in-Chief at Mass General for Children and Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Goldstein is leading pioneering work on neurosphere-based cell therapies to treat Hirschsprung disease — a life-threatening condition that affects the nerves of the gut. His team’s work could reshape how we treat not just this rare pediatric condition, but potentially a much broader class of nervous system disorders.
These two guests may operate in vastly different arenas, but that’s exactly the point.
At unNatural Selection, our mission is to explore innovation through the lens of evolution, adaptation, and survival — across domains where the rules are different but the underlying pressures are remarkably similar. Whether it’s designing a shoe that gives athletes a competitive edge or developing a therapy that could give a child their future back, we want to understand how innovation takes root — and what it takes to make it endure.
By speaking with leaders from diverse industries, we aim to uncover the hidden parallels — and meaningful differences — in how competition shapes outcomes, how risk is managed, and how bold ideas survive or fail.
We hope these episodes give you a window into two very different worlds, and in doing so, help sharpen your understanding of the forces that shape your own.
