Avatar

Kate O'Keeffe

Senior Director

Customer and Partner Innovation

Kate O’Keeffe is Cisco’s Senior Director of Customer and Partner Innovation. She brings a wealth of experience in innovation and entrepreneurship to her role, driving new customer solutions within Cisco’s engineering organization.

Prior to her current role, Kate was founder and leader of Cisco CHILL, a co-innovation catalyst designed to drive disruptive innovation with and for Cisco customers. Her passion to solve bold problems that don’t yet have answers grew out of her long-term desire to find better, faster ways to approach big global issues such as environmental and population challenges. With CHILL, she developed a unique methodology that leapfrogged traditional innovation processes to spark broad industry change. During the three years of CHILL innovation, a full 70 percent of ideas progressed to further stages, resulting in two start-ups, seven patents, and more than 20 joint projects and internal growth initiatives. She continues to drive the CHILL co-innovation methodology in her current role.

Previously Kate was the global leader of the Services Innovation Excellence Center at Cisco, where she was responsible for driving sustainable innovation capability for Cisco Services. The practice is based on an Innovation Maturity Model, devised to provide a clear pathway for businesses to build sustainable, measureable innovation capability.

Prior to Cisco, Kate led innovation for an Australian-based corporation in the utilities sector.

As a native of Melbourne, Kate proved her entrepreneurial chops as a fashion designer by founding, building, and exiting a successful shoe business, Cinderella Bella.

She holds a Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and is the recipient of numerous industry awards and recognitions, including the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize: Innovating Innovation Challenge. Kate was also named one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business” and included in the Anita Borg Institute’s annual Women of Vision awards. Most recently, Kate was named one of the Upstart 50 2018 by the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal.

She is co-author of “Managing Multiparty Innovation,” which was published in the Harvard Business Review in November, 2016.

Articles

November 15, 2018

1

INNOVATION

How to Turn Customer Obsession into Customer Success

If you are older than about 30 years old, you will probably remember the VCR—or video cassette recorder. When they first came out these devices were big, bulky and difficult to use. In order to program your VCR you had to consult the manual (400 pages long and written in poor English), press a multi…

October 2, 2018

1

INNOVATION

Intelligent Chatbots: Have a Conversation with Your Data

Growing up, one of the things that fascinated me about the old Star Trek shows was the crew’s ability to find out virtually anything from the ship’s computer, simply by asking: “Computer, what’s the political situation on Rigel V?” The computer would respond instantly with an appropriate summary and…

August 24, 2018

INNOVATION

Experience Design: Meeting User Needs, One Good Conversation at a Time

I’m proud to work with a diverse and talented team of people who comprise Cisco CHILL. Today, I’ve asked Whitney McGowan, our amazing user experience designer, to share what it means to design an experience focused on the user, not the technology. I’m a designer, so when asked to write I often expla…

July 12, 2018

INNOVATION

Prototyping for Impact: Hunt Zombies, Kill Your Darlings, and Prototype Like a Star

While I’m out on maternity leave, I’m excited to highlight the varied viewpoints of some of the amazing people that make up Cisco CHILL. I’m proud to work with this diverse and talented team. They hail from around the globe, and bring a rich set of experiences, skills, and passions to bear on everyt…

June 22, 2018

1

INNOVATION

Innovating Business Sustainability

While I’m out on maternity leave, I’m excited to highlight the varied viewpoints of some of the amazing people that make up CHILL. I’m proud to work with this diverse and talented team. They hail from around the globe, and bring a rich set of experiences, skills, and passions to bear on everything t…

May 31, 2018

INNOVATION

Techno Panics 2.0: What Do Paint Rollers and Self-Driving Cars Have in Common?

Back in 1940, a Canadian named Norman Breakey invented the paint roller—a leap forward in painting technology. Immediately, professional painters panicked, fearing large-scale job loss, and for years, paint rollers were banned from professional painting jobs. But of course, large-scale adoption was…

May 17, 2018

1

INNOVATION

Taking a Learning Journey to Innovation

While I’m out on maternity leave, I’m excited to highlight the varied viewpoints of some of the amazing people that make up CHILL. I’m proud to work with this diverse and talented team. They hail from around the globe, and bring a rich set of experiences, skills, and passions to bear on everything t…

May 3, 2018

3

INNOVATION

Innovation Leaders: Always Learning

While I’m out on maternity leave, I’m excited to highlight the varied viewpoints of some of the amazing people that make up CHILL. I’m proud to work with this diverse and talented team. They hail from around the globe, and bring a rich set of experiences, skills, and passions to bear on everything t…

April 19, 2018

3

INNOVATION

Message to Women: Disrupt the Ordinary, Be Yourself!

While I’m out on maternity leave, I’m excited to highlight the varied viewpoints of some of the amazing people that make up CHILL. I’m proud to work with this diverse and talented team. They hail from around the globe, and bring a rich set of experiences, skills, and passions to bear on everything t…