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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

April 5, 2018

6

INNOVATION

Using Rapid Multi-party Innovation to Solve Wicked Global Problems

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…

March 15, 2018

INNOVATION

Learning by Doing: The Fast Track 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…

March 2, 2018

6

INNOVATION

Women in Tech: Glass Half Full?

When the Olympics wrapped up in PyeongChang last week, the U.S. walked away with 23 medals—57 percent of which were won by women! I’m not sure if this is a first, but it certainly represents a trend in the right direction—in all the Winter Olympics since 1924, women have won just 40 percent of the m…

January 4, 2018

INNOVATION

Introducing Two New Startups, Built from Scratch by Enterprise Innovation

Enterprises seem to have an endless fascination with startups. Business journals are full of articles on how enterprises can and should be more like startups. And indeed, bogged down in the procedures, processes, and approval cycles we need for compliance and accountability, it’s easy to be nostalgi…

November 30, 2017

1

INNOVATION

To Save Tomorrow: The Future of Work Is Ours To Create

I began this comic book series with the idea that creating a science fiction prototype would be a useful tool in imagining—and planning for—the Future of Work. I have found it helpful to envision future scenarios where a mobile, flexible work force collaborates seamlessly with each other and with in…

November 17, 2017

INNOVATION

To Save Tomorrow: It’s about Transformation and Choice

Whatever you think the future might bring, one thing is certain—it will be about transformation and choice. The transformation is certain—it’s already here and accelerating. But how that transformation takes shape is still our choice. This comic book prototype of the Future of Work has been one way…

November 2, 2017

1

INNOVATION

Creating Smarter, Safer, More Inclusive Workplaces: Are You In?

In our digital and connected world, the opportunities are simply too large and fast-moving for any one company to seize on its own. That’s why we created Cisco Hyperinnovation Living Labs (CHILL). CHILL gathers together an impressive cross-section of large industry players to tackle large industry i…

October 19, 2017

INNOVATION

To Save Tomorrow: The Evolving Workplace

Office workers of the mid-20th century would not recognize how we work today. They banged out documents in triplicate using manual typewriters and carbon paper. They had to wait for a live operator to connect their phone calls manually. Their hours were fixed and non-negotiable. How could they have…

October 5, 2017

6

INNOVATION

Will Robots Take Over the World and Destroy All Our Jobs?

Welcome to the fight of the century. In one corner there are the prophets of doom, who say that no job is safe from automation, and economic chaos is inevitable. And in the other corner, we have the rosy optimists, who believe technology will usher in a new era of meaningful work, more leisure time,…