Episode #17 | A CFO's Perspective on Innovation

This episode of the Solutionology podcast is unlike any other we've done. Our guest is Todd Buness, the CFO and President of Prinsco, a long standing product development client of DI Labs. In this conversation we do a deep dive into the business and finance side of product innovation from his perspective. It's a topic that takes us away from the technical details of additive manufacturing and highlights how the benefits of additive support innovation with speed, rapid learning, and flexibility to iterate.
Todd is a great storyteller and shares specific examples of how this has played out in companies he's worked for such as Cargill, Heraeus, and Prinsco. He describes himself as a "manufacturing guy" and not a typical CFO because of his strategic focus on bringing together the functional units of an organization to drive success. He talks about understanding customer needs, designing the right thing, getting something into customer hands as soon as possible for feedback, getting to market quickly to start a revenue stream and building a partner relationship with clients. It's a long-term, solutions-based way of thinking that is very aligned with our approach at DI Labs which is why these types of conversations are so much fun for us! Enjoy!
00:00 Intro
05:02 Inside the episode
07:42 Bringing together engineering, manufacturing and sales
08:30 Heraeus contract manufacturing approach
10:21 Medical component example
14:18 Not a typical finance guy
15:35 Shifting the customer perspective at Cargill
16:49 First ever customer solutions strategy
18:25 Converting a commodity business into a solution model
19:36 Beer barley examples
22:21 Helping customers shift their thinking
25:57 Story of shifting from commodity vs solution customers
29:53 Scarcity mindset to opportunity mindset
31:55 Enlarging the pie vs getting the lowest price
33:04 Classifying customers to service them correctly
34:19 Challenges of managing a program
37:30 Advice to your younger self
39:46 Getting the commitment to get programs launched
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