A Playbook for Building Rapid Growth Ventures

I’ve had my fair share of experiences in the world of entrepreneurship. Over the course of my career, I’ve built 13 startups, but it’s important to note that I’ve also failed at 9 of them. However, every failure brought invaluable lessons, and during my time as an intrapreneur at KPMG, I gained insights into innovation […]
Beyond Digital Strategies, Solutions, and Apps: Why a Venture Studio is Your Key to Building the Right Thing

Navigating the buzzwords companies throw out like “digital strategies,” “digital solutions,” and “innovation” makes it difficult to understand what they actually do. What’s actually being delivered? Each one promises a pathway to success. Yet, in all of these possibilities, it’s easy to lose sight of what matters most — building the right thing. Let’s dive […]
Building a World-Class Software Project Team in an Unstable Talent Market

Trends of Staffing in Software At City Innovations, we are constantly trying to refine our process for the better of our customers. These process refinements range from kickoff to closeout on our projects — and some even outside of our project process like staffing. Historically, software development teams have largely adopted an idealistic “Stable World” […]
What is a Servant Leader?

Hi, I’m Josh Barker, CEO of City Innovation Labs. And this is another video in our series called Cultivating Innovation where we talk about the roles that an innovative leader plays in order to create an innovative team. In this video, I’m going to talk about the role of Servant leader. We have already touched […]
The Second Role of an Innovative Leader

Read the video transcript below for the second role in innovative leadership: Hi, I’m Josh Barker, CEO of City Innovation Labs. And this is the third video in our series called Cultivating Innovation where we talk about the roles that an innovative leader plays in order to Create an Innovative Team. In this video I’m […]
The First Role of an Innovative Leader

Hi, I’m Josh Barker, CEO of City Innovation Labs. This is the second video in a series we call Cultivating Innovation where we talk about the roles that an innovative leader plays in order to Create an Innovative Team. This video I’m going to talk about the first role an innovative leader, which is that […]
How to Create an Innovative Team

Hi, I’m Josh Barker, CEO of City Innovation Labs – a digital product innovation company. I am here in beautiful Pennsylvania on a road trip doing a lot of innovation workshops. We just finished one in Benton Harbor, MI with a large home appliance manufacturer, and it was a lot of fun. Very smart people […]
Why Failure was the Catalyst for Creation: the CIL Origin Story

City Innovation Labs was born as an answer to all the mistakes I’d made as an entrepreneur, it was my mission to help others avoid making the same ones. CIL is a digital product innovation firm set on helping innovation teams take their vision to life while ensuring together we build the right product. We focus […]
Ask an Innovator – with Josh Barker & Brad Hammond

Josh Barker & Brad Hammond Discuss Innovation Josh Barker and Brad Hammond launch the first episode of Ask an Innovator, a podcast dedicated to talking with experts about innovation across all industries. LEARN MORE City Innovation Labs WE’RE SOCIAL HERE AT ASK AN INNOVATOR LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Twitter ASK AN INNOVATOR TIMESTAMPS Why did we […]