https://youtu.be/T-aI91UGCWw
Nick Jain, CEO of IdeaScale, is driven by a mission to help organizations innovate to success by democratizing innovation, enabling them to crowdsource and rank ideas from their entire ecosystem.
We learn about Nick’s journey from growing up in India and building a career in private equity to leading IdeaScale, the largest innovation-focused software company globally. He explains the ICE Framework—Innovate, Collaborate, and Execute—a philosophy and process that encourages continuous improvement, teamwork, and actionable results. He highlights how IdeaScale helps organizations like Pfizer and the U.S. federal government overcome constraints and systematically tap into collective intelligence for impactful innovation. He also shares the company’s commitment to adaptability and hard work, providing responsive, high-touch solutions for customers.
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Innovate to Success with Nick Jain
Welcome everyone to the Management Blueprint Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Krista Crawford. My guest today is Nick Jain, CEO of IdeaScale, a leading innovation operating system designed as a platform for crowdsourcing ideas. Nick, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me, Krista. I'm excited to be here.
I am excited, too. And just for our listeners, we have had a short pre-interview, so we're going to be covering some things that we've already talked about, and you're also going to be adding some new information. We will dig into IdeaScale shortly. However, to begin, you and I had that pre-interview where you described your leadership journey. I am sure others would benefit from your story. Please share what you will.
Sure. So the quick summary of my background is I initially grew up in India, raised by a single grandmother to live up to the age of five, then did all my childhood education, small public high school in Canada, came to the U.S. for college, studied math and physics, spent the first 10 years of my career on Wall Street as a professional investor doing private equity deals and hedge fund deals. Went to business school at Harvard. And then for the past five or six years, I have either run or co-run companies in a bunch of different industries, ranging from a really big trucking company to a very small men's shoe company. And now I have the great honor and privilege of leading IdeaScale, the largest innovation-specific software company on the planet.
You mentioned IdeaScale. Go ahead. Give us a little teaser about what you actually do there.
Sure. So, well, I guess what I do is I'm the CEO, so I spend my time doing anything and everything, right, whether that means taking out the trash or doing marketing, coding, whatever's needed, right? What IdeaScale does, though, is really cool. What it allows any large, complex organization to do is to collect ideas from their entire ecosystem rather than just the people who sit in the boardroom. So a thing that a lot of companies struggle with is, hey, how do we get the ideas from people in our satellite offices who aren't necessarily super connected to the CEO or who are introverts or who don't speak the headquarters main language? And so our software helps you collect all of those ideas. And just like a social media platform, it'll help you rank those ideas. People can upvote and downvote those ideas. So the best ideas rise to the top.
No different than how a funny dance video rise to the top in TikTok or a cute cat image rises up in Instagram. But imagine this for much more impactful ideas that could be your company's new product. It could be you’re a new initiative for your nonprofit, a new way to serve your constituents as a government. And you can get those ideas from your entire ecosystem. That could be your employees, that could be your customers, your shareholders, the people you serve as a nonprofit. And what that results in is just a much more diverse group of ideas and also the best ideas rising to the top, rather than just the ideas of the loudest people in the room.
I am one of those people that will always get drawn into a funny cat video. So I'm so glad you mentioned that. As a self-described innovation evangelist, you were really humble with me in our pre-interview in describing your freakishly high IQ. You really didn't want to talk about it. I'm going to ask you to talk about it and how you leverage that in both your business and in your personal life?
In my personal life, I was, well, I'm on and off a reasonably competitive poker player. I stopped playing because I have other priorities in life. Yeah, I'm about to have a kid, so I'd rather spend time with my wife and my future child. But being very good at math and very able to think through things logically without a lot of emotion involved is an incredibly powerful skill in poker.
In my professional life, I think it helps in a few ways, right? Number one, it allows you to really be centered on why things are happening rather than use fuzzy logic. And that's a pitfall that a lot of businesses fall into, that they proceed down a strategy or an action or tactic because someone said something that sounds good. So having kind of studied mathematics and a very logical way of thinking about things, it's very easy to say, wait, that doesn't actually make sense. And you can discover that on the fly before decisions are made, because often once a decision is made, it's too late. So you have to react in real time. And I think that's where some micro training and background really helps in the world of business.Share on X
So some people may be questioning why I asked you that if you really didn't want to talk about it. But I think it's really important because we often typecast extremely intelligent people as not having social skills, as not being able to use their EQ, and you obviously step outside of that typecast. You have strong social skills, and I can tell you, I would imagine you rate really high in emotional intelligence. So that’s why I wanted to bring this forward. And I don’t usually have people talk about something that makes them terribly uncomfortable. But thank you for diving and deeper as to how that really helps you both in your personal life with that pending baby and in your business life. One question I often ask CEOs or leaders is what are three words that you present when you are your best? When you are adding the most value, what are three words?
Sure. So I would say I'm principled, I'm logical, and I'm fair. So when I'm at my best, I think those three words represent me quite well.
Yeah. So let's dig into those. Principled. How does that show up? How do you show up when you are exhibiting being principled?
So the way we try and run IdeaScale is we have a very clear set of principles that I've laid out on what matters to the organization. Number one, we're trying to create value for our three core constituents, which is our customers, our employees, and our shareholders. That's the principle. So every action we take has to help all three of those parties. Second is we make business decisions that actually create value. So they expand the pie, and there's a specific equation or way you run a software company that does that. So when we make decisions, again, there's a principle. We're not going to do a decision that violates how a software company should grow. And there's some deep research on this that's been known for decades. What I mean by principles, and that's my personal life, too.
I have ethical principles or business principles, and I try and run my personal life by them, too.Share on X
And those are clearly articulated both in my personal life and my professional life. These are the principles IdeaScale runs by. In terms of fair, it kind of ties into my principle thing, but I'm a big believer that you don't have to cheat to get ahead. Right. Yes, sometimes cheating to get ahead makes life easier, but that's not one of my principles. And I'd rather do things fairly in life where everyone wins rather than you have to screw someone to win. And that's true both in a one on one interaction as well as in a corporate interaction. So certainly, in a negotiation, I will be aggressive for my side, but I will not endeavor to screw anybody over who's sitting on the other side, which I think is sometimes different in the world of business where it's always me, people always think in a us versus them perspective, I generally try and grow the pine, reach something fair. And logical, right? I try and make almost no decision, no meaningful decisions in my life based on emotion, right? So I may pick a candy bar based on temptation or because I'm hungry at that moment.
That's probably not the greatest, most logical decision for my health to have a bag of chips, but any meaningful decision, right? Like, hey, who do I want to be married to? Where do I want to live? How do I want to invest my money? How do I want to run IdeaScale? Those serious decisions are entirely run or almost exclusively run based on logic rather than feelings, which I think allows me to have fewer regrets after the fact.
Fantastic. Principled, logical, and fair. All characteristics that leadership need to exhibit, if not all the time, at least most of the time. I ask you if you would share with us a process or step process that you use in your leadership and decision-making. And you offered something you call ICE. Please share with us, describe ICE for us.
Sure, so it's a three-letter acronym that basically means, says innovate, collaborate, and execute. And it's both a process and a philosophy. And I'll try to describe both elements. The first step is innovate. And this is the idea that you basically need to get better every single day, whether you're an individual or you're an organization. And the reason is twofold. A, it feels good to get better at whatever you do, whether you're playing basketball, whether you're running a company, whether you're an entrepreneur.
But secondly,
