Digital Reinvention, Innovation Capital & Platform Strategy | DisrupTV Ep. 14

In DisrupTV Episode 14, hosts R “Ray” Wang and Vala Afshar engage with three leaders driving digital transformation from different vantage points:

  • Richie Etwaru, then Chief Digital Officer at IMS Health 
  • Anshu Sharma, Venture Partner at Storm Ventures
  • Mila D’Antonio, Strategy & Innovation executive

The conversation delves into how large organizations must reinvent themselves digitally, the role of venture capital in enabling innovation, and how businesses can architect platforms for scalable growth. Vimeo

As always, Ray and Vala also discuss the week’s major trends and moves across tech, innovation, and disruption.

Key Takeaways & Themes

1. Reinventing Legacy Organizations

Richie Etwaru shares how even well-established enterprises must adopt startup thinking—lean, iterative, and customer-centric—to remain relevant. Digital reinvention is not a flip but a continuous journey.

2. Strategic Role of Venture Capital

Anshu Sharma discusses how VCs should do more than fund — they should act as ecosystem builders, connectors, and enablers, helping startups scale in complex markets.

3. Platform Thinking & Ecosystems

Mila D’Antonio emphasizes that winning business models increasingly rely on platforms—modular, extensible, partner-friendly systems that enable third-party engagement and innovation.

4. Balancing Innovation and Core Stability

The panel notes the tension between exploring new frontier opportunities and maintaining the reliability of existing core operations. Guardrails, staging, and safe zones are essential.

5. Culture, Leadership & Adaptive Strategy

Transformation requires more than tech — it needs leadership aligned with a growth mindset, cultural safety for experimentation, and adaptive strategy based on real-time feedback.

6. Metrics That Matter

Beyond traditional KPIs, new metrics around usage, retention, network effects, and ecosystem growth need to be tracked to understand digital platform success.

Final Thoughts & Strategic Advice

  • Don’t treat transformation as discrete programs — make continuous reinvention the baseline.
  • Venture capital must evolve — shift from funding to enabling ecosystems, especially in deep tech and marketplace domains.
  • Build with extensibility in mind — design platforms that others can build upon, unlocking network effects.
  • Maintain core stability while pushing boundaries — use safe zones and staged innovation paths.
  • Leadership must internalize and champion growth mindsets — culture and narrative drive adoption.
  • Track next-gen metrics — network participation, platform usage, retention, and partner growth should be elevated.

If your organization is wrestling with digital legacy constraints, platform strategy, or building scalable innovation engines, this episode offers a powerful framework and real-world validation.

Related Episodes

For further exploration of topics discussed in Episode 14, consider these related DisrupTV episodes:

 

Business Research Themes

Future of Work, Tech Optimization

Roles

Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer