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KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation—unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
Move Fast. Pitch Hard. Break the Mold.
🎙️ In this episode of KP Unpacked, we’re calling out the innovation fluff—and the leaders who can’t pitch their way out of a checklist.
Host Jeff Echols sits down with KP Reddy to unpack one of his most pointed LinkedIn posts yet: “Does your AEC innovation group have a pitch deck?” Spoiler alert—if it’s just two slides with drones and BIM screenshots... you’re doing it wrong.
They dive into the real talk around:
🔹 Why most innovation teams don’t deserve a seat at the table
🔹 How storytelling separates lazy thinkers from actual builders
🔹 The pitch that breaks the checklist (and lands real deals)
🔹 Why your innovation brand should look nothing like your parent company
🔹 What happens when your innovation team is more valuable than your core business
From fake marketing budgets to borrowed GC innovation squads, this one’s got sharp takes and smarter strategies. If you lead innovation—or think you do—this episode will either light your fire or hurt your ego.
🎉 Special Offer for KP Unpacked Listeners: Get 55% off your ticket to the 9th Annual AEC Summit on October 29th at the Diverge Innovation Center in Phoenix! Click the link below and use promo code UNPACKED55 at checkout.
Don't miss this opportunity to connect with top minds in AEC and beyond. Tickets are limited—act fast!
Welcome back to KP Unpacked. My name is Jeff Eccles, I am the director of our mastermind groups and our incubator at KP ReadyCo, and every week I get to ask KP Ready hey, when you posted that on LinkedIn, what were you thinking? I'm joined, as usual, by KP Reddy. He's the CEO and founder of KP Reddy Co. He's also the founder of Shadow Ventures and, like I said, this is my weekly opportunity to sit down with KP and unpack the things that he's posting on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:If you're not following him on LinkedIn, you should be. He posts about this every once in a while, but he's capped out on the connections over there on LinkedIn. If you're not following him on LinkedIn, you should be. He posts about this every once in a while, but he's capped out on the connections over there on LinkedIn. So follow him, and a couple of times a day, maybe three times a day, you'll see one of his posts where he shares insights, where he shares observations, where he shares the things that he's hearing, the things he's talking about all around the AEC industry and all focused on innovation for the way that we design, the way that we build and the way that we operate in the built environment. So, kp, welcome back. Glad to see you.
Speaker 2:Hey, jeff, you forgot to mention we're the number one podcast in AEC.
Speaker 1:I did forget that we are the number one. My mom started listening, so we've really bumped up in the rankings.
Speaker 2:I got stuffed in a hotel lobby the other day and was asked like hey, are you KP? I love your podcast.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:Only cost me $100.
Speaker 1:Great great so. So what's the question? Was it hey, are you kp? Or did you walk up to somebody and hand him a hundred dollars and say I'm kp, ask me about my podcast.
Speaker 2:I slipped him a hundred dollar bill with a note okay to have a conversation why? Would I have a conversation, just like hand him a note, like hey, kind of I'm over here with a group of people, can you walk up to me and just like yeah that's a little inside baseball folks. That's how it works around here.
Speaker 1:That's how it works right yeah, you know, what you should do is you put on a disguise and you walk around and you find, you know, you find kp at an event or whatever, and you get, you know, you kind of get close to him and you know, speak a little bit intelligently and he'll hand you a hundred dollars I mean, everybody else is spending money on google adwords and cpo, like whatever I just walk around with, like hundred dollar bills and little notes to hand to people.
Speaker 2:Like walk up to me and act very excited to see, to meet me in person I'm gonna have to askho to update the marketing budget to reflect that.
Speaker 1:Wow, I didn't see the light item for that, but it's good to know.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting. You say that because, as I said in the intro, and of course you know this and you show up for all of the uh incubator sessions as well but, um, and even on the the venture side maybe especially on the venture side you see pitches all the time, right? You hear people talking all the time about their great ideas. You read articles we both read articles, you know. We see things in the news, we hear it through the grapevine, etc. And this post that we're going to unpack today, so we're recording this in April 2025. So I think what we're talking about is evergreen. I don't think this changes at all, but if you want to go back and find the post, you can. It's back, probably about April 10th 2025. And it's all about storytelling. It's about getting your idea across. So, as usual, I'll go ahead and read it. It's not a very long post. I'll read it and then KP and I will unpack it. So it starts out like this Does your AEC innovation group have a pitch deck? Are they great at storytelling? Aec innovation group should think like a startup when it comes to this. If you're the CEO of an AEC firm and you haven't seen a pitch from your innovation group. That amazed you. They are doing it wrong.
Speaker 1:Now, one of the things that I'll say again related to the intro. In the mastermind groups that I facilitate and you sit in on almost all of them, we have a number of people in the innovation leaders mastermind group, the construction tech leaders mastermind group. A number of the folks that are participating in those groups run the innovation group right. They have a spin out or they have a different, they have a working group. You know a lot of firms. They have different terms and structures and things, but there are actually quite a few innovation groups out there in the AEC world, and so I think this is, first of all, this is great advice, because communication comes up. How do you communicate to your internal clients or your external clients? What innovation is, what you're working on, et cetera. But this is taking it even a step further. So when you were writing this, when you were posting this, what inspired it? What was it that led you to think? You know, I need to put this down right now or this into LinkedIn right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So I think this is, this is the I. Obviously I do a lot of workshops and talks, all that good stuff, and it was apparent to me that if you look at like I'm not going to pick on any one company because it applies to all the companies If you are a construction company and you are presenting to an owner or a design team about buying your services, what are those key messages? The key messages are we've been doing it for a long time. Here's our project portfolio. Those are all the table stakes, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Right right, those are all the table stakes, so to speak, right right right, those are the table stakes.
Speaker 2:And the innovation is like this thing that you throw in there you know a slide with some drones and lidar and vim images. Like we do innovation too. I don't think that sways the customer one way or another. So if you think about, like, just from a sheer business perspective, a lead comes in for you to do construction, you're probably catching the rfp. Right, you're not out there developing it that much, or that's just how the industry is.
Speaker 2:And so your innovation group is an exact opposition from a brand identity to the core business. Like if you tell me, like, oh, we're very innovative, we're an innovative startup, we've been around for 100 years. Like, you're not an innovative startup. So so all the, you know the counter argument to everything that is the brand identity to sell more work as a contractor. The innovation group message is actually the opposite, right? So if you look at a stakeholder, whether it's a customer or an employee, right, hey, I'm trying to recruit someone. Well, what are you selling at the construction company? Stability, safety, years of service, community, family. In your innovation group it's like move fast and break things. You may or may not make it because we're moving fast. So almost every brand point is opposite for the innovation group. So my feeling is like when you play the middle, the story gets confusing, the message gets confusing.
Speaker 2:So I think the way you really look at it is you know, if I'm pitching a customer tomorrow, I would say great, like here's the agenda, I'm going to talk about our firm and our background and then I'm going to have Steve, who runs our innovation group, come in and pitch, yeah, and Steve's deck has to be not just branded differently, it has to 100% be branded differently. That's what I love about these innovation groups creating their own brand name. I think it's important, right, branded differently, the deck is different, the message it's all those things right. And then we'll continue with a regularly scheduled program of being boring and how much our bonding is and all those things right which are important to the customer. So I think by having a separate brand and a brand identity and a pitch deck, that's how you should show up to a customer, pitch as an innovation leader, not, oh, here's two slides, throw it in the deck, right. And I just don't think innovation leaders know how to pitch. I don't think they're thinking that way.
Speaker 1:No, I would agree, and I think you know to your point table stakes. I would even say you know it's. You know maybe this is just two sides of the same coin, but it's the expected things we expect. You right, we had in our RFP, we had this checklist, right, and if you didn't check all the boxes, there's a really good chance that you didn't even make the short list If you did check the boxes. So what? Right?
Speaker 1:And the thing that because I, I, I used to teach teams to pitch in in RFP shortlist world and the irony is that most of the groups out there, most of the marketing teams out there, are using that RFP and the accompanying checklist or whatever the format is. They're thinking about that in terms of making the shortlist when in fact, the selection committee is thinking about that in terms of eliminating the short list, when, in fact, the selection committee is thinking about that in terms of eliminating people. So so we're thinking about on our side in terms of making it in and they're thinking about it on their side from kicking people out. So we're coming at it from from opposite directions and you know, I think the thing, the thing that I've always found most effective, is how do I break their system if I'm found most effective is, how do I break their system If I'm pitching?
Speaker 1:How do I break their system as quickly as possible? Do I need to have the bonding? Do I need to have the project experience? Absolutely, but what's the story that I'm telling? That's breaking that mold, right? That's that's, that's putting it out there and it's just like what? What I want, what I want the pitch team to do, is knock them off of their seats so they don't even remember where they are Right. They don't, they don't even. They don't even remember that checklist anymore.
Speaker 2:Right, I think what? So I think there's exactly what you're talking about, but I also think the way you have to look at it is right now, if you're a couple slides of the innovation group to own brand, you have to sell your value prop in a way highly disconnected from the core business, because the core business I mean honestly the stuff they pitch can be filled out in a spreadsheet. I'm not sure why we have to show up and pitch, quite honestly, here's a Dropbox file, here's all our stuff. It's a dropbox file like here's all our stuff. Right, it's a big, so what? But I think it's. It's a forcing function for the innovation group to talk about their value prop and their differentiator. Uh, almost like you're, if you think about it this way. Right, this is a wild idea. I just thought of it.
Speaker 2:What if I was a gc and I brought in as my team like, we all bring in teams? Right, it's not always just one company. What if I was a gc and on my team, I brought in the innovation group from another gc? Okay, like, why not? Different? Right, like, different, like, why? So? So let's go through that thought experiment, right? So the innovation team, they're on this team, this jv team? Right, like I think you would pitch a jv team. Here's our jv team.
Speaker 2:With this innovation group, the number one thing the customer is going to ask is like why are they here? What are they bringing to the table? What's their value, right? So a little bit I feel like some of these innovation leaders. They're not earning a seat at the table, they're just getting a seat at the table. And if I was a BD or a project executive at a big GC like, why do I want my innovation person there? Like how are they helping me win the job? How are they contributing to the team? And I think there's an inherent laziness with innovation teams to not dig deep on these topics Because they didn't earn a seat at the table. But think about it If you're an innovation group and a GC came to me and said, hey, I want you to be on my team, tell me what you'd bring to the table, they would have to approach it very differently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, to put it a different way, right, the selection team, whoever they are on the owner's side, they're the owner's side, they're looking at everything, they're looking at every submission, they're listening to every speaker, every person that's on your team and your competitors team, etc. And they're seeing and hearing everything through the lens of what's in it. For me, right, right, and so if the innovation team has two slides to your point and they show up and and and it's just, they're a cool add-on, right, and I'm on the selection committee, I'm like so what, what's? What is that? What does that bring to me? What does that matter to me?
Speaker 1:And I think your example of bringing in another gc's innovation team, that's super interesting to me, one you know from the selection committee side. Okay, what's this about? But my guess is that if you're doing that, you're going to tell a story about the reason that you brought that team in. Well, they're going to coordinate this and they're going to bring in the technology to plug this, that and the other together. And right, this is why it matters to you. This is to your point. The phrase that you used is the appropriate phrase, that the value proposition, the value that they're bringing to this project, the reason we're bringing them in from a different GC is this value and this is the impact it's going to have on the project for you, the owner.
Speaker 2:Right, think about this, right, I mean this is actually it's going to have on the project for you, the owner. Right, think about this, right, I mean this. This is actually a great. It's not even a thought experiment, as I think as I dig into it, as my brain is working on functioning. They do it with self-perform A lot of GCs, self-perform concrete but they also get bids that from other subs and they don't always the self-reformed team has to win the work. Yes, is there a preference that? If it's in-house? Yes, if they're too expensive, no, if the project is too complex for the experience they've had today. No, right, it's so different. I think architects do it as well. There's a lot of architects I know that might have like interior design in house, but they do office buildings Well. When they win a hospitality job, they bring in a different interior designer that only does high end hospitality projects.
Speaker 2:Right, they design lobbies with hand painted wallpaper or whatever it is they care about, right.
Speaker 2:It could be Right. So I think, in terms of best fit for the job, I think we have to start thinking that as an innovation team and, by the way, I do know some GCs that loan out their innovation team to other contractors, not to sell the work, but to do the work A hundred percent. I've seen that before, especially when early days have been like, oh, I don't have enough people, do you have some people? Sure, like, my BIM team can help your BIM team out. Right, that happened. So I think it's time, I mean, I think, start taking it to be a real thing.
Speaker 2:If I'm the CEO of a company and now, let's say I'm three years, in four years, in funding my innovation strategy, where's my money? I've been spending all this money. Where's my money? And if you're not bringing any money in, then please demonstrate to me while we continue to invest. And I think we might be hitting an inflection point between what's happening in this, like guys beyond, like whatever right, where a CEO has to question every dollar of spend, and like why am I doing this?
Speaker 2:And I think if I'm the head of an innovation team, I would say, like, before the CEO shows up, I'm going to preventively go ahead and go to them and say, hey, here's my pitch. But I do think these innovation leaders should pitch. In fact, I think an idea out here, like maybe at our next mastermind group event we do like a little pitch, like we asked two or three of the innovation groups like hey, pitch in front of the group, so what's your pitch? How do we do it with our stars? But they have like seven minutes and seven minutes for q a maybe I mean on our virtual demo days.
Speaker 1:We do five and five.
Speaker 2:I wish to do, I mean on our virtual demo days. We do five and five I wish you'd do that. I wish you'd start doing virtual demo days for innovation people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can certainly do that.
Speaker 2:Or at our next meeting, our Q2 meeting in Atlanta on May 20th, like why don't we? We could carve out 30 minutes. Hey, you all get five and five. Let's go Show me what you got.
Speaker 1:Right, we should team it up with a hackathon maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to do the hackathon. I don't think we can get it together. We have an impedance mismatch between my ability to generate ideas and the team's ability to execute the ideas. I generate 10 ideas a day and they can execute on one idea a day.
Speaker 1:And there's only.
Speaker 2:It's not their fault.
Speaker 1:There's only so much time we have as well, it becomes a logistical issue as well Come spend three weeks with us at our mastermind. At our one-day mastermind event lasts three weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:We cram it all into three weeks. Well, and I think you know, you said this at the beginning You're not calling out any one particular organization or one particular team. We see this all the time. I mean, we see this in our incubator as well, right, and sometimes we take our live pitches on the road, right, we've done this with some other other organizations and their their uh uh conferences and whatnot, and, and whenever we have a live pitch that we're doing somewhere, I always do training for the uh, the founders that are uh, that are going to be live pitching or or or training and practice sessions, right, because we don't want them to um, show up and bomb, so to speak.
Speaker 1:But it's real, right, it's some the architects out there. They get a ton of training on pitching in school Engineers, I'm guessing, maybe not so much Contractors, the CM side, not so much. So it's a definite skill set and it's a muscle that has to be developed. But really, it comes down to, the most important piece of it is the storytelling piece of it, which you mentioned in your post. There We've got to learn to be great storytellers, great communicators.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100% Together. We're going to talk about AI or we're going to get together and talk about, you know, reality capture or whatever it is, whatever those emerging tech or AI or you know high tech kind of solutions are and ultimately and I do actually keep a list of this but ultimately, if we were to go back and look at the things that we talk about the most right, the topics that come up the most, there's two and in fact, in our very first in-person Mastermind event I know you remember this, but the topic that we spent the entire day so those of you that are listening picture this We've got innovation leaders from AEC firms all across North America. We got together in Miami and what do innovation leaders talk about? We spent the entire day talking about communication. How do you communicate to your internal client? How do you communicate to your external client? It's storytelling.
Speaker 2:It's one of the most important skills.
Speaker 2:And look, there are some firms that are doing it pretty good. In fact, I was with a firm where the innovation leader built a stellar team and in fact, went to the CEO and said hey, I think you're holding me back. Can I spin out the business into its own thing? Like, cash me out of my company stock, I want to spin out and run it as my own thing. Yeah, right, I mean that's like the right idea, right, that's the right thinking. Now, ultimately, the CEO like met his demands, so to speak, which was honestly like that. The innovation group was actually more valuable than the, you know, in a way, than the core business, sure?
Speaker 2:and if the innovation real possibility on its own is more valuable than the core business. The core business is actually bringing me down and if I have equity in the overall business, my contribution is not commensurate with. You know the impact I'm making and I could probably just spin out and do it on my own right, which I thought was like fascinating, I mean it's great, great. I mean look all these things like people get nervous about it's, like it's not, it's like don't get scared, like don't it's one of these. Like they had another post like about, like you you know, lizard brain, which a lot of people may or may not know, but it's like the biggest thing I see with innovation, people and leadership is this lizard brain, where they say all the right things about innovation and vision and all that, but then, you know, the next day they have a meeting with their accountants and their AR department and all of a sudden, lizard brain kicks in and all those things that were so strategic yesterday are meaningless today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we should do one of these episodes on I don't know how we frame it exactly, but things that are holding the teams back, and I think from both directions, right From the corporate versus innovation, innovation versus corporate, because that also becomes a major point of discussion with a lot of our mastermind members as well. But we'll spin that out in a different episode. Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, go ahead.
Speaker 1:I was just going to wrap it up for us, as we're working on a little bit of a small window of time today. So we're going to wrap this one up. Kp and I have been, as usual, unpacking one of his LinkedIn posts. If you are not following KP on LinkedIn, you should Just find KP the letter K, the letter P ready, r-e-d-d-y, and look for his post two, three times a day. This one reads like this Does your AEC innovation group have a pitch deck?
Speaker 1:Are they great at telling the story? Aec innovation group should think like a startup when it comes to this. If you're the CEO of an AEC firm and you haven't seen a pitch from your innovation group that amazed you, they are doing it wrong. This is real. This is real. We need to be able to tell the story, we need to be able to communicate, and this is a great place to start the discussion.
Speaker 1:So, KP, as always, thank you for joining me today. It's great to unpack these things, it's always fun and, for those of you that are listening to us, the number one podcast on innovation, the AEC World. We thank you for listening and we mentioned some things. Kp mentioned our next one-day mastermind event. It's coming up in Atlanta on May 20th. I've mentioned our startup incubator. I've mentioned our mastermind event. It's coming up in Atlanta on May 20th. I've mentioned our startup incubator. I've mentioned our mastermind program. Wherever you're consuming this podcast version, video version, whatever it is just go down to the show notes and you'll find links to the things that we've talked about here. Our production team, as they slice and dice this and do all the post production magic, they also include those links in our show notes. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm a little bit more accessible from the connection point of view, but you can DM me and you can follow KP on LinkedIn and we appreciate all of you and we'll be back again next week with another episode of KP Unpacked. Thanks everybody.