On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2019. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Geeta ↗
In their words
If you have things like net 90-day payment terms and you don't pay that startup in three months, that startup won't be around in three months. You need to adjust your processes.
The first six months in my role, all I did was meet with my new friends in legal and IT and procurement and find loopholes and workarounds, so that I got net fifteen day payment terms and I got vendors set up in two weeks versus three months.
Innovation is not tech centric, it is human centric. You are gonna get people in high places saying we need something with VR, what's internet of things — and you have to remind them that your job is to delight a human, your job is to meet an unmet need.
Quick answers
Who is Geeta Chopra?
A Toronto innovation leader who heads global growth, strategic partnerships and innovation at Kenvue, Johnson & Johnson's consumer health spin-off. She was J&J's retail innovation manager from 2018 to 2023 and held skin care and design thinking roles at Procter & Gamble before that.
What did she present at TechTO?
Five tips for building a corporate innovation team from scratch, at RetailTO in April 2019 — drawn from doing it inside Johnson & Johnson. Her framing was practical rather than strategic: most of the job is unblocking the plumbing that makes a large company impossible for a startup to work with.
What did she mean by "don't break the startups"?
That standard corporate process kills the partner. She told the audience that net-90 payment terms and 45-page service agreements are fatal to a company with no legal counsel and three months of runway, so she spent her first six months negotiating net-15 terms, two-week vendor setup, and a two-page LOI with a one-page NDA.