The Disruption Lab

Step into the world of innovation with The Disruption Lab live podcast, where groundbreaking ideas and strategic insights come to life. Hosted by Kevin McGinnis and filmed in front of a live studio audience at Keystone Sessions, each episode brings you face-to-face with the visionaries reshaping industries and pioneering new paths in entrepreneurship.Whether you’re an entrepreneur, innovator, or professional eager to fuel your growth and unlock strategic collaboration, The Disruption Lab delivers the tools, stories, and wisdom from top industry disruptors and founders. Join us as we explore the minds of industry leaders to inspire and equip the next wave of disruptors.

The Disruption Lab is a society podcast hosted by Kevin McGinnis, with 91 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Kevin McGinnis hosts The Disruption Lab, a society show with 91 episodes published.

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  Episode #92

  Kansas City Didn't Leave Out Its African Entrepreneurs. It Didn't Know They Existed.

  Oct 1, 202655 min

  What happens when a city's entrepreneurs aren't excluded from the economy, just invisible to it? On this episode of The Disruption Lab, recorded live in front of a studio audience, host Kevin McGinnis sits down with Suzanne Gunn. She is a former oncology nurse, med spa owner, couture designer, founder of AfroKC, and co-founder of a planned Fashion and Beauty Innovation Campus in Kansas City. Every one of those ventures traces back to one person: her mother. She died of cancer after being misdiagnosed four times in Kenya, and her quiet, community-first way of living became the blueprint Suzanne didn't recognize until it was almost too late. Today we talk about everything she's built since: a med spa that safely treats oncology patients a couture label shown at Kansas City Fashion Week a retail line selling handmade goods from African artisans AfroKC, a festival she started after realizing the region hadn't excluded African-owned businesses so much as never known they existed a planned Fashion and Beauty Innovation Campus Recorded live, Kevin McGinnis talks with Suzanne about grief, a near-breakdown, why balance is a myth, and what it takes to build the community infrastructure most founders take for granted.

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  Episode #91

  Building a Business That Heals a Community

  Sep 25, 202656 min

  Troost Avenue is Kansas City's most infamous boundary — a redlining border named for a man who enslaved six people, and the same line congressional maps are still drawn along today. Chris Goode built Ruby Jean's Juicery, now a national brand carried in over 160 Whole Foods stores, out of a promise he made at 14, watching his grandmother die of type 2 diabetes. Eleven years later, that promise has become a campaign to rename the street, a bus-stop adoption program aiming for 1,000 stops, and a hard case for why wealthy institutions — not good intentions — are what actually change a neighborhood. Kevin McGinnis talks with Goode about grief, capital, and building something that outlasts a name.

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  Episode #90

  The Masks Weren't the Business, The People Sewing Them Were

  Sep 18, 202647 min

  In March 2020, John Pryor was standing in a furniture studio he'd just spent a year renovating, watching his business teeter. He launched a face-mask line before he knew how to sew, and sold 15,000 masks in eight weeks. Then the real story walked through his door: dozens of refugee and immigrant stitchers from Burma and Afghanistan, carrying generational craft skills the labor market had never learned to see. Pryor rebuilt his company around them, launching a handbag brand where designs carry their makers' names, royalties flow back to the designers, and there are no investors or bank debt to dilute the mission. Kevin McGinnis talks with Pryor about talent that hides in plain sight — and what it takes for a city to finally see it.

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  Episode #89

  What the Network Enables (Part II)

  Sep 10, 202617 min

  Infrastructure without application strategy is just real estate with electricity. Sprint launched America’s first 4G network — and still lost the 4G era to the translators. Having the infrastructure first is not the same as capturing the era. KC now has $11B+ of announced hyperscale investment. The economic return depends on the translation: connecting the compute to the compute-hungry industries already here. And the proximity advantage is real where it’s honest: the triangle of compute + physical testbeds + operating companies, which almost no other region has.

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  Episode #88

  How Kansas City Won a World Cup It Wasn't Supposed to Get

  Sep 3, 20261h 8m

  Kansas City is the 33rd-largest metro area in America. It was competing against host cities ranked in the top fifteen nationally and it won anyway. Then FIFA told them they had redefined what a host city does. Cliff Illig, co-founder of Cerner and majority owner of Sporting Kansas City, explains how a decade of deliberate infrastructure investment, not luck, turned Kansas City into a World Cup host. He breaks down the difference between hosting a moment and building sustained economic advantage, why design intentionality shaped everything from stadium architecture to fan experience, and what comes next for a city that no longer has to prove it belongs.

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