Tanya Kohen: Hi everyone and welcome to Invention Mode. This podcast is about what it really takes to spark meaningful change inside modern organizations. I've been wanting to create this space for a while. I talked to so many smart people doing inventive things behind the scenes. Not the flashy innovations, but the small clever fixes that quietly unlock big value.

You'll hear me say invention a lot and that's intentional. Innovation tends to get the spotlight, but invention — it's often quiet. It's when someone finds a smarter way to route a process or connect the dots, and those moves add up, sometimes more sustainably than the big stuff.

Each episode, I'll talk with leaders, experts, and accidental inventors who rethink how things are done. We'll explore how to build a culture where invention happens every day and why that mindset matters now more than ever. So with that in mind.

I'm excited to kick things off with someone who leaves and breathes this mindset. In just a moment, I'll be joined by Seth Marlowe, a treasury leader who's made a career out of spotting what-if moments and turning them into real business value. We'll talk about how invention actually shows up day-to-day, what it takes to nurture it, and why some of the smartest fixes don't always come with big transformations, but from small, we'll place moves. Welcome Seth!

Seth Marlowe: It's great to be here.

Tanya Kohen: I’m very happy that you were able to spare some time and join us today, Seth. And I'm really curious about your perspective on innovation and invention and really excited to hear some of your stories.

Seth Marlowe: It's such a great topic, and I think everybody talks about invention and innovation and very often they're used somewhat synonymously and it’s not really always the case. And I'll try to give you my concept of what the two are and what differentiates them.

The way I think about invention, it's probably more synonymous with creation. It's creating something that's entirely new. It could be a new idea, could be a new product. And it's something that really just didn't exist beforehand. So I'd say truly it's all about creation.

Whereas innovation is really about applying ideas, both new and existing, and in ways of creating value where that value hasn't been created before. It can be an improvement on something that already exists. It could be introducing something brand new to the market or doing something in a real novel way.

Let me give an example, which I think everybody can relate to. Think about the light bulb. Of course as a former GE guy it figures that I talk about the light bulb. Thomas Edison's invention was the light bulb itself and I won't go into the trials and tribulations of how he got there. But that was the invention. But really the innovation which it led to was electrifying homes and cities and creating the systems and infrastructure that really transform daily life.

I think if we apply it to the worlds that you and I both live in: treasury payments, banking, I think what it really comes down to is — some of the inventions that we've seen are things like blockchain technology, contactless EMV chip cards (boy, does that sound old at this point), and payment tokenization. Whereas some of the innovations that have come out are things like Zelle and real-time payments, mobile wallets, whether it's Apple Pay, Google Pay, anybody's pay, and then things like “Buy Now, Pay Later.” So I hope that frames it a little bit for our audience.

Tanya Kohen: Thank you so much and great examples, by the way. I would say both invention and innovation are important. I’m not trying to say that one is better than the other, but it seems to me that you should be in the creative mode in order to do any of these things, right? In order to think of improvements and truly, in the spirit of being innovative, you need to be creative.

Do you think finance and treasury teams (I know that you have so much experience with this peer group, so to speak) underestimate their creative potential?

Seth Marlowe: Totally. I think humans are just naturally creative beings. And I think, you get into a role that's in treasury or finance and there's so much structure around what those jobs are.

Everything from making a payment to doing a journal entry to even things like forecasting, it seems that there's almost a formula for it and you do it and you repeat it. There is a daily process that you go through each and every day, and it’s highly repeatable. And I don't think that most people in those roles think about “how can I innovate, how can I create or invent something new?” But I think we're all capable of it. It's something that can be done, but I think you need to have that mindset, and you need to really think about that. And you need a think time. That's probably something else that we can talk about.

Tanya Kohen: I agree. It should be intentional, right? So it's not that it just comes to you out of nowhere. No, you have to be intentional about thinking about it. And this is part of the reason why I wanted to invite people to talk about invention, because it's a whole concept that you can embrace and you can follow. And I'd be curious to talk to people about the actual roadmap and other steps in this journey to be more innovative and to invent something new and do your work better.

You walked a mile in those shoes that you were just describing the daily task and then making improvements. Maybe you can walk us through one invention, one example that you and your team brought to life, something that didn't exist before.

Seth Marlowe: I have to dig back to my practitioner days. A great example of that was something that I did when I was in GE in their treasury operations area. We had this treasury workstation, a treasury management system that was just deployed to a scale that was beyond what anybody in the industry was doing at that point. And it's not that it broke the TMS, but it created challenges for us in managing the people and the data. Typically, most systems are really good at the process and the workflows they were designed for, but they're not really good at allowing you to manage the information that is there. It's one of the reasons I think why we have so much dirty data in systems everywhere. The thing that I took upon myself when I first got to GE and started having to do some support of this system and monitoring files that were coming in, day for balance reporting and statements that were coming in for literally hundreds of banks, thousands of bank accounts, was just — how do I track which jobs, which batch processes had run, which were successful, which needed to rerun? So I had tools from over the years of having been in IT and having dabbled a little bit. I had the framework for a Microsoft Access system.

Sounds so arcane in 2025, but back then it gave me some tools where I was able to tap into the TMS's database and be able to report off of it and get to find out in real time things that had happened that the system just had no easy way to be able to find. I did that, it helped me dramatically. And then as I started getting requests, because our team did support for all of our 4,000 users around the globe, I found who that user was, what division of GE they were part of, what business unit were they, what bank accounts did they have access to, there was a litany of questions about who they were, their access rights and so on. I realized this, the system itself did not lend itself to gathering that data.

So I took that Microsoft Access database and I started building some screens — I made them as web-like as I could. Everything was hyperlinked to go from a user to see what bank accounts they had access to. And then if I wanted to hone in on an account, I could double click on an account and see all the details about the account and how it was set up and what bank it's tied to. And then I could hyperlink to the bank and I could see all the accounts across the entire system that were at that bank. This whole framework became the system we called GE WebCash — it was a TMS-provided what today is GE Treasury. Back in those days, it was gateway systems. So I called it a workbench.

And so we had the GE WebCash workbench, and this tool started off being deployed in my small team that did our support and slowly it migrated over to our cash desk that had to make sure that all the balances were in, so that they could do their cash positioning. We had followed the Sun support across multiple locations, Tokyo and India, as well as Mexico. And so the users that did that cash operational work, they too got access. And the more people got access to it and saw what it could do and how it could help them, we started getting all these requests coming in: Can you look at it this way? Can you give me a report that slices it that way? Can you do a drill down that shows something else? Slowly there was this innovation that was happening across all parts of treasury as a result of using this tool, which was helping them, making them more efficient, but it was making them think about “how can I make my day-to-day much easier?”

What was fascinating about this was the system became an add-on, it became inseparable from the core platform to the point when we did a major upgrade. There was always the question “Did everything get updated in the workbench? Was the workbench ready?” And typically, it meant that on the weekend of an upgrade, I had a lot of extra work to do to account for all the things that may have changed in the system. But it became something that people could not live without. Even though there was a very loud noise coming out of IT saying that this is wreaking havoc on the database and it's causing issues, the answer was always “Well, if you can build this for us, IT, or if we can get our vendor to build it for us, then fine.” But these things have become invaluable. We have to have them. And long after I left the organization, when I moved over to the dark side of banking, the workbench was still alive and kicking for years until they finally actually retired that entire TMS platform and migrated to something else.

Tanya Kohen: That's a great story, thanks for sharing Seth. I think what you just described addresses my other question as far as the stages. If we unpack a little what you were just describing, there was the first stage, this idea: you thought, you saw a need — reporting was not there. Everything that people needed was not at their fingertips. So you created a way for a team to get to the data that they needed and to a specific user that can see specific data. That's great, that's big.

Anyone who works with many systems and many transactions understands how important it is to focus on something that is important in this specific moment for you. But then, as I understood the system, this invention, I'll call it — evolved, then the next stage comes. So, okay, how do we actually update it, upgrade it? How do we carry out the other tasks using it? And then I guess that even the next one — how do we maybe scale it to be an enterprise-level IT solution?

And that's a whole different story, but it all starts small, wouldn't you say?

Seth Marlowe: Absolutely. I mean, it really started from that idea state. I'll be honest, I had done some similar things to this at prior companies. So when actually some of my old Pepsi colleagues heard that I was building another workbench, they were like “Didn't you do that for us at Pepsi?” Yeah, but not anywhere near to the scale. But I think the real challenge was getting it adopted by, first, our IT organization to understand that it was as important as the core application itself. And then our vendor. I mean, we actually presented all of this to the vendor and said “These are things that we have had as needs that we have built for ourselves.” And I will never forget this, but the head of development at the time for Gateway, after seeing a lot of what this system did, he basically laid his head on his hands and leaned forward and he just said “Boy, have we failed.” And I said to him “Well, you haven't failed,” but I said “For the scale of what we were doing with 4,000 users, hundreds of banks, thousands of bank accounts, we needed a way to manage this data.” And unlike a lot of their other customers, we didn't have five banks that we needed to get reporting from hundreds, coming in all day, all night, literally, as we had many international banks reporting in as well. And in fact not even offered, we gave them a copy of this database and said “Listen, play with it, take it, integrate some of this into your core offering. We don't want any money for it, just do it.” And ultimately, and this was a bit of a shock to the system, as we were doing co-development with them, they turned around and said “Well, we'll integrate the workbench, but here's the price tag for that.” And it was a pretty significant six figure number and I just looked at them and said “Let me get this straight: we designed it, we built it, we gave it to you and now you want to charge us for actually building it, putting it into your system. I mean this will help you sell the solution.” But, needless to say, it never happened.

Tanya Kohen: In general, I'm sure, from the insight and the input you gave this vendor, it was so valuable and that's a dream of any vendor really. Customers actually highlighting the extension of the service. But as you progress later in your career and from the leadership standpoint, how would you think about having people like that on your team and how to inspire people to think this way. Because again, if we're discussing starting small, anyone can do it. Any person, any organization can and should probably continuously think about small improvements or big improvements, just executed step by step. What do you think about their habits or any rituals, or to make time for invention, or how would you inspire your team to do that?

Seth Marlowe: Well, I think there are two aspects to that. Number one, it's what I just refer to as think time. Too often we spend all this time in meetings or in Teams and Zoom and whatever the remote tools are that we use today. We don't get to do our work until the day is ostensibly over. So you're in at 8, maybe you're wrapping at 6 o'clock and then maybe you can get some quiet time by 6, 6.30 p.m. You do it, but you've put on a whole day. Are you really clear-minded to be able to do that? What I found for myself personally was there were two times of the day or even during the week that I had clear thought, think time. Don’t laugh about it, but it was in the shower in the mornings.

The other thing I would find was going on walks. I did some of my best thinking while just walking with no set agenda. Your mind is just free flowing with ideas and you've got to put yourself in situations to do that. And I think from a leadership standpoint, you need to encourage your people to do that and to walk away. And sometimes they need to figure out, is this something I do at lunch? Do I sit at my desk and eat lunch or do I get out of the office and walk around? Do I walk around the building? Do I walk around the block? So many of us continue to work remotely today. So that's the first part of it.

I think the second part, and this is really where leadership and management plays a big role, is letting their teams know that it's not only okay, to do this and to spend time thinking and to spend time trying to invent things and to try to try new things — just to encourage it, that it's part of the job. It's an unwritten set of objectives. But once you've become that subject matter expert on the things that you do, the expectation I always had is “Tell me how we make it better, how do we take the next step?”

And so you have some people that are very timid about that. They only want to do what they're required to do in their day to day. And then they want to go home. But then, again, you have others who are like “Wow, I get an opportunity to play in something and maybe Seth can teach me this or I can learn a little bit here and I can do some online learning and some other things and figure it all out”. It's like what you and I are doing right now with us both launching podcasts at the same time — learning some of these tools that we need to have at our disposal. It's not part of the regular day to day, but we got to find time and to think about it and to test it out and play with it.

Tanya Kohen: Exactly. Hopefully it will give something for everyone, for us getting into this, something new and hopefully for the audience maybe some great stories and interesting food for thought, to say the least. That was very interesting and insightful. I would like to ask you the final three questions and you can give short answers or long answers, however you prefer.

What does an innovation mindset mean to you?

Seth Marlowe: I think it's one where you look at what you're doing, what your organization is tasked with doing and challenging all of the assumptions about what you do and how you do it. Give time thinking about how I would do this if I was starting with a clean slate? No system, no process. What are the things I would need to have to do this better than what I'm doing today?

I think it requires three things. There's a natural intellectual curiosity, I'll call it, that you need to just think that way and be curious as to what you can do and what others have done. I think you need the courage to go and do it because not every organization is as willing to have you do this and change what it's taken years to put into place. And then, lastly, a little bit of a vision as to what could be, and to be able to share that vision, articulate it well so that others understand it and can adopt it as well.

Tanya Kohen: What do you think is missing in today's tech stack for finance and treasury?

Seth Marlowe: This is going to sound strange, but I think it's data cleanup tools. I think as we hear more and more about AI in so many of those conversations, I hear it said over and over again that in order for AI to really work well, you need to have really good data. And I know I've seen it on the corporate side, corporate systems, you've got disparate systems that have different purposes. And certainly in our world, if you're trying to define what is Citibank in your TMS and you're trying to define what Citibank might be in another treasury system, maybe one where you're tracking your bank fees or other non-cash management activities, more, let's say, investment and debt activities. How are you defining what is Citibank and the hierarchy of it and the comparison side by side so you could get to? I know I've been asked this question in the past, “Can you figure out what the share of wallet is that we give to each of our banks?” Well, yeah, but I got to get that from a whole bunch of different places. Every system calls that, not meaning to pick on Citibank, but just with so many businesses that they've been in, so many locations around the globe, it's hard to define that. So I think about just the data, making it so that you've got a consistent system of record as to what defines a Citibank and each of your banks.

But there's so much that goes on when you think about it. I saw this so much GE as well, between mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, you end up with all of this data and reorganizations of businesses. You hope that you've gotten all the accounts right? And are they all tied to the right general ledger? And which ledger is it?

To me, one of the things that's often not talked about in the AI discussion is how AI as a tool can actually help us go into a perpetual data cleanup mode and identify all those anomalies. Because if it's attached to all this data, it can see it, it can see the patterns, it can see the things that are no longer matching, and to be able to as quickly, I don't think we'll ever get to it. Well, maybe someday we'll get to it in real time, but being able to auto-correct these data elements so that it makes sense.

Tanya Kohen: I agree with you. If you could improve one thing in a business, not necessarily tech related, but apart from what was just discussed, which I think is critically important data and having clean data and consolidated data, that's very important for any organization. But even higher level or whatever level — one thing, what would you improve?

Seth Marlowe: It's the ability for an organization to listen. There is a ton that's written and done about the voice of the customer. When you're looking at internal processes, break down a little bit because it's internal employees that are the customers. And there isn't always the same value proposition around the employee as a customer. But I think listening to employees for their feedback, their insights, what's working, what's not working is as valuable, if not more valuable than the voice of the customer in general. I'll take it one step beyond just the listening — it's actually acting on the feedback that's received. I mean, you can listen all you want, but unless you take what you've heard and translate it into actions and execute against those actions, it's just not really a good use of anybody's effort.

Tanya Kohen: And that's a perfect wrap for this episode and great advice. Thank you so much, the one and only Seth Marlowe, the Treasury Whisperer. And thanks everyone for listening to this first episode and stay tuned for more.