BTW EP 20: Inventive Incentives: Jason Brown on Procurement Incentive Structures
Release Date: 10/15/2025
The Future Is Frictionless: Simplifying Procurement with Tech and Trust W/ Todd Heimes
Art of Procurement
“We want our customers to be able to put their own internal procurement rules into our Amazon Business marketplace, so they can feel secure and still get that great experience.” - Todd Heimes, Vice President and General Manager, Amazon Business Worldwide Right now, procurement leaders are balancing pressure to deliver savings, manage risk, and remove barriers for business users. As organizations get more complex, the need for connected digital procurement – and real-time, actionable insights – makes all the difference. In this episode, Philip Ideson speaks with Todd Heimes, Vice...
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BTW EP 22: Challenging Procurement’s Most Comfortable (Bad) Habits
Art of Procurement
Procurement’s problem isn’t speed. It’s form. They’ve gotten great at automating and accelerating weak processes while quietly rewarding the “good contract, bad deal” mentality that ultimately undercuts their own efforts. In this podcast episode of “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement,” Omid Ghamami, president of the Procurement and Supply Chain Management Institute and former Intel purchasing operations leader, joins co-hosts Philip Ideson and Rich Ham to challenge procurement’s most comfortable (bad) habits. He argues that the function claims victory at...
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841: Three AI-Powered Opportunities: Assist, Augment, Autonomize W/ Etosha Thurman
Art of Procurement
“If your only role is cost management and processes, that’s scary to me. The value of procurement is so much more than that.” – Etosha Thurman, Chief Marketing Officer, Finance and Spend Management at SAP AI is rapidly changing procurement’s mandate and the expectations that business leaders now have. Technology is no longer just digitizing processes; it’s opening the door to new operating models and deeper business impact. To thrive, procurement teams must deliver far more than savings. They must bring innovation, resilience, and data-driven influence to the table. In this...
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839: Building Data-Driven Procurement at Scale W/ Adrian Vicol
Art of Procurement
“The value you bring as a procurement function has transcended being a cost saver. They are now a discussion partner with other functions and bring value in the form of intelligence.” - Adrian Vicol, Data Strategy Lead & Data Architect, Siemens Energy Procurement leaders are facing more complex questions about data than ever before. As organizations move toward AI and automation, the need for clean, reliable, and actionable data is skyrocketing – but most teams are still wrestling with legacy challenges and data silos. Getting this right is no longer optional; it’s becoming...
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840: Why Data Literacy Matters More Than Ever in Procurement W/ Satvinder Panesar
Art of Procurement
“The value isn't in giving them the coffee beans and hoping they take that away and make a cup of coffee – what they need is a drink. So instead of giving them the data, do the extra steps and pull out the insights for them.” - Satvinder Panesar, Data and Analytics Strategy Director, AstraZeneca Procurement leaders are surrounded by data, but turning numbers into true business impact is a new kind of challenge. As AI and analytics tools promise even more information, the real differentiator is knowing how to interpret, validate, and act on those outputs… before your competitors...
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BTW EP 21: Planning for People: Behavioral Architecture with David Loseby
Art of Procurement
Procurement’s toughest problems rarely come from spreadsheets or contracts. They come from people. In this episode of “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement,” David Loseby – professor, former CPO, and self-described “pracademic” – joins Philip Ideson and Rich Ham to explore why procurement’s incentive systems often fail not because they’re wrong on paper, but because they ignore how people actually think and act. Unfortunately, he says, most systems are designed for tidy models, not messy human behavior. Drawing on behavioral science and front-line experience, David...
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838: Protecting Competition: Inside the DOJ’s Fight Against Procurement Collusion
Art of Procurement
“Fraudulent conduct robs the government – at all levels, local, state, or federal – of the benefit of competition. Competition is free and open; it is the Magna Carta of the American economic system, and robbing the government of that benefit is inherently wrongful.” Public sector procurement faces mounting challenges, not least of which is the threat of collusion and fraud that quietly erodes budgets and public trust. The Department of Justice’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force is taking this seriously, with a coordinated and data-driven approach to cracking down on...
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837: Mastering Influence: Procurement’s Internal and External Edge W/ Giuseppe Conti
Art of Procurement
“Too many procurement professionals have developed a push energy. If you take that same approach with internal stakeholders, it won’t work. We need to develop pull energy — asking questions, listening, and creating a shared vision.” - Giuseppe Conti, Professor, Author of Negotiation + Influence = Success: Quick Lessons to Help You Win in Corporate Life Procurement leaders know how much the field has changed, but the biggest barriers often come from within. As procurement’s role expands, it has become essential to influence internally, manage expectations, and go beyond data-driven...
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BTW EP 20: Inventive Incentives: Jason Brown on Procurement Incentive Structures
Art of Procurement
Procurement doesn’t just have a measurement problem. It has a motivation problem. Behind every misaligned target, every “savings” claim, and every missed opportunity is the same invisible culprit: incentives that quietly tell people to do the wrong things well. In this episode of Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement, Jason Brown, accounting professor at Indiana University and longtime corporate incentives expert, joins co-hosts Philip Ideson and Rich Ham to expose how organizational reward systems shape behavior far more powerfully than strategy or mission statements ever could. He...
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836: Inside Next-Gen SAP Ariba: Rebuilding Procurement for the AI Era W/ Baber Farooq
Art of Procurement
“Everyone keeps talking about AI just for the sake of AI, but, ultimately, the only thing that matters is the outcome you can achieve.” - Baber Farooq, Senior Vice President, Market Strategy, Procurement Solutions at SAP Procurement leaders have long felt the pinch: rising expectations, tight budgets, and platforms that struggle to keep up with user expectations. As AI shifts from a buzzword to true capability, procurement needs to rethink what they need from their core procurement suite. What will it take to move from incremental change to a genuine step-change in productivity? In this...
info_outlineProcurement doesn’t just have a measurement problem. It has a motivation problem.
Behind every misaligned target, every “savings” claim, and every missed opportunity is the same invisible culprit: incentives that quietly tell people to do the wrong things well.
In this episode of Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement, Jason Brown, accounting professor at Indiana University and longtime corporate incentives expert, joins co-hosts Philip Ideson and Rich Ham to expose how organizational reward systems shape behavior far more powerfully than strategy or mission statements ever could. He explains why even the most principled teams end up chasing metrics that distort procurement’s purpose, and why rethinking incentive design may be the key to unlocking true business alignment.
Drawing from decades of academic research and corporate consulting, Jason unpacks the subtle ways procurement incentives drift off course: how bonus structures reward volume over value, how finance and procurement end up speaking different dialects of “performance,” and how organizations confuse compliance with contribution. He also brings attention to the rare examples of companies that have broken these patterns by tying procurement’s rewards directly to shared outcomes that improve EBITDA, resilience, and stakeholder trust.
This conversation challenges a fundamental assumption: can procurement ever be purposeful if its people are rewarded for something other than real impact?
As Jason argues, until incentives reflect what actually matters to the business and society, procurement will remain stuck in a cycle of performative alignment where everyone looks busy but the enterprise stands still.
According to Jason, the truth may be uncomfortable, but it’s exactly what procurement needs to hear. Incentive design isn’t a soft topic or a side project. It’s the operating system of purposeful procurement, and it’s long overdue for an upgrade.