GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

If you’re not in the design world you might have missed two events that took the industry’s collective breath away, the reprinting, through two incredibly successful Kickstarter campaigns, of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and the NASA “worm” identity system.  A graphic standards or systems manual is the rule book for any brand’s expression and consistent delivery in the world.  That means the precise guidelines for the logo, the colors, the type fonts, the signage, the conventions for marketing materials, and basically everything else that makes up the visual identity of an organization.  When I took over as Executive Director for AIGA, the professional association for design, I knew about those two standards manuals. When Sagi Haviv, a principal in the New York design firm, Chermayeff Geismar & Haviv offered to gift us with 1977 EPA Graphic Standards Manual, designed by the renowned Steff Geissbuhler it started us on an adventure that concluded this week when we met our goal. That means that this beautiful manual will now be available to our backers, and eventually to the public through the work of designers Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth at Standards Manual.  The experience has been eye opening and exhilarating.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

1.  Richard Nixon became an unlikely champion of the environment by starting the EPA in 1970, the year the first Earth Day occurred.  It was a tipping point year  for the environment.
2.  The agency evoked strong public emotions from the beginning and continues to to this day. “Few federal agencies evoke as much emotion in the average American as the U.S.  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Either directly or indirectly, the agency’s operations confront the average person in intimate ways. Everyone wants  breathable air, drinkable water, and land free from harmful pollutants on which to live.”  source: EPA Archives
3. The EPA’s mission, and actual work, like that of any government agency, relied on a coherent communications system — which is never a given.
4. That communications system was established seven years later when the agency hired Chermayeff and Geismar Associates  which included partner Steff Geissbuhler.
5. Geissbuhler reimagined the logo, and all of the communications, and named the colors that spoke to the key areas of environmental protection including air, water, noise, pesticides, waste and more.
6. The EPA graphic standards system, under Administrator Anne Gorsuch, was never fully implemented because of her personal preferences for the former logo. This is a familiar syndrome. One disaffected executive can deep six enterprise design.
7. Nonetheless, this story of this historic time in US environmental history is contained in the DNA of every page of this amazing document. That’s what a good brand and visual system does. The 1977 EPA standards manual, with its serious intent to protect the environment through clear and ubiquitous communications, may be the most profound evocation of an environmental yearning that is arguably even more meaningful today: Americans have come to look back with nostalgia at the pristine state the Nation once enjoyed.
8. Embarking on this project required legal counsel.
9. Kickstarter campaigns require great effort. Great product, great teams, relentless PR, and without a doubt, a great video like this one.
10. This project, while celebrating work done in 1977 is not just about honoring the past.  It’s ensuring that the work of this designer, this design firm and most importantly, this agency, can remain relevant in the present and inspire us to protect the environment in the future.

To learn more or back the 1977 EPA Standards Manual visit Kickstarter.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

“Mitch Ditkoff’s Storytelling at Workreminds us that truth is rarely in the bottom right corner of a spreadsheet. It’s already inside of us.”

The above statement is a powerful quote from Jon Bidwell, the Chief Innovation Office at Chubb Insurance, who as a serious practitioner of corporate innovation and change for a long time in “CIO years”, is in a good position to deliver that insight.

Storytelling at Work is a serious walk through the ubiquitous topic of storytelling – and also in my experience, rarely given its due by leaders. Mitch Ditkoff has been building the bridge between storytelling and work for a long time and is one of the wise ones. He knows that adding more storytelling improves efficacy for whatever it is that we are trying to communicate. It’s simple to do, opens minds, and shifts behavior in a positive way. Here are some reasons why:

1. Storytelling is the most effective, time-tested way to transmit meaning from one human being to another.
2. According to neuroscientists, psychologists, theologians, sociologists, advertisers, linguists, and marketers, storytelling is what makes a message memorable and allows it to ‘stick’.
3. Storytelling quickly establishes trust and connection between the speaker and listener. It increases receptivity, captures attention, engages emotions, and allows the receiver to participate, cognitively, in the narrative.

“Look at it this way: If you want to transport water to a thirsty person, you need a container — a cup, a bottle, or canteen. If you want to transport wisdom, you also need a container. And the best, most available, container we have is story.” – Mitch Ditkoff

Storytelling at Work features 38 of Mitch’s innovation-sparking stories from the front lines of business and 16 provocative essays about why storytelling is our species preferred form of communication and how to tap into its transformative magic. Here are some storytelling ‘wins’ that can be learned from this terrifically readable book:

• communicate values not just skills

• decrease teaching time

• build community

• ignite five more regions of the brain than mere fact giving

• help people make sense of their world

• shape perceptions via the subconscious mind

• reframe frustration, paradox, and suffering

• change behavior

• provide a dependable way for people to remember, retrieve, and retell a meaningful message

• use the art of storytelling at work

According to Ditkoff, “Companies spend millions of dollars each year training their employees. And while these educational efforts do have some value, they often ignore a fundamental reality: that within each and every person they are trying so hard to ‘tool up’ is an untapped, naturally occurring, business growth intelligence that does not need to be taught, only awakened.”

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

In our current era of corporatized innovation, and obsession with Silicon Valley’s unicorns, there’s a certain kind of person that I’m drawn to in the extreme  – the artist as innovator who uncompromisingly runs their own creative enterprise, on their own steam. I don’t know about you but I require massive amounts of inspiration to keep my engines humming.  As one year ends and another begins I am thinking about six of my favorite places to reliably seek and find inspiration that doesn’t quit.  They come bearing serious gifts.  They are each artists first, performers with singular voices and business models, historical observers and teachers, generous archivists, all at once.  Each uniquely represents a doorway they have constructed in and out of a whole tradition.  They’re tech-literate enough to build their own distinct distribution platforms and over decades have created whole worlds — bodies of work that spill out from those platforms onto YouTube, iTunes and myriad channels into the Zeitgeist. Which will make it very easy to share their work with you.  Where do they get their energy?  My guess is that they don’t have a choice — they love to work.  In fact it’s closer to passion then work, but make no mistake, it is hard work to do what each of these artists do. Their work is their gift.  Despite the very significant ups and downs of the creative journey, they allow us in.  In their honor, I want to make sure you don’t miss the chance to participate, starting with…

#1  ROGER MCGUINN – Bringing Space to Folk

“Ah, Folk Music and Rock & Roll…together.”  Roger McGuinn

Because….

He Expressed the Moment

Some people embody the flashpoints of an era, the moment when the era gets white hot,  signalling an upending, a cultural explosion.  Some artists take and weave, or forge and throttle those forces together into something new.  In Roger McGuinn’s case, he created a sound.  And when it rang out, intentionally or not, it became a masthead, an intro and an outro, a symbol of the times, that tipping point known as the 60s.  He was young, but he was there.  McGuinn, still in high school in Chicago, jumped headlong into folk music after hearing Bob Gibson play banjo at his highschool, the Latin School, and then, through studying at the Old Town School of Folk Music a few blocks away, became masterful enough to be hired by the LimeLiters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and Bobby Darrin to perform with them while still in his teens.  His early career is a sound narrative of a teenager who brought his early training in folk to rock & roll.

Innovation Springs from Technique, and…

As a banjo player, he mastered “Travis picking.”  And he had quite an ear.  He recognized, and resonated with the Beatles’ use of folk chords together with a new stepped-up beat, the Liverpool beat.  He, Gene Clark and David Crosby, blended it in their band, the Byrds, with their own version of folk into a precise and special sound.  One that hadn’t been heard before.  The same year they formed, circa 1964, they went to see a Hard Days Night, and when McGuinn saw George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 12-string electric, he immediately traded in his banjo and acoustic guitar for one of his own, and invented that ringing, jangling mystifyingly amplified sound, that ushered in an era and that many fellow musicians, Dylan, Springsteen, Petty, Seeger and more acknowledge as…momentous.  Like so many innovators, I don’t think McGuinn was attempting to do something ‘new’ as much as do something that felt right to him.  When Steve Jobs told designer Clement Mok he wanted the first Mac’s aesthetic to have the verve of the early Beatles music, it wasn’t about doing something new, it was seeking an aesthetic aspirational vision.  That’s the art of innovation.  Not a formula.

What Does Space Sound Like?

In May 1961, President Kennedy set for the U.S. the goal of a manned spacecraft landing on the Moon by the end of the decade and space became SPACE, an idea, a possibility, a new territory for imagination.  McGuinn’s appetite for exploration translated into an entire genre, “space rock” that while sounding camp is much more visceral and when he sings about floating in it…you do.  His early fascination with gadgets, science, and tech melded into a career obsessed with using tech to stretch his craft and bend his technique, Moog-like, and with harmonies. To paraphrase music critic Greil Marcus writing about Dylan, “the whole of what is happening came through instantly and irrevocably.”  That was 50+ years ago.   Innovators capture the essence of their eras and help write the story line for the rest of us.  In the 60’s, McGuinn invited us into space with him in such a personal and soaring way – won’t you please take us along for a ride – that we just had to go.

Trifecta Move:  Innovating a Career

For me, his second greatest innovation is his career, and how he’s plied his craft, his technological prowess to the Folk Den and his solo performances.  What makes McGuinn such an iconic innovator begins with his technique…his picking, his songwriting, his voice, and his production…that enables such wide-ranging exploration.  While he’s focused on folk, he can still make Eight Miles High sound like there are at least 3 more guitars playing behind him.  He has established that he is a troubadour of multiple musical traditions, blended, continuously, into that joyful sound that the Psalmists wrote about.  For over two decades, McGuinn and his Grammy-winning producing-partner and self-declared “roadie” wife Camilla, have done just that.  He has taken his gift, their shared passion, and turned it into an evolving 50-year musical odyssey of almost endless collaborations.  There he is…singing harmony with Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen King, Marty Stewart, and…audiences everywhere.  Go hear his one-man show with your voice on because you will be invited to sing (or scream.)  He is my first Inspired Innovator for 2016 and his work is worth revisiting if you haven’t heard him for a while.

The Historical Perspective

Bruce Springsteen said …“Roger invented Folk Rock, and Country Rock, and Sci Fi Space Rock. He was the inventor of these things. You were hearing the guitar jangle for the first time.  It (Mr. Tambourine Man) was the classic 12 string riff of all time.” If you delve into and track McGuinn’s musical evolution over 50+ years, marked by those numerous versions of the Byrds, fluid collaborations, album covers and hair, a semiotic language it of its own, you will witness continuous musical transformation.  He iterated the Byrds’ sounds from folk to folk rock to country rock to space rock back in multiple versions of the Byrds, to his solo career and then back to folk and more, in creative partnership with Camilla. It’s a career that arcs like Picasso’s in technical mastery and productivity.  Or paraphrasing McGuinn, it’s just “something he loves, and turned it into a lifestyle.”

The Hats He Wears

Any individual who runs their own creative enterprise by definition requires lots of hats. As Byrds Founder/Frontman and “architect of their sound” per Chris Hillman, he could have cashed in and done the re-uniting rinse and repeats like so many have.  But instead he chose to wend his way back from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to become, like Pete Seeger and Theordore Bikel, a travelling folk-singing Troubadour, who in his spare time is an archivist, teacher and lecturer.  It all seems fitting for someone who created music that anticipated Space.

Generosity / Archive:

In 1995 McGuinn began recording folk songs, sea shantys, and American treasures like the Yellow Rose of Texas and the Star Spangled Banner, and religiously uploading them once a month to the Folk Den, along with their lyrics and chords so you can not only enjoy them (for free) but play them, which just may be the point.  Done in collaboration with UNC Chapel Hill, Joan Baez said on Stories, Songs and Friends, that “without the benefit of the Library of Congress’ Roger is keeping the folk tradition alive.”

Gems from the Archive:

There are so many, but here are some of my favorites:

Start with the “book” on Roger’s life, the Friends DVD on Stories, Songs and Friends

Almost any version of Eight Miles High

Live from Spain

Roger singing Mr. Tambourine Man with Tom Petty at the Bob Dylan Anniversary Concert at MSG 30th… the whole evening insanely beatific.

And one from the many gorgeous songs from the folk den…The Sloop John B – or John B Sails sung with some of the Rock Bottom Remainders – the band-cum-authors including Stephen King, Dave Barry, Barbara Kingsolver, Greil Marcus, Amy Tan.

Coda:

As a musical innovator, Roger McGuinn gives new meaning to the phrase “what’s in a song.”  Apparently, a lifetime of creation, re-invention, a legendary fountain… and he’s not done. Find the 2016 Tour Dates here.

Next Up:

Craig Hatkoff and Rabbi Irwin Kula, Disruptor Foundation/Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards.

image credits: RogerMcGuinn.com, Bill Kollar, Michael Zorn

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Does eavesdropping qualify as “an adjacency?”  Sometimes it pays off.  Last winter I found myself accidentally listening with greater and greater fascination to a conversation on the couch behind me at NeueHouse in New York. Finally I had to turn around and ask as Braulio Flores as gracefully as I could “what are you talking about?” He answered “Looplabs”, which happens to be the name of an organization where he serves as Director of Creative/Strategic Partnerships.

He described Looplabs as the ‘Google Docs’ of music — a free, collaborative cloud based music studio that would let anyone, regardless of technical skills or ability, easily make, share and discover music anywhere, anytime and with anyone – all from their web browser — including the kids at Niños de Cristo Orphanage in the Dominican Republic above, who made music with Swann and Zayas using Looplabs.

Cortney Harding recently called the platform the Minecraft of Music on Medium

I had the opportunity to sit down with Looplabs co-founder and longtime digitalist / music innovator, Craig Swann, as he celebrated the launch of his music co-creation platform.

This has been a labor of love for Swann — a recognized thought leader in the interactive music space; His love of music is palpable.  He’s been authoring books, speaking internationally, teaching, curating technology events and developing / licensing customized online music experiences for top global brands for decades that include Microsoft, Sony, Coca-Cola, HP, Vodafone, AOL, Bacardi, Heineken and many others.

For 20 years, Craig’s passion has been using technology to connect people and music – through innovative, intimate and interactive experiences. In the mid 1990’s Mr. Swann founded the award-winning interactive agency CRASH!MEDIA, and in 2001 developed the Internet’s first online music studio, Looplabs. Millions of people have benefited from Craig’s innovations, including Steve Jobs, who demoed Looplabs for the launch of the Safari Browser at an Apple Keynote.

“Everyone is now a creator.” says Swann. “Whether it’s blogs, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram, cloud-based computing, broadband connectivity and social networks have democratized the production and distribution of entire industries. We are witnessing a global transformation of consumers into creators that is generating an explosion of user generated content of the written word, photos and videos. Music creation, however, has been largely left behind. Until now.”

The Looplabs’ founders’ vision has been to enable anyone to easily make music online. That means you!  You can try creating your very own “loops” here.

Swann has attracted a formidable team.  He joined with Music Executive, Bigram Zayas, and Technologist Timothy Braun as Founding Partners to bring Looplabs to the world. Joining them are Grammy®-winning music producer Sergio George as Latin Ambassador and Music Advisor; MTV Co-founder Les Garland as Media Strategist and music technology veteran Jon Diamond as Advisor to the Company.

Designed for this new generation of creators, Looplabs’ intuitive interface automatically snaps more than 25,000 freely available royalty-free sounds into the same tempo and musical key, removing the complexities of musical theory and allowing anyone with internet access to easily create music for their YouTube, Instagram or Vine videos, drop in their next DJ set, remix artists, write songs and record vocals or simply have fun with their friends.

In the formal announcement Les Garland said “More people today than ever before in history are making music, more people than ever before in history are listening and sharing music. There are still unwired spots on this planet that are getting wired and this visionary concept is viral in nature. That a single platform allows anyone the chance to create, collaborate and share music is a new way of discovering the world, and that is extremely powerful, and that is Looplabs.”

By leveraging open web technologies and APIs such as HTML5, Web Audio and WebRTC; Looplabs allows for a “Google-Docs for music” like experience of remote co-creation and collaboration supporting messaging, audio and video chat and drag-n-drop sharing of musical ideas. More than a free, powerfully simple, browser-based music studio, Looplabs is a social music platform that connects people and music, fosters collaboration, enables education and empowers people of all ages to make music.

For Sergio George “The significance is Looplabs eliminating our current barriers to making music including equipment, knowledge and access and creating a space where very little stands in the way of imagination, intention, and creation.”

To paraphrase Harding on Medium, Looplabs makes writing a song a game everyone can play.

Craig Swann is a recognized thought leader in the interactive music space; authoring books, speaking internationally, teaching, curating technology events and developing / licensing customized online music experiences for top global brands. These companies include: Microsoft, Sony, Coca-Cola, HP, Vodafone, AOL, Bacardi, Heineken and many others. Currently he is focused on developing new interactive music products and experiences that break down barriers to making music – while connecting the world. Swann has received special recognition at SxSW and has won the prestigious Webby Award.  Follow him @CrashMedia

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Editor’s Note:  This week SAP launched a new e-publication, Digitalist Magazine, Executive Quarterly.  We sat down with Jeff Woods, Editorial Director for the magazine and VP, Corporate and Portfolio Marketing at SAP to get the back story.

IX: What is a digitalist?  And how do you pronounce it phonetically?

Jeff: “Dijh-juh-tuh-list.”  A digitalist is someone who has leadership responsibility for his or her enterprise transformation through the digital economy.

It is somebody who sees how his or her organization can thrive in the digital economy. And whether that be an executive level or at a business unit level or even a worker’s level, various people can be digital leaders at all different levels in the organization.  We’re really writing for all of them.  I’d say we’re primarily writing for that senior executive audience, but anyone can find value from the content in the magazine.

IX: Tell us again about the intent behind the Digitalist magazine.  It is obviously a big investment. You’ve hired a serious editor.  You’re on iTunes. Why are you starting this new thought leadership platform?

Jeff: We want to have authentic conversations with our customers.  That’s how SAP established a trusted advisor innovation relationship over the past 40 years. When we asked “what is the most relevant topic that is keeping them up at night?” it was the digital economy that our customers wanted to have conversations about.

Then we asked ‘what is really the relevant forum, what’s the best way to have that conversation with our customers?’  We came up with the Digitalist Magazine as a way to package the best of SAP’s thought leadership, the best of those conversations that we are having with our customers, and also in the world at large.  The magazine is a space and a forum for that conversation.  As we got a little bit deeper into it, we realized that out there in the world, we didn’t really find a dedicated space for those conversations around the digital economy.  We really wanted this magazine to sort of fill a convening role and not just for our customers, but for the world at large. We’re committed to helping enterprises transform into the digital economy.

IX: What do you guys mean by “the digital economy?”

Jeff: There are actually a few definitions out there.  Gartner talks about bridging the physical and virtual worlds, and I think that’s a really good explanation for what is going on.  It means a few things:

• The digitization of assets —  the ability to see assets and control and manipulate assets that are present in the physical world from a digital instrumentation perspective.
• The digitization of the customer experience — making sure that your customers can interact with you on a very fine-grained, very granular basis through digital channels, through mobile channels or through pervasive presence channels.

One of the things we talk about in the Digital Economy Manifesto is that in the early days of the Internet, and ecommerce itself, things were very different than it is now. Then the customer experience was about creating orders, and maybe checking the status of orders online.

In contrast, what you’re doing in the digital economy is really creating end-to-end immersive customer experiences that rely on digital capabilities. There may be information services that come along with physical products that you sell.  It may be the fact that the experience is always on — for example the Amazon Echo is always on with you.

Creating those immersive digital customer experiences is another aspect of the digitization process.

• It’s also about digitization of core processes within the business —many processes that enterprises use today were established in the ecommerce era, and were really built for the technology and the experience that people expected in the ecommerce era.

Now that we have digital capabilities that are pervasive you can also take those experiences to your core processes as well.  So, doing things like enabling configuration, enabling order changes through digital experiences are major ways that digitization of core processes will affect that immersive customer digital experience.

• The last piece of the shift is the digitization of work. Ensuring that you have engaged employees to be able to change and have them respond to the dynamics of the digital economy.

In sum, the digital economy is based on four things: the assets, the customer experience, the processes, and, the work.

IX: There has been a promise for a long time with the evolutions of web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and all the integration they’ve envisioned.  Yet from a consumer point of view on the ground, it doesn’t seem like the immersive “seamless” customer experience the digital economy promises is actually happening in many places.  It sure doesn’t feel like it’s the norm.  I’m curious from your, and SAP’s perspective, where you think we are we along the continuum from ecommerce to the full blown digital economy?

Where are we in the evolution of organizations being able to really deliver this seamless integrated experience?  Isn’t it still early days?

Jeff: As Geoffrey Moore might have said, we’re “inside the tornado.”  We think the level of activity that we are seeing around the digital economy is accelerating dramatically.

We have been in conversations actively with customers about the digital economy for some time.

In 2014 you would talk to people and you’d say, “let’s talk about a digital transformation” and the first question would be what do you mean?  Like, is this a thing?  And now digital transformation is leading the conversation, and it’s on the minds of, of CIOs, of CEOs, of business leaders all around the world to understand the importance of this.

The title of the manifesto in the magazine is This Time It is Different.

I think that title says it. The promise of a fully integrated digital economy has been   emerging for a while. It is coming to be fulfilled for a variety of reasons.

One is the pervasiveness of the mobile technology that enables you to have that digital experience with you at all times.  Ironically the other reason we’re closer to Digital Transformation is the emergence of Lean start up methodologies inside of large enterprises which allows companies to experiment, quickly understand whether or not this digital experience is right for their customers, and then either expand, and accelerate and institutionalize, or move on and find a new digital experience.

So there’s a combination of technologies as well as practices that are coming together to make this very important, and different this time.

IX: The whole notion of using a magazine to drive authentic communications suggests that you guys put a lot of stock in the media, in the written word, in blogging, in content as a powerful accelerator of conversations.  What about this content do you think is going to be compelling enough to drive these authentic conversations?  I don’t mean to sound glib, I’m really interested…

Jeff: One thing that’s very important for us is that we have a definitive point of view.  We aspire very much to be the digital destination, the source of information of what you need in order to successfully execute a digital transformation.  We have been working with this content for several years, and it’s been a fantastic journey because it’s been driven by great conversations with customers.  With the Digitalist we have a point of view about where the market is going, and our content efforts are aligned behind satisfying everything that a customer needs in order to be a digitalist.  So, one thing that’s very different is, we are committing to be a definitive source.  It’s an authoritative source on the digital economy and digital transformation.

IX: It strikes me, Jeff that not a lot of people get to claim that, and to claim it, you have to back it up?

Jeff: Absolutely.  We work with our colleagues throughout the business.  We have organizations that are field-facing, that we collaborate with very strongly, that are in fact leading digital economy, digital transformation work, and, and are really out there on the forefront.  They are having the conversations that are at the heart of our new platform.

IX: Cool.  We wish you great luck with the Digitalist.  Where exactly can our readers find it?

Jeff: Innovation Excellence readers can check out the Digitalist app that is free to download for tablets, only, from the Apple and Google Play app stores.

“Digital doubles” of magazine content will be available starting July 29 on the newly rebranded Business Innovation site, now called Digitalist Magazine, Online Edition These digital doubles provide a way for readers to share and amplify the magazine’s content.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

What does an open innovation playground for business look like?  RELEVENTS, a company that is disrupting what events look like, is creating one in Sacramento, California on September 17 with a group of global curators. Innovate @ TBD FEST is designed to be a radiant social-by- design learning environment for anyone interested working on real challenges and accelerating their own projects and capabilities in a festival setting.  Sacramento, a city on the rise, will open its most creative venues to set the condition for innovation and allow you to experience the local flavor of the city.

The big idea behind Innovate @TBD Fest is to turn a traditional conference on it head. Instead of focusing on content —  delivered through PowerPoint presentations, Innovate @TBD Fest is a collective experience that focuses on in-the-moment experimentation on YOUR ideas and work — bringing together expert educators and their world-renowned curriculums to teach new creativity and innovation practices and processes that can be instantly applied.

Those experts include people from Sacramento and all over the world.  Imagine being able to put your own agenda together and work with people like:

• Christer Windeløv-Lidzélius – who designs a custom Creative Leadership Kaos Pilot curriculum for INNOVATE participants
• Socially conscious investor Ari Eisenstat – who launches a Sacramento Accelerator – ideation meets hackathon, including the Pitchfest with on the spot funding
• Peter Vander Auera, from SWIFT, who launches the first ever LIVE REBEL JAM that brings to life the winning stories from corporate rebels from around the globe
• Max Lugavere, filmmaker and documentarian translates what it means to eat for better brain health – complete with a road trip to urban farm
• Vince Voron, Executive Creative Director at Dolby, takes you behind what Redesigning the Cinema Experience looks like
• Elizabeth Isele and Jeanne Sullivan of eProvStudio, share the power of the Experienced Economy and debut a screening of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
• Manoj Fenelon, director of foresight at PepsiCo (and first mover fellow at Aspen Institute) reimagines the future with you
• Peter Koen brings together practices from more than 350 companies on Innovation at the Front End
• Arlene Semen of One Heart World-Wide on creating thriving communities that can take ownership of programs
• Michael Foster, innovation author and director at Paypal on the Ideators Dilemma
• Dustin Garis, chief troublemaker (formerly global innovation and marketing CMO P&G) on fueling human innovation revolution on global megabrands and entrepreneurial startups
• Sheila Babnis, former global head of strategic innovation at Roche imagines with you consumers role in the Future of Health when they start with an “I Pick Me” mindset
• Jim McGrann, incoming CEO of VSP on the future of Contextual Health where we claim our own data
• Craig Hatkoff co-founder of Tribeca Film Festival and Disruptor Foundation on disrupting change
• James Stikeleather, chief innovation officer of Dell, on the future of cybersecurity
• Dennis Erokan, the found of BAM and the Bammies, the Bay Area Music’s first indelible R&R platform
• Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity and a global leader in purpose driven design and how you can engage in a global movement

The open innovation campus spreads across Sacramento’s downtown over four days, inviting small groups to collaborate, solve problems and explore innovative solutions in the arenas of Healthcare, Insights and Intelligence, Economic Development, Education in Cities, FinTech and other societally critical domains.

Experimentation meets Music Festival Innovate will co-locate with the TBD Music, Arts and Culture Fest in Sacramento, California— widely recognized as one of the most exciting, and well-curated independent music, art and culture festivals in the country.

The Innovation Excellence is community is invited to participate at a 25% off pricing by using the festival code VIPIX15.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

While creating new products is challenging in any industry, Pharma may be one of the most challenging environments for product innovation because of regulatory, safety and privacy issues.

Over the course of 3 years as the Head of Product Development Strategic Innovation at Roche, Sheila Babnis helped navigate a team to lead a big change in new product development  – she established an Innovation start-up as a new corporate function, incubating a portfolio of over 50 solutions resulting in 5 major structural shifts in how business is done, building communities, managing a global team and building a network of over 100 innovators across the company.

Babnis’ team evaluated and oversaw external collaborations (consortiums, private and public sector programs) to sustain industry leadership and increase organizational capacity. While there were many factors that contributed to these outcomes, Sheila credits stories, and storytelling, as a secret weapon.

I had a chance to collaborate in some of the storytelling workshops that Sheila Babnis, along led with her team at Roche that were designed to deploy as a strategic tool for leaders.

No stranger to storytelling, what I learned from this particular assignment was, um, life altering.  Coming from the thought leader-brand-communications-public affairs space, I realized I had been immersed in the perfection-of-the-story to be followed by the perfection of the delivery routine.  Sheila, along with Ayelet Baron and Amy Aines, flipped that paradigm on its head and challenged me to think about stories as tokens of engagement (having the right conversation with the right person) to be passed along and to open doors (mental and otherwise) as they “worked out loud” in their “Connected Networks” and trusted communities.  And the business need for storytelling arose from empathy sessions conducted by Ayelet Baron that found that people viewed innovation as a buzzword. Together, we asked what if a story was told every time to replace the word “innovation.” What if we brought innovation to life with stories?  What if we stopped trying to convince people about the importance of storytelling and simply showed them?

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Sheila Babnis, head of strategic innovation for product development at Roche, shared, at the Front End Innovation conference earlier this year, new ways that her company is working in innovation in drug development; and how empathy and patient-centricity are shaping both drug development and clinical trials. Co-creating with patients is a core pillar of the new way Roche is working and an area of deep focus for Sheila and her team.

During the conference, attendees were curious to learn more about this exciting journey. I asked Sheila to “take us back” to when Roche’s innovation journey in patient co-creation began. Here Sheila recalls:

THE PERFECT STORM

“The perfect storm was brewing in healthcare, and external factors were changing the landscape we had known for so long. The pace of change and use of technology were accelerating; health care costs were skyrocketing; patients and doctors were empowering themselves and becoming more vocal participants in health and wellness; and payers and governments were shifting their views on drug priorities and value.

The world was changing all around us. And we had not really changed how we designed and developed drugs in a long time. It became clear that if we wanted to keep our edge – that is, to stay valuable, relevant, and ahead of the curve – we had to change our way of working. And so, we began looking at our business from multiple perspectives, starting with the patient.

We decided to go beyond listening to the voice of patients in our drug development efforts. We decided to co-create.

As Sheila shared her story, we learned that to do so, the strategic innovation leadership team took action in two areas:

1. Influencing and revamping how the organization approached new drug development work at Roche, and in particular the Product Development organization, by bringing the outside in and using human centered design.
2. Reaching out and working with others in new ways to co-create the future of healthcare and medicine – building what Roche Innovator in Residence, Ayelet Baron, coined a “Connected Network.”

HOW DID THEY HELP MAKE THESE SHIFTS?

Sheila shared with us that ”These ideas were not necessarily revolutionary but really helped a big company like ours move faster and accelerate the impact we’re having in the world and society.”

First, they reached out internally to their own Product Development employees around the world. They knew they needed to make this change together.  Leaders recognized it didn’t have all the answers. They wanted more diversity in thought and perspective so they shifted to an ‘inside out’ perspective. As a result, the Strategic Innovation team began designing their first crowdsourcing campaign to help solve three big challenges:

1. How do we access information better?
2. How do we think differently about our patients?
3. And, how do we stay current?

The response was truly overwhelming: 500 ideas and 10,000 votes.  They picked three big ideas to work on:

1. Creating an environment that makes it simple and easy to do our work
2. Finding new ways to work with patients and bringing the trials to them
3. Setting up a HUB that enables the creation of an environment where we can regularly test new ideas and concepts

Crowdsourcing ideas and engaging employees directly, led to a shift in the organization. Sheila described, in her talk, how it facilitated getting great ideas out, testing them and engaging in new ways of working.  A great example of integrating high impact ideas was working with patients like Sean, a Crohn’s patient who joined their Advisory Board. (will link to past IX blog)

At the same time that they reached out to employees, they also looked outside and talked to other companies; they learned to ask for help and seek unusual partners.  The team used an Open Innovation Platform to engage with patients, and other solution seeker and finders; they created channels for real time advice from physicians – even sharing their intellectual property in some cases – all of which were unprecedented in our industry.”

HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN ENABLES PATIENT CO-CREATION

Through Design Labs and the HUB, they gained insights that helped improve trial design and increased their ability to listen and demonstrate value of co-creation. “We are using Design Thinking to increase our empathy and really understand our stakeholders’ needs, building new relationships with regulators, payers and physicians, and keeping our decisions focused on patients.”

The teams are tackling some of the most pressing issues their patients have identified, such as ease of patient participation, bringing trials to them and using new ways, including biosensors and apps, to support and enable them to maintain and manage their healthcare experience. By listening, they have refined their goal as “conduct quick, cost-effective experiments, learn from them, share the knowledge, and iterate our process so that it becomes standard practice of care and clinical studies.”

OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO SUCCESS

Not surprisingly, Sheila acknowledged, “The culture change has been the toughest part of the journey.” Trying to bring change about in an environment where people are already successful is never easy. People understand that the world is changing but it’s never easy to create a common understanding of what innovation means to each person and help them make the change.

To tackle this major shift, Sheila and her executive team looked at what new behaviors were needed in their organization and called out risk taking, fostering creativity, courage, and innovation. They also set up a recognition and reward program to highlight the ways teams were changing the way they work. This program helped reinforce the new behaviors and created a common language around what it means to be innovative in drug development.

Roche has always been a leader in medicine. Today, they are a key part of changing the course of medicine. In 2013 alone, they had more than 65 teams across the company trying out different innovations, doing things differently. They have given out over 200 awards to teams and individuals. And they regularly follow up by sharing their impact and their stories.

BRINGING STRONG BOTTOM LINE IMPACT

Sheila shared that there has been a shift; “we are excited that we are meeting unmet medical needs; after all, each of us can become a patient at any time.” The results speak for themselves as the team, under her leadership helped achieve the following results:

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Editor’s Note: We love it when we meet people who are boundary spanners — people who play in and across many aspects of innovation and commercialization, across functions and geographies, and help drive success. Mark Polson, Estee Lauder’s VP Creativity and Business is one of those people. He has a global role developing creativity as competence in a powerful house of brands, Estee Lauder. Here’s a glimpse, from our recent conversation, into what that looks like.

Innovation Excellence: You have a really interesting role in an amazing company. Can you describe what you do at Estee Lauder?

Mark: As Vice President of Creativity and Business I’m part of the global learning and development team, which is an extension of our global HR. In my role I’m responsible for the development of the competency of creativity and innovation within the corporation. We have a number of internal programs that we’ve built, that enable our people to further develop their creativity and innovation.

IX: Estee Lauder is not an industrial company. It’s a company that’s really built around the big ideas of beauty and the personal experience of beauty, which at its heart is extremely creative. I’m curious about what it’s like to build creativity as a competency inside of a company that’s already, you know, perceived to be a highly creative.

Mark: It is. However creativity here used to be viewed as being the domain of a select few people. What we’re really trying to say is that whatever domain that you’re in, be it supply chain, be it sales, be it finance, even procurement – you have the ability to be creative in that role and you have the ability to be an innovator and come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things, and that’s a capability we’re committed to building. So many people don’t view themselves as being creative. At Estee Lauder we’re fond of saying that companies don’t innovate, people do.

IX: How do you make that real?

Mark: One of the main ways that we socialize that idea is starting off by saying creativity, broken down, is very simply problem solving. Creativity is about solving problems, and who doesn’t solve problems on a daily basis? Therefore, everybody by virtue of their innate problem solving skills, is creative. That’s our jumping off point.

IX: How did you get started at Estee Lauder? Can you talk a little bit about your career trajectory and how you ended up in this role?

Mark: My background is industrial design. I was trained as an industrial designer. I spent many years working as a designer both in consulting roles and in corporate roles. In the mid-80’s I moved into the beauty industry. I spent two years at Revlon and then had the opportunity to come into Estee Lauder. I started off in the Estee Lauder brand doing visual merchandising — designing product displays and merchandising. I moved into the package development for a number of years, and then the woman who is my present boss now, who I’ve known for a number of years, approached me and said that she had an opening in her team, the Leadership & Development team, and she wanted me to come over, and help her add component around creativity. We got together and we carved out what this role would look like.

So I don’t have any of the traditional HR background of Learning and Development, but what I do have is training as a designer and in what we now talk about as design thinking. I also had the background in the company and along with the design education, the ability to put this program together.

IX: It’s funny — I was just thinking that you were doing design thinking in this role before design thinking became the vogue.

Mark: Exactly. I laugh about it, you know, when people are talking about design thinking. It’s become such a buzzword. But anybody who has gone to design school or architecture school has been trained that way. It’s so interesting to me that it’s being adopted now in general business circles. I think it’s great. It’s been a long time coming as far as I’m concerned.

IX: How many brands are in the house of Estee Lauder today?

Mark: Approximately 28 brands.

IX: There are so many iconic brands, Lauder, Clinique, Origins, MAC, Bobbi Brown, and the list just goes on. They are brought to life with an enormous amount of investment, energy and brand building kind of at its finest. I can see why people in supply chain and accounting and other parts of the organization might be a little wobbly when it comes to, you know, thinking they can innovate and create! Can you talk a little bit about sort of the legacy of innovation at Estee Lauder?

IX: Innovation is in the heart and soul of the Estee Lauder companies. I think it goes all the way back to when Mrs. Estee Lauder founded the company herself. She was truly an innovator. I think she’s an example of the kind of entrepreneurship often associated with “the garage” and the stories of Hewlett and Packard, Jobs and Wozniak, and Page and Brin.

Mrs. Lauder started out behind her home, which was actually in a stable in Queens with her uncle. She was a young innovator, responsible for creating innovations that are the standards in the industry now, that are seen in the personalized care at the counter, or the gift with purchase, and many others. She really created those innovations. So the whole culture of innovation runs deep and really goes back to the founding of the organization. There’s always been that entrepreneurial spirit in our organization, it still runs very strong today.

IX: And the Lauder family is still leading the organization?

Mark: Very much so. Mr. Leonard Lauder is Chairman Ameritus of the board. William Lauder is the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Jane Lauder has now become the head of the Clinique brand and Evelyn has been involved in a leadership role for many years. Ronald Lauder runds Clinique. Aerin Lauder is our style and image director, and has launched the Aerin brand. It’s very much a company about family values, and I think you can ask any employee the one word that describers the organization, they’re going to say family.

IX: Well family is sort of the first place that we all learn to create, right? It’s sort of that safe first place?  So it’s very interesting to me that this multi-generational family has really kept a very fiercely held vision of this creative, entrepreneurial and innovative company.

I understand that you’re building the creativity competency throughout the corporation. I think our readers would be very curious about what kinds of innovation you’re touching in your programs: business model innovation, social innovation, product innovation, there’s service innovation. Are you touching all of those or are you focused on one more than the other?

Mark: We touch all types of innovation. Product innovation is only one aspect our how our brands innovate. Service innovation is definitely something that’s on our radar as is, in new avenues of distribution. We’re thinking about technology, how does technology touch distribution? Yes, absolutely, business model innovation is definitely something that we’re looking at, and, social causes and altruism have always been part of the DNA of the Estee Lauder companies, and there are many, many activities that go on, more that we can really talk about. Giving back is a deep part of what this organization’s all about. So if you think of the continuum of innovation, and we see it holistically.

IX: Can you share any specific favorite examples of the impact your program has made?

Mark: While I can’t talk about specific commercial examples, but I can tell you that the work that I do is really about people and, how people view themselves, and how they view their own capacity for creativity and innovation.

Changing people’s mindsets about creativity is the most gratifying part of our work. I had a person who came in every morning in one of our programs say, “This is going to be terrible. I’m not creative at all. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the day,” and at the end of the program she said, “I feel liberated”. She came out with a completely different point of view of how she viewed herself, her own creativity and how she contributes to the organization.

So that’s where I get my gratification. It really begins with people, and what they believe they’re capable of doing. That is what work that we do is about.

IX: Well rightly so. In my travels through the corporate world, I continue to be struck by how much fear and anxiety there is in the workplace, particularly since the last economic meltdown as the job market has changed so dramatically, and there’s more disruption going on in very industry. It seems to me that fear in the workplace is actually on the rise. So I’m curious about your view of fear in the work that you do? Where does fear fit in?

Mark: I think fear comes in an aspect of something that we talk about called climate. What is the climate like for innovation? Climate is something that’s very real. It’s a subset of culture. Climate is something that’s very immediate and speaks to the needs and the behaviors of what’s going on in a particular scene or organization or team. Fear is really driven by how leaders set the environment for the organization.

So I think it’s incumbent upon me, and all our leaders, to set the right conditions that allow their people, their teams to be at their creative best, and part of that is allowing them to be fearless, and you do that by creating trust and transparency. You do that by creating an environment that doesn’t punish failure, but looks to learn from the lessons of failure. There are many other dimensions that compose that climate. But that’s what dealing with fear in a productive way comes down to really. It is about leadership setting the right climate.

IX: I know you’re using design thinking principals, are you doing prototypes?

Mark: Yes we are.

IX: What role do prototypes play in the work that you do?

Mark: We do rapid prototyping sessions, where we get groups of people together based on a particular issue or problem that’s facing the business. And we’re pulling people together from different domains. They aren’t necessarily, have engineering or designing backgrounds. We bring them together, put the problem on the table, break them into teams and just let them come up with ideas and put protoypes together. Then we evaluate them, and iterate and do more prototypes.

IX: One of the key differences between designers and everybody else is that designers really have no problem trying all kinds of things over and over and over and starting and stopping and iterating, and most people who don’t have that design and creativity background, are hesitant to sometimes to do that.

Mark: We don’t live in a linear world. We live in an iterative world. What we’re trying to do is to get people away from being linear thinkers and comfortable working in a more iterative sort of way. And while it does come more naturally to designers, once you get people into thinking about the mindset, you know, they really get into it and they like it. It’s just a new way of doing things for most people, but people do begin to see the results of their efforts of working. So iterating is a more natural way of working.

IX: So what are your personal favorite kinds of challenges to tackle?

Mark: My favorite part the work is moving people and moving the organization through people — to help us get to the best, because, you know, there’s always going to be competition. Great brands have to be fresher than usual, and it is really about, keeping people fresh in their thinking.

I love being able to work across the organization and with different cultures. What we find is that all the ideas about creativity and how people view creativity aren’t a cultural thing, but it’s very much a human thing. So you see this across all cultures of people who struggle with these same issues. So that’s really where my gratification comes from is seeing people across the organization begin to view themselves as creative.

IX: Estee Lauder is a consumer company, and you obviously are a great observer of your interaction with consumers. What are your wishes for consumers, or what do you think the company’s wishes are? I’m curious to sort of bring the consumer into this conversation and understand how you, how you think about them and the role they play in the work you do?

Mark: Consumers are truly our number one stakeholder, and it goes back to the constant belief that we always want to be able to surprise and delight our consumers in new ways. And I think that the way we look at that is, you know, we really, we want to give consumers things that they never imagined that they could have. And that’s I think really pretty much sums it up. They’re really at the heart of everything that we do. Our CEO is fond of saying that we are, we’re consumer inspired but at the end we’re creativity driven. So we want to be inspired by our consumers, but it’s our creativity that’s really going to give them the things that they didn’t even know that they wanted.

IX: What haven’t I asked you that I should ask you? What haven’t you told me about this program, this focus of Estee Lauder on creativity that you think people would like to know about?

Mark: Look, I’ve said it several times but, you know, I’ll say it one more time. In the end, I think when business, when the popular press, when everyone talks about innovation, it’s spoken about in sort of a unanimous, monolithic way as this thing. In the end, for me, it all comes down to people and I think often forget that. So it all starts with people. In business, in all other domains, you can have all the right processes, you can have the right systems in place, all of those types of things; none of that is going to be successful unless you have people in the right mindset, in the right frame of mind to approach innovation. That’s where it starts.

As Vice President of Creativity and Business Innovation for Global Management Strategies at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc., Mark Polson leads and develops internal creativity and innovation programs to include digital media and consumer insights that heighten and critical build capabilities within the Estée Lauder Companies. Mark also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology where he teaches in the Graduate School. He also serves on the Professional Development Committee for Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management Program in the FIT Graduate School.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Happy Valentine’s Day. Love is in the air. I fell in love AGAIN, as I often do with innovators-creative activists-big thinkers, and this week I had the pleasure to hear Derrick Ashong, Performance Artist, Producer and Founder of Take Back the Mic talk about his work — thanks to my friend CityKids founder Laurie Meadoff, who is Derrick’s non-profit partner. And yep.  Fell in love again.  Fell in love with Take Back the Mic!

It’s the Editor’s Pick this week because.   Because of Derrick, who is a force of nature, and who is committed to giving global youth a stage (virtual and live.)  To do that he created Amp-it, a social music sharing platform, which powers Take Back the Mic. Ashong is organizing a global World Cup of Hip Hop so that musically inclined youth can find, share and perform for their fans, and for the world.  From Ghana originally, Ashong understands that the most powerful way for global youth to find their own powerful original voices is to Take Back the Mic.  It’s just launched for kids from Kingston, Jamaica; Medellin, Colombia; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The finalists will be competing for the Cup in Miami at the eMerge festival.

Ashong is committed to bringing not just the performers but their fans to the final competition. He gets the social nature of having a voice — which must be one of the many bonds with Meadoff, who founded CityKids and Chat the Planet, and is a lifelong producer of youth performance, turning pain into purpose and creating safe spaces everywhere she goes.

He includes the fan base, the community in everything he touches.   As I was about to leave the event, Ashong friend and collaborator, the photographer Jane Feldman shared the following story with me.   She was with the Reverend Desmond Tutu, sharing a little photo flip book she made for the very Rev. Tutu at gathering for peace they had all attended. When Ashong’s image came up, Tutu said…”we’re counting on that one.” And Ashong is counting on global youth, and giving them a stage.

Please fund his IndieGogo campaign.

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