GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

What do Fedex, the Pope and the Fosbury Flop have in Common? The answer is not just that they’re all iconic disruptors in their own right.  The answer may well go deeper and address our collective yearnings for positive disruption, what it takes to productively embrace, and make disruptive innovation happen, without decimating or getting decimated by it.

Innovation Excellence is pleased to announced our newest exclusive online content series:

Disrupting Disruptive Innovation:  Lessons from the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, with Tribeca Film Festival Co-Founder Craig Hatkoff and Rabbi Irwin Kula, who together, with Harvard Business School’s Professor Clayton Christensen, originator of disruptive innovation theory, founded the Disruptor Foundation in 2009.

The mission of the Disruptor Foundation is to raise awareness of and encourage the advancement of disruptive innovation theory and its application in societally-critical domains.  Together Hatkoff and Kula lead Clay Christensen’s advanced research – focusing on cultural examples of disruptive innovation in societally critical domains such as spirituality, ethics, morality and more.

The Foundation’s marquee event, the annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, is presented in collaboration with the Tribeca Film Festival and Clayton Christensen.

The Award Winners (TDIA) represent an eclectic body of high impact lives and work that has not been shared broadly as a cohort.  It’s in the mix, and the adjacencies, that their body of work stands for positive disruption and is most provocative. (See the complete list here.)

This Beta series will take a look at and reflect on the lessons from the past five years of work to aggregate a exemplary disruptors from every walk of life.  In the process, Hatkoff and Kula and Christensen have been on quite a journey of exploration.  Now they want to share it with us.

To learn more or sign up visit us here:

Compete Series

Jan 30 – Disrupting Disruptive Innovation Theory: Lessons from the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards  – Changing How We Think About Change Using the New Calculus of Pop Culture

Feb 13 – The Cathedral and the Bazaar: How Next-gen Disruptive Innovation will Encourage Cathedrals (incumbents) to Learn How to Dance with the Bazaars (two guys in a garage), and Invite more Disruptions of Consequence.

Feb 27 – Disrupting the Status Quo, One-on-One: Courage, Empathy and Conversational Intelligence with Judith Glaser, Author Conversational Intelligence

March 13 – Disrupting Brands: Innovations that Challenge Identity Have a Much Different Dynamics than those Innovations of Pure Utility.

March 27 – Disrupting Hell: Innovations in Moral and Ethical Products, Services and Delivery Systems or Accountability in the Age of the Unbeliever.

This series invites you to explore a wide-ranging and provocative dialogue on our collective yearnings for disruption, and what it takes to productively embrace, and make disruptive innovation happen.  Come to one or more!

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Location

Location, location, location is as true for events as it is for Real Estate. Events are engines of economic development for the cities they choose. We’ll be doing more on both – cities and their innovation events this year – bringing you the innovation highlights from both. That’s why we were excited by Frost and Sullivan’s choice of New Orleans for their January Innovation in NPD and Marketing gathering that kicks off today. It’s at once practical (less expensive that NY, Chicago, Vegas, SF), aesthetic (gumbo, zydeco, the French Quarter, et al) and symbolic: if the city of New Orleans was a product, and it is, then it’s rebirth, revitalization, and renewal since the Levee’s, FEMA, and the general infrastructure failed in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina decimated the city and its residents. New Orleans is a story of the redemptive power of innovation.

Innovations in New Product Development and Marketing?

It’s against that backdrop that the The Innovation in New Product Development and Marketing conference will be happening this week.  IX will be covering it and will share highlights in the coming as part of our ongoing industry conference coverage.   We asked Frost & Sullivan to preview Innovation in NPD and Marketing for us and here’s what they said:

Describe the event?  Why does F&S put it on? How does it serve the innovation discipline?

F&S:  The Innovation in New Product Development and Marketing event brings together innovation and product development executives from a variety of industries to cross-pollinate ideas, strategies and best practices for business implementation. To achieve this, Frost & Sullivan created an event model that centers on interaction and participation where executives are encouraged to share ideas and strategies through collaborative benchmarking sessions. Since much of the innovation discipline calls upon strategies like co-creation, crowd-sourcing and open innovation, and our sessions encourage the participants to first listen to each other’s challenges and then investigate possible solutions through collaboration.

Why are you holding in New Orleans?

Frost & Sullivan elected to host the event in New Orleans because it’s one of the most creative environments in the United States – New Orleans is defined by its dynamic music, food and art and we thought that environment was well-suited for an audience of innovation executives. We also wanted to support the local economy post-Katrina.

What is your favorite thing about New Orleans?

F&S:  The energy, dynamism and resilience of the culture and people.  We love this city and we want to support it. Plus you can’t beat the food!

What is special about the Event — what happens there?

F&S:  The event is special because it is a hybrid of networking, collaboration, and structured best practices and case studies from subject matter experts and thought leaders.

Tell us about a couple of the keynoters — who are you especially excited to hear?

Our three presenters, Kipp Bradford from Brown, Brandon Rowberry, UnitedHealth Group and Jim Stikeleather, Dell bring radically diverse perspectives to new product development and marketing.  We’ll be excited to share highlights of their talks with IX over the coming weeks!

Kipp Bradford Founder/President of KIPPworks & kippkits, LLC Brown University

Brandon Rowberry Vice President Innovation Development UnitedHealth Group

James Stikeleather Executive Strategist Dell

F&S:  We have a dynamite speaker faculty lined up for this program.  are bright, creative and charismatic, but will also offer insights on how to adapt and remain nimble in a changing world.

How much time is devoted to networking?

Our program model is 80% interactive, which means executives are able to build relationships while exploring different content points. On top of that, we have structured networking activities throughout the event, including a progressive dinner around New Orleans!

What else should we have asked you?

Why we really came to New Orleans?  Because we love this city, we think it’s the perfect place to convene a creative catalytic gathering.

What other events do you put on?

• GIL 2014: Silicon Valley
• 10^th Anniversary Customer Contact 2014, East: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange
• 10^th Anniversary Customer Contact 2014, West: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange
• 15^th Anniversary Marketing World 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange
• 19^th Annual Medical Technologies 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange
• 2^nd Annual ConNEXTions 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange

image credit: bourbon street image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

At the Back End of Innovation Conference (BEI) last week in Santa Clara, we had two kinds of innovation cocktails — libations curated for the conference by Greg Waldron and his mixology team at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, and courtesy of Tito’s Vodka: Da Vinci’s Flight (see recipe below) and The Spirit of Innovation. This Innovation Cocktail Party was made possible by those people who care about our eyesight at Vision Services Program. That was one of two formal cocktail parties — the first night’s was hosted by Roche and featured Vivek Wadha who talked about why he’s edited his upcoming book on Innovating Women. Both evenings rocked and ended too soon.

Then we had each other. There were 250+ from all over the world; extraordinary people united by a common interest in implementing innovation inside enterprises — in the how, the doing, the heavy lifting, the bringing ideas across the finish line into new business models, products, services and cultures. If Innovation is code for hope, for growth, for finding your voice and for making change happen, then this was by all measures an extremely, high on the growth curve, vibrant crowd. So we talked. And drank. And talked some more. Three great innovators: Tito’s Vodka, The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, and Vision Services Program brought Da Vinci’s flight and others to the table:

Between the practitioners, speakers, storytellers, experience-creators, experts in their various domains, and the regular creative people that assembled, it was as good a 3 day dry cocktail party as I’ve been to in a long time. But then, good conferences are like good cocktail parties. They’re social. There is a perceptible sense of fun and conviviality. There are more people you don’t know than know, and it’s about meeting people, just usually without a bar nearby.

We had a vision for BEI.  It was to celebrate the idea that Innovation has become a full-fledged profession. The collective we spent 3 days sharing experiences, lessons learned, intense questions and curiosities about HOW it works ‘over there?’

While this is NOT a complete summary here are some of our favorite one-liners from this 3 day tribal gathering:

• “Companies over-emphasize idea generation and under-emphasize idea execution when it comes to innovation” – Vijay Govindarajan, Dartmouth

• Embracing polarity and accepting discordance are critical in the #innovation process. @pathfw

• “So true Mick Simonelli, the Back End of Innovation is harder to realize.” – Dawn Mortimer
  
• @Smartorginc CEO – “Mediocrity is biggest threat. Most companies are looking too small or or no risk.” – @mobilepointview
• Entrepreneurs bet everything on big ideas – managers watch closely that the train is on time #BEI13 – Lea Carey, TheHealthMaven
• “True innovation is nothing more and nothing less-than a creative combination of existing ideas.” – Ken Favaro, Booz & Co (and a shout out to your visuals!)

• “Strategy is really about how you create your future while you are managing the present.” – Vijay Govindarajan, Dartmouth

• “Don’t take a no from someone who cannot give you a yes.” – Michele Weslander-Quaid, Google

• “Recognize and fight the 2 antibodies that will kill innovation: corporate antibodies and personal antibodies.” – Unknown

• “Be Daring, Be Different, Be Impractical — anything that will assert integrity of purpose & imaginative vision against the play-it-safers.” – Cecil Beaton, Fashion Photographer brought to life by Lisa Marchese

• “I knew I wanted to design robots after I saw my first Star Wars movie.” – Dr. Dennis Hong (and his adorable throw the bigger ball at the robot son)

• “Everyone at Intuit is trained on Designing for Delight.” – Unknown

• “When we introduced Design for Delight as a process, it didn’t work. Making it 3 simple principles did. “ #BEI13 Intuit field trip

• “We get locked into views because we refuse to continuously transform.”- @robertsgolden

• “Show the creative twice. I always show it twice.” – Lisa Marchese, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, after showing Just the Right Amount of Wrong commercial for the first time.

• “Online community members see themselves as consultants to the brand” – Thomas Finkle, Passenger

• “A lot of innovation just falls off or dies when it reaches the Marketing suite.” – Lisa Marchese

• “I have pissed a lot of people in the valley off by asking why are there no women on Twitter’s senior management team?” – Vivek Wadwha, Singularity University

• “Vision without execution is hallucination.” – Unknown

• “Come visit us on either coast.” – Jay Sales, Leslie Muller, Vision Services Program

• “(With this certification) we’re trying to create resonance out of dissonance.” – Ron Jonash, Hult International School of Business and IXL Center

• “A warrior is not afraid to be afraid.” – Stuart Heller, Walk Your Talk

• “I want to come back!” – Unknown

And. So do WE. We raise a glass to all who made the trek and showed up at #BEI13! If you have a favorite line or quote don’t hold back – please share! And for those that didn’t you can find much more at the Back End of Innovation Group on LinkedIn.  Now, are you listening? Clink-Clink!

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Sponsored by the Creating WE Institute

Editor’s note: Since this feature first appeared, we hosted a Books as Tools web chat with Judith E. Glaser and our global community. To hear Judith speak in-depth about her work, and new book Conversational Intelligence, click here.

I have two questions for our readers for which I do not have the answer. First: How satisfied are you with the overall quality of conversations you have? Second: What can you do to make your conversations more productive?  And a third bonus question – does this sound at all familiar:

• 9 out of 10 conversations miss the mark
• We talk past each other
• We talk over each other
• We trigger each other
• Then we stop listening

Why?  The answer may be shown in this encounter: as I worked in my back yard yesterday, a garden snake slithered out beneath my feet.  In principle, I like snakes, but in less than a nanosecond, my nervous system leapt into the air, and ran screaming, bringing me with it.  That snake wasn’t trying to trigger me, but he (or she) did. I don’t know about you, but conversations often take on that quality of nerve-ending, gut tweaking SURPRISE. As for conversations that truly matter?  I think I’ve found an alternative response to the work-world version of snakes slithering in the grass and triggering the  #$*!$# out of us.

We are excited about bringing Conversational Intelligence, Judith’s newest book, and culminating body of decades of work in the C-Suite and research labs, to the world.  While its lessons are universal, we are especially pleased to share it with innovation practitioners – it’s our newest addition to our Books as Tools family of killer books – a small yet growing body of work we believe has the catalytic ability to be used for good, not just read. To join Judith in a live conversation on Sept. 26th, register here.

Because, we know that innovation is one part imagination, and two parts enrolling; that collaboration, innovation’s most profound verb and the key to creating new stuff, is one part getting the right people in the room or online, and much more about creating an environment where ideas can really be heard and built upon, or said another way, developed in a climate of trust, where it’s less about being right, and more about producing the best results.

Because we know, that actually launching something new in the world or transforming anything, is by definition, an exercise in mind-shifts, and that those are usually, naturally because we’re human and hard-wired, accompanied by fear and frustration, balanced only by commitment and need.

Remember when Emotional Intelligence (EQ) popped into our collective consciousness?  It took Daniel Goleman drawing that distinction to confirm for us what we already, intuitively and it turns out, emotionally, knew: that we make decisions instantaneously first emotionally, then rationally.  That we read people and situations, develop trust, make life-altering decisions like where to work and live, whom to love, using a form of native intelligence we only knew tacitly, silently.  That might have been OK, unless we wanted to summon our EQ and apply it at will to solve problems.

Here comes Judith E. Glaser, her lifetime research and her offer to be our guide in the adventure called developing Conversational Intelligence.  Depending on the day, you can either view it as an owner’s manual for building trust, or perhaps, the best therapy you can get on Amazon.

So What Exactly Is Conversational Intelligence?

It is a deeper understanding that conversations are not only the exchange of information.

• They are multi-dimensional experiences…
• They have:

–     Space

–     Time

–     Dimensions

–     Influence Ripples

–     Conversations keep us connected with others and enable us to successfully navigate our ‘inner and outer’ realities together.

• Conversations activate our next generation DNA

DeMille on Glaser

“The crux of Conversational Intelligence is knowing that the words we use, and how we use them, have a direct impact on the brain neurochemistry of the people who hear what we say. This is real power, and those who understand the incredible influence of words are able to use them more effectively to lead, sway, and impact other people.”

Are there Cliff Notes?

Yes.  There are always Cliff Notes.  These take the form of LAPS, and here they are:

L – Listen to Connect, Not Reject

A – Ask More Questions For Which You Have No Answers

P – Prime Conversations for Mutual Success

S – Sustained Conversational Agility; And we need to approach this as a long-distance sport in which we take multiple laps

How Will Conversational Intelligence Help You?

Understanding how using different words and communication styles impact the brain chemistry, aka, the hard-wiring and receptiveness of the people you work with, will help you build Conversational Agility, which Glaser describes as the ability to navigate at will, or toggle, between the three levels of Conversational Intelligence.

Conversational Agility is a secret power within your grasp.  It enables you to toggle at will between the three innate levels:

Level I – Confirming What We Know, Asking & Telling

Level II – Defending What We Know, Advocating & Inquiring

Level III – Discovering What We Know, Sharing & Discovering

Level III is where the real rewards come in.  When you can toggle between, you can, at will:

• Build trust
• Overcome resistance
• Get people to listen
• Push back effectively
• Catalyze new thoughts
• Change people’s minds
• Shift from I to WE
• Activate energy, passion and accountability

In his review, Oliver DeMille, also said this about Glaser’s distinction of Level III: “This is the highest level of Conversational Intelligence, where a person understands how the brain and words work so well that he or she can use words with agility—to drastically empower, uplift, motivate, and serve people.”

Level III conversations enable moving:

1- from fear to Co-Creating

2- from power (and politics) to genuine Relationship Building

3- from uncertainty to Understanding

4- from a need to be right to Mapping Shared Success

5- from groupthink to Group Cohesion and Partnering

In closing, we think Conversational Intelligence has implications well beyond the boardroom.  To wit, Tom Friedman, in a New York Times editorial yesterday, said out loud what many people I know, me included, often feel:

“It’s easy to be depressed about America these days. We’ve got messes aplenty abroad and the Republican-dominated House of Representatives is totally paralyzed. Indeed, the G.O.P.- led House has become a small-minded, parochial place, where collaboration is considered treason…

Politics aside, it is clear that our current Congress isn’t up to the truly hard work of collaborating.  Just as far too many C-suites, and boards and leadership teams and working teams aren’t up to building the trust that is required for growth.

Fortunately, for our future, and our sense of what’s possible, Friedman provides the point-counterpoint argument:

“There is another, still “exceptional,” American reality out there.

It’s best found at the research centers of any global American company. These centers are places where scientists and engineers from dozens of nationalities are using collaboration and crowd-sourcing to push out the boundaries of medical, manufacturing and material sciences.”

Our burning platform, aka the global economy, has rightfully emboldened leaders in Strategy, Marketing, R&D, Product Development, and Innovation, to take collaborative problem solving very seriously.  And at less publicized but equally adventurous places – that you know about like New York Yankees, the UN, the US Postal Service, to places that you might not know, like healthcare gem-in-action, Memorial Hospital in South Bend Indiana, the hunt for solutions has caused collaboration to go mainstream.  And it’s about time.  Again quoting Friedman as he describes what he sees in US R&D labs:

“Where possibilities seem infinite, where optimal is the norm and where every day begins by people asking: “What world are we living in, and how do we thrive in that world?”

Conversational Intelligence (thank you Judith Glaser) holds the keys to the HOW we can thrive – one trusting conversation at a time.

Want to learn more?

Join us on September 26 from 1-2 p.m. eastern for “A conversation with Judith E. Glaser”.  You can register here and also buy the book here.

About Judith: Judith E. Glaser is the founder and Chairman of the Creating WE Institute. She was honored by Leadership Excellence 500 as one of 2012’s top 15 consultants, coaches

and organizational practitioners in the country known for their contribution to the development of leadership in organizations globally. Judith was ranked as the top woman in this category. She is the author of 3 bestselling books.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

See Intuit For Real at Back End of Innovation, Nov 19, 2013

It’s all too rare that we get to go behind the scenes, witness and experience what makes a company that is SYNONYMOUS with innovation tick, especially one that has been doing it continuously for thirty years.  As a strategic partner to the Back End of Innovation (BEI) conference, we are happy to be giving the IX community early notice that BEI is including on-site experiential learning in the form of (#BEI13) Field Trips to three innovation powerhouses (Intuit, Xerox Parc andPayPal.) The first, Intuit, will be held on November 19, on Intuit’s corporate campus in Santa Clara, and led by Suzanne Pellican, who has one of the better titles I’ve seen of late – Director, Design for Delight and Innovation Catalysts.

In Their Own Words…

Intuit on Innovation: “Innovation at Intuit is systematic. Yet we afford our employees the autonomy to tap into their own passions to delight customers and grow the company. Innovation at Intuit is the intersection of customer, technology and business insights. We encourage our employees to know our customers – watch them, listen to them, visit their homes and workplaces – so they can discover and solve important customer problems.”

10% of Employee Time for Exploration/Experimentation

“Our secret sauce for innovation is Design for Delight (D4D), our way of looking at design thinking. We also nurture our employees to be innovators through a grassroots environment that taps into their passions and lets them spend 10% of their time exploring and experimenting on their ideas. We call this Unstructured Time.”

Applicability to Your Organization and Business

Can you say that about your business with a straight face? It sounds simple and straightforward. But as we all know, implementing it is something else entirely. And that’s why we’re heading to Intuit – to see, feel and experience an environment that’s fully committed to implementing ideas and creating a persistent innovation culture.

A Little Background

For 30 years Intuit has been simplifying the way people manage money, a rather profound ‘job to be done.’  Products like Quicken, TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Mint get those jobs done for people at home and at work.   All of these software products are developed by Intuit Labs, which has a point of view about how to fuel and innovation pipeline.

They started small in 1983 with Quicken personal finance software, simplifying a common household dilemma: balancing the family checkbook. Today, they’ve served the lives of more than 50 million people, and have annual revenue approaching $4 billion. They’re publicly traded with the symbol INTU on theNasdaq Stock Market, and regularly recognized as one of the best places to work in locations around the world.

The BEI13 Field Trips are about making Intuit’s innovation style visible.

Intuit is one of the companies innovators admire and want to work for because of their track record, their longevity, and especially their people. Let’s go see them, talk to them, breathe their air. Seeing is believing in any realm. In Innovation it’s especially true. Because the kind of synthesis of leadership, courage, resources, vision, and practice that it takes to grow to 4Billion in revenues does not happened by accident. The kind of people coming to the Back End of Innovation work at Innovation for a living.They KNOW it’s HARD.  Rewarding to be sure, but hard. Intuit believes in the power of the individual and puts teeth into the belief.  Beyond the words, implemented in action.  Now that’s a job to be done!

Come Join Us at Intuit on November 19 at BEI

To learn more visit www.backendofinnovation.com. To register call: 888.670.8200 or Email: register@iirusa.com And don’t forget to get your 25% InnovationExcellence discount off the standard price, using the code BEI13IX!

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Today, the Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbor reopens after being damaged in Hurricane Sandy.  To paraphrase the wonderful New Jersey campaign, she, and we, are stronger than storm.  On CNN this morning, a Park Ranger said that it never ceased to amaze him that people from all over the world weep when they first see Lady Liberty. Why do they cry?  What is it about this global symbol that moves us to tears?  It must start with the idea of liberty.  Liberty is the value of individuals to have agency (control over their own actions.)1  The word comes from the Old French liberte “freedom, liberty, free will, from the Latin libertatem, “freedom, condition of a free man, absence of restraint; permission.”2

And from the dictionary, always worth checking out, lib·er·ty [lib-er-tee]  noun, plural lib·er·ties.

1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.

2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.

3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.

4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty.

5. permission granted to a sailor, especially in the navy, to go ashore.

6. freedom or right to frequent or use a place: The visitors were given the liberty of the city.

7. unwarranted or impertinent freedom in action or speech, or a form or instance of it: to take liberties.

8. a female figure personifying freedom from despotism.

What creates lasting liberty?  A constitution that allows us to govern.  As we watch the events in Egypt today this is especially poignant.  What did our founding fathers have to do and find within themselves to sit for 100 days of debate to come together to revise the Articles of Confederation and then decide to (unconstitutionally) abandon them in favor of creating a new US constitution.  Oh to be a fly on that wall, to have listened to them argue and draft the words that gave birth to our Constitution.   My friend, the author and communications guru Judith E. Glaser has, for the last few years, been deconstructing the US Constitution through the lens of Conversational Intelligence. Working with historians, neuroscientists, and the National Constitution Center, she has developed a thesis:

America’s Founders had a hundred day conversation in which they embodied an unnervingly high degree of interpersonal intelligence, civility, and intentional commitment in their conversations:  they passionately spoke their hearts and minds, and then they listened to each other.  They built trust, handled conflict, engaged in negotiation and compromise, and ultimately created a new form of government, one that eerily paralleled the constitution of the Iriquois Federation, and created centuries of political stability that, while imperfect, is a beacon.

That kind of intelligence is conversational intelligence, and it transformed history.  Judith’s work on this is just beginning and we will be sharing more of it in the months to come because we see the direct relationship between conversation, innovation, and yes, liberty.  It’s worth noting that the first book in our Books as Tools series, How Stella Saved the Farm, is also about gaining mastery in the innovation conversation.   It is an article of faith for us at IX that the capacity to have the right conversations about innovation, no matter where you are on the path, is the first, critical competency of leadership.

As an American citizen, it is humbling to think about the humility, patience, energy, and moral courage that our Founding Fathers embodied in those conversations.   Many people I know, including me, are so disappointed in our current Congress’s ability to even have the conversations that it turning us into activists all over again.   (Occupy Congress could be coming to a theater near you.)

And, in a personal note, it is why our team at Innovation Excellence works overtime to create a persistent space for global conversation that is of the people, by the people and for the people. And we intend to keep it that way, so please, join in.  And if you think something is missing, or needs greater amplification, tell us.  We are listening.

A famous story  from McHenry’s The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 about founder Benjamin Franklin goes like this… At the end of the convention a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well,  Doctor, what have we got – a Republic or a Monarchy?” Benjamin Franklin is said to have replied  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Liberty.   Freedom.   A value, and a way of life, to treasure, to honor, and to respect.  I for one am FOR keeping it close in our hearts, guarded, safe and secure. Thank you Founding Fathers, thank you signers of the Declaration of Independence.  Happy Birthday America.

sources: 1  Wikipedia    2 https://www.etymonline.com/

Image credit:  A Herrero

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

We are celebrating and shining a spotlight on how innovators use Books as Tools™, tools for driving the shifts that innovation requires, with a series of the same name, and founded in on our belief that books aren’t really books. They’re incendiary tools for personal revolution and organizational change.  They can and often do serve as inspiration or impetus at the right time.  They don’t have to be consumed all at once like a cold beer.  But they can be. And when consumed by the sip or the drink they are windows into the different worlds that form Innovation.

Innovation is such emergent field that no one map can or will suffice because everyone comes from their own entry point.  That’s why we created this series. The books we’ll highlight, some new and some old, have a particular magic for innovators, or those who simply want to own the vision, skills and confidence to move to new ways of doing, being and living.  We’ll also be taking your suggestions, and look forward to being a big fat channel and discussion forum for the most inspiring works by, about and for people who want to innovate. Whether you’re trying to:

• break through some intellectual concrete,
• find just-in-time expertise or new ways of working,
• compare and contrast architectural approaches to enterprise innovation in other industries,
• develop your own interpretation about what is needed now,
• or simply find some solace, a pick me up, when the world or your own resistance is just too much, there is nothing quite like a book.

To quote the philosopher and inventor Dr. Fernando Flores, “reading is a conversation with the author, to which we bring our concerns.” And it seems we have no shortage of concerns when it comes to how to innovate.  Which is where Books as Tools™ began.

We’re Aiming for a Non-Exhaustive Lexicon of Innovation

Did We Say We Plan to Go Deeper

Each of these categories is drawn from, and against the challenges of meeting organizations where they are – across the spectrum of challenges they’re facing and the relative sophistication of their experience and going in knowledge. Conversations with the Authors is the Start. As you know, we started with How Stella Saved the Farm by Chris Trimble and Vijay Govindarajan.

St. Martins’ Press and the International Thought Leaders Network, sponsored a series of Web Chats with Chris that many of you have participated in…we started with a great spirit of discovery, and here’s what we’ve learned…there is an appetite on the part of both the authors and our audience to talk about how to use a book to drive change, where the ideas came from, what it was like to write a different kind of book (a fable!) and so much more.  This led to a now ongoing series of terrific small group discussions via Abobe Connect (no firewall issues or software to download.) We will be doing more author Web Chats, sponsored or not…this has been our practice field and we’ll do our final one for the summer this Thursday, June 13 at noon edt,  on How Stella Can Engage Your Students.  You can join us by registering here.

And of Course, the Back Stories – How to Use these Books as Tools of Innovation

In which we highlight one book from just three of the six categories and how it can be used it to lessen innovation anxiety and stoke your courage to act. Sometimes you need to know where to start.  For each of us, the innovation journey starts in a different place.  When an organization is taking a first step, and many are, the validation of the past is useful, and quite comforting.  My friend the author and meta-communicator Judith Glaser is currently deconstructing the US Constitution through the lens of Conversational Intelligence™,  and neuroscience – to understand how this collective conversation even occurred much less transformed history.  It’s part of her life’s work – and she, like many of us, likes to ‘look back to look forward.’[2]

I’ve used Arie De Geuss’s book, The Living Company.  As head of planning for Royal Dutch Shell he found himself wondering “what keeps companies ALIVE?”  This book summarizes the research he commissioned at Royal Dutch Shell to answer the questions: how many companies have lived to be over hundred years old? If organizations were species, how many really thrive and persist (it’s a very small number) and why? What he learned has profound implications for leaders making decisions about where and now to invest.  It’s sober.  One of the four characteristics was a strong balance sheet or “cash in hand,” while still allowing “tolerance at the margins.”  That this came from Royal Dutch Shell, which has been a successful performance engine company with a rep for imbedding innovation makes the book all the more powerful a reference: it can be done.

When we intend to embrace innovation,  where do we begin?  The five books in this category each provide sweeping, diverse interpretations of the innovation landscape – the state of the discipline today. They each come from thinkers and doers who’ve honed their perspectives on the anvil of the world’s most complex companies.   One timeless example, Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm, operationalized Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation research and “made the historic and elegantly obvious argument that there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists).

Moore explored those differences and suggested attitudes and techniques to successfully cross the “chasm.”  Those distinctions are still extremely useful, still very much with us as short-hand, today, explaining why innovation must be approached systematically.

While the five books in this category could each be used a primer for architecting and implementing innovation inside of large organizations, The Lean Startup is extremely important right now as a tool of change, because it’s focused on capabilities that are most often missing or atrophied in enterprises – specifically the way of working that agile software developers use: the disciplined learning, customer testing and iteration of new products and services. Author Eric Ries says:

“Too many startups begin with an idea for a product that they think people want. They then spend months, sometimes years, perfecting that product without ever showing the product, even in a very rudimentary form, to the prospective customer. When they fail to reach broad uptake from customers, it is often because they never spoke to prospective customers and determined whether or not the product was interesting.”

This is not just true of startups, this is true of very large corporations and explains in part the large failure rate of new product and service introductions. Stay tuned…and let us know if you’d like information about our discussions with these and many more authors by signing up here.

Time to tool up and hit the books!

[1] Dictionary.com [2] Judith Glaser;  image credit: jsonline.com

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

In 2010 the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) disrupted itself and its laser focus on film by adding an awards ceremony, the Disruptive Innovation Awards. Co-Founder Craig Hatkoff decided it was the right moment to honor the work of the father and popularizer, or one might say liberator, of disruptive innovation, Clayton Christensen, who he’d met through Tribeca Enterprises’ COO and President Jon Patricof,  a former student of Christensen’s. Hatkoff and Christensen co-founded and have cast the Awards as a public stage, a platform that Hatkoff declares is “dedicated to exploring the ever-increasing gap between the rate of technological change and the bumpier, slower-moving cultural adoption and diffusion.”                                                          The best part of this year’s awards was the mix, the collective breadth of imagination.  On this year’s stage advances in technology and human invention from the worlds of Business, Social Good, Civics, Government, the Arts and Hollywood show up in a wildly diverse tableau of people who probably would not normally be hanging out:  Twyla Tharp, Glenn Beck, Quirky founder Ben Kaufman, Aaron Peckham, the Creator of Urban Dictionary, Hamadi Ulukaya, the CEO of Chobani Yogurt, Jose Antonio Vargas, founder of Define American, and Korean YouTube phenom Psy. Hmmm.

Of course, the ceremony is non-traditional. The winners get silver sledge- hammers (to be able to better break things with.)  There are NO long, or even short, thank you-to-my-people speeches – which could be a nod to the high-octane shoulders of Webby Awards Founder and film pioneer Tiffany Schlain (whose mandate for 7 word acceptance speeches at the Webbys was just that – a mandate.)

In their place are ‘one question-one answer moments,’ delivered by emcee Perri Peltz who clearly enjoys the knock-down drag-out pacing that replicates the rhythm of creative collaboration, as does the parade of these thinker-doer-inventors.  Like most things delicious, it just leaves you wanting more.  Because all of these people, from Norma Kamali to the twin set of identical twins, the Agrawals AND the McClays who have taken on the ‘monthly shame’ problem for global girls through Thinx: Change Your Underwear,  just have that disruptive ju-ju that makes you want to learn more. As you might imagine from a ceremony that shares its origins with the only De Niro inspired downtown film festival, it’s got a visceral narrative…complete with so many great one-liners that I lost track. Maybe Mamet wrote it?

Imagine a Goodfella’s script crossed with an Umair Haque tweet and you get the existential bent.

Yes there’s much to love about the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards. But curate we must.  So here are the 10 things about the event and the shift towards DISRUPTION it signifies that have, unshakably, stayed with me:

1. That it exists. This two-hour fishbowl of world-class disruptors exists as a landmark on the nav bar of today’s culture. The Tribeca Film Festival proper was an act of creative defiance.  It’s fitting that this satellite comes from Downtown and is both a testament to TFF Founder Craig Hatkoff’s humanity, and passion for world changers.  ‘Innovation is a buzzword?  Oh yeah?  Come over here and say that!’

2. Disruption has an icon – a silver hammer and it’s ready to smash more conventions.  You can’t see Focus Forward’s You Don’t Know Jack about 13 year old Jack Andraka and his family’s squabbles about his ambition to cure pancreatic cancer, (“get your own lab!” yells his mother) and the 199 rejections he got before finding a scientist who would give him a chance without getting choked up, and wanting to smash the 199 scientists who said no.  For those old enough or hip enough to recall, a certain Maxwell had a hammer too.

3. That it recognizes that disruption has no boundaries – and stands up and points an intentional finger in your face with ‘you talking to me’ recognition that innovation can disrupt cities (Manchester, England), the lives of girls – “weeks of (menstrual) shame that keep young girls around the world missing up to 25% of their schooling (Thinx,) immigration (Define American,) the way we talk (The Urban Dictionary), the way we manufacturer (Quirky,) consume books (Audible,) media (Vine, Uber, Kenzo Digital) and entertainment (Psy,Twyla Tharp,) alike. Disruptive innovation, like oxygen, exists to disrupt and refresh every part of life that is not accurately or efficiently serving people’s needs.  And that’s why people are called to do it. They cannot stand the status quo.

4. Or geographical limits – Harlem Village Academies, again Manchester, England’s new ventures, the African Robotics Network, Brooklyn Bowl, the www.whatever it’s called now.

5. And disruption relies on committed collaborations:Where else will you find Beth Comstock (GE) hanging out withMorgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) because GE produced his film, You Don’t Know Jack, along with a tens of others at Forward Focus films.  Now there’s a woman that knows how to live.

6. And ageless and timeless: Norma Kamali, Twyla Tharp, Harlem Village Academy’s ‘most threatening educator’ Deborah Kenny and Sir Howard Bernstein, the executive who’s led the reinvention of Manchester, England (from the home to the industrial revolution, into banking, new media, biotech, incubator for low carbon enterprise)…these are not overnight sensations.  They are the unstoppables — career innovators who disrupt because they must. And then there are the kids with like impulses: the McClay and Agrawal twins, Elise Andrews (I f—ing Love Science/Science is Awesome) and Ben Kaufman (Quirky founder) who seemingly have been doing this all along. Ben’s mom should have accepted the award for him because, according to Ben she raised him in her Queens’ factory. Perhaps a labor law violation allowed this kid to get manufacturing in his DNA.  Perhaps we need a take your-kid-to-your-factory day in his honor?

7. And surprising: Wait. That’s Glenn Beck. And he’s telling stories about Walt Disney and Orson Welles and rehab and robots and his views on a new kind of media company, one where he cannot be fired.  You could feel the more than palpable admiration in the audience for that business model.

8. And economically satisfying: Who knew ‘the man’ behind Chobani Yogurt, CEO Hamadi Ulukaya, expects the economic impact of their newest factory in Idaho to bring ‘$1.3 billion for the state and 300 new jobs” while being he says, ‘a door to better eating.’  Yogurt can be disrupted. Anything can be disrupted, and that IS the message of these awards.  Can. Will Be. Is.

9.  And restlessly seeking new domains of life to consume, disrupt and spit out transformed: In accepting his Christensen Award, Clayton Christensen offered three wishes for three arenas ‘badly in need of disruption.’  Never one to dumb it down, he called upon the planet, starting with the US, to disrupt, in this order: terrorism, parenting and religion. Because, according to him, we are losing that which makes us strong.  Security begins at home, with us.

10. That it (disruption as a discipline) is not perfect.  And, it’s just begun. If seeing is believing, then being relentlessly entertained while seeing is even better, because a movement that requires courage gets plused up when people are moved. I just have one beef with the whole thing:  It’s a shame, a terrible shame to limit the examples of these honorees and the catalytic power of their accomplishments to a small audience. To keep the downtown theme going…if you remember the name Petula Clark you’ll remember her singing “when you’re alone and life is making you lonely you can always go – D-O-W-N-T-O-W-N.”  Hult professor Ron Jonash states unequivocally that innovators are lonely, and indeed, we are.  And it’s not just those secure enough to say ‘let’s create something better.’  It’s a lonely planet, filled with missed opportunities and connections to do better.  For everyone. So Craig Hatkoff, thank you for bringing all these fantastic disruptors to our attention.  Now, how do we share them writ large in all the other tiny corners of the world?  How do we get their wisdom, guts and inventiveness out to balance the stuff that needs no name? I think you have some fellows who might make a good start.  YOLO!*

*You only live once — the most popular term in the Urban Dictionary, according to founder Aaron Peckham.

This is the first in a series of articles about the disruptors celebrated in these awards.  Stay tuned.

All photos by Andrew Federman courtesy of TDIA

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Books Aren’t Books

As a blogger, author or change agent you know this very well. Books aren’t books. They’re incendiary tools for personal revolution and organizational change.

Books provide the courage and stimulus to move people’s molecules around, and when they’re consumed by teams in a deliberate way, books can cause teams to align to create change – a prerequisite to making innovation happen.

Listen in on Chris Trimble’s phone chat with Tim Sutton, Engagement Director at Fahrenheit 212, as they discuss how books can be used as tools to inspire and motivate people to act, to change, and to drive innovation results.

Books as Tools – How Stella Saved the Farm

Learn How Stella Saved the Farm by Chris Trimble and Vijay Govindarajan – a post Animal Farm parable about barnyard business mates with a deadly serious intent –  can get 10 people in an organization talking about how they can innovate right where they are and save their proverbial farm. And boy do our “farm’s” need saving!

Join me and Chris Trimble, author and Dartmouth professor, on our next IX Web Chat for the first segment of our Books as Tools campaign – Tuesday, March 12th, at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Feel free to share this page and invite your friends – the more the merrier.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

I caught up with Sarah Miller Caldicott to discuss her latest book Midnight Lunch: the 4 phases of team collaboration success from Thomas Edison’s Lab. Sarah is keen to talk about how collaboration “powers” innovation.  As the great grandniece of Thomas Edison and a seasoned executive she has a singular perspective.

February 11 marks Edison’s 166 birthday. Time was good to him – he lived to be 84. Indeed, 166 years seems like a very long time ago, which makes it all the more stunning to look around our modern world and trace so many industries today to Thomas Edison: Movies, recorded sound, storage battery and electrical power to name a few. Edison is truly all around us. His lifetime bridged two centuries, his life’s work astounding. My interview with Sarah reveals Edison’s love for collaboration, and more… – Julie Anixter, Executive Editor

What is a midnight lunch?

Midnight lunch was the affectionate term Edison’s Menlo Park employees gave to the popular practice of staying late in the lab to run experiments, and having dinner together. Edison would often leave work at 5 PM to have dinner with his family, then return to the lab at 7 PM to monitor how his experiments were faring. He’d speak personally with the dozen or so employees who were staying late to work on their experiments, encouraging them to share insights with each other, and learn from the diverse expertise each person brought to their projects. Everyone would roll up their sleeves, working together amidst heady dialogue.

At about 9 PM, Edison would order in food for everyone from a local tavern. For an hour or so, the assembled crew would relax, tell stories, sing songs, and even play music together, before heading back to work until the wee hours of the morning. They connected socially, and created a deeper understanding of each other as people and not just workers. This process of midnight lunch transformed employees into colleagues. It served as the foundation for collaboration in all of Edison’s labs. Through midnight lunch, we see the importance of activities that encourage employees to come together in ways that link work with their social lives.

For Edison, midnight lunch was crucially important in Phase 1 – Capacity, creating an environment in which collaboration could thrive. It became a powerful link to Edison’s use of small teams as a driver of innovation success.

Why did you write this book?

I wrote Midnight Lunch because I’ve seen a shift in the effectiveness of innovation initiatives over the past five years. Following the Great Recession, many executives have realized that innovation is not optional…it’s now a requirement. But there’s still a lot of confusion on how to draw people and resources together to effectively drive innovation in an increasingly digital and mobile environment. Without collaboration, innovation stalls. Midnight Lunch offers new ways for us to approach collaboration today, and understand its crucial connection to innovation success.

What can innovators specifically learn from Thomas Edison?

Although we don’t think of Edison this way, he worked in collaborative teams from the very start of his career. Most often we link Edison with the American lore of the ‘lone American inventor.’ But he realized even in his late teens that collaboration was crucial for innovation to succeed. We can learn from Edison how to create an environment of collegiality, how to use collaboration as a means to develop entirely new context around our thinking about a project, how to sustain momentum around innovation when the going gets tough, and how to navigate complexity as part of innovation itself. I address each of these issues in the 4 Phases of True Collaboration™, which are Capacity, Context, Coherence, and Complexity.

Will you share some lessons from Midnight Lunch?

• Collaboration is most powerfully generated in small, diverse teams of 2 to 8 people, with both experts and generalists present on the team.

• Collaboration begins with collegiality. Unless people feel they can roll up their sleeves and work together, innovation is much tougher.

• Collaboration evolves from a shared context of learning, not the mere execution of tasks. Through discovery learning, a collaboration team develops content they hold in common.

• Collaboration is reinforced through casual dialogue rather than stiff agendas. Every member of a collaboration team engages in dialogue with other team members, and is not able to shrink to the background.

• In part, collaboration gains momentum and sustains momentum through stories – the narrative prototypes a team develops over time.

• Inspiration must be present for collaboration to thrive. Inspiration can come from beyond the collaboration team, such as through a senior leader or champion, or it can come from a member of the collaboration team.

• Collaboration generates knowledge assets. These assets can be shaped and reshaped multiple times, in different configurations over time. These knowledge assets drive the fundamentals of value creation.

• Collaboration drives collective intelligence. By documenting a team’s knowledge assets and insights as they emerge, a footprint is established for others to follow. Collective intelligence can be documented via text, video, and sound.

• Collaboration serves as the sinews, the ligaments, the tendons – the ‘invisible glue’ – that allows innovation to advance and sustain momentum. Without collaboration, innovation stalls.

• Collaboration involves engagement with complex systems. It is complex and simultaneous rather than linear and sequential.

What do you hope people will do differently as a result?

Collaboration often operates as a background force. Like gravity, collaboration is something unseen, yet pervasive and powerful. I’m hoping that as a result of reading Midnight Lunch people will be able to recognize when collaboration is present — or not present — and see its various parts. I’d like Midnight Lunch to bring collaboration to the foreground, offering specific steps on how to set it in motion, and use it as a supporting structure for innovation.

image credit: National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site

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