Human-Centered Change and Innovation loves making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because we truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.
As a result, we are eternally grateful to all of you out there who take the time to create and share great innovation articles, presentations, white papers, and videos with Braden Kelley and the Human-Centered Change and Innovation team. As a small thank you to those of you who follow along, we like to make a list of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers available each year!
Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:
Do you just have someone that you like to read that writes about innovation, or some of the important adjacencies – trends, consumer psychology, change, leadership, strategy, behavioral economics, collaboration, or design thinking?
Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking for the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023.
The deadline for submitting nominations is December 24, 2023 at midnight GMT.
You can submit a nomination either of these two ways:
Sending us the name of the blogger and the url of their blog by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Sending the name of the blogger and the url of their blog and your e-mail address using our contact form
(Note: HUGE bonus points for being a contributing author)
So, think about who you like to read and let us know by midnight GMT on December 24, 2023.
We will then compile a voting list of all the nominations, and publish it on December 25, 2023.
Voting will then be open from December 25, 2023 – January 1, 2024 via comments and twitter @replies to @innovate.
The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions by an author to this web site will be a contributing factor.
Contact me with writing samples if you’d like to publish your articles on our platform!
The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023 will then be announced on here in early January 2024.
We’re curious to see who you think is worth reading!
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Imagine yourself as the CEO of a Dow component company in 1919. You are fully aware of the technological forces that would shape much of the 20th century, electricity and internal combustion. You may have even be an early adopter of these technologies. Still, everything seems like business as usual.
What you don’t see, however, is that these inventions are merely the start. Secondary technologies, such as home appliances, radio, highways and shopping malls, would reshape the economy in ways that no one could have predicted. Your company has a roughly 50% chance of remaining on the Dow a decade later.
We are at a similar point today. New inventions, such as quantum computing, neuromorphic chips, synthetic biology and advancements in materials science already exist. It is not those inventions, however, but the ecosystems they spawn that will shape the decades to come. We’re all going to have to learn how to compete in a new era of innovation.
A 50-Year Boom In Productivity
By 1919, electricity was already a 40-year old technology. In 1882, just three years after he had almost literally shocked the world with his revolutionary electric light bulb, Thomas Edison opened his Pearl Street Station, the first commercial electrical distribution plant in the United States. By 1884 it was already servicing over 500 homes.
Yet although electricity and electric lighting were already widespread in 1919, they didn’t have a measurable effect on productivity and a paper by the economist Paul David helps explain why. It took time for manufacturers to adapt their factories to electricity and learn to design workflow to leverage the flexibility that the new technology offered. It was the improved workflow, more than the technology itself, that drove productivity forward.
Automobiles saw a similar evolution. It took time for infrastructure, such as roads and gas stations, to be built. Improved logistics reshaped supply chains and factories moved from cities in the north — close to customers — to small towns in the south, where labor and land were cheaper. That improved the economics of manufacturing further.
Yet all of that was just prelude to the massive changes that would come. Electricity spawned secondary innovations, such as household appliances and radios. Improved logistics reshaped the retail industry, shifting it from corner stores to supermarkets and shopping malls. As Robert Gordon explains in The Rise and Fall of American Growth, these changes resulted in a 50-year boom in productivity between 1920 and 1970.
The Digital Revolution
In 1984, Steve Jobs and Apple launched the Macintosh, which heralded a new era of computing. Based on technology developed for the Xerox Alto in the early 1970s, with a bitmapped screen, a graphical user interface and a mouse, it made computing far more accessible to regular consumers.
Before long, personal computers were everywhere. Kids would use them to write term papers and play video games. Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software became a staple for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Desktop publishing helped democratize the flow of information. The computer age had begun in earnest.
Yet much like electricity and internal combustion earlier in the century, the effect on productivity was negligible, causing the Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Solow to quip, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” In fact, it wouldn’t be till the late 90s that we saw a measurable impact from computers.
Once again, it wasn’t any particular invention that made the difference, but an ecosystem that built up over years. The Internet paved the way for open-source software. Hordes of application developers created industry specific tools to automate almost every imaginable business process. Computers converged with phones to create the mobile era.
The 30 Years Rule
Look back at the two major eras of technology in the 20th century and a consistent theme begins to emerge. An initial discovery of a new phenomenon, such as electricity and internal combustion, is eventually used to create a new invention, like the light bulb or the automobile. This creates some excitement, and builds the fortunes of a few entrepreneurs, but has little impact on society as a whole.
Yet slowly, an ecosystem begins to emerge. Roads and gas stations are built. Household appliances and personal computers are invented. Secondary inventions, such as shopping malls, home appliances, the Internet and application software help create new business models. Those business models create new value and drive productivity.
The truth is that innovation is never a single event, but a process of discovery, engineering and transformation. As a general rule of thumb, it takes about 30 years for all of this to take place, because thousands, if not millions of people need to change their behavior, coordinate their activity and start new businesses.
That’s why the future will always surprise us. It is not any one great event that tips the scales, but some hardly noticeable connection that completes the network. Network scientists call this type of thing an ‘instantaneous phase transition’ and there’s really no way to predict exactly when it will happen, but if you learn to look for telltale signs, you can see one coming.
A New Era Of Innovation
Today, we appear to be in a very similar situation to what those executives faced in 1919. We have decoded the human genome. Artificial intelligence has become a reality that everyone, for the most part, accepts. New computing architectures, such as quantum computers and neuromorphic chips, are in late stages of development by a variety of companies.
Yet once again, the impact has been negligible and it’s not hard to see why. While these inventions, in some cases at least, are relatively mature, they have yet to create the ecosystems that can drive a true transformation. Today, however, we can clearly see those ecosystems being created.
In fact, in artificial intelligence we can already see a fairly well developed ecosystem emerging already. In synthetic biology and genomics we can begin to see one as well, although it is still nascent. IBM has created a Q Network of major companies, research labs and startups to support quantum computing.
Here’s what’s important to know: We can’t predict exactly when the system will tip, but it’s a good bet it will happen in the next decade. It is also likely that the impact will be equal to or greater than the 50 year boom that began in the 1920s. Finally, it won’t be driven by any particular invention, but by ecosystems. You need to start figuring out how you will connect.
— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and an earlier version appeared on Inc.com
— Image credit: Pixabay
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A major challenge that most large enterprises face is the lack of a true transformation vision.
Most organizations have a basic vision for growth: to serve the maximum number of people, to sell the maximum amount of product, to grow different segments, or to expand in new areas. But in most large enterprises I’ve worked with, that vision is usually about doing more of the same. They optimize what they already have, expand what they already do, update the way that they’re currently selling to very similar customer groups, and interact with their customers in a way very similar to their current operations.
For most organizations to be successful as the world changes around them, they need to change and adapt more profoundly than that. During times of change, driving growth within an organization using tactics similar to current ones don’t often work well. The most common technique I see leaders of large enterprises using to drive growth is to go to each individual area and tell them to continue driving growth in their area. For example, product groups get, “Make new products.”; channel groups get, “Find new channels.”; and the sales group gets, “Sell more stuff!” If you multiply all the effect of these different areas of growth together, you get something that looks like pretty good growth for the organization overall.
Imagine a caterpillar trying to figure out become a butterfly, and having every part of its body come up with its own strategies and methods to contribute. A segmented approach can work when you’re just trying to multiply the scale of what you’re already achieving, with little to no optimization in the different areas.
But there’s a problem with this method. Imagine a caterpillar trying to figure out become a butterfly, and having every part of its body come up with its own strategies and methods to contribute. A segmented approach can work when you’re just trying to multiply the scale of what you’re already achieving, with little to no optimization in the different areas. But it doesn’t work when you’re trying to transform an entire organization, and entire transformation is what we need to do to keep up with the quickly changing digital world. A vision for the whole transformation is what’s going to truly coordinate your entire organization.
You are probably familiar with Lana Turner, movie star from the ’40s and the famous story of her discovery that made her Hollywood starlet. The story goes: Around 1934, 16-year-old Judy Turner (her real name), is skipping school and having a Coke at the Schwab’s Pharmacy counter in Hollywood. She’s spotted by a famous movie director who says, “You’re beautiful and have a wholesome look. You’d be great in a movie. I’m going to take you in for a screen test.” He brings her to the back lot, does the screen test, and it’s fantastic. He puts her in a movie, and she becomes one of the top stars in Hollywood. The rest is history!
There are two problems with this story. First, it’s not actually true. The whole story is fiction, dreamed up by 1930’s Hollywood PR teams. But even if it happened to be true, it would be an extreme outlier. Transformation doesn’t just happen by accident or good luck. It doesn’t even happen because it’s deserved, or because of inherent merit. The other day, I was listening to Howard Stern interviewing Jennifer Hudson about her success. He asked her if, when she was a child and sang in church, everyone knew that she was going to be a star. She said, “No, because there were a lot of kids in my church who could sing like that, and there were a lot of people in my family who could sing like that.” The difference was that, besides the talent, she also had the drive, determination, and the vision to succeed.
This idea of needing vision to succeed isn’t new. The great poet and three times Pulitzer Prize Winner, Carl Sandburg, said, “Nothing happens unless first a dream.” American inventor George Washington Carver, said, “Where there is no vision, there is no hope.” And Helen Keller said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
What is this transformation vision that you need to create? What are its components?
There are two parts to a transformation vision. The first is a vision of how the world is changing. How are your customers going to be changing over the next few years? How is technology going to change, and what do you think your competitors, old or new, might do with the changing landscape?
The second component is to determine what new products and services you can bring to market. How can you take advantage of these changes in environment and your customers, and how will you compete with what your competitors are doing? How does your business model need to change, based on new technology capabilities, or new customer behaviors? How will your operations, cost structure, and ultimately, interaction with our customers, change? Will we be delivering on different channels, serving and supporting them in different ways, or will we be dealing with an entirely new set of customers?
It might seem like you need to be able to see into the future to answer these questions, and I think that’s a major reason why many enterprises don’t have a true transformational vision. They may have a five-year plan, but it isn’t really a vision for transformation — more of just a hopeful projection of growth based on where they are now. They believe they can’t see far enough into the future for it to be practical to have a vision of the future. But here’s the thing: you can foretell the future. I’ll do it right now: It’s about 4:30pm here in New York. I think that in the next couple hours, many people in my area will be having dinner. I’m heading to the airport shortly, for a flight to London, and I predict that there will be lines at the TSA checkpoints that I’ll have to take into account to get on my flight on time. The truth is, we can see into the future to some degree, based on previous experience. We might not always be right, but there’s a lot of information we can use to get a reasonable hypothesis of what the future is going to look like.
Was the iPhone that much of a shock, after the Blackberry Treo and other smartphones that came before? True, it had aspects that we might not have anticipated, and the precise timing might not have been predictable by someone who wasn’t in on Apple’s plans, but its existence on the market was relatively predictable.
To get into the business of predicting the future, we have to get over the fear of being wrong. As Seth Golden said, “The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.” I believe this is absolutely true.
Here’s one last thought about creating transformation visions: It’s important to be able to think in terms of transformation time. Sometimes our focus is so much in the next quarter or the things that we have to get done right now. And that is the reality of the world of the large enterprise, especially if it’s a public company. But in order to be successful long-term, you have to be able to think in terms of transformation time, to think a few years ahead. Why? Because the transformations that you need are often going to take a few years. Products and solutions that burst onto the market, like the iPhone, are in development for years before they ever see the light of day. So many of the things that we see as overnight successes are really the result of long-term visioning, planning, R&D efforts and product development, and there are products that don’t succeed that went through those processes, too. Risk tolerance is important for transformation vision since you have to be ready for a number of potential futures. Those that are successful will be those that define the future of the company.
To recap, take the time to predict the future and be willing to be wrong. Track the changes in the world, and engage yourself in ongoing research, both to initially develop your long-term transformation vision and then to continue to see whether your predictions appear to be coming true. Is the timeframe you initially anticipated changing? If so, adjust your transformation vision to align with what is actually happening. Most importantly, be willing to get it wrong. Second, look at the fundamental value proposition your company brings to your customers. How would that value proposition be best delivered in this future that you envision? If you built a new company today that was going to launch three years from now, how would we build that for where we think the world will be in a few years? You can use that exercise as a way of defining what your transformation vision should potentially be. Take bets, consider and prepare for different possible futures, so you can be prepared for the actual future when it arrives.
This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog
Image Credit: Pixabay
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We live in a transformational age. Powerful technologies like the cloud and artificial intelligence are quickly shifting what it means to compete. Social movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter are exposing decades of misdeeds and rewriting norms. The stresses of modern life are creating new expectations about the relationship between work and home.
Every senior manager and entrepreneur I talk to understands the need to transform their enterprise, yet most are unsure of how to go about it. They ordinarily don’t teach transformation in business school and most management books minimize the challenge by reducing it to silly platitudes like “adapt or die.”
The truth is that change is hard because the status quo always has inertia on its side. Before we can drive a true transformation, we need to unlearn much of what we thought we knew. Change will not happen just because we want it to, nor can it be willed into existence. To make change happen, we first need to overcome the myths that tend to undermine it.
Myth #1: You Have To Start With A Bang
Traditionally, managers launching a new initiative have aimed to start big. They work to gain approval for a sizable budget as a sign of institutional commitment. They recruit high-profile executives, arrange a big “kick-off” meeting and look to move fast, gain scale and generate some quick wins. All of this is designed to create a sense of urgency and inevitability.
That works well for a conventional initiative, but for something that’s truly transformational, it’s a sure path to failure. Starting with a big bang will often provoke fear and resistance among those who don’t see the need for change. As I explain in my book, Cascades, real change always starts with small groups, loosely connected, united by a shared purpose.
That’s why it’s best to start off with a keystone change that represents a concrete and tangible goal, involves multiple stakeholders and paves the way for future change. That’s how you build credibility and momentum. While the impact of that early keystone change might be limited, a small, but successful, initiative can show what’s possible.
For example, when the global data giant Experian sought to transform itself into a cloud-based enterprise, it started with internal API’s that had limited effect on its business. Yet those early achievements spurred on a full digital transformation. In much the same way, when Wyeth Pharmaceuticals began its shift to lean manufacturing, it started with a single process at a single plant. That helped give birth to a 25% reduction of costs across the board.
Myth #2: You Need A Charismatic Leader And A Catchy Slogan
When people think about truly transformational change, a charismatic leader usually comes to mind. In the political sphere, we think of people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. On the corporate side, legendary CEOs like Lou Gerstner at IBM and Steve Jobs at Apple pulled off dramatic turnarounds and propelled their companies back to prosperity.
Yet many successful transformations don’t have a charismatic leader. Political movements like Pora in Ukraine and Otpor and Serbia didn’t have clear leadership out front. The notably dry Paul O’Neill pulled of a turnaround at Alcoa that was every bit as impressive as the ones at IBM and Apple. And let’s face it, it wasn’t Bill Gates’s Hollywood smile that made Microsoft the most powerful company of its time.
The truth, as General Stanley McChrystal makes clear in his new book, Leaders: Myth and Reality, is that leadership is not so much about great speeches or snappy slogans or even how gracefully someone takes the stage, but how effectively a leader manages a complex ecosystem of relationships and builds a connection with followers.
And even when we look at charismatic leaders a little more closely, we see that it is what they did off stage that made the difference. Gandhi forged alliances between Hindus and Muslims, upper castes and untouchables as well as other facets of Indian society. Mandela did something similar in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a solitary figure, but just one of the Big Six of civil rights.
That’s why McChrystal, whom former Defense Secretary Bob Gates called, “perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I had ever met,” advises that leaders need to be “empathetic crafters of culture.” A leader’s role is not merely to plan and direct action, but to inspire and empower belief.
Myth #3: You Need To Piece Together A Coalition
While managing stakeholders is critical, all too often it devolves into a game theory exercise in which a strategically minded leader horse trades among competing interests until he or she achieves a 51% consensus. That may be enough to push a particular program through, but any success is bound to be short-lived.
The truth is that you can’t transform fundamental behaviors without transforming fundamental beliefs and to do that you need to forge shared values and a shared consciousness. It’s very hard to get people to do what you want if they don’t already want what you want. On the other hand, if everybody shares basic values and overall objectives, it’s much easier to get everybody moving in the same direction.
For example, the LGBT movement foundered for decades by trying to get society to accept their differences. However, when it changed tack and started focusing on common values, such as the right to live in committed, loving relationships and to raise happy, stable families, public opinion changed in record time. The differences just didn’t seem that important any more.
In a similar vein, when Paul O’Neill took over Alcoa in 1987, the company was struggling. So analysts were puzzled that when asked about his strategy he said that “I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America.” Yet what O’Neill understood was that safety goes part and parcel with operational excellence. By focusing on safety, it was much easier to get the rank and file on board and, when results improved, other stakeholders got on board too.
Myth #4: You Will End With The Vision You Started With
When Nelson Mandela first joined the struggle to end Apartheid, he was a staunch African nationalist. “I was angry at the white man, not at racism,” he would later write. “While I was not prepared to hurl the white man into the sea, I would have been perfectly happy if he climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent of his own volition.”
Yet Mandela would change those views over time and today is remembered and revered as a global citizen. In fact, it was the constraints imposed by the broad-based coalition he forged that helped him to develop empathy, even for his oppressors, and led him to govern wisely once he was in power.
In much the same way, Lou Gerstner could not have predicted that his tenure as CEO at IBM would be remembered for its embrace of the Internet and open software. Yet it was his commitment to his customers that led him there and brought his company back from the brink of bankruptcy to a new era of of prosperity.
And that is probably the most important thing we need to understand change. In order to make a true impact on the world, we first need to change ourselves. Every successful journey begins not with answers, but with questions. You have to learn how to walk the earth and learn things along the way. You know you’ve failed only when you end up where you started.
— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and an earlier version appeared on Inc.com
— Image credit: Pixabay
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From now until December 31, 2023 you can get the hardcover version of my latest best-selling bookCharting Change for only $19.99 (60% off), including free shipping worldwide*!
Sorry, unfortunately this sale doesn’t have a discount on the eBook.
UPDATE: You can also now get the eBook for $19.99 using code HOL50 using any of the links in this post, also until December 31, 2023.
I created the Human-Centered Change methodology to help organizations get everyone literally all on the same page for change. The 70+ visual, collaborative tools are introduced in my book Charting Change, including the powerful Change Planning Canvas™. The toolkit has been created to help organizations:
Beat the 70% failure rate for change programs
Quickly visualize, plan and execute change efforts
Quick reminder: Everyone can download ten free tools from the Human-Centered Change methodology by going to its page on this site via the link in this sentence, and book buyers can get 26 of the 70+ tools from the Change Planning Toolkit (including the Change Planning Canvas™) by contacting me with proof of purchase.
*This offer is valid for selected English-language Springer & Palgrave hardcover books and is redeemable on link.springer.com only. Titles affected by fixed book price laws, forthcoming titles and titles temporarily not available on springer.com are excluded from this promotion, as are reference works, handbooks, encyclopedias, subscriptions, or bulk purchases. The currency in which your order will be invoiced depends on the billing address associated with the payment method used, not necessarily your preferred currency. Regional VAT/tax may apply. Promotional prices may change due to exchange rates. This offer is valid for individual customers only. Booksellers, book distributors, and institutions such as libraries and corporations please visit springernature.com/contact-us. This promotion does not work in combination with other discounts or gift cards. Promotional prices may change due to exchange rates.
At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?
But enough delay, here are November’s ten most popular innovation posts:
If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!
Have something to contribute?
Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.
P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last three years:
Today, technology has become central to how every business competes. Futuristic advancements like artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing are no longer pie-in-the-sky propositions, but mission critical initiatives that leaders are racing to implement within their organizations.
Unfortunately, most of these initiatives fail. In fact, McKinsey found that fewer than a third of organizational transformations succeed. That’s incredibly sobering. Imagine any other initiative with that type of expected return not only getting consistently funded, but enthusiastically viewed as a smart bet on the future.
Yet digital transformation doesn’t have to be a sucker’s bet. The truth is that digital transformation is human transformation and that’s where you need to start. Initiatives fail because organizations habitually get blinded by the “gee-whiz” aspects of technology, don’t focus on clear business objectives, scale too fast and then declare victory way too early.
1. Focus on People First, Technology Second
At first, digital transformation seems fairly straightforward. There are many capable vendors that can competently implement cloud technology, automation, artificial intelligence applications or whatever else you’re looking for. So, theoretically at least, a standard procurement process should be effective in sourcing and executing a project.
Yet consider how the the nature of work has changed has changed over the last few decades, due to technological shifts. We spend far less time quietly working away at our desks and far more interacting with others. Much of the value has shifted from cognitive skills to social skills and collaboration has increasingly become a competitive advantage. New technologies such as the cloud and AI will only strengthen and accelerate these trends.
The truth is that value never disappears it just shifts to another place. Consider the case of bank tellers. There are more than twice the number of bank tellers today than there were before ATM machines, but the work they do is vastly different. They are no longer there to execute transactions, but to advise, solve problems and up-sell. That takes very different skills.
So the first step towards a successful digital transformation is not the technology itself, but thinking about how you can empower your people through it. Where do you expect value to shift to? What new skills will your people need to learn in order to succeed? How can technology help them get where they need to be to serve your customers well?
2. Establish Clear Business Outcomes
Another common mistake executives make when implementing new technology is to focus on the capabilities of the technology itself, rather than the business outcome you hope to achieve. Are you trying to drive transactions, improve service and customer experience or something else entirely? You need to determine that before you can even think about a technical approach.
That’s why every transformational effort should involve operational managers, partners and front-line workers from the start. You need also to talk to customers and see what they actually value, rather than what would simply help operations to run smoother. From there, you can begin to develop a vision for how your business can function differently.
For example, when Barry Libenson first arrived at the data giant Experian as Global CIO in 2015, he spent his first few months talking to customers and the business units that served them. Everywhere he went, he found the same thing: what customers valued most was access to real-time data, which his company’s existing infrastructure could not provide.
From there, the path forward was fairly simple, but not easy. He needed to shift his company from a traditional on-site server architecture to the cloud. That took him three years to accomplish, but it transformed Experian’s business, empowered new business models and led to new revenue streams.
3. Identify A Keystone Change
Once the vision is in place, the tendency, all too often, is to embark on what becomes a “five-year death march” to achieve it. In the end, everybody ends up frustrated, angry and, inevitably, it turns out that by the time the vision is achieved, the technology is out of date.
So instead of trying to swallow the entire vision whole, it’s best to start out with a keystone change. Think about a clear and tangible goal you can achieve in the near term that would require the involvement of multiple stakeholders and pave the way for future, more complex initiatives in the future.
One way to do this is to choose a solution that will help people with tedious, mundane tasks rather than create a new capability. It’s much easier to get people excited by reducing the time and effort they have to expend on something they hate then it is to push them to adopt something new. You always want to attract and empower, rather than bribe or coerce.
For example, in Experian’s case, Libenson started out by creating internal API’s rather than building customer facing features. These didn’t create an enormous impact, but they showed what was possible and built momentum for the larger vision.
4. Treat Transformation As A Journey, Not A Destination
Perhaps the most dangerous part of any transformation is when the initial objectives have been achieved. That’s when motivation begins to weaken and complacency sets in. In my book, Cascades, I call this problem surviving victory and it is a crucial element of every transformational effort.
The key to surviving victory is to plan for it from the start. In Experian’s case, the journey was never about the cloud. That was merely a destination. The vision was always to serve customers better and to develop new business models. That’s why Libenson focused not only on implementing technology, but indoctrinating new values and beliefs.
“Having gone through this transformational process over the past three years and seeing concrete business results, we are much better positioned to adopt those technologies,” he told me. “We’ve made the changes in culture, our organizational structure and skills to be able to adopt new technologies quickly, completely and with better collaboration with our customers.”
That emphasis on values is key, because to change fundamental behaviors you first have to change fundamental beliefs and digital transformation is always about empowering action. Keep your eye on that and you will be likely to succeed where most others fail.
— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and an earlier version appeared on Inc.com
— Image credit: Pixabay
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My publisher is having a Thanksgiving sale that will allow you to get the hardcover or the digital version (eBook) of my latest best-selling bookCharting Change for 55% off!
Including FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE! *
I created the Human-Centered Change methodology to help organizations get everyone literally all on the same page for change. The 70+ visual, collaborative tools are introduced in my book Charting Change, including the powerful Change Planning Canvas™. The toolkit has been created to help organizations:
Beat the 70% failure rate for change programs
Quickly visualize, plan and execute change efforts
Quick reminder: Everyone can download ten free tools from the Human-Centered Change methodology by going to its page on this site via the link in this sentence, and book buyers can get 26 of the 70+ tools from the Change Planning Toolkit (including the Change Planning Canvas™) by contacting me with proof of purchase.
*This offer is valid for selected English-language Springer & Palgrave books and eBooks and is redeemable on link.springer.com only. Titles affected by fixed book price laws, forthcoming titles and titles temporarily not available on link.springer.com are excluded from this promotion, as are reference works, handbooks, encyclopedias, subscriptions, or bulk purchases. The currency in which your order will be invoiced depends on the billing address associated with the payment method used, not necessarily your preferred currency. Regional VAT/tax may apply. Promotional prices may change due to exchange rates. This offer is valid for individual customers only. Booksellers, book distributors, and institutions such as libraries and corporations please visit springernature.com/contact-us. This promotion does not work in combination with other discounts or gift cards.
November 10, 2023 from 8:30-11:30 AM in Issaquah, WA
Wow! Crazy news!
In honor of Veterans Day I will be giving away up to 20 copies of my bestselling book Charting Change at the East Lake Sammamish Starbucks tomorrow, November 10, 2023 from 8:30am-11:30am until the last copy in the box is gone. That’s about $1,000 worth of books.
Usually people give Veteran’s like me a thank you offer. But, I thought I would flip it around to help spread the benefits of the human-centered change methodology even farther and wider for the benefit of non-profit, for-profit and governmental organizations looking to plan and execute transformations and change initiatives.
Here is a map of the Starbucks location where I will be giving away the books:
I created the Human-Centered Change methodology to help organizations get everyone literally all on the same page for change. The 70+ visual, collaborative tools are introduced in my book Charting Change, including the powerful Change Planning Canvas™. The toolkit has been created to help organizations:
Beat the 70% failure rate for change programs
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It’s great to have an excuse to post an Eddie Van Halen video to the innovation community. It’s of course fun just to watch Eddie, but I also have a deeper, innovation relevant reason for doing so.
Art & Science: I’m a passionate believer in cross-pollination between art and science. And I especially believe we can learn a great deal from artists and musicians like Eddie who have innovated consistently over a career. Dig into their processes, and we see serial innovators like The Beatles, Picasso, Elton John, Bowie, George Martin, Freddie Mercury, William Gibson, Lady Gaga, Paul Simon and so many others apply techniques that are highly applicable to all innovation fields. Techniques such as analogy, conceptual blending, collaboration, reapplication, boundary stretching, risk taking, learning from failure and T-Shaped innovation all crop up fairly consistently. And these creative approaches are typically also built upon deep expertise, passion, motivation, and an ability to connect with future consumer needs, and to tap into early adopters and passionate consumers. For me at least, that’s a pretty good innovation toolkit for innovation in any field. Now, to be fair, often their process is intuitive, and many truly prolific artists are lucky enough to automatically and intuitively ‘think that way’. But understanding and then stealing some of their techniques, either implicit or explicit, can be a great way to both jump-start our own innovative processes, and also to understand how innovation works. As Picasso said, ‘great artists steal’, but I’d argue that so do good innovators, at least within the bounds allowed by the patent literature!
In the past I’ve written quite a lot about Picasso and The Beatles use of conceptual blending, Paul Simon’s analogies, reapplication and collaboration, Bowie’s innovative courage, and William Gibson’s ability to project s-curves. Today, I’d like to to focus on some insights I see in the guitar innovations of Eddie.
(a) Parallel or Simultaneous Innovation. I suspect this is one of the most important yet under-appreciated concepts in innovation today. Virtually every innovation is built upon the shoulders of giants. Past innovations provide the foundation for future ones, to the point where once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, many innovations become inevitable. It still takes an agile and creative mind to come up with innovative ideas, but contemporary innovations often set the stage for the next leap forward. And this applies both to the innovative process, and also to a customers ability to understand and embrace it. The design of the first skyscraper was innovative, but it was made a lot more obvious by the construction of the Eiffel Tower. The ubiquitous mobile phone may now seem obvious, but it owes its existence to a very long list of enabling technologies that paved the way for it’s invention, from electricity to chips to Wi-Fi, etc.
The outcome of this ‘stage setting’ is that often even really big innovations occur simultaneously yet independently. We’ve seen this play out with calculus (independently developed by Newton and Leibnitz), the atomic bomb, where Oppenheimer and company only just beat the Nazi’s, the theory of evolution, the invention of the thermometer, nylon and so many others. We even see it in evolution, where scavenger birds vultures and condors superficially appear quite similar due to adaptations that allow them to eat carrion, but actually have quite different genetic lineages. Similarly many marsupials look very similar to placental mammals that fill similar ecological niches, but typically evolved independently. Context has a huge impact on innovation, and similar contexts typical create parallel, and often similar innovations. As the world becomes more interconnected, and context becomes more homogenized, we are going to see more and more examples of simultaneous innovation.
Faster and More Competitive Innovation: Today social media, search technology and the web mean that more people know more of the same ‘stuff’ more quickly than before. This near instantaneous and democratized access to the latest knowledge sets the scene and context for a next generation of innovation that is faster and more competitive than we’ve ever seen. More people have access to the pieces of the puzzle far more quickly than ever before; background information that acts as a precursor for the next innovative leap. Eddie had to go and watch Jimmy Paige live and in person to get his inspiration for ‘tapping’. Today he, and a few million others would simply need to go onto YouTube. He therefore discovered Paige’s hammer-on years after Paige started using them. Today it would likely be days. That acceleration of ‘innovation context’ has a couple of major implications:
1. If you think you’ve just come up with something new, it’s more than likely that several other people have too, or will do so very soon. More than ever before you are more than likely in a race from the moment you have an idea! So snooze and you loose. Assume several others are working on the same idea.
2. Regulating Innovation is becoming really, really difficult. I think this is possibly the most profound implication. For example, a very current and somewhat contentious topic today is if and how we should regulate AI. And it’s a pretty big decision. We really don’t know how AI will evolve, but it is certainly moving very quickly, and comes with the potential for earthshaking pros and cons. It is also almost inevitably subject to simultaneous invention. So many people are working on it, and so much adjacent innovation is occurring, that it’s somewhat unlikely that any single group is going to get very far out in front. The proverbial cat is out of the bag, and the race is on. The issue for regulation then becomes painfully obvious. Unless we can somehow implement universal regulation, then any regulations simply slow down those who follow the rules. This unfortunately opens the doors to bad actors taking the lead, and controlling potentially devastating technology.
So we are somewhat damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. If we don’t regulate, then we run the risk of potentially dangerous technology getting out of control. But if do regulate, we run the risk of enabling bad actors to own that dangerous technology. We’ve of course been here before. The race for the nuclear bomb between the Allies and the Nazi’s was a great example of simultaneous innovation with potentially catastrophic outcomes. Imagine if we’d decided fission was simply too dangerous, and regulated it’s development to the point where the Nazi’s had got there first. We’d likely be living in a very different world today! Much like AI, it was a tough decision, as without regulation, there was a small but possible scenario where the outcome could have been devastating.
Today we have a raft of rapidly evolving technologies that I’d both love to regulate, but am also profoundly worried about the unintended consequences of doing so. AI of course, but also genetic engineering, gene manipulating medicines, even climate mediation and behavioral science! With respect to the latter, the better we get at nudging behavior, and the more reach we have with those techniques, the more dangerous miss-use becomes.
The core problem underlying all of this is that we are human. Most people try to do the right thing, but there are always bad actors. And even those trying to do the right thing all too often get it wrong. And the more democratized access to cutting edge insight becomes, parallel innovation means the more contenders we have for mistakes and bad bad choices, intentional or unintentional.
(b) Innovation versus Invention: A less dramatic, but I think similarly interesting insight we can draw from Eddie lies in the difference between innovation and invention He certainly wasn’t the first guitarist to use the tapping technique. That goes back centuries! At least as far as classical composer Paganini, and it was a required technique for playing the Chapman stick in the 1970’s, popularized by the great Tony Levin in King Crimson. It was also widely, albeit sparingly (and often obscurely) used by jazz guitarists in the 1950’s and 60’s. But Eddie was the first to feature it, and turn it into a meaningful innovation in of itself. Until him, nobody had packaged the technique in a way that it could be ‘marketed’ and ‘sold’ as a viable product. He found the killer application, made it his own, and made it a ‘thing’. I would therefore argue that he wasn’t the inventor, but he was the ‘innovator’. This points to the value of innovation over invention. If you don’t have the capability or the partners to turn an invention into something useful, its still just an idea. Invention is a critical part of the broader innovation process, but in isolation it’s more curiosity than useful. Innovation is about reduction to practice and communication as well a great ideas
Art & science: I love the arts. I play guitar, paint, and photograph. It’s a lot of fun, and provides a invaluable outlet from the stresses involved in business and innovation. But as I suggested at the beginning, a lot of the boundaries we place between art and science, and by extension business, are artificial and counter-productive. Some of my most productive collaborations as a scientist have been with designers and artists. As a visual scientist, I’ve found that artists often intuitively have a command of attentional insights that our cutting edge science is still trying to understand. It’s a lot of fun to watch Eddie Van Halen, but learning from great artists like him can, via analogy, also be surprisingly insightful and instructive.
Image credits: Unsplash
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