Category Archives: Innovation

Your Innovation is Dictated by Who You Are & What You Do

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Your Innovation is Dictated by Who You Are & What You Do

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Using only three words, how would you describe your company?

Better yet, what three words would your customers use to describe your company?

These three words capture your company’s identity. They answer, “who we are” and “what business we’re in.”  They capture a shared understanding of where customers allow you to play and how you take action to win. 

Everything consistent with this identity is normal, safe, and comfortable.

Everything inconsistent with this identity is weird, risky, and scary.

Your identity is killing innovation.

Innovation is something new that creates value.

Identity is carefully constructed, enduring, and fiercely protected and reinforced.

When innovation and identity conflict, innovation usually loses.

Whether the innovation is incremental, adjacent, or radical doesn’t matter. If it conflicts with the company’s identity, it will join the 99.9% of innovations that are canceled before they ever launch.

Your identity can supercharge innovation.

When innovation and identity guide and reinforce each other, it doesn’t matter if the innovation is incremental, adjacent, or radical.  It can win.

Identity-based Innovation changes your perspective. 

We typically think about innovation as falling into three types based on the scope of change to the business model:

  1. Incremental innovations that make existing offerings better, faster, and cheaper for existing customers and use our existing business model
  2. Adjacent innovations are new offerings in new categories, appeal to new customers, require new processes and activities to create or use new revenue models
  3. Radical innovations that change everything – offerings, customers, processes and activities, and revenue models

These types make sense IF we’re perfectly logical and rational beings capable of dispassionately evaluating data and making decisions.  SPOILER ALERT: We’re not.  We decide with our hearts (emotions, values, fears, and desires) and justify those decisions with our heads (logic and data).

So, why not use an innovation-typing scheme that reflects our humanity and reality?

That’s where Identity-based Innovation categories come in:

  1. Identity-enhancing innovations reinforce and strengthen people’s comfort and certainty in who they are and what they do relative to the organization.  “Organizational members all ‘know’ what actions are acceptable based on a shared understanding of what the organization represents, and this knowledge becomes codified u a set of heuristics about which innovative activities should be pursued and which should be dismissed.”
  2. Identity-stretching innovations enable and stretch people’s understanding of who they are and what they do in an additive, not threatening, way to their current identities.
  3. Identity-challenging innovations are threats and tend to occur in one of two contexts:
    • Extreme technological change that “results in the obsolescence of a product market or the convergence of multiple product markets.” (challenges “who we are”)
    • Competitors or new entrants that launch new offerings or change the basis of competition (challenges “what we do”)

By looking at your innovations through the lens of identity (and, therefore, people’s decision-making hearts), you can more easily identify the ones that will be supported and those that will be axed.

It also changes your results.

“Ok, nerd,” you’re probably thinking.  “Thanks for dragging me into your innovation portfolio geek-out.”

Fair, but let me illustrate the power of this perspective using some examples from P&G.

OfferingBusiness-Model TypesIdentity-based Categories
Charmin Smooth TearIncremental
Made Charmin easier to tear		Identity-enhancing
Reinforced Charmin’s premium experience
SwifferAdjacent
New durable product in an existing category (floor cleaning)		Identity-enhancing
Reinforced P&G’s identity as a provider of best-in-class cleaning products
Tide Dry CleanersRadical
Moved P&G into services and uses a franchise model		Identity-stretching
Dry cleaning service is consistent with P&G’s identity but stretches into providing services vs. just products

Do you see what happened on that third line?  A Radical Innovation was identity-stretching (not challenging), and it’s in the 0.1% of corporate innovations that launched!  It’s in 22 states!

The Bottom Line

If you look at innovation in the same way you always have, through the lens of changes to your business model, you’ll get the same innovation results you always have.

If you look at innovation differently, through the lens of how it affects personal and organizational identity, you’ll get different results.  You may even get radical results.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2023

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2023Drum roll please…

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 September’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. The Malcolm Gladwell Trap — by Greg Satell
  2. Where People Go Wrong with Minimum Viable Products — by Greg Satell
  3. Our People Metrics Are Broken — by Mike Shipulski
  4. Why You Don’t Need An Innovation Portfolio — by Robyn Bolton
  5. Do you have a fixed or growth mindset? — by Stefan Lindegaard
  6. Building a Psychologically Safe Team — by David Burkus
  7. Customer Wants and Needs Not the Same — by Shep Hyken
  8. The Hard Problem of Consciousness is Not That Hard — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  9. Great Coaches Do These Things — by Mike Shipulski
  10. How Not to Get in Your Own Way — by Mike Shipulski

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in August that continue to resonate with people:

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:

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Twelve Digital Disruptions of Your Sales Cycle

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Twelve Digital Disruptions of Your Sales Cycle

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

The good news for a salesperson selling into a disrupted industry is that the forces of change are bringing net new budget dollars to the table. The bad news is, the budgets have not yet landed. In effect, then, there are two kinds of sales opportunities to target. You can go after the landed budgets, the incumbent ones, knowing that they are under assault and will be dwindling, but also knowing that at present they can be deployed quickly and readily. Or, one can go after the much larger budgets that have not yet landed, the ones that will power the future of the target industry and your company’s role within it, but with the knowledge that this is a time-consuming effort that requires a completely different approach from the normal sales motion. Basically then, you can make quota in the short term while marginalizing your company’s future, or you can build a platform for the future while putting quota at much higher risk.

Of course, what we need here is an and not an or. And that is possible, provided executive leadership and compensation programs acknowledge this challenge openly and segment the field of play accordingly. The key distinction is simple. Selling into undisrupted industries requires to you to compete to consume budget, whereas in a disrupted one, you must create to consume budget. The first activity is conducted with middle managers charged with deploying operational budgets as efficiently as possible. The second is conducted with executives seeking to reallocate investment assets to meet the new challenge as effectively as possible. As just noted, these are two very different sales motions, and the challenge facing many sales teams today is that, like it or not, they have to do both, and do both well, if their companies are going to succeed.

The Impact of Digital Disruption on the Sales Cycle:

Here are twelve ways in which selling into a digitally disrupted sector calls for a radically different approach from what marketing, sales, and service teams are used to:

  1. Conventional lead generation does not work. It is based on hooking up with mid-level managers who have influence or authority over RFPs and budgets already in place. These people have no influence or authority over sales cycles involving redeployment of assets into new areas. All they will do is steer you to the old regime. Pursuing leads here will ensure you miss the next wave. And cold calling can’t succeed either. Executives employ people called administrative assistants for the express purpose of blocking your call. Instead you need to enable referrals, where a peer or trusted contact of the target executive enables the introduction.
  2. Product narratives don’t work. They are based on having an established view of the problem and of the competitive set. This is very much the case in non-disrupted industries but never so in disrupted ones. So PowerPoint presentations and demos don’t serve. All they do is disappoint and cause executives to redirect the salesperson back to a mid-level manager and an ever-diminishing established budget. Instead you need problem narratives, stories that surface the critical changes under way and that resonate with the business leaders undergoing them. That’s what the early conversations in the sales cycle need to be about.
  3. We need thought leadership here, people! Executives in disrupted industries are hungry for frameworks that can help them diagnose their new situation, envision a novel solution, and engage with peers to discuss their ideas. Slick slogans and asking “What’s keeping you up at night?” won’t cut it. But any vendor, be it a start-up or an established enterprise, who comes with a useful framework will get a good hearing, and the one whose framework gets adopted gets to orchestrate the others in building out a solution architecture. Narratives really, really matter.
  4. Relationship marketing is fundamental. Executives in disrupted industries are open to forming new relationships and are looking for a trusted advisor. To compete for this role salespeople need to monitor industry developments, personal information, and workflow status in real time so they can bring key issues and ideas to the table in a timely manner.
  5. Let’s get vertical, vertical! Digital disruption is unfolding on an industry by industry basis and manifests itself in ways unique to each one. That means that the early framing conversations need to be couched in the language and issues of the target industry, not the technologies and themes of the vendor’s industry. This requires marketing to develop a whole new set of muscles and sales to learn a new foreign language, which calls in turn for some judicious hiring of insider expertise and a sales training capability to get field teams up to speed fast.
  6. Sales and marketing need to map out a new customer journey. All sales cycles are built on an underlying model of the customer journey. These become the backbone of workflows through any CRM system. The problem in a disrupted industry is that the conventional sales cycle maps are all wrong because the journey is taking a very different route. Sales teams need to work with their counterparts in marketing to map out the new journey and align their sales cycles and their CRM systems to it.
  7. Proof-of-Concepts are necessary but not sufficient. To teams used to selling into non-disrupted markets POCs feel like going back in time, but they are key for disrupted industries where neither the problem diagnosis nor the solution prescription is well established. The challenge here is to manage them judiciously. Conservative forces inside the target customer will try to slow roll things here to buy time, whereas visionary sponsors may be too quick to want to leap to the full implementation. The trick is to make sure they are neither an obstacle to sales progress nor become a destination in and of themselves.
  8. Professional services organizations need to lean in. They have to provide insightful pre-sales consulting on a low-latency, cost-efficient basis, while still maintaining billable utilization via their other work. In addition, they have to take the lead in the first few implementations, where their role is often as not to be the chief spear catcher, and then be prepared to package up their expertise and hand it over to partners just when the projects become predictable and profitable. Running professional services inside a technology company is an incredibly important and almost always thankless endeavor. But as the next point makes clear, it is core.
  9. All offers are services-led—period. In a disrupted industry no one buys a product. The early adopters buy projects and the pragmatic majority buys solutions. Both of these offer types are services led. That means all proposals need to be services led as well. That is, they cannot be about products or even ROI; they have to be about changes under way and the responses needed to address them properly.
  10. All sales motions are land-and-expand. No responsible executive underwrites a massive re-engineering undertaking with a single check, even when they already have established a deep relationship of trust with a particular vendor. Most follow a three-phase approach, where the first phase is to prove feasibility, the second, confirm desirability, and the third, achieve scalability. There is no place in disrupted industries for fly-by selling of any kind.
  11. Customers have to step up too. This means that sales teams need to learn diplomatic ways for holding the customer’s feet to the fire, provoking them when they are not rising to the occasion, and holding them accountable when they do. Often this is best done through third parties, so creating communities of interest and sponsoring dialogs among peers become critical sales enablers.
  12. Change management becomes an integral part of every implementation. Getting the new paradigm adopted is key not only to the customer’s success but to the vendor’s continued expansion within the account as well. Service organizations and partners need to be engaged, enlisted, monitored, and compensated accordingly, and this initially at least has to be orchestrated by the sales team who has the winning proposal.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Why Successful Innovators Are Curious Like Cats

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Why Successful Innovators Are Curious Like Cats

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our previous blog, we shared how consciousness, imagination, and curiosity are the fundamental precursors to creativity, invention, and innovation. Where consciousness encapsulates our states and qualities of mind, our capacity for imagination and curiosity are the necessary states of mind that stimulate creativity, all of which propel successful innovators to bring the new to the world differently.

Yet, according to a recent article by the Singularity Hub “OpenAI’s GPT-4 Scores in the Top 1% of Creative Thinking”:

“Of all the forms of human intellect that one might expect artificial intelligence to emulate, few people would likely place creativity at the top of their list. Creativity is wonderfully mysterious—and frustratingly fleeting. It defines us as human beings—and seemingly defies the cold logic that lies behind the silicon curtain of machines.”

We have a “Sputnik moment” to further our creative abilities

Revealing that their recent study into the striking originality of AI is an indication, that AI-based creativity – along with examples of both its promise and peril – is likely just beginning.

“The creative abilities now realized by AI may provide a “Sputnik moment” for educators and others interested in furthering human creative abilities, including those who see creativity as an essential condition of individual, social, and economic growth”.

  • What if we, as humans, could compete with, and perhaps even complement, AI-based creativity and become successful innovators?
  • How might we spark our imagination and curiosity to gain new knowledge that reduces ignorance and sustains our relevance to benefit all of humanity?

How does this link to cats – successful innovators are like cats!

As an animal lover, and the second servant to two sublime household pet cats, I have always wondered why our cats are so curious, always exploring and getting into everything, and yet are also well known for having at least nine lives.

This, in many ways, is a similar experience of many successful innovators, who apply their capacity for imagination and curiosity to explore and navigate the edges of the system and wander into wonder into surprising states of boundarylessness.

In a LinkedIn blog, David Miller shares that:

“Leonardo Da Vinci taught us that curiosity is the basis for creativity and innovation. The more relentless our curiosity, the more likely we will be innovative and creative, and possibly one step closer to perfection. If we want to build innovative organizations, we should start by creating curious organizations which nurture and enhance the curiosity of people”.

  • Exploration and discovery

According to a post in Quora, “Why are cats so curious” the common saying that “curiosity killed the cat,” is not entirely accurate and states that:

“Cats are naturally curious animals, who also have a strong survival instinct that helps them avoid dangerous situations. Humans, on the other hand, have evolved to have a powerful curiosity that drives them to explore and discover new things”.

  • Imagination and curiosity

Suggesting that intentionally applying our imagination and curiosity, potentially enables us humans to become successful innovators, who can both survive and thrive, in today’s globally hyperconnected, constantly uncertain and continuously changing VUCA/BANI world, in ways that benefit all of humanity.

Where we have an opportunity to focus and harness our imagination and curiosity toward becoming successful innovators who cultivate and exploit their curiosity as a radical force.

Curiosity as a radical force for unforeseen bonuses

According to the author, Philip Ball in his book Curiosity – How Science Became Interested in Everything curiosity is a radical force, introduced in the mid-sixteenth century, fuelled within scientists and philosophers with a compulsion to understand why and how.

Enabling curiosity to become the engine that drives both knowledge and power, reduces ignorance and has become a source of “unforeseen practical bonuses” in all of the sciences, and innovations, since then.

Curiosity and creativity spur innovation

Curiosity is derived from the Latin “cura” which means to care. In a sense, this potentially makes successful innovators and innovative entrepreneurs “curators” of curiosities and strangeness.

Richard Freyman, in an article on curiosity, in the FS blog, states that curiosity has to:

“Do with people wondering what makes something do something. And then to discover, if you try to get answers, that they are related to each other – that thing that makes the wind make the waves, that the motion of water is like the motion of air is like the motion of sand. The fact that things have common features. It turns out more and more universal. What we are looking for is how everything works. What makes everything work”.

Someone who evokes and cares for what exists now and for what could exist possibly exists in the future by:

  • Demonstrating the mental acuity, fitness, and readiness to find the peculiar and the unusual in what surrounds them, and an ability to break up familiarities and seek new associations and unlikely connections,
  • Disregarding convention and traditional hierarchies, and allowing their minds to wander into spaces that are unknown, invisible, and intangible,
  • Harnessing their attention and patience to evoke, provoke, incubate, and generate deep and bold questions that they listen to, to result in profound* insights.

What can successful innovators learn from cats?

A recent blog post, Why Are Cats So Curious? The Science Behind Cat Curiosity, explains that a cat’s insatiable curiosity develops as a result of its survival instinct. Cats have mental acuity and fitness, because like successful innovators, they are:

  • Incredibly intelligent, and have the ability to learn from experience and remember it for years.
  • Opportunistic creatures, and are always on the lookout for a chance to explore their environments.
  • Attentive and observant, and have a heightened sense of awareness and constantly observe their surroundings, and listen deeply, to attend to, and discover any new, or missing objects or movements in their environment.
  • Always on the move, and are driven by their need for constant exploration and mental stimulation.
  • Protective in investigating any potential threats to their own and others close to them.

How to cultivate your curiosity like Leonardo De Vinci

The creative brain balances intense focus with relaxed states like daydreaming and the time and space for mind wondering and wandering. Doing this activates both our imagination and curiosity and guides any problem-solving efforts with emergent, divergent, and convergent breakthrough ideas and illuminating insights.

  1. Active minds, and are always asking powerful questions and searching for answers in their minds, through mind wandering and mind wondering in expectation and anticipation of new ideas and increased knowledge related to their questions.

They are grounded, mindful, and attentive in observing and recognizing ideas when they emerge.

Be a successful innovator like Da Vinci ask bold and difficult questions, listen deeply, and use the answers to develop your knowledge, and to inform your creative ideas for invention and innovation:

  • How can I see this situation with fresh eyes?
  1. Open minds, and come from not knowing, are always searching, sensing, and discovering new worlds and possibilities that are normally not visible, in that they are often hidden behind or below the surface of normal life.

They are open to sensing, perceiving, and illuminating possibilities to crystalize new ideas.

Be a successful innovator, like Da Vinci, and keep notebooks and a daily journal by retreating, reflecting, and recording your time mind wandering and wondering in your search for insights and answers to things you don’t yet understand.

  • What might I be assuming about……?
  1. Flexibility, adaptability, provocation and playfulness, and challenging routines, seek excitement, new adventures, and a variety of things that attract attention, increase knowledge and play, and search for a more meaningful life.

They seek learning as a fun way of expanding and applying both knowledge and imagination, as a mechanism for co-creating ideas, staying relevant, and being informed and innovating in ways that illuminate people’s hearts and minds towards effecting positive change.

Be a successful innovator, like Da Vinci and ask provocative and disruptive questions, such as: “Why do shells exist on top of mountains, why is lightning visible immediately, but the sound of thunder takes longer to travel? How does a bird sustain itself up in the air”?

  • What am I missing? What matters most?

Increasing our knowledge for the benefit of humanity

Like cats, and like Albert Einstein, we can apply our imagination and curiosity and become successful innovators who explore and navigate the edges of the system, wander into wonder and surprising states of boundarylessness, in ways that benefit all of humanity, and make cultivating and harness your imagination and curiosity a daily habit:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.” – Life Magazine 1955

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, starting October 3, 2023.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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An Innovation Lesson From The Rolling Stones

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An Innovation Lesson From The Rolling Stones

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

If you’re like most people, you’ve faced disappointment. Maybe the love of your life didn’t return your affection, you didn’t get into your dream college, or you were passed over for promotion.  It hurts.  And sometimes, that hurt lingers for a long time.

Until one day, something happens, and you realize your disappointment was a gift.  You meet the true love of your life while attending college at your fallback school, and years later, when you get passed over for promotion, the two of you quit your jobs, pursue your dreams, and live happily ever after. Or something like that.

We all experience disappointment.  We also all get to choose whether we stay there, lamenting the loss of what coulda shoulda woulda been, or we can persevere, putting one foot in front of the other and playing The Rolling Stones on repeat:

“You can’t always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, well, you might just find

You get what you need”

That’s life.

That’s also innovation.

As innovators, especially leaders of innovators, we rarely get what we want.  But we always get what we need (whether we like it or not)

We want to know. 
We need to be comfortable not knowing.

Most of us want to know the answer because if we know the answer, there is no risk. There is no chance of being wrong, embarrassed, judged, or punished.  But if there is no risk, there is no growth, expansion, or discovery.

Innovation is something new that creates value. If you know everything, you can’t innovate.

As innovators, we need to be comfortable not knowing.  When we admit to ourselves that we don’t know something, we open our minds to new information, new perspectives, and new opportunities. When we say we don’t know, we give others permission to be curious, learn, and create. 

We want the creative genius and billion-dollar idea. 
We need the team and the steady stream of big ideas.

We want to believe that one person blessed with sufficient time, money, and genius can change the world.  Some people like to believe they are that person, and most of us think we can hire that person, and when we do find that person and give them the resources they need, they will give us the billion-dollar idea that transforms our company, disrupts the industry, and change the world.

Innovation isn’t magic.  Innovation is team work.

We need other people to help us see what we can’t and do what we struggle to do.  The idea-person needs the optimizer to bring her idea to life, and the optimizer needs the idea-person so he has a starting point.  We need lots of ideas because most won’t work, but we don’t know which ones those are, so we prototype, experiment, assess, and refine our way to the ones that will succeed.   

We want to be special.
We need to be equal.

We want to work on the latest and most cutting-edge technology and discuss it using terms that no one outside of Innovation understands. We want our work to be on stage, oohed and aahed over on analyst calls, and talked about with envy and reverence in every meeting. We want to be the cool kids, strutting around our super hip offices in our hoodies and flip-flops or calling into the meeting from Burning Man. 

Innovation isn’t about you.  It’s about serving others.

As innovators, we create value by solving problems.  But we can’t do it alone.  We need experienced operators who can quickly spot design flaws and propose modifications.  We need accountants and attorneys who instantly see risks and help you navigate around them.  We need people to help us bring our ideas to life, but that won’t happen if we act like we’re different or better.  Just as we work in service to our customers, we must also work in service to our colleagues by working with them, listening, compromising, and offering help.

What about you?
What do you want?
What are you learning you need?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Curiosity and Collaboration in the Escape Room Adventure Playground

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Curiosity and Collaboration in the Escape Room Adventure Playground

GUEST POST from Leo Chan

When’s the last time you felt curious? When’s the last time you fully immersed yourself in curiosity?

For me, it was this past weekend, during my escape room experience at Escape Games Canada. 

It’s only my second time with escape rooms. My first wasn’t positive. I actually really disliked it.

In reflection, I believe it was because I was too in my head and didn’t lean into curiousity enough back then. I didn’t know what to do. I stood around, confused and overwhelmed. So I watched my team while I stood there helpless.

This time, I was ready to jump in. I chose to let my curiosity lead. 

We were led into a very small room and after an intro sequence, the mission begun. During the intro, I looked around the room curiously. I noticed a small lantern-like light with an electrical symbol. Adjacent to it was an empty cavern with a power socket.

When the mission started, everyone stood wondering what to do.

💡The immediate next step was intuitive for me. I grabbed the lantern-like light, unplugged it and put into the adjacent power socket.

The door opened and we were onto the next part of the mission. “Cool! What’s next?” I thought.

The entire escape room experience was a fun exercise of curiousity and I found it delightful. I went into each room with lots of curiosity, wondering “What if I…? What happens if…?” I pushed buttons, pulled things, rotated, twisted objects, examined items, looked for patterns. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

Research shows when you satisfy your curiosity, your brain rewards you with a flood of dopamine. That’s why curious people are happy people.

Each new step of the escape room was another opportunity to exercise more curiousity. What would happen next? What would we be required to do? 

In addition to this curiousity extravaganza, I also loved that this escape room required real collaboration.

In one room, I noticed there were two joysticks and a button on one side of the room. On the other side of the room, there was a viewfinder (like a periscope).

I was curious about this and thought the two were linked together so I told my wife, “hey, go over to the viewfinder and tell me if anything changes when I move these joysticks around.” 

My curiosity was right. She said “Yes! It moves what I’m seeing!” We then proceeded to work together to figure out the puzzle.

In another room, we had to work together as a trio to solve a puzzle. We each stood in three parts of the room, interacting with the material and dialoging about what we were seeing and then using that as an input to the piece we were responsible for. Our collaboration leveraged our diverse perspectives and experiences. Some people needed to use math (thank goodness that wasn’t me), memorization, cartography, pattern recognition and other skills.

We couldn’t have achieved our mission without collaborating, it was literally impossible. We leaned into our diverse perspectives and experiences; it was wonderful!

As we left the escape room, I couldn’t help but thinking that I went through an immersive, innovation masterclass because the experience highlighted two very important innovation mindsets: curiosity & collaboration.

🌱Mindset #1: Curiosity is essential for innovation. It leads you to see new things, go down new paths and try new things. Walt Disney once said: 

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and trying new things, because we are curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” 

The problem with curiosity is that it’s become a buzzword. We tell people to “just be curious.” We’ve fallen prey to the belief that people are either curious or not curious. And the sad reality is, many adults have lost their curiosity. They’ve lost their child-like wonder. What if you could reinvigorate curiousity? What if you could learn how to be curious once again? It’s possible. 

🌱Mindset #2: Collaboration drives innovation. True collaboration allows us to see new perspectives, gain insights and reach unexpected outcomes. Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators says this: 

Innovation comes from teams more than lightbulb moments of lone geniuses.

Collaboration is more mindset than skillset and most of us think we’re better collaborators than we really are. If you’ve experienced working in functional silos, a lack of communication, a lack of knowing what’s going on in other teams, you’ve experienced a lack of collaboration. A lack of collaboration roots in a lack of belief in the true power of collaboration. In order to move the needle on collaboration, you need to shift people’s mindsets on collaboration.

At the end of the escape room experience, my wife asked, “How did you know what to do? (It was her first ever escape room experience). I exclaimed, “It’s easy! I was curious!”

🪄Curiosity is powerful. In a 2019 research study, researchers discovered that a single-unit increase in curiosity on a seven-point scale was associated with 34% greater creativity.

🚀 Right now, I want you reflect on the following two prompts:

  1. How will you stimulate your curiosity today? Is there a topic you’ve been curious to learn more about? Maybe it’s a topic, hobby or interest of yours. Some popular topics these days include: Generative AI & ChatGPT. Once you’ve identified an area of curiosity, go and learn about it. Explore it and enjoy the process. I’m giving you permission right now to go and do this. After you’re done, come back and share your experiences with me!
  2. Who could you collaborate with on something you’re working on? It doesn’t matter if it’s a small or big thing. Invite them into your work and get their perspective. You’ll gain fresh insights and new ideas from them. Pro tip: Find someone you NORMALLY wouldn’t ask. Be surprised by what they share with you.

🌱Both curiosity and the collaborative mindset can be taught and nurtured. If you want to know how and bring this to your team, please reach out! I’d be happy to help.

Image credit: Leo Chan

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The Secrets of Seeing What’s Missing

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The Secrets of Seeing What's Missing

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

With one eye open and the other closed, you have no depth perception. With two eyes open, you see in three dimensions. This ability to see in three dimensions is possible because each eye sees from a unique perspective. The brain knits together the two unique perspectives so you can see the world as it is. Or, as your brain thinks it is, at least.

And the same can be said for an organization. When everyone sees things from a single perspective, the organization has no depth perception. But with at least two perspectives, the organization can better see things as they are. The problem is we’re not taught to see from unique perspectives.

With most presentations, the material is delivered from a single perspective with the intention of helping everyone see from that singular perspective. Because there’s no depth to the presentation, it looks the same whether you look at it with one eye or two. But with some training, you can learn how to see depth even when it has purposely been scraped away.

And it’s the same with reports, proposals, and plans. They are usually written from a single perspective with the objective of helping everyone reach a single conclusion. But with some practice, you can learn to see what’s missing to better see things as they are.

When you see what’s missing, you see things in stereo vision.

Here are some tips to help you see what’s missing. Try them out next time you watch a presentation or read a report, proposal, or plan.

When you see a WHAT, look for the missing WHY on the top and HOW on the bottom. Often, at least one slice of bread is missing from the why-what-how sandwich.

When you see a HOW, look for the missing WHO and WHEN. Usually, the bread or meat is missing from the how-who-when sandwich.

Here’s a rule to live by: Without finishing there can be no starting.

When you see a long list of new projects, tasks, or initiatives that will start next year, look for the missing list of activities that would have to stop in order for the new ones to start.

When you see lots of starting, you’ll see a lot of missing finishing.

When you see a proposal to demonstrate something for the first time or an initial pilot, look for the missing resources for the “then what” work. After the prototype is successful, then what? After the pilot is successful, then what? Look for the missing “then what” resources needed to scale the work. It won’t be there.

When you see a plan that requires new capabilities, look for the missing training plan that must be completed before the new work can be done well. And look for the missing budget that won’t be used to pay for the training plan that won’t happen.

When you see an increased output from a system, look for the missing investment needed to make it happen, the missing lead time to get approval for the missing investment, and the missing lead time to put things in place in time to achieve the increased output that won’t be realized.

When you see a completion date, look for the missing breakdown of the work content that wasn’t used to arbitrarily set the completion date that won’t be met.

When you see a cost reduction goal, look for the missing resources that won’t be freed up from other projects to do the cost reduction work that won’t get done.

It’s difficult to see what’s missing. I hope you find these tips helpful.

Image credit: Pixabay

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3 Ways to View Your Innovation Basket

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(including one that makes Radical Innovation easy)

3 Ways to View Your Innovation Basket

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You are a rolling stone, and that means you gather no moss!  You read the September issue of HBR (and maybe last week’s article), tossed out your innovation portfolio, and wove yourself an innovation basket to “differentiate the concept from finance and avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities, where the goal is usually to maximize returns through diversification [and instead] remember that innovation projects are creative acts.”   

Then you explained this to your CFO and received side-eye so devastating it would make Sophie Loren proud.

The reality is that the innovation projects you’re working on are investments, and because they’re risky, diversification is the best way to maximize the returns your company needs.

But it’s not the only way we should communicate, evaluate, and treat them.

Different innovation basket views for different customers

When compiling an innovation basket, the highest priority is having a single source of truth.  If people in the organization disagree on what is in and out of the basket, how you measure and manage the portfolio doesn’t matter.

But a single source of truth doesn’t mean you can’t look at that truth from multiple angles.

Having multiple views showing the whole basket while being customized to address each of your internal customer’s Jobs to be Done will turbocharge your ability to get support and resources.

The CFO: What returns will we get and when?

The classic core/adjacent/transformational portfolio is your answer.  By examining each project based on where to play (markets and customers) and how to win (offerings, profit models, key resources and activities), you can quickly assess each project’s relative riskiness, potential return, time to ROI, and resource requirements.

The CEO: How does this support and accelerate our strategic priorities?

This is where the new innovation basket is most helpful.  By starting with the company’s strategic goals and asking, “What needs to change to achieve our strategy?” leadership teams immediately align innovation goals with corporate strategic priorities.  When projects and investments are placed at the intersection of the goal they support, and the mechanism of value creation (e.g., product, process, brand), the CEO can quickly see how investments align with strategic priorities and actively engage in reallocation decisions.

You: Will any of these ever see the light of day?

As much as you hope the answer is “Yes!”, you know the answer is “Some.  Maybe.  Hopefully.”  You also know that the “some” that survive might not be the biggest or the best of the basket.  They’ll be the most palatable.

Ignoring that fact won’t make it untrue. Instead, acknowledge it and use it to expand stakeholders’ palates.

Start by articulating your organization’s identity, the answers to “who we are” and “what we do.” 

Then place each innovation in one of three buckets based on its fit with the organization’s identity:

  • Identity-enhancing innovations that enhance or strengthen the identity
  • Identity-stretching innovations that “do not fit with the core of an organization’s identity, but are related enough that if the scope of organizational identity were expanded, the innovation would fit.”
  • Identity-challenging innovations that are “in direct conflict with the existing organizational identity.”

It probably won’t surprise you that identity-enhancing innovations are far more likely to receive internal support than identity-challenging innovations.  But what may surprise you is that core, adjacent, and transformational innovations can all be identity-enhancing.

For example, Luxxotica and Bausch & Lomb are both in the vision correction industry (eyeglasses and contact lenses, respectively) but have very different identities.  Luxxotica views itself as “an eyewear company,” while Bausch & Lomb sees itself as an “eye health company” (apologies for the puns). 

When laser-vision correction surgery became widely available, Bausch & Lomb was an early investor because, while the technology would be considered a breakthrough innovation, it was also identity-enhancing.  A decade later, Bausch & Lomb’s surgical solutions and ophthalmic pharmaceuticals businesses account for 38% of the company’s revenue and one-third of the growth.

One basket.  Multiple Views.  All the Answers.

Words are powerful, and using a new one, especially in writing,  can change your behavior and brain. But calling a portfolio a basket won’t change the results of your innovation efforts.  To do that, you need to understand why you have a basket and look at it in all the ways required to maximize creativity, measure results, and avoid stakeholder side-eye.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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How to Defeat Corporate Antibodies

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A Guide to Beating Resistance

How to Defeat Corporate Antibodies

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

Imagine yourself as the CEO of a mid-sized organization that’s struggling to grow and adapt to the ever-changing business landscape. You decide that it’s time for a significant transformation, which will involve new partnerships, revamped processes, and a shift in the company’s culture.

Despite the potential benefits, the proposed changes are met with strong resistance from within the organization. Corporate antibodies, individuals who fight against innovation and maintain the status quo, are now the biggest challenge to overcome.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through a story that illustrates the impact of corporate antibodies on organizational development and explores the role of organizational culture, leadership, and employee engagement in fostering a supportive environment for change.

A Tale of Two Teams

In our fictional organization, there are two departments that perfectly illustrate the impact of corporate antibodies on organizational development: the marketing team, led by an open-minded and forward-thinking manager named Susan, and the finance department, led by a risk-averse and conservative manager named Mark.

Susan’s marketing team is known for embracing new ideas and encouraging collaboration. She has created a culture where employees are motivated to share ideas, challenge assumptions, and learn from failures. On the other hand, Mark’s finance team resists any proposed changes and defends the status quo. Mark is wary of any initiatives that could disrupt the stability of his department and is often skeptical of suggestions coming from outside his team.

The Power of Culture

One day, during a company-wide meeting, the CEO announces a new partnership with a cutting-edge technology company to streamline processes, reduce costs, and drive innovation across the organization.

Susan’s marketing team quickly embraces the idea, eager to explore the opportunities this partnership could bring. They begin brainstorming ways to integrate the new technology into their work and share their ideas with other teams.

In contrast, Mark’s finance team reacts with apprehension and skepticism. They question the need for such a drastic change and raise concerns about potential disruptions to their well-established processes. Mark himself is hesitant to support the initiative, fearing that it might expose weaknesses within his department and lead to a loss of control.

Detecting Corporate Antibodies

The stark difference between the two teams becomes apparent during meetings and discussions about the upcoming transformation. The finance team, led by Mark, expresses their resistance through statements like:

  • “We already tried something similar, and it didn’t work.”
  • “Our current process has worked fine for years; there’s no need to change.”
  • “If that were a good idea, we’d already have thought of it.”

Some individuals in the finance team genuinely believe they’re looking out for the company’s best interests, while others prioritize their personal interests or fear the potential consequences of change.

The Battle Begins

As the transformation moves into the incubation phase, the tensions between the two teams escalate. Susan’s marketing team starts working closely with the new technology partner, sharing their progress and achievements with the rest of the organization. They demonstrate the positive impact of the change initiative and inspire other departments to get on board.

Meanwhile, Mark’s finance team continues to resist the change, erecting roadblocks and questioning every decision made by the marketing team and the technology partner. Their relentless negativity creates a tense atmosphere and slows down the progress of the transformation.

The Turning Point

As the organization enters the Acceleration stage, the CEO recognizes the need to address the corporate antibodies that are hindering the company’s growth. She decides to implement the following strategies to manage resistance and foster a more supportive environment for change:

  1. Engage potential blockers: The CEO invites Mark and key members of his finance team to participate in decision-making processes, ensuring they feel valued and included. By involving them in shaping the transformation, she gradually turns some of the blockers into backers.
  2. Encourage open communication: The CEO fosters a culture where employees can voice their concerns and suggestions without fear of backlash. This allows the organization to identify and address potential issues early on, reducing the likelihood of resistance emerging later in the process.
  3. Provide support and resources: The CEO allocates resources to offer training and support to employees who need help navigating the change process. This alleviates anxieties and creates a more positive attitude towards the change initiatives.
  4. Celebrate successes: The CEO acknowledges the achievements of Susan’s marketing team and other departments that have embraced the change. Recognizing progress and milestones helps maintain morale and motivation while demonstrating the benefits of the transformation.
  5. Foster collaboration across departments: The CEO organizes cross-functional workshops and team-building activities that encourage employees from different departments to work together. This helps break down silos and promotes a greater understanding of the benefits of the change initiative across the organization.
  6. Appoint change champions: The CEO identifies key influencers within the organization who can help advocate for the change and address concerns from their peers. These change champions play a critical role in maintaining momentum and enthusiasm for the transformation.
  7. Establish a feedback loop: The CEO implements a system for collecting regular feedback from employees about the progress of the transformation. This allows the leadership team to monitor the effectiveness of their strategies, make necessary adjustments, and address any emerging concerns promptly.

With these additional strategies in place, the organization begins to witness significant progress in its transformation journey. The impact of the corporate antibodies is gradually diminished, and a culture of innovation and adaptability starts to flourish.

Monitoring Progress and Ensuring Long-term Success

The CEO understands the importance of monitoring progress and adjusting strategies as needed to ensure the long-term success of the transformation. To do this, she establishes a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that help track the progress of the change initiatives and their impact on the organization. These KPIs may include employee engagement, cross-functional collaboration, efficiency gains, and financial performance.

Additionally, the CEO remains vigilant for signs of lingering resistance or the re-emergence of corporate antibodies. By maintaining open lines of communication and actively soliciting feedback from employees, she can quickly identify and address any issues that might hinder the organization’s development.

The conclusion is that identifying and tackling corporate antibodies is essential for successful organizational growth and transformation. By understanding the reasons behind their emergence and applying effective strategies to manage them, organizations can build a positive environment for change and promote long-lasting progress.

Emphasizing a strong organizational culture, good leadership, and employee engagement can help ensure your organization’s development efforts succeed, leading to a more resilient and adaptable business in a constantly changing world.

Image Credit: Stefan Lindegaard

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Why You Don’t Need An Innovation Portfolio

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According to Harvard Business Review

Why You Don't Need An Innovation Portfolio

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You are a savvy manager, so you know that you need an innovation portfolio because (1) a single innovation isn’t enough to generate the magnitude of growth your company needs, and (2) it is the best way to manage inherently risky endeavors and achieve desired returns.

Too bad you’re wrong.

According to an article in the latest issue of HBR, you shouldn’t have an innovation portfolio. You should have an innovation basket.

Once you finish rolling your eyes (goodness knows I did), hear me (and the article’s authors) out because there is a nuanced but important distinction.

Our journey begins with the obvious.

In their article “A New Approach to Strategic Innovation,” authors Haijian Si, Christoph Loch, and Stelios Kavadias argue that portfolio management approaches have become so standardized as to be practically useless, and they propose a new framework for ensuring your innovation activities achieve your strategic goals.

“Companies typically treat their innovation projects as a portfolio: a mix of projects that, collectively, aim to meet their various strategic objectives,” the article begins. “MOO,” I think (household shorthand for Master Of the Obvious).

“When we surveyed 75 companies in China, we discovered that when executives took the trouble to link their project selection to their business’s competitive goals, the contribution of their innovation activities performance increased dramatically,” the authors continue. “Wow, fill this under N for No Sh*t, Sherlock,” responded my internal monologue.

The authors go on to present and explain their new framework, which is interesting in its focus on asking and answering seemingly simple questions (what, who, why, and how) and identifying internal weaknesses and vulnerabilities through a series of iterative and inclusion conversations. The process is a good one but feels more like an augmentation of an existing approach rather than a radically new one.

Then we hit the “portfolio” vs. “basket” moment.

According to the authors, once the management team completes the first step by reaching a consensus on the changes needed to their strategy, they move on to the second step – creating the innovation basket.

The process of categorizing innovation projects is the next step, and it is where our process deviates from established frameworks. We use the word “basket” rather than “portfolio” to denote a company’s collection of innovation projects. In this way, we differentiate the concept from finance and avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities, where the goal is usually to maximize returns through diversification. It’s important to remember that innovation projects are creative acts, whereas investment in financial securities is simply the purchase of assets that have already been created.

“Avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities” and “remember that innovation projects are creative acts.” Whoa.

Why this is important in a practical sense (and isn’t just academic fun-with-words)

Think about all the advice you’ve read and heard (and that I’ve probably given you) about innovation portfolios – you need a mix of incremental, adjacent, and radical innovations, and, if you’re creating a portfolio from scratch, use the Golden Ratio.

Yes, and this assumes that everything in your innovation portfolio supports your overall strategy, and that the portfolio is reviewed regularly to ensure that the right projects receive the right investments at the right times.

These assumptions are rarely true.

Projects tend to enter the portfolio because a senior executive suggested them or emerged from an innovation event or customer research and feedback. Once in the portfolio, they progress through the funnel until they either launch or are killed because of poor test results or a slashed innovation budget.

They rarely enter the portfolio because they are required to deliver a higher-level strategy, and they rarely exit because they are no longer strategically relevant. Why? Because the innovation projects in your portfolio are “assets that have already been created.”

What this means for you (and why it’s scary)

Swapping “basket” in for “portfolio” isn’t just the choice of a new word to bolster the claim of creating a new approach. It’s a complete reframing of your role as an innovation executive.

You no longer monitor assets that reflect purchases or investments promising yet-to-be-determined payouts. You are actively starting, shifting, and shutting down opportunities based on business strategy and needs. Shifting from a “portfolio” to a basket” turns your role as an executive from someone who monitors performance to someone who actively manages opportunities.

And this should scare you.

Because this makes the challenge of balancing operations and innovation an unavoidable and regular endeavor. Gone are the days of “set it and forget it” innovation management, which often buys innovation teams time to produce results before their resources are noticed and reallocated to core operations.

If you aren’t careful about building and vigorously defending your innovation basket, it will be easy to pluck resources from it and allocate them to the more urgent and “safer” current business needs that also contribute to the strategic changes identified.

Leaving you with an innovation portfolio.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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