Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of April 2025

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of April 2025Drum 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 April’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Innovation or Not? – Kawasaki Corleo — by Braden Kelley
  2. From Resistance to Reinvention — by Noel Sobelman
  3. How Innovation Tools Help You Stay Safe — by Robyn Bolton
  4. Should My Brand Take a Political Stand? — by Pete Foley
  5. Innovation Truths — by Mike Shipulski
  6. Good Management is Not Good Strategy — by Greg Satell
  7. ChatGPT Blew My Mind with its Strategy Development — by Robyn Bolton
  8. Five Questions Great Leaders Always Ask — by David Burkus
  9. Why So Many Smart People Are Foolish — by Greg Satell
  10. Beyond Continuous Improvement Culture — by Mike Shipulski

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in March 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!

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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 four years:

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Procrastinating with Purpose

Procrastinating with Purpose

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

There’s a useful trick when you want to do new work. It has some of the characteristics of procrastination, but it’s different. With procrastination, the problem solver waits to start the solving until it’s almost impossible to meet the deadline. The the solver uses the unreasonable deadline to create internal pressure so they can let go of all the traditional solving approaches. With no time for traditional approaches, the solver must let go of what worked and try a new approach.

Now, the mainstream procrastinator doesn’t wait with forethought as I described, but forethought isn’t the required element. The internal pressure doesn’t care if it was forethought, it constrains out the tried-and-true, either way. Forethought or not, the results speak for themselves – unimaginable work done in far less time than reasonable.

But what if you could take the best parts of procrastination and supercharge it with purpose and process? What if you could help people achieve the results of procrastination – unimagined solutions done in an unreasonable time window – but without all the stress that comes with procrastination? What about a process for purposeful procrastination?
The IBE (Innovation Burst Event) was created to do just that – to systematize the goodness of procrastination without all the baggage that comes with it.

The heart of the IBE is the Design Challenge, where a team with diverse perspective is brought together by a facilitator to solve a problem in five minutes. The unreasonable time constraint generates all the goodness that comes with procrastination, but, because it’s a problem solving exercise, there’s no drama. And like with procrastination, the teams deliver unimaginable results within an unrealistic time constraint.

The purposefulness of the IBE comes with up-front work to create Design Challenges that investigate design space that has high potential. This can be driven by the Voice of the Customer (VOC) or Voice of the Technology (VOT). Either way, the choice of the design space is purposeful.

If you want to jump-start your innovation work, try the IBE. And who knows, if you call it purposeful procrastination you may get a lot of people to participate.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Paying Your Employees More Can Save You Money

Paying Your Employees More Can Save You Money

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What’s the secret to keeping employees, getting them to work hard and provide a more engaging experience with your customers? There are two answers. The first is one word: Money.

Many years ago, I worked with a well-known fast casual restaurant chain. I was impressed by its low turnover and high customer engagement and satisfaction ratings. Its secret was higher starting pay, generous raises and a reasonable benefits package. All of that compensation led to attracting the best candidates, and more importantly, keeping them.

A recent RetailWire article covered the higher wages Costco pays its employees. Typical hourly employees (Costco refers to them as “assistants”) include cashiers, stockers, warehouse personnel and people running the Costco food courts. With a tighter labor market, it is tougher to find people to fill these roles (and others). It is reported that Costco’s wages are at the high end of the industry. A memo from Costco’s CEO Ron Vachris stated, “We believe our hourly wages and benefits will continue to far outpace others in the retail industry.”

While wages are higher, employee retention in retail has gone down. According to an article in The Economist, the average employee turnover rate in the retail industry is 60%. Costco’s turnover is 8%, which is an incredible 86.67% lower than the industry.

Does this mean the higher wages are being paid by consumers? The simple answer is no. The longer answer is why. Just because a company pays employees more, a resulting benefit, such as lower turnover, actually reduces the cost of the higher wage. Lower turnover results in lower hiring costs, which also includes the cost of on-boarding and training. The full cost of the higher wage is dramatically reduced to a point that might pay for itself.

But higher wages aren’t the only reason employees stick around, work harder and better engage with customers. As mentioned at the top of the article, there is also a second reason, and that is culture.

While some employees will stick around for the paycheck, if you want the most out of any employee, they must like their job, and that goes beyond the job description. It also includes who they work with and work for. The culture of a company helps retain the best talent.

Regardless of what you pay your employees, if they don’t like the company, the way they are treated, their boss or leadership, paying them more may not be enough. I won’t go into creating company culture, but you can check out a Forbes article from last year that covered the Employee Hierarchy of Needs with a focus on building a fulfilling workplace culture.

Happy employees mean happier customers. All the benefits mentioned translate to higher NPS and customer satisfaction scores. If you compare the highest-rated companies and brands for customer service and experience posted by the American Customer Satisfaction Institute (ACSI) and the highest-rated companies and brands by employees at www.Glassdoor.com, you’ll find many of the same names. This is further backed up by an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review titled “The Key to Happy Customers? Happy Employees” by Andrew Chamberlain and Daniel Zhao. Even though it was written just over five years ago, the insights are more relevant than ever.

Companies like Costco prove that investing in employees through both compensation and culture isn’t just good for employees. It’s good for business. Employee happiness is contagious. Customers pick up on it. And when customers are happy, they come back, spend more and tell others. And, that makes the leadership and investors happy too!

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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Diverge and Disrupt Your Way to Success

Diverge and Disrupt Your Way to Success

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

I have earned my stripes as a rebellious maverick and serial misfit, who, until today, seldom feels content with complying with the status quo, especially when confronted by illogical, rules-bound, conventional, and conforming behaviors. My constant and disruptive search for new horizons has enabled me to make many professional changes and reinventions – from graphic to fashion designer, retail executive, design management consultant, culture and change management consultant, corporate trainer, group facilitator, executive, leadership and team coach, start-up entrepreneur, innovation coach, and award-winning blogger and author who has thrived by being different and disruptive. We need to reframe disruption to increase the possibilities for game-changing inventions and innovations to succeed in an uncertain and unstable future.

Through real-life experiences and by teaching, training, mentoring, and coaching others to learn, adapt, and grow by conquering high peaks and engaging in stimulating adventures, I have come to understand that being open to continuous disruption and constant reinvention is essential for survival and success in our chaotic and uncertain world.

This sense of restlessness continues to spark disruptive and creative changes in my life; as a result, it has taught me several key distinctions —being braver, daring, courageous, responsible, and accountable — throughout my forty-year professional career, which has spanned a period of being different and disruptive.

Being different and disruptive has allowed me to reach new inflection points, absorb new information, build new relationships, establish new systems and modalities, and elevate my confidence, capacity, and competence as an innovator through consulting, training, and coaching in innovation.

How does this link to being innovative?

This relates to innovation because when people impose barriers and roadblocks to innovation, they unconsciously inhibit and resist efforts to learn new ways of enacting constructive and creative change while being different and disruptive.

  • The crucial first step in managing this is to accept responsibility for recognizing and disrupting your internal structures, mental models, mindsets, and habitual behaviors.
  • The next step involves leveraging your cognitive dissonance to create cracks, positive openings, doorways, and thresholds, thus making space for profound changes that enable you to challenge accepted norms.
  • Finally, safely exit your comfort zone, unlearn, learn, and relearn variations in how you feel, think, and act to remain agile, adaptive, and innovative during uncertain and unstable times.

These three elements help you stand out and be disruptive, maximizing differences and diversity by fostering inquisitiveness and curiosity, and developing self-regulation strategies to manage your unconscious automatic reactions or reactive behaviors when faced with change imperatives, including digital transformation, cultural change programs, and innovation initiatives.

Being brave and different

Some of you come from learning environments that label students who challenge teachers or their learning processes as different, disruptive, and rebellious. These students are often punished, threatened, or ignored until they comply with the accepted norms and conform. This diminishes the possibilities and opportunities of maximizing diversity, difference, and disruption as catalysts for change and creativity in the classroom.

As a result, some individuals develop “negative anchors” due to being labelled as different or disruptive and learn how to act or speak to avoid their teacher’s displeasure and disapproval. This leads many to either rebel or adopt more compliant behaviors that keep them out of trouble. Those who choose to rebel miss the chance to benefit from the diversity and inclusion offered in the classroom and traditional education processes.

Only exceptional teachers and educators are curious and question why some individuals think or behave differently. Often labelled as “troublemakers,” these individuals tend to be alienated from the more compliant students, leading many “disruptive” students to fall by the wayside, unable to progress and achieve their full potential. Many of these “deviants” seek alternative ways of becoming socialized and educated. In contrast, others experience exclusion and social and intellectual alienation rather than maximizing the possibilities of being different and disruptive to the world.

  • Finding the courage to rebel.

Alternatively, many found the courage and resilience to persist in our rebellion and challenge the status quo. By being different, disruptive, and diverging from the norm, many of us changed our game and, ultimately, the world! People achieved this by thinking thoughts no one else considered and taking actions no one else pursued, flipping conventions on their heads and making the ordinary unexpected through difference and disruption.

The outdated labels and negative associations tied to being different and disruptive have become ingrained in the organizational mindset through schools and educational institutions. These continue to create paralyzing, fear-driven responses to embracing change and adopting innovation. This often hinders organizations from fully embracing people’s collective intelligence, developing the skills and maximizing the possibilities and creativity that disruption, diversity, inclusion, and difference present:

  • Diversity, inclusion, difference, and disruption are essential tools for thinking differently in ways that change the business landscape!
  • Disruptive, deviant and diverse teams that differ significantly and challenge the status quo can think the unthinkable, surprising the world with new inventions and unexpected solutions through their disruptive, collaborative, and creative thinking strategies, which are crucial for innovation success.

Being the disruptive change

Choosing the self-disruption path forces you to climb steep foothills of new information, relationships, and systems to take the first steps toward becoming the change you wish to see in the world.

  • Reframing Disruption

For many, even the word ” disruption ” is perceived as unfavorable and intimidating. When we were confronted at school by disruptive students, we would duck for cover to avoid the teacher’s wrath.  Similarly, in group and team projects where one person opposes, argues, dominates the conversation, and doesn’t pay attention to or listen to anyone else’s opinions, we tend to stay silent and disengage from the discussion.

Many situations and problems require changes, upgrades, or removal of systems or processes, which disrupt the norm. The global pandemic significantly disrupted the traditional 9:00 am to 5:00 pm office workday, leading to the advantages of more flexible work environments where people have adapted to numerous challenges and forged a new working world.

This prompts us to reconsider how we might reframe disruption from its typical definition.

Original Definition of Disruption (Oxford Dictionary): “Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process.”“Radical change to an existing industry or market due to technological innovation” Reframing Disruption“An opening, doorway and threshold for intentionally disturbing or interrupting an event, activity, or process positively, constructively to effect radical changes that contribute towards the common good (people, profit and planet) differently.

Yet complacent, inwardly focused, conventional business methods result only in continuous or incremental disturbances or changes. In contrast, being different and safely disruptive to activate profound interruptions to business as usual is required to transform the business game.

Disruption without a positive, constructive, value-adding intent and relevant context makes people fearful and anxious. Many individuals have blind spots regarding how their fear-driven learning or survival anxieties negatively affect their effectiveness and productivity. They may even attempt to mask their fears and learning shortcomings by pretending to know things they don’t.

It starts with disrupting yourself.

Personal or self-disruption opens pathways for self-discovery, self-transformation, and innovation in a volatile and chaotic world where disruptive change is constant and inevitable. 

This involves becoming emotionally energized and mentally stimulated by engaging in a journey of continuous discovery that maximizes the value and benefits of being different and disruptive. It includes a commitment to ongoing learning and a willingness to identify and take smart risks, reframe, and embrace constraints as catalysts for creative thinking. This approach involves failing fast to learn by doing, generating ground-breaking ideas, and taking unexpected and surprising right turns that lead to new ways forward. Particularly as we explore what AI can do and what it should do, we need to ensure that our courageous and rebellious traits support its development and applications to help build a brighter future for all.

Being different and disruptive shifts the needle, increasing the possibilities for game-changing reinventions and innovations. Co-creative relationships with AI can support us in restructuring and reimagining how we approach customers, markets, communities, and the world in unprecedented ways. 

This is an excerpt from our upcoming book, Anyone Can Learn to Innovate, which is due for publication in late 2025.

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack. It is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over nine weeks. It can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

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-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pexels

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Building Innovation Momentum Without the Struggle

Five Questions for Tendayi Viki

Building Innovation Momentum Without the Struggle

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Innovation efforts get stuck long before they scale because innovation isn’t an idea problem. It’s a leadership problem.  And one of those problems is that leaders are expected to spark transformation, without rocking the boat.

I’ve spent my career in corporate innovation (and wrote a book about it), so I was thrilled to sit down with Tendayi Viki, author of Pirates in the Navy and one of the most thoughtful voices on corporate innovation.

Our conversation didn’t follow the usual playbook about frameworks and metrics. Instead, it surfaced something deeper: how small wins, earned trust, and emotional intelligence quietly power real change.

If you’re tasked with driving innovation inside a large organization—or supporting the people who are—this conversation will challenge what you think it takes to succeed.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Robyn Bolton (RB): You work with a lot of corporate leaders. What’s one piece of conventional wisdom they need to unlearn about innovation?

Tendayi Viki (TV): That you need to start with a big bang. That transformation only works if it launches with maximum support and visibility from day one.

But we don’t think that way about launching new products. We talk about starting with early adopters. Steve Blank even outlines five traits of early evangelists: they know they have the problem, they care about solving it, they’re actively searching for a solution, they’ve tried to fix it themselves, and they have budget. That’s where momentum comes from.

But in corporate settings, I see leaders trying to roll out transformation as if it is a company-wide software update. I once worked with someone in South Africa who was introduced as the new head of innovation at a big all-hands event. He told me later, “I wish I hadn’t started with such a big bang. It created resentment—I hadn’t even built a track record yet.”

Instead of struggling and pushing change on people, I try to help leaders build momentum. Think of it like a flywheel. You start slow, with the right people, at the right points of leverage. You work with early adopter leaders, tell stories about their wins, invite others to join. Soon, you’re not persuading anyone—you’ve got movement.

RB: Have you seen that kind of momentum work in practice?

TV: A few great examples stand out.

Tendayi VikiClaudia Kotchka at P&G didn’t go around talking about design thinking when she started. She picked a struggling brand and applied the tools there. Once that project succeeded, people paid attention. More leaders asked for help. That success did the selling.

And there’s a story from Samsung that stuck with me. A transformation team was tasked with leading “big innovation,” but they didn’t start by preaching theory. They said, “Let’s help senior leaders solve the problems they’re dealing with right now.” Not future-state stuff—just practical challenges. They built credibility by delivering value, not running roadshows.

If you can’t find early adopters, then take one step back. Solve someone’s actual problem. People are always fans of solving their own problems.

RB: When you think about leaders who are good at building momentum, what qualities or mindsets do they tend to have?

TV: Patience is huge. This stuff takes time. And you have to set expectations with the people who gave you the mandate: “It’s not going to look like much at first—but it’s working.”

And I think you can measure momentum. Not just adoption metrics, but something simpler: how many people are coming to you without you pushing them? That’s real traction. You don’t have to chase them. They’re curious. They’ve seen the early wins.

Another big one is humility. You’ve got to respect the people who resist you. That doesn’t mean agreeing with them, but it means understanding. Maybe they need to see social proof. Maybe they’re waiting for cover from another leader. Maybe they’re not comfortable standing out.

None of that means they’re wrong. It just means they’re human. So work with the confident few first and bring in the rest when they’re ready.

RB: Have you always approached resistance that way?

TV: Oh no—I learned that one the hard way.

Early in my career, I was running a workshop at Pearson. I was beating up on this publishing group about how they’re going to get killed by digital, and they were arguing.  It was a really difficult conversation, and I was convinced I was right and they were wrong.

Afterward, one of the leaders pulled me aside and said, “I don’t disagree with what you said. I think you’re right. But I didn’t like how you made us feel.”

And that was the moment. They weren’t resisting because of the content. They were reacting to how I delivered it. I made them feel stupid, even if I didn’t mean to. And their only move was to push back.

It took me years to absorb that lesson. But now I never forget: if people are resisting, check the emotional tone before you check the content.

RB: Last question. What is one thing you’d like to say to corporate leaders trying to drive innovation?

TV: Just chill!

Seriously. There’s so much *efforting* in corporate transformation. All the chasing, tracking, nudging, following up. “Have they responded to the email? Did you call them?” All that pressure to push, to prove.

But it reminds me of this Malcolm Gladwell podcast, Relax and Win, about San Jose State sprinters. Their coach taught them that to run their fastest, they had to stay relaxed. When you tense up, you actually slow down.

Innovation works the same way. Don’t force it. Build momentum. Let it grow. And trust it once it’s moving.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

The real challenge in corporate innovation isn’t convincing people that change is needed—it’s helping them feel safe enough to join you.

This conversation with Tendayi reminded me that the most effective innovation leaders don’t lead with pressure or pitch decks. They lead with patience, empathy, and small wins that build momentum.

Image credit: Pexels, Tendayi Viki (via LinkedIn)

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Don’t Get Fooled by Hucksters, Gurus and Consultants

Don't Get Fooled by Hucksters, Gurus And Consultants

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When I lived in Poland, it was common to say that “life is cruel, and full of traps.” From an American perspective, the aphorism can be a bit of a culture shock. We’re raised to believe in the power of positivity, the American dream and the can-do spirit. Negativity can be seen as something worse than a weakness, both an indulgence and a privation at the same time.

Over the years, however, I came to respect the Poles’ innate suspicion. The truth is that we are far too easily fooled and taken in by those prey on the glitches in our cognitive machinery. Sometimes the ones peddling bunk have fooled also themselves. Their claims seem to be supported by logic and evidence, but their promises never quite pan out.

We’re taken in because we want their claims to be true. We’d like to think that there is a secret we’re missing, that there’s a black magic that we’re not privy to and, if we prove our worth and obtain access to a few simple truths, we’ll capture the success that eludes us. Yet these frauds follow common patterns and there are telltale signs we can learn to spot.

1. The Survivorship Bias Trick

In 2005 W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, both distinguished professors at INSEAD, published Blue Ocean Strategy. In their study of 108 companies the authors found that “blue ocean” launches, those in new categories without competition, far outperformed the shark-infested “red ocean” line extensions that are the norm in the corporate world. It was an immediate hit, selling over 3.5 million copies.

Bain consultants Chris Zook and James Allen’ book, Profit from the Core, boasted even more extensive research encompassing 200 case studies, a database of 1,854 companies, 100 interviews of senior executives and an “extensive review” of existing literature. They found that firms that focused on their ”core” far outperformed those who strayed.

It doesn’t take too much thinking to start seeing problems. How can you both “focus on your core” and seek out “blue oceans”? It betrays logic that both strategies could outperform one another. Also, how do you define “core?” Core markets? Core capabilities? Core customers? While it’s true that “blue ocean” markets lack competitors, they don’t have any customers either. Who do you sell to?

Yet there is an even bigger, more insidious problem and it is a trick that hucksters, gurus and consultants regularly employ to falsely establish dubious claims. It’s called survivorship bias. Notice how “research” doesn’t include firms that went out of business because there were no customers in those “blue oceans” or because they failed to diversify outside of their “core.” The data only pertains to the ones that survived.

Can you imagine a medical researcher failing to include the results of patients that died? Or an airplane designer forgetting to mention the prototypes that crashed? Yet hucksters, gurus and consultants get away with it all the time.

2. Dressing Up Social Proof As “Research”

Another trick hucksters, gurus and consultants use is to dress up social proof as research in order to increase their credibility as experts and establish a need for their services. They say, for example, that they find company profitability is strongly correlated with a customer focus or that culture has a statistically powerful effect on performance.

At first glance, these claims seem reasonable, but as Phil Rosenzweig explained in The Halo Effect, it’s all part of a subtle bait and switch. What is being “researched” is not really “customer focus” or “culture,” but perceptions about those things in responses to a survey. So it is highly likely that successful companies are merely being perceived as having these traits.

For example, in 2000, before the dotcom crash, Cisco was flying high. A profile in Fortune reported it to have an unparalleled culture with highly motivated employees. But just one year later, when the market tanked, the very same publication described it as “cocksure” and “naive.” Did the “culture” really change that much in a year, with the same leadership?

Some might say that it’s “obvious” that a strong culture and customer focus contribute to performance, but then why go through the whole kabuki dance of “research?” Why not just say, “if you believe these things are important, we can help you with them?” It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that their is either an intent to deceive or just pure incompetence.

You don’t have to look far to see that this is an ongoing con. A few quick Google searches led me to major consulting firms currently selling halo effects as causal relationships to trusting customers here and here.

3. The VUCA World

Today it’s become an article of faith that we live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). Business pundits tell us that we must “innovate or die.” These are taken as basic truths that are beyond questioning or reproach. Those who doubt the need for change risk being dismissed as out of touch.

The data, however, tell a very different story. A report from the OECD found that markets, especially in the United States, have become more concentrated and less competitive, with less churn among industry leaders. The number of young firms have decreased markedly as well, falling from roughly half of the total number of companies in 1982 to one third in 2013.

A comprehensive 2019 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found two correlated, but countervailing trends: the rise of “superstar” firms and the fall of labor’s share of GDP. Essentially, the typical industry has fewer, but larger players. Their increased bargaining power leads to more profits, but lower wages.

The truth is that we don’t really disrupt industries anymore. We disrupt people. Economic data shows that for most Americans, real wages have hardly budged since 1964. Income and wealth inequality remain at historic highs. Anxiety and depression, already at epidemic levels, worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

So why do hucksters, gurus and consultants insist that industries are under constant threat of disruption?

4. The Allure Of Pseudoscience

In Richard Feynman’s 1974 commencement speech at Cal-Tech, he recounted going to a new-age resort where people were learning reflexology. A man was sitting in a hot tub rubbing a woman’s big toe and asking the instructor, “Is this the pituitary?” Unable to contain himself, the great physicist blurted out, “You’re a hell of a long way from the pituitary, man!”

His point was that it’s relatively easy to make something appear “scientific” by, for example, having people wear white coats or present charts and tables, but that doesn’t really make it science. True science is testable and falsifiable. We can’t merely state what you believe to be true, but must give others a means to test it and prove us wrong.

This is important because it’s very easy for things to look like the truth, but actually be false. That’s why we need to be careful, especially when it’s something we already believe in. The burden is even greater when it’s an idea that we want to be true. That’s when we need to redouble our efforts, dig in and make sure we verify our facts.

Hucksters, gurus and consultants love to prey on our weakness for authority by saying that “the science says…” The truth is that science doesn’t “say”anything, it merely produces hypotheses that haven’t been disproven yet. Some, like Darwin’s theory of natural selection, have been around a long time, so we’re pretty sure that they’re true, but even in that case a large part of it was debunked within months. The ‘theory” as we know it now is what survived.

There are no absolute answers. There is, as Sam Arbesman has put it, a half life of facts. We can only make decisions on higher or lower levels of confidence. In the real world, there are no “sure things,” and don’t let hucksters, gurus and consultants tell you any different.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pexels

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The Rise of Data Alchemy

How an entrepreneurial couple helped start a retail revolution

The Rise of Data Alchemy

GUEST POST from John Bessant

A gold ingot about the size of an older generation smartphone weighs 1kg, 2.2 lbs. To make it requires at least a million times that weight in ore, often a great deal more. That raw material doesn’t look particularly promising — it’s plain old boring rock, grey or brown with, if you’re lucky, some tiny tell-tale flecks of glistening yellow. But there is a lot of it about; gold comes from a variety of ores , often embedded in rocks like quartz which can be found anywhere on earth. Most of which is discarded in the extensive process of refining the metal, left in mountains of yellowing rock.

There may be great value in what finally comes out of all of this but getting to that shiny soft and heavy metal requires a lot of effort. The idea of lucky prospectors panning for gold and finding a pure clean nugget glinting away below the surface of the water is as far from reality as the presence of unicorns dipping their mythical heads to drink from the stream.

That doesn’t mean gold mining isn’t worth doing; that ingot is worth around $100,000 at today’s prices. But it does focus our attention on the importance or finding ways to mine and process the precious metal as effectively as possible. A kind of alchemy, transmuting base material into something of great value.

Which is what a couple of entrepreneurs started doing thirty years ago, developing tools and techniques for refining something similarly unprepossessing into a resource increasingly prized around the world. Knowledge.

Much like the raw ore which carries the high value of gold we have mountains of data available in various forms. The trick is to turn that unpromising source into high value knowledge of the kind which increasingly fuels economic growth and underpins effective decision-making in our organizations.

Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby were early prospectors. They met back in 1980 working at the London office of CACI, a company originally founded as the California Analysis Center, Inc. by a couple of RAND Corporation scientists who thought that using simulation and analytical techniques could prove commercially useful. Their instincts were good; from its origins in the 1960s the company had grown successfully and spread its work internationally.

Dunn and Humby were a good fit for such a knowledge-based organization; they worked on a variety of projects, drawing on his skills as a mathematician and her abilities in marketing. In particular she found herself working on the retail sector, trying to use data to help retail stores with location plans by developing improved understanding of their local customer bases. They were both successful; she rose from being a marketing assistant to become the youngest vice-president (at the age of 26) in the company with a team of 40 working for her.

But growing frustration led the couple to develop a plan to set up on their own; they formed a company taking its name from theirs — dunnhumby. The idea was that Clive would leave and Edwina would continue to support him from her senior position in CACI. A good plan in theory but one which soon crashed when unfortunate realities intervened. Within ten minutes of his submitting his resignation she was sacked by the company, leaving the couple sitting round a kitchen table in their home in Chiswick, west London, with some great ideas and a vision for how data science might change the world. But not a lot actually coming in to help them make ends meet.

Using her marketing skills and his knowledge of the key mathematical tools and how to use them they set about trying to promote their big idea. Their value proposition was around helping businesses unlock the hidden value in the data which they already collected and which could offer deep insights into their customer base. An early success came with signing the Booker cash and carry group as their first client, giving them a foothold in the retail world. But it also brought a major problem; their former employer began a lawsuit claiming that they were using ‘confidential knowledge’ which the couple had been party to when working for them.

In an interview Edwina Dunn explained that this ‘…..was rubbish, because we invented the knowledge, or certainly Clive had…”. But it put them under severe pressure; if they fought they risked losing their home and everything they had built up. “It was incredibly stressful. There was a big moment where we looked at each other and knew we could lose everything. They could break us. But we came to terms with the fact that if we lost everything, including the house and what we’d saved so far, we’d start again. That was a moment where you realize you’re quite strong — and you have to be in order to survive.”

Fortunately they eventually won their battle in the High Court and were able to concentrate on developing the business, bringing their vision of helping firms use data effectively to life.. One of the key advantages which they had was an understanding of how valuable data could be at a time when organizations didn’t. Indeed for many it was seen as a cost rather than an asset; once collected for whatever purpose it was too expensive to store, still less analyze, because computer power was still expensive.

dunnhumby’s alternative strategy was based on using data analytics to create a deep understanding of customers at a differentiated level so that clients could target sales promotions and engineer deals much more accurately. Over their first couple of years they worked from home, keeping costs as low as possible and paying themselves very little as they refined the plan and gradually grew the business.

A key challenge for them, analogous to gold mining, was getting access to suitable raw material. They needed datasets just as gold miners needed deposits of ore. Their big breakthrough came when they were invited to a meeting with the Tesco supermarket chain to talk about their ideas. Grant Harrison, a Tesco manager responsible for the rollout of a new loyalty card for the chain had seen Clive Humby at a conference and was interested in the ideas he was putting forward.

(Time for a quick detour into the wonderful world of customer loyalty programs)

Rewarding customers for their loyalty to a shop or a brand is not a new idea. Indeed it has been around at least since the eighteenth century when a US merchant began giving small copper tokens which could be redeemed for purchases at his store. In the mid-19th century the UK Co-operative Wholesale Society (the Co-op) began rewarding its customers with tokens which could be saved up and redeemed for cash or goods. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company began putting coupons in its packets of tea which could be redeemed for gifts in a catalogue; by 1915 customers could choose from over 60 luxury items on offer. The idea soon spread with an increasing number of retailers offering rewards for loyalty to shoppers in the form of tokens, stamps and points which could be collected. Frequent flyers were rewarded for traveling with the same airline, drivers could receive loyalty points to get discounts on fuel and shoppers could collect stamps to be redeemed for an ever increasing range of goods and services. New businesses emerged acting as the brokers, supplying the stamps or tokens and operating the schemes on behalf of major clients.

Tesco Clubcard

Data as a By-Product

The idea underpinning this long-standing business was essentially about getting close to and keeping customers; a by-product was the information that some of these schemes could reveal about customer identity and behavior. Something which the team at Tesco saw as a possibility when it was planning the launch of its ‘Clubcard’ as a points-based loyalty program in the early 1990s. Early trials of the idea suggested that in addition to the usual benefits of keeping customers loyal to the brand the Clubcard might also give them access to useful customer insights which could help future planning.

Harrison’s early work suggested that it might be possible to ‘mine’ the data about transactions made using the card but talks with major IT services companies suggested the costs and timescale would be significant. Faced with estimates suggesting a development time of three years and a cost running into tens of millions of pounds he thought it worth exploring what outsiders like dunnhumby might be able to offer.

Their initial offer proposed a 10-week development project costing around £250k and he decided to take the risk of seeing what they could come up with. dunnhumby developed a version of the Clubcard which was trialed in nine stores over a three month period; they presented their results at the end of that time and caught the attention of increasingly senior management. Eventually they were invited to present to the Tesco board; their report was met by a long and awkward silence.

It was finally broken by Lord MacLaurin, the chairman, who memorably captured the huge implications of what the couple had presented. “What scares me about this is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years.”

What began as a short-term consulting project was transformative for both sides. dunnhumby’s work showed in detail patterns in what customers were buying, who they were broken down by various categories and identifying where further ‘data mining’ might be useful. Clubcard became the world’s first mass customization loyalty program in the world, offering a much finer degree of insight into particular groups of customers than anything that had previously been available.

That project became a long-term partnership from which both sides learned and were able to grow. Tesco’s success helped it overtake Sainsbury’s to become the top UK supermarket within a year of the launch of Clubcard. They not only benefited from their own use of the data analytics approach; in partnership with dunnhumby they signed similar deals with other supermarkets around the world. So successful was the Clubcard for Tesco that dunnhumby was soon approached to do the same for Kroger, the US chain competing with the giant Walmart.

In 2002 Tesco bought a 53% stake in the business and in 2010 bought the remainder. By that time the business was making profits of £46 million on a £248 million turnover. It employed 1,300 people across 30 offices worldwide and had other clients including Cadbury, Vodafone, Shell and Unilever. What had started as a kitchen table office and a real risk of bankruptcy for the two entrepreneurs had paid off to the tune of an estimated £93million.

At the heart of their original business was a simple belief — that buyer behavior wasn’t random but something which could be analyzed and the resulting understanding used to develop far more effective strategies for reaching and satisfying customer needs. With millions of customers the task of data mining was difficult but the rewards in terms of deep and tailored insights about segments and even individual purchasers would outweigh the costs in developing the necessary analytical technology. In a world increasingly driven by mass customization the potential for getting close to the individual customer and communicating with them, responding to their needs, anticipating their preferences and engaging their long-term loyalty offered a real strategic advantage to whoever could realize it.

These days we take the power of such analytics for granted; the spectacular rise of many of the big players on the global business scene like Google, Meta, Amazon and Alibaba owes a huge amount to such customer data science. Its tentacles reach beyond commercial transactions to the densely-populated world of social media and down into murky waters of electoral influencing and opinion manipulation. And with the rapid rise of machine learning the potential for deeply customized interactions individualized from a population of billions becomes a distinct possibility.

Dunnhumby offers an entrepreneurial success story demonstrating how a vision — in this case seeing the potential value in something others discounted or threw away — can become a reality. Dunn and Humby can claim to being pioneers in the world of data science and to have worked some alchemical magic, turning waste into gold. But it’s not a story of getting lucky; instead it reminds us of some key lessons about successful innovation management.

· First it involves much more than a big idea; it’s recognizing and shaping opportunity from the context around that idea. And it’s about both vision — seeing what’s possible — and what Angela Duckworth calls ‘grit’. Being able to put in the hard work to bring the idea to life and coping with the setbacks and unexpected challenges which the journey throws up. Perseverance and resilience are qualities which the couple clearly had in spades, not least when they were sitting round the kitchen table with no income, no clients and the threat of a lawsuit putting their self-belief to the test.

· Their success wasn’t built on a magic single idea which turned out to be just what Tesco needed — right idea, right place, right time. It was more along the lines of Pasteur’s famous dictum ‘ chance favors the prepared mind’. In their case they were able to respond quickly and effectively to the Tesco challenge because of the deep knowledge they’d already acquired developing and honing the tools of their trade.

Nor was it something which emerged overnight. It is a story of scaling a great idea through careful strategic development. At the core is a commitment to the knowledge base , the core competence which enabled them to enter and pioneer the field of customer data science (CDS). They hired smart people and built close relationships with universities who helped them identify the talent needed to contribute to the growing workload. When they started with Tesco they employed 30 staff and this number doubled each year over the next five. They created an academic partnerships program, developing research links with world leading institutions which has enabled them to stay abreast of the science shaping the future of their industry.

· Scaling innovation is a multi-player game and in many interviews the couple have repeatedly drawn attention to their commitment to developing partnerships as a way of growing. Their early and close relationship with Tesco was a deep and long-term relationship; one indicator was the level of trust which developed between them to the point where dunnhumby had access to all of Tesco’s cost information. They were able to see the profit margin of every product sold in the stores and with that kind of data it became possible to develop some of the elements of the Clubcard approach which gave it such a competitive edge.

They developed similar close links with other players like Kroger as they grew the business. Building a value network in this fashion enabled them to leverage resources, open up market access, and develop enhanced solutions and services. As Edwina Dunn explained in an interview looking back on how they successfully scaled their idea ‘….my best decision… was to do joint ventures with companies. Where they win, we win, and they make sure you never lose’.

Conclusion

There’s a famous old Yorkshire expression; ‘where there’s muck, there’s brass’ — which , roughly translated suggests that sometimes there’s real value in what might otherwise be seen as worthless. The challenge, whether we are talking about recovering precious metals from discarded scrap, re-using waste heat in sustainable energy schemes or seeing and exploiting the value in discarded data, is the same. How to turn what might be alchemy to robust and widely used science. A case well made by Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby thirty years ago and as relevant now as ever.


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It All Starts with Wanting Things to be Different

It All Starts With Wanting Things to be Different

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Wanting things to be different is a good start, but it’s not enough. To create conditions for things to move in a new direction, you’ve got to change your behavior. But with systems that involve people, this is not a straightforward process.

To create conditions for the system to change, you must understand the system”s disposition – the lines along which it prefers to change.. And to do that, you’ve got to push on the system and watch its response. With people systems, the response is not knowable before the experiment.

If you expect to be able to predict how the system will respond, working with people systems can be frustrating. I offer some guidance here. With this work, you are not responsible for the system’s response, you are only responsible for how you respond to the system’s response.

If the system responds in a way you like, turn that experiment into a project to amplify the change. If the system responds in a way you dislike, unwind the experiment. Here’s a simple mantra – do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. (Thanks to Dave Snowden for this.)

If you don’t like how things are going, you have only one lever to pull. You can only change.your response to what you see and experience. You can respond by pushing on the system and responding to what you see or you can respond by changing what you think and feel about the system.

But keep in mind that you are part of the system. And maybe the system is running an experiment on you. Either way, your only choice is to choose how to respond.

Image credits: 1 of 850+ FREE quote slides available for download at http://misterinnovation.com

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Doing Personalization Correctly

Doing Personalization Correctly

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Companies today face three critical marketing and Customer Experience (CX) challenges:

  1. How can you keep customers coming back?
  2. How can you get your customers’ attention so they don’t consider switching to the competition?
  3. How do you create an experience that makes price less relevant?

These questions and others can be answered in one word: Personalization.

It used to be that personalization was a marketing tactic. Simply using the customer’s name in the salutation of an email or letter, such as “Dear Shep,” was personalization in its most basic form. Include a reference in the body of the message, for example, what city the customer lives in, and you had what many considered to be a more sophisticated personalization program.

Today, the concept of personalization has blended into part of the customer experience. Using a name is barely a personalized experience. Using information about the customer that feels like the company or brand knows them takes marketing from promotional to customer experience.

For example, if I call a company that I’ve done business with and have questions about a new product I’m interested in purchasing or a customer service question, the company representative should have enough information about me to know how long I’ve done business with them, what products or services I’ve purchased, what problems, questions, or complaints I’ve called about and more. Using that information the right way is the beginning of a more powerful personalized experience. Customers like it when you know them.

And this concept goes beyond live interactions between a customer and an employee. A modern-day personalization messaging campaign is powerful and turns traditional email or text message marketing into a highly personalized experience.

This same experience can be used in email or text messages, either as part of customer support when customers “write in” with a question or for marketing when you want to push a message to the customer. Used the right way, you’re showing your customers that you know them.

On a recent Amazing Business Radio episode, I interviewed Ronn Nicolli, chief marketing officer of Resorts World Las Vegas. He talked about how storytelling can hit an emotional chord with a customer, helping to create and maintain an image that customers embrace and look forward to. And when the customer can relate to the story—or maybe they are part of the story—you connect at a different level. A higher level.

Nicolli said, “Ten years ago, email marketing was like fishing with dynamite. Throw the dynamite in the water—in the form of a big email campaign—and see what floats to the surface.” It was a mass marketing campaign, and the extent of personalization was the customer’s name. Today, because of advances in technology, Nicolli says, “AI gives us the ability to market in mass, but on a one-to-one basis.”

What you’re selling may be the same for everyone, but the message is highly personalized by merging the customer’s name, dates they did business, comments they made and more into the message. Nicolli referred to the AI program as an intelligent learning program.

Curating personalized messaging and visuals in mass that speak to each individual is going to resonate far better than a general message with no personalization other than the customer’s name. Nicolli shared that he can send out a million emails, and the messages are all re-curated to ensure they are meaningful and speak directly to the customer. For example, the resort may want to promote a seasonal package to its database. A message to a customer/guest who comes in with a group of friends for college basketball’s March Madness tournament weekend will receive a different email than a customer who frequents the hotel with a spouse or loved one for the occasional romantic weekend—even if the promotion is asking for the same call to action.

So, whether you’re personalizing the experience for customer support or a marketing message, it’s now all part of the customer experience. Our latest customer experience research finds that eight out of 10 customers prefer a personalized experience. They will even pay more for it, making price less relevant. They want to do business with or go to the place, like the title of the theme song from the hit 1980s TV sitcom Cheers implies, ‘Where Everybody Knows Your Name’.

This is what your customers want and expect. So, take your customer experience efforts to the next level with a personalization strategy that creates an emotional connection and gets customers to say, “I’ll be back.”

Image Credit: Shep Hyken, Pexels

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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‘Stealing’ from Artists to Make Innovations Both Novel and Familiar

AKA Self Plagiarism

Stealing from Artists to Make Innovations Both Novel and Familiar

GUEST POST from Pete Foley


This morning I came across a wonderful piece of music by one of my guitar heroes, Robert Fripp, of King Crimson fame.  It was a duet with Andy Sommers (The Police).  You don’t need to listen to it to connect to the insight it gave me, but if you are interested, you can watch it here. It’s interesting and innovative music

I’m a fan of Fripp, in part because of his technical expertise with the guitar, but mostly because of his innovation and restless creativity.   King Crimson are not a top 40 band, but they’ve enjoyed a long and successful career going back to the late 1960’s.  Their longevity derives, at least in part from their ability to completely reinvent themselves, and challenge their audience on a regular basis.  But they do so while also retaining a loyal following and owning a unique space in music.  They have, over 50 odd years, managed to walk the tightrope between constant change and ongoing familiarity.  

The Novelty-Familiarity Dichotomy:  Stepping back, that tightrope is one of the biggest challenges we all face as innovators.  Hitting the sweet spot between novelty and familiarity is key to both trial and repeat. If we don’t offer something new and interesting, then people have no reason to try us, and are better off staying with their existing habits and behaviors.  But make it too different, and we create a barrier to adoption, because we ask potential users to take a risk by straying from the proven and familiar, and to put effort into trying, using and understanding us. 

This reflects the somewhat schizophrenic, or at least dual personality of our collective human behavior.  We are drawn to familiarity, but have also evolved to crave novelty.  Our desire to experiment and explore is key to why we are the dominant species on the planet, and have expanded our presence to just about every habitat on the planet.  But the lower cognitive demands of the familiar mean much of our life is still dominated by habits, comfortable repetition and familiar activities.  Whether we an artist, a brand, work in an office, or are simply in a romantic relationship, we all have to navigate this dichotomy.  

Self Plagiarizing:  That brings me back to Robert Fripp.  Given his history of continuous change, and much as I enjoyed the track, I was surprised that the core riff sounded very, very similar to a King Crimson song Thela Hut Ginje, released the year before.  They are both Robert Fripp co-compositions, so he was effectively ‘stealing’ his own ideas, or self plagiarizing. 

Initially that seemed odd for someone who has for decades been a formidable change agent.   But I often learn a lot about the innovation process via analogy from music and fine arts.  So I started thinking about self plagiarism, and if it is a tool we could or should use more in innovation in general, as a potential way to maintain familiarity while also driving change  

Transferring our own signatures into multiple new executions ensures familiarity and hence reassures to our ‘loyal’ users.  But in parallel, putting those signatures in new contexts also provides a way to draw in new ‘fans’, or safely break monotony for our ‘regulars’.   Of course, at one level, the reassurance element is exactly what branding does.   But the concept of self plagiarism is potentially a way to achieve this on a more subtle, implicit level.   

Name that Band!  The arts community are masters of this.   It’s amazing to me how often we almost instantly recognize an artist, even if the painting or song itself is not familiar.  Maybe it’s a unique voice, a unique style or sound, or perhaps a signature motif.  Whether it’s David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Pablo Picasso,  Salvador Dali or Taylor Swift, we intuitively and largely unconsciously recognize their ‘style’.   Of course, explicit continuity and consistency is also important.  The wall of color in a supermarket acts as both a signpost, and reinforces important popularity cues.   Even in more dispersed digital environments, more ‘explicit’  cues provide important and cognitively simple cues that tie individual innovations to over-arching brands.  

But self reference, or self plagiarism is an additional tool that I think is worth exploring.  It allows us to leverage (implicit) sensory cues to reinforce brand consistency, and is one potential way to reinforce continuity in the face of evolutionary or even disruptive change. And just as you may intuitively recognize a song by your favorite artist without having to ‘think’ about it, it can operate very quickly, and help an innovation to ‘feel’ right.

Bob Dylan Goes Electric: And having more implicit tools can help with some of the inherent constraints of consistent branding.  Chasing familiarity can be both a blessing and a curse; ask any classic rock band on a greatest hits tour.  Or for any of you who saw the excellent “A Complete Unknown’ movie about Dylan, that culminates in the outrage he created with his core fan base by ‘going electric.  Maintaining familiarity ‘talks’ to a loyal audience, but can also be quite constraining, especially for the most innovative amongst us. And this can be especially challenging if, as in Dylan’s case, the outside world is changing quickly and we need or want to respond.  But there are numerous examples of artists who have done this quite successfully.  For better or for worse, Dylan still sounded distinctly like Dylan after he ‘rebranded’ as electric.  David Bowie, Madonna, or the different ‘periods’ that describe Picasso’s catalog are good examples of dramatic change and reinvention that still maintain some familiarity and consistency.  

What taking this kind of approach looks like for us will of course depend upon the area in which we are innovating.  But sensory cues, shapes, or relative design elements are all cues we can self-plagiarize, that add layers of familiarity, and are often difficult for competition to copy without evoking as, and hence increasing the ‘mind-share’ of their competitor.     

Of course, this is not to suggest replacing brand (visual) language and brand first design with subtle, implicit cues.   But the journey of a brand is complex, and in today’s world of rapid change, we are likely to increasingly need ways to manage ever greater changes within a ‘familiar’ context.  Thinking about different, potentially complementary ways to do this is never a bad idea. 

Image credits: Pixabay

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