468: Discovering the heart of innovation Part I – with Merrick Furst, PhD

How product managers can create authentic demand

Today we are visiting the topic that is at the heart of this podcast—creating products customers love. To do that, we are joined by one of the co-authors of the new book The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand.

Our guest is Dr. Merrick Furst, a Distinguished Professor and the Director of the Center for Deliberate Innovation (CDI) at Georgia Tech. In 2011, he founded Flashpoint, a first-of-its-kind deliberate innovation studio, to develop formative leaders and exceptional technology startups. Both at Flashpoint and at CDI, Merrick works with hundreds of founders and innovators and is developing the discipline of Deliberate Innovation. He has also personally founded eight startups. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[2:37] One of the aspects of your book, The Heart of Innovation, that caught my attention is the diversity of the four authors—four innovation experts from the startup world, large enterprises, nonprofits, and academia. How did that impact what the book addresses?

Many of the ideas in the book came from my work and the work of my business partner, Matt Chanoff. We created and ran a program called Flashpoint at Georgia Tech, and we learned some counterintuitive but super useful things. In the context of doing pure startups, we were unencumbered by being part of a large corporation. The difficulty for a startup is how you become of value. We realized what we learning was applicable way beyond startups.

One thing we learned is it’s hard to figure out the difference between invention and innovation. We determined a successful innovation is when people set out to do something and it continues beyond them. It doesn’t stop when they get bored or when the money runs out. It actually becomes part of the world.

Matt and I were thinking about writing a book, and we wondered who the audience would be. People told us this kind of material and way of thinking affected their whole lives. It wasn’t just they were able to raise money or be successful in business. It also changed their relationships with their spouse and kids. Additionally, this material was for the people doing innovation inside corporations. I asked my friends Daniel Sabbah, who ran software for IBM, and Mark Wegman, who is an IBM fellow and member of the National Academy of Engineering, to write a book together. We wanted to tell stories about startups, large and medium enterprise innovation projects, and how individuals can innovate in their own lives.

The hard part was taking four people who have very strong opinions and different stories and writing a book that is easy to read. We had very intense conversations. We started the conversations with reminding ourselves of the purpose of the conversation, and then we discussed the facts we could all agree on.

The thing that kills most startups is building products that customers are indifferent about. People say, “I could buy it or I could not buy it.” To be successful, you have to created something that people can’t be indifferent to. That’s the heart of the problem. You see that problem in its purest way in a startup. It’s important to ask yourself, “How is it that my customers are able to be indifferent? How can I create something in such a way that they are non-indifferent?”

[10:00] What’s an example of a product customers are not indifferent to?

Coca-Cola is super successful because everyone drinks a certain amount of liquid every day. Coke’s problem is to maintain a share of the liquid that is bought every day. If your customers find themselves in a situation in which not buying is not okay, that’s non-indifference. If not buying is okay, they can be indifferent to your product,