In this episode, we are joined by Whitney Johnson to discuss her upcoming book, Build an A-Team. Whitney is the author of the bestselling book Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Innovation to Work, and is the founder of the accompanying Disrupt Yourself podcast. Whitney is also a noted speaker, and executive and innovation coach, and is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review.

What was covered

• The S-curve, and how it can be used to gauge not only product growth and investment, but individual learning and innovation
• The stages of learning in the S-curve, and how to predict challenges and boredom in the individual learning process in order to drive growth and prevent a lack of innovation
• Why Whitney believes organizations should hire “disruptively”, taking on market rather than competitive risk for this core business process

Key Takeaways and Learnings

• ‘Onrampers’ and ‘boomerangers’, and how organizations can benefit from hiring these ex-employees who return with fresh skills and competitor and client knowledge
• ‘Taking the pulse of the workplace’ and how to optimize your people for innovation and predict disruption by analyzing the different stages of learning within your team
• ‘Learn, leap, repeat’; Whitney’s theory for leaders on how to use the S-curve model to lead teams towards innovation by implementing fresh learning cycles

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Get in touch with Whitney Johnson via email, LinkedIn or Twitter
• Whithey Johnson's website
• Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve, a book by Whitney Johnson
• Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work, a book by Whitney Johnson
• Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream, a book by Whitney Johnson
• Whitney Johnson's podcast
• The Innovation Ecosystem Podcast Episode 013 – The Disruptive Individual, Riding the S-Curve and Liberating Constraints with Whitney Johnson
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, a book by Clayton M. Christensen
• The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued, a book by Ann Crittenden
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, a book by Liz Wiseman