The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

This is for CxO's or those who want to eventually be a CxO. How are you thinking about innovation within your organization? What are you doing to ensure that you have the right innovation leader in place?

A recent McKinsey & Company surveyed more than 2,000 executives and asked how important is innovation to them. Not surprisingly, +80% responded that innovation was extremely or very important to their companies' growth.

If that wasn't convincing, The Boston Consulting Group found that nearly 80% of executives put innovation as one of the top 3 priorities for their companies, and more than 20% made it the single top priority.

Why?

Research has shown that consistently innovative companies hold 6 times the market share and make 3 times the profit than the average in their industry.

So - what things should your innovation leaders be able to bring to your organization?

#1 - They Bring Experience: They've lived the front line of taking an idea and turning it into a success. Having a failure under the belt is a big plus. Consultants are not experienced. While they can help you understand the theory and maybe implement a process, they do not bring the experiences you need for innovation success.

#2 - Build A Culture For Innovation: Building and extending a culture for innovation is critical to an organizations success. If the culture is not aligned with innovation, the innovation leader needs to have the skills to do the hard work of re-building the culture.

#3 People: Innovation leaders understand that innovation is about people. It's human ingenuity that sparks that ideas that transform organizations. At the same time -- innovation DOES NOT happen from a single team and the role of the innovation leader is to help other leaders in the organization succeed when it comes to innovation.

#4 Executive Presence: The innovation leader must have the executive presence and ability to communicate at the most senior levels within the organization. Their role is to act as translator. They translate innovation so that executives see and understand the what and the why. They also translate executive speak so that the innovators understand what the innovation objectives are.

#5 Great Ideation Facilitator: The innovation leader knows how to create the right BHAG (Bold Harry Audacious Goal). This is what enables teams to create ideas that become game-changing innovations. The innovation leader has a proven ability to use team diversity (much broader than the HR definition of diversity) for generating better ideas.

#6 Innovation Metrics: The innovation leader has a proven track record of creating, measuring and delivering against innovation metrics. They know how to define innovation metrics tailored to the organization. They commit and take responsibility to deliver against the metrics even though they are beyond their direct control.

#7 Coach and Mentor: The innovation leader understand the difference between coach and mentor and knows when to apply each. A coach provides specific instruction regarding how to improve your performance. A mentor becomes more of a trusted adviser in areas that can cross personal and professional lines.

#8 Great Collaborators: Collaboration is fundamental to innovation success and great innovation leaders model collaboration. NIH (Not Invented Here) doesn't belong inside ANY organization just as fighting over credit is NOT collaboration. Innovation leaders are focused on getting the best out of others and not worrying about who gets credit in the end.

While I started off addressing this show to CxO's its a good scorecard for those of you who want to become innovation leaders insider your own organization.

So how would score yourself against each of the 8 items??

Don't sweat it. No one has all eight. There are a few items on the list that I need to work on myself.

The Truth And Disappointment Of Orphaned Innovations S13 Ep17

Inside any size organization, getting everyone engaged on innovation can be daunting. Its not just as simple as saying that innovation is important. You need to show the organization how. At Adobe, Mark Randall reversed engineered his approach to grassroots innovation and structured into a process called Kickbox. He didn't stop there. He and Adobe decided to open source the Kickbox approach to grassroots innovation to help other organizations innovate.

During the interview, Mark and Phil discussed:

• Mark's work experience that led him to being at Adobe and heading up innovation.
• His experience in being an entrepreneur and how that prepared him for his role in innovation leadership.
• The difficulty in reverse engineering how someone innovates so they can teach others.
• Challenging large organizations to innovate.
• The challenge that resulted in the creation of Kickbox (hint: grassroots innovation).

• The overall structure of Kickbox
• What is in the Red Box?
  • The six step/level process
  • Pre-paid credit card with $1,000
  • Scorecards, frameworks and exercises to develop ideas
• The objective of the two-day workshop where participants are given their Red Box.
• How does someone "get" a Blue Box?
• What is in the Blue Box?

• What has been the impact from Kickbox on Adobe?
• What other organizations have used Kickbox and what has been the result? (e.g. Cisco, Caterpillar)
• What improvements and changes has been contributed back to the open source material for Kickbox?

Mark's serial entrepreneurial career conceiving, designing and marketing innovative technology spans nearly 20 years and three successful high-tech start-ups. As VP of Innovation at Adobe, Mark Randall is focused on infusing divergent thinking at the software giant.

Mark has fielded over a dozen award-winning products which combined have sold over a million units, generated over $100 million in sales and won two Emmy awards. As an innovator, Mark has a dozen U.S. patents, he's been named to Digital Media Magazine's "Digital Media 100″ and he is one of Streaming Magazine's "50 Most Influential People." Mark speaks & teaches frequently on entrepreneurship, innovation and strategy and has appeared on CNN, ABC, NBC and CNBC.

The boomer market is quickly becoming the target demographic that is driving a new category of technology and innovation. The desire to allow those in this gray wave of aging adults to age in place is one area of innovation we all can appreciate.

In this weeks show, serial entrepreneur and technology executive Wendi Burkhardt shares how she found her purpose project by bringing technology and innovation to the gray wave of aging adults.

During the show, we answer questions such as:

• What was the experienced that cause your to co-found Silvernest?
• People are living longer than ever and wanting to age in place. What are the opportunities that aging adults present as a large (and growing) segment of the economic and consumer base?
• How does technology and innovation cater to this growing gray wave?
• What are some of the emerging trends in the aging demographic that are fueling innovation?
• Is it harder for companies to innovate in the aging industry because they're perceived as serving a lower-tech audience?
• Are Boomers more receptive to new technologies than their parents were? How are their outlooks and circumstances different?
• Are you finding that the 50+ demographic is open to participating in the sharing economy?
• How is the sharing economy and technology transforming aging?
• You've called gerontechnology – the blending of gerontology with technology – the hottest thing in Silicon Valley. Why is it so attractive and set to explode?
• Some of the innovation in this space is obviously coming technology, but are there other ways that companies need to innovate in their thinking or marketing to reach Boomers, empty nesters and other aging adults?
• How do we need to be shifting the conversation around innovation and technology for gray wave?
• What recommendations do you have for companies who are working to innovate in ways that serve aging adults?

As CEO of Silvernest, Wendi Burkhardt is responsible for driving the company's overall direction and strategic growth, as well as overseeing day-to-day operations. She boasts more than 25 years of technology experience working with venture startups, emerging technology companies, rapid-growth tech firms and Fortune 500 corporations.

Her history also includes working with Home Instead, a $1B in-home, senior care corporation as a key client. She is a seasoned entrepreneur, as well as a mentor and coach to social ventures.

Wendi holds a degree in International Trade & Finance from Louisiana State University, and has completed an executive education program at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

I've been going back and looking at past shows that had guests in an attempt to trigger ideas for new guests we should invite to be on the show. During the process, I started to see patterns of common attributes across this group that I label as the most the innovative people I've interviewed.

The show archive goes back to March 2005 and we've had more than 100 innovation experts and authors. These guests range from:

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee - the inventor of the world-wide web -- was on the show Dec 10, 2009
• Geoffrey Moore - author of Crossing The Chasm -- was most recently on the show July 17, 2015
• Bob Metcalfe - inventor of Ethernet and co-founder of 3COM -- was on the show April 10, 2010
• Peter Guber - co-owner of the Golden State Warriors -- was on the show Sept 28, 2015
• Nick Titus - co-founder of Myoinc Technologies -- was on the show Aug 23, 2016

I've also had the benefit of meeting and supporting other leaders with their innovation projects including Elon Musk (on the large display that is part of the dash in Tesla), Jimmy Iovine (on Beats and bringing it to the consumer electronics market) and Will.I.Am (as a sounding board on his software ideas).

1. Curiosity: Highly innovative people have an insatiable level of curiosity. How do they exhibit this curiosity? By asking really great questions. Its through questions that they push to discover more about problem or opportunity and thus allow them to form an ideas or solution.
2. Being a non-conformist (brave): These innovation leaders do not fall into a simple category of type or backgrounds. They each have gone their own way to achieve their innovation vision and they've done it without regard to what others thing.
3. Chasing the "new": Innovation leaders are always aware of the latest thing in their area of interest(s). They pride themselves on being on the leading edge - always experimenting and learning. In the technology world, they tend to have the latest devices, applications and services.
4. Perseverance: They don't take "no" for an answer. They don't let speed bumps, distraction or corporate/innovation antibodies to get in the way. They find ways to work with and around others to achieve their innovation vision.
5. Highly Flexible: Its rare that an idea will manifest itself with out changes and pivots along the way. Highly innovative people will adjust and change as they move along the process of transforming the idea into that new product or service.
6. Takes Action: Innovators don't wait around for permission. They act. They don't let themselves get caught in the "resource trap" of believing they need people, time and money to begin. They find a way to start moving forward and let the rest catch-up.

[shareable]Ideas without execution are a hobby -- and real innovators are NOT in the hobby business[/shareable]

Most people would look at the show guests and believe that each had been blessed with some kind of "super power". The reality is that we all have been blessed with the superpower of creativity and innovation -- we just need to find it, harness it, practice it and then use it.

These attributes of the most innovative people I know proves that any of us can achieve the same level of success if we want.

The ball is in your court.

While most innovators think about innovation across two types, incremental and disruptive, there is actually a third type; little ideas. Little ideas are complimentary to the existing offerings thus low risk. At the same time, little ideas can have high impact. The risk for little ideas is the desire by managements and the MBA's to apply traditional management approaches. The typical approaches, such as defining success KPI's at the start, is what will kill innovation inside an organization.

Today's guest, David Robertson, is the author of The Power of Little Ideas and we discuss:

• The benefits and challenges of management consulting projects with such firms as McKinsey.
• Background on the concept of the little ideas and why its the "third way" to innovate.
• Walk through the four decisions organizations need to make when it comes to innovation.
  • What is your key product?
  • What is your business promise?
  • How will you innovate?
  • How will you deliver your innovations?
• How do MBA's kill innovation?
• Why are early metrics a risk to innovation?
• How should companies be organized to take advantage of little ideas?
• Why the metaphor of "innovation is dating" is so powerful
• How do get the MBA to understand why little ideas is different?

David Robertson is a Professor of Practice at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2002 through 2010, he was the LEGO Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Robertson is the host of Innovation Navigation, a weekly radio show and podcast that focuses on the management of innovation. Robertson is the author of Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry and coauthor of Enterprise Architecture as Strategy.

The Power of Little Ideas looks at how well-known companies, including CarMax, GoPro, LEGO, Gatorade, Disney, USAA, Novo Nordisk, Victoria's Secret, and many others, used this approach to stave off competitive threats and achieve great success. The book lays out a clear four-step process for implementing this approach to innovation, outlines the organizational practices that can unintentionally torpedo this approach in companies, and shows how organizations can overcome those challenges.