The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

Today, we continue our series on innovation agencies and will explore why organizations hire them.

1. To help with creative problem-solving.

An innovation agency can help organizations find new solutions to their problems. These agencies bring new perspectives and stimulate creativity, allowing companies to overcome roadblocks and generate new ideas.

1. To help with product development.

An agency can help organizations develop new products that meet customers' needs. By working with an agency, companies can access the creativity and ingenuity of the team that can help them create innovative and commercially viable products.

1. To help with business model innovation.

An innovative agency can help organizations innovate next-generation business models and test them in live settings. This process accelerates adoption.

1. To get access to creative talent.

An agency has a diverse team of highly skilled and creative professionals. Creativity is a skill that can be taught and learned, but it's usually not something you're born with. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to cultivate creativity in yourself or your team. One way to do this is to hire an innovative agency!

1. To get access to resources.

Innovative agencies typically have a wide range of resources, including funding, mentorship programs, outsourced manufacturing, channel partners, and workspace. These resources can reduce the time it takes to bring products or services to market.

1. To accelerate commercialization.

Agencies can also help organizations with the commercialization process. They can help identify and assess marketing trends and opportunities, develop testing plans, and create channel partnerships to get products and services onto the market.

1. To help drive business growth.

An innovative agency can also help organizations create and execute their growth strategies. This process includes helping to identify new markets and the latest products and services for these new markets.

1. Access to new technologies.

Many agencies have strong relationships with technology providers. These relationships can be helpful for organizations looking to stay competitive in their industry. Through access to technological advancements, agencies can bring their clients the most up-to-date and innovative technology for their innovation efforts.

1. Expert advice.

Innovation agencies have significant experience with ideation, product development, business model innovation, and commercialization. Companies can access this expertise and learn from the agency's experience.

1. To outsource innovation.

Innovation agencies can also help companies outsource their innovation efforts. Outsourcing can be helpful for organizations that don't have the time or resources to do everything themselves.

1. Access to creative talent.

Creative agencies typically have a team of highly skilled and creative professionals and connections with other organizations, such as designers, marketing agency leaders, and PR experts.

1. Specialized expertise.

Innovation agencies can help you turn your idea into a reality, whether you're a young startup or an established business. Their expertise can help you ideate, brainstorm, conduct research, create prototypes, and launch products.

1. Faster turnaround times.

Innovation agencies can often turn around projects faster than consulting companies. Their team of experienced professionals and network of contacts can help you get your idea into the market more quickly than you can do individually.

1. Lower costs.

Innovation agencies typically offer lower costs because of their deep expertise and experience. They also have access to a broader pool of creative talent, which drives down the cost of services.

1. Greater focus on innovation.

An innovation agency is focused exclusively on helping clients achieve innovation goals. In contrast, a consulting company may have other priorities that can distract it from providing the best possible service to its clients.

Let us explore what an innovation agency is and how it can help bring you more success in the challenging innovation process.

Innovation Agency is a term created to distinguish agencies that specialize in innovation from the agencies such as advertising, design, marketing, and PR agencies.

An innovation agency specializes in helping businesses create, market, and sell new products and services. They utilize a team of experts to help your business with everything from ideation to execution. An innovation consulting company allows companies to improve their innovation processes. They typically don't have expertise in ideation, prototyping, product development, and launching. However, they can help you develop a better process for coming up with new ideas and bringing them to market. The crucial difference here is that an innovation agency specializes in assisting clients in creating new products, services, or business models. In contrast, innovation consultants typically advise improving existing products, services, or business models.

Agencies have innovative staff with access to creative resources such as design studios and marketing agencies. They have a track record of helping clients successfully innovate. Innovation agencies can help clients innovate in several ways. Firstly, they help identify and define problems that need solving. Secondly, they provide access to creative resources like innovators, design studios, prototyping experts, engineering expertise, and product launch expertise. Lastly, they guide and support clients through the challenging innovation process.

An innovative agency specializes in taking ideas and turning them into new products, services, and business models. They can help clients overcome challenges that many organizations experience in translating an idea into an innovation. They help clients identify and assess opportunities, understand the customer and their needs, and develop a strong business case. Innovation agencies also create prototypes and test them with customers. They specialize in scaling innovations, protecting and commercializing them, managing risk, and making innovations sustainable.

Using an agency with a deep track record of helping clients achieve success is an excellent way to increase your chances of success with your innovation efforts. When you choose the right innovation agency, they bring together expertise you don't have to improve what you do have. They have the experience and knowledge to help you navigate the challenges during the innovation process. This can be extremely helpful in ensuring that your innovation efforts are successful.

If you want to learn more about innovation agencies and what is involved, start with a quick Google search of innovation agencies. There are several of them that specialize in different industries. Secondly, stay tuned as I will be sharing more about innovation agencies and why and how to leverage them to your benefit. Lastly, check out Techtrend Group at techtrend.com. Full Disclosure — Techtrend is the innovation agency I started in 1996 and am now the Chairman. That said, I'm not that involved in the day-to-day at Techtrend. They just recently relaunched their site and updated their portfolio. They specialize in tech, consumer electronics, architecture, and digital immersive media experiences. Techtrend will give you a good view of an innovation agency.

Stephen Key joins us to discuss how inventors can successfully license their most valued ideas.

Stephen has an extensive following on YouTube, where he coaches, mentors, and advises inventors. His channel focuses on those who have ideas but don't want to start a business. Creative people want to do what they are good at but don't always want to do the heavy lifting. This is where the licensing business model comes into play.

The first part of the process is recognizing that companies must keep innovating to stay alive. Then you need to deeply understand a specific company's culture, business model, etc., and sell them an invention that fits what they are looking for. Licensing is all about finding that perfect partner that has everything in place today. If you come up with an idea, it is not copy-proof. When you market your product to an established leader, they can get it to market fast, protecting you.

Most inventors who approached HP didn't understand our product lines, strategies, customer segments, etc. If an inventor who had done their research came to me, the conversations would have been different. Product developers need to understand the company's mission, vision, supply chain, costs, etc. Most inventors look at things only from their perspective, resulting in failure. Inventors need to invest time with potential licensees. In my ten years at HP, the winners at this were the ones who knew our mission, technologies, and competitors and had a plan of attack.

There are many contests and programs to help inventors win. CableLabs is hosting a contest called the 10G Challenge, based on new services that will run on multi-gigabyte broadband networks. The prize is $50,000 in four different categories: Health, education, work, and entertainment. The best overall idea wins $100,000. At the end of it all, the inventor keeps their idea.

Stephen started his YouTube channel, InventRight TV, to give people a roadmap on how they can license their inventions. He also created inventYes, a free program that teaches kids how to license their inventions. It's all about giving people the opportunity to see how they can change the world.

Check out Stephen's YouTube channel here.

Check out his LinkedIn page here.

Stephen Key is an author, writer, and leading expert in licensing consumer product ideas. The innovative packaging solution he brought to market has more than 20 patents and received 15 industry awards, including two Edisons. InventRight, the coaching program he cofounded in 1999, has helped people from more than 60 countries license their product ideas. Stephen has a popular YouTube channel inventRight TV, and writers for Forbes, Inc., and Entrepreneur.

In 2017, he cofounded Inventors Groups of America to educate and empower inventors and inventing group leaders. He is also the co-founder of inventYES, a free program for high school students worldwide. In 2020, he became a founding member of the United States Intellectual Property Alliance to help educate entrepreneurs and inventors on intellectual property.

Greg Shepard of BOSS Capital Partners joins us to discuss autism, neurodiversity, and entrepreneurship.

Growing up, Greg struggled with learning in school and communicating. He had a different style of learning that schools did not teach. He scored very high in some areas but struggled in others. Greg's kids go to the Winston School, which specialize in neurodiverse students. The school teaches students their learning styles before they do anything else. Once the kids understand how they learn, they can know which type best fits them.

My three kids also had different learning styles when they were growing up. My wife and I homeschooled each of them through different curriculums. The school system fails students when they don't match teaching styles to learning styles.

Greg says starting a business is like a GPS. When using a GPS, you must know your current location and where you're going. He connects that way of thinking to the acquiring of businesses. Most people jump into things before knowing where they are going and end up in the wrong place. Greg chooses to define the destination ahead of time and plan accordingly.

It is not a matter of intelligence but rather the lens you see things through. Most people learn things one way and look at things that way. Neurodivergent people look between and around, seeing things differently naturally. This ability has greatly attributed to Greg's career success.

In most organizations, neurodivergent people cannot get through the application process. To change this, organizations need to get rid of certain obstacles. Job applications often ask the wrong questions to those with different ways of thinking. Interviewers need to focus on areas these people are passionate about. This process will highlight their capabilities rather than getting overlooked. Additionally, neurodivergent people do not operate well with things that are not direct and specific. They need targeted things, and many interviewers fail to provide direct questions.

Greg is a 20-year startup veteran and serial entrepreneur with 14 liquidity events— selling two as part of a $925M transaction that won 4 PE awards for transactions between $250M-$1B. He is a ForbesBooks author and has written over 100 articles published in 25 national and international publications. Hie is also a TEDx speaker and keynote speaker for universities, associations, and conferences worldwide. He is the Host of Meet The BOSS Forbes Radio show and guested on over 25 popular podcasts and numerous network TV and radio shows.

Greg co-founded BOSS Capital Partners, a global syndicate for investing in tech startups worldwide. He also Co-Founded BOSSStartupScience, the learning center based on Greg's Business Operating Support System (BOSS). BOSS is an open-source methodology developed to empower entrepreneurs while increasing startup success rates.

Rob Tiffany joins us to discuss innovations around digital twins and where the technology is making an impact.

Rob is an industry analyst working around wireless communications, IoT, digital twins, etc. Digital twins are digital representations of a physical object. Digital twins arose with NASA when they used them as digital models of spacecraft. GE started using them for aircraft engines in the early 2000s. As the pace of innovation accelerates, things become more complicated. Rob likes to think of digital twins as "asset avatars."

For example, if you have a 2018 Ford F-150, you build the digital twin to have the same properties as the car (oil, PSI in tires, engine, etc.). The digital twin holds all the elements that make up the object. Digital twins change the whole process of building products and improving them. Rob believes digital twin technology is in the early days because of low fidelity. The first person out of the gate usually doesn't win with any innovation. Google was not the first search engine, for example.

One current issue affecting digital twins is the amount of data that an electric vehicle generates. Data is collected when the vehicle reacts to traffic, changing signs, the weather, etc. When people plug their cars in, a lot of data is jammed in and sent to the digital twins, stressing data servers.

While at Hitachi, Rob's team had a platform called Lumada, which held their digital twins and analytics. In 2016 the UK government put out an RFP as they were looking to replace all the inter-city trains in the country. Hitachi had no footprint in Europe at the time but ran Lumada on Hitachi bullet trains. They won the deal. The digital twin technology was put into a real-life situation.

Rob Tiffany is Founder and Managing Director at Digital Insights. Rob served as Vice President and Head of IoT Strategy at Ericsson, driving 5G connection management for IoT devices. As CTO and Global Product Manager at Hitachi, he received the Presidential "Product of the Year" award for designing the Lumada Industrial IoT platform, which landed in Gartner's "Leaders" Magic Quadrant. Spending most of his career at Microsoft, Rob was Global Technology Lead for the Azure IoT cloud platform and co-authored its reference architecture. Before Microsoft, he co-founded NetPerceptor developing one of the industry's earliest Mobile Device Management (MDM/EMM) platforms for smartphones.

A bestselling author and frequent keynote speaker, Rob serves on multiple boards. He is routinely ranked as one of the top IoT experts and influencers globally by Inc Magazine, Onalytica and others.

Scott Crowder of IBM joins us to discuss quantum computing and its potential to change the world of technology.

Scott leads the quantum computing efforts at IBM. Quantum computing is an entirely different information science than what is considered classical computing. Quantum scales exponentially, whereas classical scales linearly. Data with structure, especially machine learning, and simulating quantum mechanics can't be done on a classical computer. Because of advances in technology, energy efficiency has dramatically increased over the last 70 years but still isn't linear. With quantum computing, every time a cubit is added to a system, the space that can be explored is doubled. This means that computing power is immensely more significant and more efficient. As Scott put it, it's "sci-fi come to life."

To win in the quantum space, several things need to be done. The technology needs developing, as there is a ton of innovation required. Quantum computing needs to be simplified, which is one of IBM's goals. They also want to make the technology available to as many people as possible. IBM believes they will be the first to market quantum computers as doing more than classical computers.

IBM has one of the largest userbases of people exploring quantum computing. There are over twenty quantum computers available on the cloud today, with systems worldwide. They have a more open-access platform for exploration. They also have a platform with higher quality and capacity systems they provide to their partners for more profound research. They collaborate with over 175 industry, academic, and research institutions to identify ways to leverage the technology. IBM has adopted the attitude of "not doing everything on their own." Scott says if they understand the problem better, they will create better technologies.

Scott crowder is the Vice president of IBM Quantum and the CTO of IBM Systems, Technical Strategy & Transformation. Scott has his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Alan Proithis of Capstone Partners joins us to discuss private 5G networks and the importance of innovation collaboration.

Allen and I have worked together at different companies since the mid-90s. He is currently focused on private 5G networks. There is an unprecedented amount of investment and interest in the mobile space. People want to apply 5G to some crazy areas. The consumer market around it has created some misconceptions about the technology. Allen believes consumers won't benefit from it in the short term. Enterprises, on the other hand, can potentially benefit significantly from it. While public networks are still needed, 5G brings in a new dynamic. You can tune virtual slices of a private network to do exactly what you want, where you want, all on-demand. This process can all be done securely, which is appealing to many.

Allen's firm, Capstone Partners, was part of a team that delivered the first private 5G network for the Department of Defense. Cisco, Federated Wireless, JMA Wireless, the Marine Corps customers, and various smaller partners played a vital role in the project. There was a high level of collaboration, and this project wouldn't have worked without it. Collaborating with the right set of partners is key to reaching end goals. Innovation without collaboration is doomed for failure.

Within the practice of collaboration lies the critical task of defining the problem. Understanding the problem is a lot harder than most people think. Allen says understanding the problem requires getting your hands dirty. If you don't take the time to do this, you'll never understand the customer's problem deeply enough. As a result, you will not adequately solve their problem. No matter what the innovation is, it is vital to define the problem you are trying deeply

Allen Proithis is the CEO of Capstone Partners, a strategic advisory firm for clients in the mobile, IoT, software, and technology industries. Before Capstone, Allen was the President of Sigfox, North America. He created a high-performance team that built an Internet of Things business with top enterprise companies and verticals while providing wireless coverage for over 70M people in the US.

Before Sigfox, he created a $155M IoT joint venture (Convida Wireless) with Sony, InterDigital, and Stephens Capital and served as Chairman. In 2014, Allen raised $15M to launch an Internet of Things spinout focused on accelerating value produced by the data generated by IoT. At InterDigital, Allen oversaw all market development activities, including commercializing IoT, Wi-Fi, shared spectrum, and video content management solutions. Allen has been on/recognized by: CNBC, Fortune, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fierce Wireless, MWC, and CES.

Peter Lierni of Solutioneering joins us on the second episode of Season 18. The Solution Engineering Tool (SET) is a framework that takes an engineering-based approach to win competitive deals.

As a Navy officer, Peter lived on a ship, which he described as a system of systems. After leaving the Navy, he started consulting in the Pentagon, assessing complex weapons systems. Peter connected building a complex system and doing business development and capture and proposal planning. Peter began using different mental models he developed from his experiences to win deals. He was eventually encouraged to develop this into a framework, and the Solution Engineering Tool (SET) was born. SET is a tool of tools, holding sixty-one tools that companies of all sizes can use and for deals of all sizes and timeframes.

Innovators often fail to think enough about their innovation's value critically. This critical thinking failure is where SET comes into play. SET starts with an issue and key factor analysis. The goal is to understand the problem, why it's a problem, and identify the critical problems and why they are problems. After that, it's a matter of showing the value your innovation offers.

When SET is used, it stores a data lake of competitive intelligence. SET provides a digital and visual blueprint that federates all the thinking behind how you got to a win. Many companies can't repeat successes because they didn't document the process behind them. SET collects strategies behind wins to be built upon and repeated in the future. SET's root cause analysis helps identify areas of success and areas that need improvement. In the case of a loss, the compiled data can see where things went wrong. Peter says no matter what innovation tool you use, it's not the tool that makes you successful. It is how you use it. SET is meant to facilitate collaborative analysis to help you make decisions on strategies you apply, potential teams to partner with, who you should hire, and give reasons as to why your company should win a deal.

Welcome to season 18 of the Killer Innovations podcast! We are thrilled to kick off the 18th year of Killer Innovations. This episode is dedicated to answering your questions about the podcast.

My mentor Bob Davis, who I attribute much of my success to, inspired me to pay it forward

I used to listen to a motivational speaker, Earl Nightingale's Insight Audio Magazine cassette tapes.

I recorded it in a Marriott bathroom, using a $5 microphone attached to my laptop.

Adam Curry, an MTV VJ who had a podcast called Daily Source Code, promoted my show.

Odeo was a podcast directory that promoted my podcast on their show. Not too long after, the Apple podcast came out, killing Odeo. Odeo pivoted and eventually became Twitter.

What was the original audience for the podcast? – The original audience consisted of mostly tech people.

Yes, most early listeners were podcasters. Now people from all sorts of backgrounds are listening.

Longevity (averaged 40-45 episodes a year for seventeen years) and staying consistent with the content.

This show is my creative outlet.

Geoffrey Moore or Peter Guber.

Dealing with personal issues that impact getting a show out and maintaining consistency

Don't chase the numbers. Focus on your content, be consistent, and collaborate with other podcasters who you like.

The podcast is encouraging and holds timeless content with a long/deep archive of episodes – take advantage of it.

Inspiring others to podcast, inspiring creatives to create, and inspiring innovators to invent

Fans were becoming friends – Woody, Seth (designer), and many others.

The listeners of the show threw me a party in London.

To know more about the Killer Innovations Show, listen to this week's show: Ask Me Anything Q&A.

Innovation doesn't happen by accident. It takes planning, action, and the right tools to achieve game-changing innovations.

Need help? Check out the aids/help over at innovation.tools.