The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

The Consumer Electronics Show 2021 (CES) will be fully digital due to COVID-19. The show will be available online and in seventeen different languages, a virtual innovation to say the least. If you are registered, you get thirty days to view all of the available content. Karen Chupka, the Executive Vice President of CES, joins us to discuss what we should look forward to at CES 2021.

Transitioning from a physical show in Las Vegas since 1978 to a virtual show has been interesting. The decision to go digital was made in July 2020 after the pandemic started to pick up. With a ton of innovation happening throughout the year, CES 2021 had to go on.

Everybody who is in the online collaboration space has seen such an explosion in usage due to COVID. These collaboration tools are now being used for doctors' appointments, family visits, schooling, etc. A year ago, nobody would have thought this would be a reality. Consumers were able to adapt to this virtual innovation a lot faster than they would have without the pandemic.

The traditional technologies that are always at CES will still be there this year. As far as new trends, there have been many digital health advancements in wearable technologies that help people better monitor themselves. On top of that, there are many new diagnostics equipment that will help doctors have more effective tele-visits. Advancements in driverless technologies and AI technologies have been popping up and new desktops, laptops, television, and gaming technologies.

In my organization Cable Labs, we worked from home in March of 2020 and recently announced that all of our staff would be doing so until May. With innovation being done virtually, productivity and R&D have increased. There is a loss in collaboration, and it is harder to fix specific problems virtually.

Even with the increase in technology, there is a decrease in group creativity. Karen believes the trend of improving the work from the home environment will continue, but we need to get back to working in-person to achieve the best results.

With the show happening virtually, many people who usually couldn't make it, now can. As a new virtual feature, CES 2021 offers the ability to opt-in to an attendee directory so people can communicate back and forth with others at the show.

CES is partnering with Microsoft to power the show this year and create the best possible experience. They created product showcases for exhibitors to show off their products in various capacities. About 1,800 companies are attending the show, and about 100 different conference sessions will be going on during the show and covering many topics.

This year, there will be a live anchor desk for two days broadcasting product announcements, hot topics, and interviews with different executives. On top of that, the digital platform will be available for thirty days to those registered, offering opportunities to see more content from the show. Closed captioning will also be available in seventeen different languages.

Karen Chupka is executive vice president, CES for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). She oversees the sales, marketing, conferences, operations and management of CTA's events including its annual tradeshow. CES is the largest annual North American tradeshow by Tradeshow Executive Magazine and Tradeshow Week under her leadership.

Chupka has been with CTA for 30 years. She has held numerous roles within the organization. Karen has been vice president of business development, director of industry relations and education, and director of marketing for CES.

To know more about virtual innovation at CES 2021, listen to this week's show: CES 2021 – A Virtual Innovation.

Consumer Electronics Show 2021 (CES) will be held virtually due to COVID-19. Despite this change, the show will be available virtually and in seventeen different languages. On top of that, if you are registered, you get thirty days to view all of the content available. Karen Chupka, the Executive Vice President of CES will be joining us to discuss what to look forward to at CES 2021.

Transitioning from a physical show that's been in Las Vegas since 1978 to a virtual show has been interesting, to say the least. The decision to go digital was made in July 2020 after the pandemic started to pick up. Over a year, there has been a ton of innovation going on, so CES 2021 had to go on. Everybody who is in the online collaboration space has seen such an explosion in usage due to COVID. These collaboration tools are now being used for things like doctor's appointments, family visits, schooling, etc. A year ago, nobody would have thought this would be a reality. Consumers were able to adopt all of these virtual technologies a lot faster than they would have without the pandemic.

The traditional technologies that are always at CES will still be there this year. As far as new trends, there have been a lot of digital health advancements in the area of wearable technologies that help people better monitor themselves. On top of that, there is a lot of new diagnostics equipment that will help doctors have more effective tele-visits. Advancements in driverless technologies and AI technologies have been popping up as well as desktops, laptops, television, and gaming technologies. In my organization Cable Labs, we went to working from home in March and recently announced that all of our staff will be doing so until May. With innovation being done virtually, the productivity and R&D has increased. That being said, there is a loss in the area of collaboration, and it is harder to fix certain problems virtually. Even with the increase in technology, there is a decrease in group creativity. Karen believes the trend of improving the work from home environment will continue, but we need to get back to working in-person to achieve the best results.

With the show being held virtually this year, a lot of people that normally couldn't make it now can. Over the years, CES has wanted to hold the show digitally and physically, so now they will be better prepared for that. As a new virtual feature, CES 2021 offers the ability to opt in to an attendee directory so people can communicate back and forth with others at the show. CES is partnering with Microsoft to power the show this year and create the best possible experience. They created product showcases for exhibitors to show off their products in various capacities. About 1,800 companies are attending the show and about 100 different conference sessions will be going on during the show and covering many different topics. This year, there will be a live anchor desk for two days broadcasting product announcements, hot topics, and interviews with different executives. On top of that, the digital platform will be available for thirty days to those who are registered, offering opportunities to see more content from the show. Closed captioning will also be available in seventeen different languages.

Karen Chupka is executive vice president, CES for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). She oversees the sales, marketing, conferences, operations and management of CTA's events including its annual tradeshow, CES. Under Chupka's leadership, CES has been named as the largest annual North American tradeshow by Tradeshow Executive Magazine and Tradeshow Week since 2001. Chupka has been with CTA for 30 years and has held numerous roles within the organization including vice president of business development, director of industry relations and education, and director of marketing for CES.

Building a library of inspiration in your innovation studio is what ensures you have a ready source of ideas. This can come in the form of a collection of innovation books. I am a visual learner, so reading books is where I often find my inspiration. I am going to walk you through some important books I have and explain why I value them. The first book is "Frank Lloyd Wright: A Visual Encyclopedia". I grew up in Chicago where Frank Lloyd Wright started and was very popular. Personally, this book reminds me to create my own style. This is where Frank Lloyd Wright separated himself from others. He created his own style and put a different spin on the design of his buildings. The next book is called "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander, a professor at UC Berkeley. This book breaks down patterns that are found through building houses, cities, and various types of other buildings. This book was used by the developers of the original Sims games. While you can't take what is in this book and apply it directly to a product or service, the book does teach an important idea. You can generate a certain feeling or experience through the patterns and designs that you use.

The third innovation book is "Designing Interactions" by Bill Moggridge which focuses on designing experiences. The book offers important insights into the origins of Google and others. The next book is "The Universal Principles of Design" by William Lidwell. This book touches on what to do with design, where problems can occur, and how to avoid them. The fifth book is "Thinker Toys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques" by Michael Michalko. In my opinion, this is a book that every innovator should have. The book brings together all of the tools, approaches, ways to brainstorm, uses of SCAMPER, etc., that are very useful for innovators. Pretty much anything that Michael puts out, I buy. Another book is "Six Thinking Hats" by Dr. Edward de Bono". I got introduced to the innovation/creativity space by watching a TV show he put out on PBS back when I was a kid. Over six or seven shows, Dr. de Bono taught about unleashing your creativity, which sparked something inside of me. The book is a great reminder to change your perspective and keep a fresh mind and is a great piece to have in your library of inspiration.

Fun Books I Keep

Now I'm going to share with you some fun books I keep that make me laugh. The first one is "The World's Worst Inventions: The Craziest Gadgets and Machines Ever Made" by Jack Watkins. This book discusses some inventions that have been deemed stupid by many. Ironically, some of these inventions have gone on to be successful after this book was published. The next book is "Fail Harder: Ridiculous Illustrations of Epic Fails" by Failblog.org Community. This book humorously discusses human failings and reminds us of our human nature.

This episode is the last of Killer Innovations as a radio show. Not an easy decision, but as part of our drive for innovation, we believe this is the best decision. We will discuss the show's history, my book and radio show deal, and what Killer Innovations will look like moving forward.

Throughout the show, we have talked about how important it is to re-evaluate and try new things. This is a challenge that many organizations come across as they have processes in place that often keep them narrow-minded. Our decision to leave the Biz Talk Radio format will open up opportunities for us to be more flexible, creative, and innovative. With this change coming out, I know the listeners have a ton of questions. To answer some questions, we will still be a weekly show but will be shorter and have no interruptions. We will also be using a podcast-only format.

Let's jump into the history of the podcast. The podcast was launched in March of 2005, and we are now in season 16. Killer Innovations is the longest continuously produced podcast in history. We were podcasting before iTunes was even a thing. We have averaged around 45-50 episodes per year. The motivation behind the podcast came from a conversation I had with my mentor Bob Davis, who I have mentioned many times in previous shows. In the conversation, I was asking Bob how I could pay him back for all the help he had given me throughout the years. Bob laughed and told me that I couldn't pay him back, rather, I could only pay it forward. At the beginning of the show, podcasting tools and technology were not nonexistent so I had to hand-code for each show. Following the launch of the podcast in 2005, my book deal came about. I was approached by my agent Mark who was from New York. One of Mark's staff was a listener of the podcast and mentioned it to him. I had a meeting with Mark that went well, and he has been my agent ever since. The book proposal was distributed in the fall of 2010 and had about nine interested publishers. I signed a book deal at the end of 2010 and finished writing the book in June of 2011, and the book was released in February of 2012. The content of the book basically came from the podcast. Doing this book deal was anything but easy and required a lot of lift. As far as the radio show goes, I got approached by Biz Talk Radio in 2015 at a tradeshow where I was speaking. They said they liked the podcast and my book, and we ended up launching the show in July of 2016.

I want to give you guys insights on how to structure media deals as I have had a very successful nationally syndicated radio show and book deal. Like I said earlier, there were nine publishers interested in the book. After meeting with the publishers, there was an auction to see who the winning publisher would be. Hyperion ended up winning and I committed to doing 75,000 words in eight months, which was a big hurdle. I was lucky to get a big advancement after the book was published in 2011. Publishers get paid back first in book deals, and after you get your advance, the publisher gets all the money until their costs are paid back. After this, the author starts collecting royalties. In my deal, the publisher took control of the audiobook and had a professional voice actor relay it. As far as the radio show goes, Biz Talk radio is a syndicator of the radio, so I had to do everything through them. They distributed the show all across the country as part of their service. As far as constraints, we had to comply with the FCC rules such as political messages, profanity, age appropriateness, etc. We also had to comply with a time constraint slot as there were commercial breaks. This is where the four segments of the show came from. There was a weekly fee we had to pay to the syndicator to distribute the show. As part of the syndication deal, we got several ad spots which we gave away to charity. Zoom funds part of the show production and has done so for six years. This is what allowed us to give away our ad spots to charities.

Let me share some lessons I learned in creating my media platform. Firstly, do what you love. I have been doing the podcast for fifteen years, and If I didn't love doing it, we wouldn't have lasted this long. Secondly, don't do it for the numbers. I can't tell you how many times I've been contacted by people who are discouraged about how many listeners they have for their podcasts. If you are being driven by the numbers, you won't stick with it, because the numbers are hard to get. While this show has been around a long time, some people aren't as interested in our content as they are in other people's and that is ok. If you focus on your new subscriber numbers, you will drive yourself crazy. Thirdly, be open to new possibilities and let your followers aid you in finding what works best. Also, you need to know when to walk away from something like we are doing now.

Today's topic is an extension of a show I did a few weeks ago about my innovation self-confidence. Entrepreneurship is a huge part of innovation at any level. On today's show, we will discuss entrepreneurship and the learning experiences and steps that made me a successful innovator throughout my career.

Entrepreneurship consists of having an idea, being assertive, having a strategy, etc. I quickly realized from my Deltek experiences that I was not ready to jump right into entrepreneurship. After working at Deltek, I went to a company called Individual Software where I was hired again by my previous boss from Deltek, Bob Davis. The company was small and had only been around for a few years, and my experiences there taught me how to work inside of a startup. At Individual Software, I worked on designing and building products through coding. At this job, everybody was a salesman, everybody was the shipping department, everyone was customer service, etc. As an entrepreneur, you have to do literally everything, and there is not time to just sit back and work on ideas. Individual Software did a great job of teaching me some basic skills of entrepreneurship and how it really plays out.

Before getting the first big IPO win that I could build my career off of, I was involved in a ton of startups. I realized early on that I was going to have to go to multiple different jobs to learn different parts of entrepreneurship. At Individual Software, my boss Joel was a former executive at a big company in Silicon Valley. He believed that the training technology around the PC was going to be the next big thing. I went there to be part of a team in a small organization and I realized yet again that you have to do everything as an entrepreneur. The next position I took was with an organization called Corporate Resource Associates. CRA was started by two people I worked with at Deltek, Bob Davis, my mentor, and Roxie Westfall. Here I wasn't involved in getting the startup running, but I came in once it was initially established. At CRA, I had my first engagement with HP as we were developing RISC (Reduced instruction set computing) processors. This job taught me how to communicate and help people understand complex items as we were training HP and others to use RISC. The most important thing I learned at CRA was assertiveness/standing up for yourself. Here, I was still young and didn't have any gray hair, so people sometimes thought I didn't know much. I also learned about strategy, as the business was newly started, and we were trying to grow it and make it functional.

At CRA we worked with HP, Intel, and Apple, as well as other smaller companies. CRA was focused on a combination of training and actual development work. Here, I realized that I was good at taking complex things and making them simple. The software I worked on was all about putting a face onto technology that was uncomfortable to many people at that time. I liked taking concepts and ideas and turning them into commercially successful ideas. This is where my entrepreneurship bug started to take off. After my time at CRA, I went off and started my own company called Millenium RAND (Research and Development), whose mission was to help innovators who had ideas but needed help making them real. This entailed going in with clients who had a raw idea but didn't have the people, skillsets, and confidence to make something out of it. This is where I started to build my reputation as I did everything from debugging hardware boards, writing embedded apps, writing user interfaces, etc. I had a couple of subcontractors and a couple of employees and ended up creating many products. One product called Thumbscan won the product of the year award at COMDEX. After creating this product, I was hired on by an entity funded by venture capitalists and ended up creating another product of the year award the following year.

At this point I had been involved in going to a startup, watching a startup get launched, launching my own company, and joining an entity funded by venture capitalists. Eventually, Thumbscan got sold off, and the founders of the product recruited me to work on another idea around supercomputers. This company was called Teraplex, which was a supercomputer company based on a new process called MISC, or minimal instruction set computer. The company was initially funded by the state of Illinois and some angel investors, and I came in as the president of the company. It was here that I first learned how to deal with angel investors and was able to secure additional funding for the company. Teraplex was quite successful and I was also able to secure some technology licensing agreements. Looking back at it all, I found that my skillset was taking an idea and turning it into an innovative product, and that is what I built my career off of.

The topic this is week is one that I have touched on over the years in various ways. People reach out to me all the time asking about this. Coaching, as well as mentoring, often get placed in the same category. In reality, they are different. We will discuss the differences between innovation coaching and mentoring and will run through some application scenarios.

When it comes to the topic of coaching and mentoring, many people often find themselves confused. They don't understand that innovation coaching and innovation mentoring are not the same. Coaching is the most common activity when it comes to innovation.

In general, coaching and mentoring are two of the top five most popular jobs out there. Innovation coaching is kind of like a sports coach. In baseball, there is a pitching coach who trains pitchers to improve in their craft. Pitching coaching is just like innovation coaching, as it seeks to help one improve in a specific area based on an assessment. It tends to be limited in duration. Also, it only works best with measurable and tangible improvement opportunities.

A good innovation coach will offer clear direction for improvement based on an assessment of one's needs. Coaching can be on the individual level, team level, or for an entire organization. An innovation coach should be able to assess and tell you what area you need to improve. They should lay out a plan for improving and being more successful in a specific area.

Mentoring is a less specific and tangible area that looks at the big picture, such as your career. An innovation mentor is a trusted advisor that crosses personal and professional lines and might be with you for many years. They help craft broader goals along with the skills and experiences to achieve them. When looking for an innovation mentor, choose someone you can learn from. You want one that has achieved innovation success in their career.

Usually focused on the individual, I have done long-term mentoring for innovation teams as well. Mentoring sessions are less formal than coaching sessions and are on an as-needed basis. Fees for mentoring most likely come from the individual. A successful mentoring role should last many years and stay constant no matter if the organization you're in changes.

There may be no fees required in rare cases if you become close to the mentor. Don't expect mentoring to be free just because some mentors might typically do it out of the kindness of the heart. Remember, mentoring relationships require time and transparency to be successful. A mentor can't do their job if you are not honest with them, and vice versa.

One of the best ways to show the differences between an innovation coach or mentor is to run through some scenarios.

First scenario: Your team is struggling to create a pitch for an idea to secure funding from your organization. You need to figure out the best way to structure your pitch to secure the funding. Is innovation coaching or mentoring the best way to aid you in your pursuit? In this situation, you could hire an innovation coach because it is a specific issue you are trying to resolve. You want to find a coach that has an excellent track record of helping teams craft pitches. Be sure to pay the coach for the work they are doing, rather than saying you'll pay them upon success.

Second scenario: Your CEO has asked you to develop innovation leaders within your existing staff. Would this be innovation coaching or mentoring? With a longer-term goal that is not tangible, so in this case, it would be innovation mentoring in a team setting.

Third scenario: Your team is running up against internal and external innovation anti-bodies (naysayers), and you need help in crafting a strategy to win the organization's support. In this situation, you need help with a specific issue within your organization, so this is an innovation coaching opportunity. You need a strategy coach to help deal with the anti-bodies and win your organization's support.

Fourth scenario: You have decided to improve your innovation abilities and skills to be more successful. This scenario is a textbook case of innovation mentoring. Here you need help in establishing your long-range career to have a successful career in innovation.

Today, we talked about the differences between innovation coaching and innovation mentoring. As we discussed, there is a difference between coaching and mentoring. Coaching is about solving particular issues such as communication skills, deliverables, executive presence, etc. Mentoring comes with long-term career advice.

My first mentor was my boss at Deltek, Bob Davis. Bob hired me and put me into the first management role of my career. He knew I could be a great software engineer, but as my mentor, he told me I had broader skills than that. I had to put in a lot of extra work to develop myself under Bob's mentorship. He put me on a career rotation, placing me in finance, marketing, advertising, sales, and IT, which helped me grow. Bob helped me think through my long-term goals and what opportunities I should look out for.

Today, I do innovation coaching and mentoring and have done small companies up to Fortune 10 companies. I've coached and mentored CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs, some lasting up to seven years long.

Check out the Disruptive Ideation Workshop that acts as a long-term investment for you or your team's success.

People are always asking me how I made it to the point I'm at today in my career. While I can't cover the full extent of my career, I want to share some valuable learning experiences. On today's show, we will discuss how I built my innovation self-confidence and what I learned early on in my career that shaped the future of my career.

Self-Confidence and Soft Skills

Looking back on my career, I realize it is all about building self-confidence. I am very thankful for those early leaders and organizations that invested heavily into me. Despite being sort of a "know-it-all", they didn't put me down, but taught me how to be a leader and encouraged me to pursue my passions. Wherever you are in your career, there are elements existing that build up self-confidence. The first area revolves around team spirit and knowing how to build a team. Your self-confidence isn't about showing people up or being the smartest person in the room. It's about being a part of a team, knowing how to build a team, and knowing how to lead a team. In the innovation game, there is no such thing as the lone innovator. Early in my career, I fed off my name being mentioned in the press. As I progressed in my career, I learned just how important the team is over the individual. The second self-confidence building element is based on being confident you can achieve and build things from what you have learned. The third area is confidence in your communication skills and knowing how to communicate effectively. Another key area of self-confidence is being able to empathize with people. The last one is assertiveness, which should be based on standing up for your ideas.

My Experience at Anchor Industries

Like I said earlier, I want to walk you guys through some of my own experiences. My wife and I met when we were young and got married in our sophomore year of college. The summer after our wedding, my wife helped me get an internship at Anchor Industries, one of the largest producers of canvas products. My wife knew the family that owned the company and had mentioned that I was looking for an internship. My initial job at Anchor was to go through and reverse-engineer the blueprints of their products as they were outdated. I started off doing drafting but also learned how to do time studies. One of the things Anchor built was pool covers. At this point in the 1980s, they would get a blueprint of the pool cover and hand draw the pool on the factory floor. Then they would lay out edges, lay the fabric, stitch or weld it, and add other things to it. This was a slow process and I felt like I could do something better. I went back after my internship and designed an automatic pool cover layout plan for a project class I had at school. This had a huge impact on Anchor's ability to make pool covers and I ended up working for anchor and building out this program for a year. Because of my self-confidence in trying new things, I was able to impact Anchor Industries and build a lasting relationship with the company. To this day, Anchor Industries is still one of the biggest producers of pool covers.

My Experience with Deltek Microsystems

After working with Anchor Industries, I worked with Deltek Microsystems, a subsidiary of Deltek. The company focused on the early stages of PCs and sought to create training materials for new PC users. I ended up there due to my success at Anchor. At Deltek, I learned a lot about teamwork as it was a new company. I was hired on as a manager of the company and this was my first-time experiencing leadership. Deltek pushed me to give talks and speeches and built my communication skills up. I also experienced failures at Deltek that taught me a lot. I learned assertiveness in this position, as I had to express my opinions and ideas to those around me. This was new to me as it was only my second real job. My boss at Deltek Microsystems, Bob Davis, my first mentor, taught me how to be a manager, to take risks, and get back up after failure. He also taught me to be self-aware and learn my strengths and weaknesses. Bob taught that if I wanted to be a good leader, I had to be experienced in running the business, not just doing the software. I sat in just about every leadership seat at Deltek from Finance and Marketing to IT.

Wrap-Up

The building of my innovation self-confidence was based on my early career experiences. Each experience contributed to all the soft skills I needed to become the leader I am today. When looking at team spirit, both Anchor and Deltek had a huge impact on my understanding. It is important to provide feedback to others and contribute your expertise to the team's ideas. Both companies impacted my self-confidence by giving me the chance to go out and try things. Deltek helped me approve my communication skills in a way that I could adapt my language to my audience. In the case of empathy, I learned to empathize with customers as well as employees. Deltek taught me to be assertive in pushing and selling your ideas. All these soft skills learned at Anchor Industries and Deltek were vital in future success with my innovation self-confidence.

This show might come off as controversial to those who are innovation consultants. However, these are my personal views on the subject. Consultants can have a significant effect on an organization for better or worse. We will discuss innovation consultants and why I believe 80% of them are not worth the money.

A consultant has some expertise and is getting paid for sharing it with a client. I started my career early on doing consulting for a company called CSC. I was working heavily in the wireless and mobile arena. In my case, I had very deep expertise in the mobile space before being a consultant.

Most people hire consultants because they lack expertise in specific areas, and this effort is becoming ever so popular in the innovation space. I get calls all the time from people asking for recommendations on consultants. Based on what I have observed, 80% of innovation consultants are not worth the money. Why am I saying that? You don't become a driving instructor after reading a book on how to drive cars. Instead, you drive the car and then teach others how to do it. There are loads of innovation consultants out there that have never actually done it.

Today, I'm going to share the four questions you should ask innovation consultants before hiring them. Firstly, “is this innovation consultant a proven innovator?” Like innovation, you can't teach people how to drive if you haven't done it before. You need to ask if the consultant has led innovation for organizations known for innovation success. Have they been a CIO, led innovation teams that have delivered, or are they credited for creating successful innovations in the marketplace? Does the industry recognize them for innovation leadership? If they don't check these boxes, they try to teach how to drive without ever doing it themselves.

Question number two is, “Who else have they been hired by?” Assuming they have the expertise and have successfully done innovation, you need to look at who has hired them. If they are endorsed by those who are known for their innovation efforts, they will have more credibility. It's a good sign if a company, known for its innovation efforts, still felt the need to hire this person. If they have zero experience working with a company with an innovation reputation, that is not necessarily negative, but is something to look at.

Another thing to look at is whether they completed any projects for their clients and have been brought back by their clients multiple times. This precedent shows that the consultant does excellent work and is getting the company success. The last thing to look at is whether you can call up the clients they mentioned in their proposals or pitches. If the consultant hides the company name from you but mentions their work, I count it as a negative mark.

Despite all that I have said, don't hire someone solely because they have done work for a well-known company. Dig deeper and validate whether they did the work and were successful or are lying about it. It amazes me how many organizations fail to do reference checks for employees and consultants. If you choose the wrong innovation consultant, your credibility goes down, and you can turn your organization off to innovation.

The third question to ask is, “What about this innovation consultant attracts their following?” It is essential to evaluate why a successful consultant is successful with its clients. Firstly, look at the number of clients they have worked for/use their process or framework and whether they can prove it. An example of this is the FIRE framework, where about 2,000-2,500 organizations use it. Secondly, evaluate whether or not they are willing to share the details of their approach. I am a big believer in paying it forward and giving it away. With that being said, I don't use this to make a living while most consultants do.

Your organization is unique, and you need to know that a consultant's approach will work for you and your organizational needs. If you bring in a consultant that is not a match, you will run into some big problems.

Question four is, “Can you adapt and adopt the approach from the innovation consultant?” You would not believe how hard this is to do. When hiring an innovation consultant bringing an approach to the table, it is crucial to know where they stand. Do you get granted the rights to use their method within your organization or offer a training class? Are they willing to adapt it to your organization's culture, approach, and language? An example of this is how Kroger implements the FIRE framework while using their own Kroger language.

I started today's show off on the premise that 80% of innovation consultants are not worth the money. Let's recap the four questions you should ask an innovation consultant before hiring them:

If you are looking for an innovation consultant and aren't so sure about it, drop me an email or hop over to The Innovators Community for feedback from other innovators and myself.

If you are interested in the FIRE framework for your organization, check out our Disruptive Ideation Workshops.

To know more about why many innovation consultants are not worth the money, listen to this week's show: Why 80 Percent of Innovation Consultants Are Not Worth the Money.

This show might come off as controversial to those who are innovation consultants. However, these are my personal views on the subject. Consultants can have a significant effect on an organization for better or worse. We will discuss innovation consultants and why I believe 80% of them are not worth the money.

A consultant has some expertise and is getting paid for sharing it with a client. I started my career early on doing consulting for a company called CSC. I was working heavily in the wireless and mobile arena. In my case, I had very deep expertise in the mobile space before being a consultant.

Most people hire consultants because they lack expertise in specific areas, and this effort is becoming ever so popular in the innovation space. I get calls all the time from people asking for recommendations on consultants. Based on what I have observed, 80% of innovation consultants are not worth the money. Why am I saying that? You don't become a driving instructor after reading a book on how to drive cars. Instead, you drive the car and then teach others how to do it. There are loads of innovation consultants out there that have never actually done it.

Today, I'm going to share the four questions you should ask innovation consultants before hiring them. Firstly, "is this innovation consultant a proven innovator?" Like innovation, you can't teach people how to drive if you haven't done it before. You need to ask if the consultant has led innovation for organizations known for innovation success. Have they been a CIO, led innovation teams that have delivered, or are they credited for creating successful innovations in the marketplace? Does the industry recognize them for innovation leadership? If they don't check these boxes, they try to teach how to drive without ever doing it themselves.

Question number two is, "Who else have they been hired by?" Assuming they have the expertise and have successfully done innovation, you need to look at who has hired them. If they are endorsed by those who are known for their innovation efforts, they will have more credibility. If a company is known for its innovation efforts still felt the need to hire this person, that is a good sign. If they have zero experience working with a company with an innovation reputation, that is not necessarily negative but is something to look at.

Another thing to look at is whether they completed any projects for their clients and have been brought back by their clients multiple times. This precedent shows that the consultant does excellent work and is getting the company success. The last thing to look at is whether you can call up the clients they mentioned in their proposals or pitches. If the consultant hides the company name from you but mentions their work, I count it as a negative mark.

Despite all that I have said, don't hire someone solely because they have done work for a well-known company. Dig deeper and validate whether they did the work and were successful or are lying about it. It amazes me how many organizations fail to do reference checks for employees and consultants. If you choose the wrong innovation consultant, your credibility goes down, and you can turn your organization off to innovation.

The third question to ask is, "What about this innovation consultant attracts their following?" It is essential to evaluate why a successful consultant is successful with its clients. Firstly, look at the number of clients they have worked for/use their process or framework and whether they can prove it. An example of this is the FIRE framework, where about 2,000-2,500 organizations use it. Secondly, evaluate whether or not they are willing to share the details of their approach. I am a big believer in paying it forward and giving it away. With that being said, I don't use this to make a living while most consultants do.

Your organization is unique, and you need to know that a consultant's approach will work for you and your organizational needs. If you bring in a consultant that is not a match, you will run into some big problems.

Question four is, "Can you adapt and adopt the approach from the innovation consultant?" You would not believe how hard this is to do. When hiring an innovation consultant bringing an approach to the table, it is crucial to know where they stand. Do you get granted the rights to use their method within your organization or offer a training class? Are they willing to adapt it to your organization's culture, approach, and language? An example of this is how Kroger implements the FIRE framework while using their own Kroger language.

I started today's show off on the premise that 80% of innovation consultants are not worth the money. Let's recap the four questions you should ask an innovation consultant before hiring them:

• Is this innovation consultant a proven innovator?
• Who has hired them?
• What about their innovation consulting attracts a following?
• Can I adapt and adopt the innovation consultant's approach to my organization?

If you are looking for an innovation consultant and aren't so sure about it, drop me an email or hop over to The Innovators Community for feedback from other innovators and myself.

If you are interested in the FIRE framework for your organization, check out our Disruptive Ideation Workshops.

Innovations can happen in any industry and a variety of different ways. We are going to take a deeper dive into part of the FIRE framework known as ideation. We will focus on combining individual ideation and team ideation. On this week's show, we will discuss Walt Disney's “Plus it” approach and how it changed the customer entertainment experience.

Walt Disney used a concept known as “plus it” to improve his company's ideation. He would tell his Imagineers (people who design the Disney experience) to “plus it” as a way to motivate them to take their work to another level. He challenged them to see what was possible and then encouraged them to take it a few steps further.

“Plus it” is a technique to iterate on ideas without using any harsh criticism. It's about finding what is good about an idea and tweaking it to make it even better. The question is, how do you do it?

The first step you need to do is to conduct brainstorming activities and set up a quota of ideas to iterate. You need to come at the problem from different angles. Good ideas will get people excited so keep an eye out for reactions. Remember, evaluation happens after, not during this process. After brainstorming, grab some sticky notes and crank out unique ideas. Cranking ideas is when individual ideation comes in to play. Do this for about twenty minutes and come up with a minimum of twenty ideas.

The next step is to post and group ideas. Each team member posts and shares their ideas to the rest of the group. Done through a short and quick process, it involves posting a sticky note on a board. During this time, one idea may trigger another's idea. If this happens, write down the new idea and post it. If two people have similar ideas, post those ideas next to each other.

The next step is to do team ideation or “plus it”. One at a time, everyone chooses somebody else's idea that they like. Then, they ideate and build upon that idea and have others jump in.

Throughout my work, I have found that around 30% more and better ideas come from this combination of team and individual ideation. I've also found that there is an elevated collective ownership aspect to this. People feel like more of a team and are more passionate and energized through this combination.

Walt Disney focused on making ideas better for many years and made it fundamental to Disney's culture. Many other organizations have embraced the “plus it” and have applied it to their organizations. Walt Disney made breakthroughs using his “plus it” method in many different ways.

Walt applied plussing it early on at Disney with the idea of Disneyland. He came up with the idea for a Christmas parade going through the park. The financial people at Disney disagreed with Walt's idea as people were already going to the park and didn't expect anything different. Walt wanted to deliver a never-before-seen experience. Despite what the finance people had thought, the idea became a huge success and drew many more people to the park.

Another example of plussing the experience happened for Disneyland's 50th anniversary. They rebuilt the Space Mountain ride by synchronizing audio, creating a completely new experience.

The third example of plussing a product was when the Apple iPod and the iPhone came about. Steve Jobs cited the influence of Disney on his work many times. It comes down to the little things that most people overlook yet make Apple products stand out.

Another example is Elon Musk's company, Tesla. The company has breakthrough features such as the summon feature. This feature allows you to call your car to come to a different spot and pick you up. The company is continuously improving and adding features to their products.

Disney is also continually improving and innovating and will never stop plussing it. The last company we will discuss is Zoom, a sponsor of our show. In the previous year, Zoom averaged 300 new features and did so every year. Eric and his team are always asking how to make the experience bigger and better.

Today we discussed Walt Disney's approach to “plussing it”, which is significantly improving ideas and products by thinking differently and pushing the limits. Walt applied the concept to his early work at Disneyland and seen all over the Disney experience to this day. The concept is about using each other's ideas for inspiration and building upon them without using harmful criticism.

Improving someone's challenge instead of being an innovation antibody is key to plussing it. This all starts with individual ideation and combining it with team ideation to make ideas that stand out and are better.

To know more about the “plussing it” approach, listen to this week's show: Walt Disney's Plus It Approach To Better Ideas.