The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw

This weeks show was broadcast live from the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The mission of Unreasonable is:

… gets entrepreneurs what they need to scale solutions to the world’s biggest problems at programs ranging from 5 days to 5 weeks. We do this by identifying entrepreneurs with the potential to address problems like poverty, lack of education, and social injustice at scale, and then by swarming them with hand-picked mentors, funders, and partners to help grow their impact. And once entrepreneurs leave our program they can forever access and engage with this global network of entrepreneurs, mentors, and funders that now spans over 50 countries. Our goal is to help each of these ventures scale up to meaningfully impact the lives of at least one million people each.

Guest: Daniel Epstein – Co-Founder of Unreasonable Group

Daniel’s life has been shaped by a fundamental belief that entrepreneurship is the answer to nearly all the issues we face today. By the time he received his undergraduate degree in philosophy, he’d already started three companies. In 2012 he was recognized by Inc. Magazine as a “30 under 30 entrepreneur” and by Forbes as one of the “top 30 most impactful entrepreneurs” of the year. In 2013, he received the prestigious “Entrepreneur of the World” award along with Richard Branson at the Global Entrepreneurship Forum. Today, this passion for entrepreneurship and startups has led to the creation of Unreasonable Group ( www.unreasonablegroup.com ).

Bio

Guest: Gavin Armstrong – Founder and CEO Lucky Iron Fish

Gavin is a PhD Candidate in biomedical science at the University of Guelph and is a Fulbright Scholar. He has received the William J. Clinton Hunger Leadership Award and the Michaëlle Jean Humanitarian Award. He has also received the Mayor’s Award of Excellence, has been named one of the Top 40 under 40 in the Guelph community, and has been named a fellow emeritus of both the Hunger Solutions Institute and the Kirchner Food Fellowship.

Lucky Iron Fish website

Guest: Rubayat Kahn – Co-Founder of mDoc

Rubayat Khan is a social entrepreneur, development practitioner and data scientist from Bangladesh specialized in the rapidly growing  intersection between scalable low-cost technologies and international  development challenges. He is also a global pioneer in the use of cutting-edge data mining, predictive modeling and interactive data visualizations to make development interventions and research more impactful and efficient.

Linked-In

Killer Question/Mind Hack

How can I eliminate customer hassles and create unique benefits for my customers?

Why do people choose you over your competitors? Or, vice versa?

How do you go about eliminating a hassle or creating a benefit to your customer if there is no obvious reason for them to pick you over your competitor?

I pretty much hate flying these days, which is unfortunate, because I log a minimum of a quarter-million miles every year. Travel is at best a neutral experience, and at worst an awful one, but that’s probably not news to you.

Every new hassle of flying is absorbed into the “new normal” and accepted by travelers relatively quickly.

“It’s kind of fun doing the impossible” ~ Walt Disney

Doing The Impossible

Have you ever felt like you did something that others said couldn’t be done? There is not better feeling than completing something that the antibodies said couldn’t be done. Even when they try to use government regulations as a roadblock.

When you look at companies who have ignored the antibodies and delivered true ground breaking innovations, they tend to be small business and not the large corporations. Why? They are more focused on the one idea they are achieving to bring to the market. They don’t have time for distractions.

Background on example: e-magine platform for Teligent created in 1996.

What could/should governments do to encourage small business innovation?

Guest: Rahul Sood

“Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.” ~ Booker T. Washington

This weeks guest was Rahul Sood, the CEO of Unikrn, a Seattle based eSports startup.

Previous to Unikrn, Sood created the first incubation fund for startups at Microsoft, and eventually Microsoft consolidated their global startup activities under Sood’s leadership.  In June of 2013 he launched Microsoft Ventures.

A serial entrepreneur, Sood spent 18 years in multiple startups prior to joining Microsoft. He founded luxury and gaming computer manufacturer VoodooPC, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.  Voodoo brought the ENVY and OMEN product lines to HP, contributing advanced technologies, such as commercial liquid cooling, and an increased focus on design.

Killer Question/Mind Hack

Who will not buy your product because they feel something is objectionable about it?

If you are inspiring enough such that some people love what you are doing, odds are you are going to be inspiring others to dislike your product with an equal passion. Plenty of companies trade on the fact that they represent something the mainstream culture will find offensive or questionable. Look at any business that sells rebellion or a gritty counter-cultural message.

Even more mainstream products such as those found in the tobacco or alcohol industries subtly sell themselves as being a little dangerous and outside the norm.

So ask yourself …

* Have you ever tried to market your product based on what it doesn’t supply rather than on what it does?

* Can you use the thing that’s objectionable about your product to create a community of customers?

* How could eliminating the objection help or hurt you?

Creative Exercise

Just as you go to the gym to work out your physical muscles, we all need to exercise our creative muscle.

So your assignment this week:

Find 3 ways to make your product objectionable to a segment of the market

If you discover some interesting idea, post them in the comments section. That way, you can inspire others to look beyond the obvious.

Link to the podcast: Doing The Impossible S11 Ep18

 

This weeks Killer Innovations Podcast is a phone interview with Geoffrey Moore.

Geoffrey is an author, speaker, and advisor who splits his consulting time between start-up companies in the Mohr Davidow portfolio and established high-tech enterprises. Moore’s life’s work has focused on the market dynamics surrounding disruptive innovations. His first book, Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers, has become required reading in universities around the world.

We discussed a wide range topics including:

* How organizational dynamics (corporate antibodies) block innovation

* Why innovation success requires CEO and Board support.

* Why the direct CEO sponsorship is required an innovation effort (can’t be delegated)

* Why an organization should only focus on one innovation effort a time.  Not 2 or 3.

* How Steve Jobs used the “hour glass” approach to innovation

* The best culture of innovation is “mission/cause” based

* The decline of the HP culture

* What are the “next things” that VC’s are looking at

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill

Perseverance and Pivots

When we first come up with what we think is a great idea, we have a clear vision of how things are going to go. We see the idea being wildly successful. Then guess what? We get thrown a curve ball. Something totally unexpected that causes us to throw out our original plans.

What separates the innovators from the wannabes? Wannabes will use the curve ball as an excuse or a “sign” that they should stop working on that idea. Innovators will turn that curve ball into a bigger success than the idea they started with. Example: ODEO, the podcast directory, pivoted to becomeTwitter.

Guest: DP Venkatesh/founder of mPortal

This week, we learn from an innovator who jumped into a space way before anyone else and then stuck with it for 15 years. DP Venkatesh, is the founder of mPortal which was recently acquired by Broadsoft to become Broadsoft Design. DP was one of the early visionaries to see the role mobile apps was going to have in our lives and founded mPortal 15 years ago. He discuses the “can’t not do” idea that drove him,. the pivots and challenges along the way and in the process, shares three lessons learned through the experience of going from a raw idea and sticking with it for so long.

In addition to the websites above, you can find DP on Twitter and LinkedIn

Killer Question

Who is using my product in a way I never intended—and how?

Once a product has been sold, it’s pretty much out of your control. You may have an idea why people will buy it, and what they’ll do with it, but the most you can ever do is guess. Why are you assuming that you know what your customer actually likes and values about your product, and how they use it? Go out and find out yourself

Remember: Your objective is to sell your product. Their objective is to solve a problem.

So ask yourself …

* What problems and needs are you looking to address? Are you so tightly focused on what you believe your customer’s problems and needs to be that you are missing out on potentially huge opportunities?

* How could you identify existing customers and observe how they use your product?

* Is there a way to give your potential customers an opportunity to play with and use your product without giving them specific parameters for how, when, and why they should use it? What do they come up with?

Exercise Your Creative Muscle

Just as you go to the gym to work out your physical muscles, we all need to exercise our creative muscle.

So your assignment this week: Get out of your office and go find 5 ways your customers are using your product or service in a way you never considered.

If you discover some interesting ways in which your customers are using your product, post them in the comments section. That way, you can inspire others to look beyond the obvious.

When I started the podcast, I had no idea where that path would lead me. Over the 11 years, the show has gone through a number of transitions.  The latest being that it is now a weekly live talk radio show syndicated on the BizTalk Radio Network of AM and FM radio stations across the US.

The show is a 1 hour live show on Sundays at 5:00PM Eastern – 2:00PM Pacific and can be listenedlive on BizTalk Radio site or you can download the BizTalk apps for iOS and Android.

The weekly show will then be edited/produced and released as our normal weekly podcast through our normal podcasting networks (e.g. iTunes, Soundcloud, etc).

While you will still get the show as a podcast, those listening live will be able to participate by asking questions or offering your ideas and comments.

This post is for show #1 – what I’m referring to as the “prototype” show.

NOTE: I would love your comments/feedback/suggestions as we attempt to “innovate” live radio. Please add them to the comments below.

Enjoy.

Show notes for this weeks show:

* Anything and everything can be innovated:

* Business model

* Customer service

* Processes

* Sales

* Advertising

* Expense Reporting

* how you raise money to fund your idea

* Even how to clean the bathrooms

* What is a killer innovation? A killer innovation is a significant and highly profitable departure from current offerings or practices that would be difficult to duplicate

* Significant – unique idea/approach that is not just an extension to what already exists today.

* Highly profitable – create entirely new industries/markets with a profit stream that creates growth, jobs economies and wealth

* Difficult to duplicate – create a barrier for others to take it away .. Could be speed of innovation (can’t catch you).

* Types of innovation antibodies?

* The Ego Antibody

* “Oh I already thought of that a long time ago.”

* “Somebody else has already come up with that idea.”

* “I have something better.”

* The Fatigued Antibody

* “You’ll never get approval.”

* “We tried that before.”

* “Who’s going to do it?”

* “It won’t fit our operation.”

* The No-Risk Antibody

* “Not enough return on investment.”

* “We can’t afford that.”

* The Comfort Antibody

* “We’ve always done it this way.”

* “Our customer likes it this way.”

* “Don’t rock the boat.”

* At some point — sometimes we are the anti-body

* We get comfortable with how “it’s always been done”

* “this worked for me in the past”

* “I’m the expert — I’ve done this before”

This weeks Killer Question:  What are the assumptions under which my INDUSTRY operates?