Everyday innovators are the ones driving the innovation we are seeing across a variety of industries, companies, and governments that are making the pivots and changes needed to address the current pandemic and adapt to the changing times. Alex Goryachev, Cisco’s Senior Director of Innovation Strategy and Programs and author of Fearless Innovation: Going Beyond the Buzzword to Continuously Drive Growth, Improve the Bottom Line, and Enact Change, is one of these innovators I’ve featured in my book.

Mark Johnson is the co-founder and Senior Partner of Innosight, a growth strategy consulting company. He has been a strategic advisor to both Global 1000 and start-up companies in a wide range of industries. He is the co-author of Lead from the Future: How to Turn Visionary Thinking into Breakthrough Growth (April 2020), which explores the concept of “Future-Back” thinking and provides a hands-on guide to long-term planning, strategy development, and execution within established organizations.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is transforming our lives in unprecedented ways but the opportunity to innovate is also tremendous. At this stage, when everyone is in a state of hunkering down and trying to be productive in our new virtual workplaces, leadership is a key element that can help push us from survival mode to innovation mode, which is now what it takes to survive.

Now more than ever, we need to tap into our innovative sides to find a path to move forward, particularly because the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused the world to shift in an unprecedented way. Innovation is no longer something that is ‘nice to have’ or something that we can put off to a future time; to survive, we must innovate by turning obstacles into opportunities and seeing the potential in our current situation.

Leadership right now is in a really tricky place because things are not only uncertain, but they’re also out of our control. With the evolving novel coronavirus (COVID-19) situation, we as leaders need to adapt to the times and guide our teams through this situation. The time for shock and panic is over, and it is now time for us to find ways to move forward. To do this, we need to lead in a way that shows strength and courage, but also vulnerability and authenticity.

Almost every organization has legacy thinkers and we have to deal with them to get things done. They’re often the people in senior leadership and have years of experience under their belts but they can be frustrating to work with because of their resistance to innovation and new ideas. They’ve got the been-there-done-that mentality to the point of holding the rest of us back, or they tend to have an ‘I know better and I’ve seen more than you’ attitude that shuts down ideas.

Carol Sanford describes herself as a lifelong learner and an educator who helps people develop themselves into more conscious, creative, innovative, and intentional human beings. Author of multiple books, and host of multiple podcasts including Business Second Opinion, Carol has over four decades of experience in helping companies challenge accepted best practices.

Jeremy Gutsche is the founder of TrendHunter, a global crowdsourcing platform that helps you spot and understand trends. He is also a New York Times bestselling author and has just released his latest book, Create the Future: Tactics for Disruptive Thinking. Jeremy’s forward-thinking mind and ability to connect the dots in insightful ways is unique and he helps shed new light on the challenge of innovation.

Keith Belling is the Founder & CEO of RightRice, a product that reinvents the concept of rice, and which sold over one million bags in its first year. Keith is a proven entrepreneur and innovator, and RightRice is his second foray into disrupting the F&B industry — his first being Popchips, a wildly successful food product. He is a master of following a frustration he has, figuring out how to solve it in a unique and meaningful way, and turning the solution into a business.

Kyle sheds light on why sometimes innovative ideas can be too far ahead of their time and people aren’t ready for them, as well as how these ideas get put out without the realization that they might be too outlandish for people to accept. We dive into the role of failures in the bigger process of gearing up for success, and the impact that failures can have on individuals within the company pushing for these innovative ideas vs. the company in the long term.