Latest / The Innovation Philosophie Podcast / How to Think New: Leave Your Industry on Purpose
Transcript
- Nathan: Hello and welcome to the Innovation Philosophy Podcast, the show where we look at the economics of innovation and the conditions that produce genuinely new ideas. I'm your host, Nathan Rearden, and today we're asking a deceptively simple question. How do you actually think new? You want a new idea, so you read 10 more posts from your industry, you open up the competitor website, you search best examples, you ask your AI of choice what companies like yours are doing, and then You're shocked when the idea you produce looks exactly like the rest of the market. You trained the answer before you asked the question. Joining me today is Pat Villasaran, the creator of Innovation Philosophy and founder of the Move and City Jam. Someone who's built a career on crashing ideas from completely different worlds into one problem. Pat, thanks for joining me again. What do people believe about where new PAT: Again, always. Nathan: ideas come from that you think is completely wrong? PAT: Where new ideas come from? We want to start with why we stopped creating new ideas. And I did love that introduction because with all of the platforms that we are launching this season, they definitely would be coming in from multiple different industries and segments. They don't necessarily interact with each other. However, the question is, how do you come up with original ideas? And we have to put the blame, not necessarily I mean, that's the closest word that we could use, Nathan. It's the blame. Around technology. Before we were allowed to get bored, before our minds were allowed to just sit for hours and hours and have the Newton Apple fall down, and you get like Eureka. That's the idea. Nathan: Right. PAT: Now we do not have that is a luxury right now. That is a luxury that is high class. Luxury right now for you to have your habits and your ecosystem and your body to not respond to immediately looking at your phone the first thing in the morning. It takes massive discipline to do that right now. Majority of human beings, we're talking about eight billion, Nathan. Eight billion people in the world. Let's just say seven billion have their phones. We do not have that luxury because ever since you know the boom of technology, we have been ingrained through marketing and through the hardware of the technology and through algorithm that we are we are we're a part of this too. We are a show. And so we are a part of the engine that engages human beings all throughout the internet. However, it is a luxury right now to be bored. Be bored. So that is one of the biggest reasons why it is actually very, very hard to think about new ideas right now because we don't have the capability. Even for founders who are dealing with fires after fires after fires every single day, handling their businesses, it is the most efficient. ones are the ones who have the capability to say, wait a minute, and we've talked about this in the episode one and two, to look at this from an altitude perspective. Because you cannot solve a problem from the same way it started. It has to be from a different dimension or angle on what could be done to solve this. Right? So founders or CEOs, most especially. mid-sized CEOs who are already handling a hundred employees. It is actually even more challenging for them at scale because at that point you have already created a habit and an institutional routine for the entire team to be dependent on your workflow. This is why innovation doesn't happen, Nathan. Nathan: Mm-hmm. PAT: At scale, these CEOs, there is an institutional routine. On how the team submits reports every Friday, how this thing works every because you've created pillars. The HR needs to do this, the CMO needs to do this, the marketing, and then interdepartmental things around finance, everything is moving around that routine. And so if you're at the top, you're the CEO, you're functioning at the very top of it, and you are needed every day, and you haven't created the structure that actually allows you to say, These things need to exist on their own because the job then really is to strategize and to get us to that next level. This is where plateau happens. We're so comfortable on the existing success, even though we really have the capability to grow exponentially. Innovation is exponential growth. Innovation is exponential Nathan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. PAT: growth. I have seen this recently. A founder mention, I forgot his name, but if I found the reference, I would tag him here in our show notes. But he was talking about Moonshot, Nathan. Moonshot risk taking. And this is what our platform is for. It is not again, you can MBA the entire thing, the business aspects, profit losses, revenue. For Nathan: Yeah. PAT: those who are listening, thank you so much that you are here. But the show is just quite different because we're talking about innovation. And so when you say moonshot, you know. That means that you are starting from a point with the thesis that you're going to get that ball thrown up at moonshot height. Literally throwing a ball, like hoping it would hit the moon coming in from the earth. That's the closest Nathan: Okay. PAT: analogy because they they can't see us and you know you're listening. And so, however. In the moonshot activity, there is an awareness that you even if you fail 10 times, let's just put a tangible number on the failure. Advertising, for example, you want to do advertising $100, $100 for a value of five thousand dollars, right? Not all one hundred dollar campaign would work well. So let's just say you've done 10 $100 campaigns, about you've spent $1,000. This is considered a loss. This is a considered loss, right? Because you're you're putting money out there. But if the testing's purpose is the moonshot probability, you would put, you would put that $1,000 if if you could close that $5,000 deal. Because that's the that is the moonshot. You've used $1,000, but you got like five X of what you put out there. Even though nine of the campaigns would fail, if one of them works, you've got the moonshot pinned down. Nathan: So how do you how do you stop yourself from judging an idea too early then? If you've got if you've if you've put nine of those ideas out before you get to that tenth one that actually makes the money, how do you PAT: Mm. Nathan: how do you separate generating the ideas from choosing between them? PAT: You have to just execute. Nathan, there's no how it is. I have an idea, execute. I have an idea, execute. I have an idea, execute. Otherwise, you can't really test what's working, what is not working in the speed that you want it to be. You can theorize the entire thing. And we have an entire consulting business managing the risk around this take, around this navigation of like, what if we fail, right? That's what consulting bodies are for. To make sure that, of course, if you're already putting $1,000 on the table, if I'm a consultant, I would make sure that it's just $800 of a loss. But you're still you still paid $200 for the consultant, basically. But it Nathan: Right. PAT: lowered your probability of failing. You would still get there, right? However, it's the idea execute, idea, execute, idea execute. Otherwise, Nathan. There would be other founders. No idea is really truly original. No idea is ever truly original. The differentiator Nathan: Okay. PAT: is the executor themselves. Who is the fastest one to get to market? Who's the fastest one to act on that idea and test that out and put put that out into the world? Nathan, put that out into the world because as long as it's there, and this is the reason why. so many people especially the more intelligent ones the most intelligent people in the world and they say this you know probability that maybe the most intelligent human beings are not fit to be entrepreneurs not fit to be founders because you would have to overthink the idea before you move Founders, yeah. Nathan: That sort of thing like letting perfect be the enemy of the good. You know, you need PAT: Exactly. Nathan: to work out every small detail before and you know, if you're doing that then there's always something else that can be optimised. So it just never actually becomes anything. PAT: before you get to the jump. Before you get Nathan: Yeah. PAT: to the jump. Before you get to the jump. And so if you're thinking of putting up a restaurant, for example, you've done your obviously, done your research, done the thing, basic research. You do the thing, try to cook for your own and see, you know, can I actually cook? You can you can test the what if I make a restaurant and I I'm crappy at cooking and it doesn't make sense. But the person who failed at cooking scrambled eggs, and you've got the eggs and the egg yolk and like even the shells of the eggs inside the thing, Nathan: Oof. PAT: that has a bigger milestone and bigger probability in terms of growth, Nathan, that founder, compared to the one who is researching fine-dining scrambled egg recipes in their minds. I had written this seven decades ago, Nathan, on a Medium article about how how entrepreneurship is kind of like it is getting dealt with an egg. And I really I this was the season that I was obsessed with Master Chef. This was like the boom of Master Chef. And it was so interesting because everyone could be given an egg, Nathan. Everyone. Nathan: Yeah. PAT: Just one, two, three eggs, right? But the way that you would cook that egg would be different from everybody. If someone adds milk, it's a little bit more fluffy. If someone adds a little bit of a technique, it's different kind of thing. But everyone's got that one to three eggs. But if someone like waited for that to hatch, you know, it's become a chicken at that point. You can't, it's, you know. It's a whole new different problem now because how how are you gonna feed Nathan: Yeah. PAT: the chicken, Nathan? And so to answer your question, it is about idea, execution, idea, execution. F there was another quote, right? Fail as fast as you can. Fail as many times, but as fast as possible to get to that thing. Nathan: Right, yeah. Yeah. PAT: To get to that thing. Nathan: So when a team comes to you and they're stuck digging into into your area of expertise now, what does their default answer usually look like? And how can you tell that they've trained the answer before they've asked the question? PAT: I do this with with our teams, right? I do this because we do have a lot of technology that does the grub work for us, that does, you know, filing, documentation, organization, preliminary research, and everything. But I would give always, I would always give you guys the question of like, Nathan, what other angles can we explore? Nathan, what other opportunities have we not explored? And again, for me, I am I'm just one person. I would always have insights and strategies, but my team is they have a different perspective too. So you always come to me and it's like, Pat, this is another segment for SMEs and another thing for the thing. And I believe that's where truly functional high growth teams get to develop, Nathan. Just like ours. When Nathan: Okay. PAT: you were given a framework, obviously the framework of these are the things. Let's let's let's when we go to work, when we phase the productivity aspect, and I'm very, very you this too. Like I'm very strict, read this, read this, meditate, walk outside, get the sun, because the the work that we do is really, really highly demanding. And so it Nathan: Yeah. PAT: has to be kind of like a holistic. Personal growth activity. and I'm very, very upfront about this as well, even from the very beginning. Anyone who's coming in, sometimes I know if they would be able to kind of last, and sometimes I know if they would plateau at a certain level. And it's just a gut stink instinct kind of thing once you've gone through this years on, years out. but for for the team, I want to invite. the CEOs and founders to give a lot of leeway for the team to problem solve on their own because you got them in because they're incredible. So they we as founders, we need to be able to kind of trust you and say, what kind of solution can this person create out of the three eggs that they've got right now? What kind of solution can they create from here? Nathan: So walk us through then your own idea machine day to day. Where where do your inputs come from and how deliberately do you go looking outside your own field? PAT: That is a very good question. That is a very good question. Founders would resonate a lot to this because a founder's life looks fancy on paper on the daily. It is brutal when it comes to the discipline and the self-growth and the work that happens within. it is easy to just say, I'm not gonna read a book today. I'm just I'm gonna sleep in. It's easy to say, I'm not gonna walk outside because you know. All of these things. But it has to be ingrained, ingrained with deep discipline, Nathan, for the founders out there too, to be trained on making sure that you actually have a minimum of five. Let's put this into framework and not just like a voodoo kind of thing. There has to be about five facets on a daily activity, Nathan, that a founder or a leader. should be kind of exploring to make sure that you are always generating, not necessarily original, but and not even out-of-boxes term. But a unique problem-solving capability. The first thing is if you look at the industry, of course, that's the team. You get obsessed with the growth of the company, obsessed with the minutiae and the technicalities, aerospace, for example. That's something you cannot be a non-expert on. You need to read the books, the engineering, everything else inside, right? focus on that. 100% expertise, mastery, you need that. However, you need to find avenues from within the day. To go outside of that expertise and be so 180 away from this. So this is already known for geniuses. Like even for Einstein, he played violin. Even for, for example, the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, he played the violin. And so this is a creative. For others, it's painting. For others, it's the creative aspect of things. that's number one. You need a creative output because what? What does that do? Like music, arts, humanities, philosophy, what does that do? That brings your brain down to a level of outside of the analytical aspect of things. Left brain, right brain. You need the both both of the muscles of the brain to be interacting equally, exercised every single day. And so the arts aspect of it allows your analytical brain to be literally shut down. Not necessarily fully shut down, but the other side of the brain then works to empower that neural pathway. We're gonna go a little bit technical, Nathan. Neural Nathan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. PAT: pathway to connect from the left to the right side of the brain. So you need a creative output, whether that is journaling. Pictures, what are it's it should be the arts really. It should be the arts and humanities that need to be integrated in here. the next is analog activities. Analog activities. I'm gonna repeat that again. Analog activities. It is the activity from within the day that you're really not touching any technology. It is so in this day and age, it is a make it or break it, Nathan, for CEOs and founders. To not have analog activities within the day. So even for example, for Steve Jobs, it is quite known that whenever he's having like the most critical decision making, critical, the most critical, Nathan, this guy, this person changed, literally changed the world. Steve Jobs. But his productivity is not tied into getting stuck in a in an office for sixteen hours in a day. He did that that he did that too. However, for the most critical and most pivotal decisions that would Catapult Apple. It is known that he takes two hour walks, four hour walks with a partner, a stakeholder, one of the best, most trusted people in the firm. Two hour, just walking. Let's talk about something that's I just want to walk. He walks, Nathan. Analog without anything. You cannot reach him anywhere. He just walks. Analog. activities in the day and age of the most the most fascinatingly fastest moving technological pace in human history. In human history, Nathan. So that is critical. The next I would say is Reading and writing. There is no founder or CEO that would survive without reading and writing. Reading, actual writing. Nathan: Actual writing, not just not just typing on a keyboard. PAT: Could be typing on the keyboard too, but the because you've already got the analog thing, right? But writing, writing, because reading is consumption of the knowledge. Writing, whether you publish that on Medium and Subsec or your personal blog or on your LinkedIn. The writing aspect, Nathan, allows you to process that information. Same goes with you, right? To process the information and then actually prove to yourself that you have acquired the knowledge and information coming in from that source. So there's a mind training again around neural pathways that expand. And did you know, Nathan, that our brains, we we have an unbound capacity to grow our brain muscles? Because they have examined Einstein's brain. It is you know, the more complex a brain works, the more kind of like crooked it is. It's tucked in so tight. But the ones that have they had they did a comparison of brains that didn't do the the muscle training. It didn't read, didn't write, it's kind of just like playing. These are the kinds of like you know, they did that study, and then they found out that the muscles of the brain are loose, a little bit fat, just loose, and it filled in the the the scalp. Nathan: Right. PAT: So it's just you know, it's just like the veins, but a little bit loose. But the more that you train the brain, it's actually a physical muscle, Nathan. This is not something that is just conceptual, it it contracts and then it expands and it. And then it it it expands too. And you know that movie, what is that? The pill that gives you kind of like Nathan: limitless. PAT: limitless. Even right now, we are using and show notes, we're gonna find the correct data for this. But if I remember it correctly, less than 10% of our active brain, 10% of our active brain, even as adults, even as Intellectuals, Nathan, we're talking about philosophy here, you know. But even for us, we're not even using the full capacity of our brains. And so for a human being to tell you or me, right? Or for founders themselves to say, I don't have the capacity to think outside of the three eggs, that is incorrect. You just didn't Nathan: Right. PAT: do the the process of like how to really grow that muscle in. So That's the third. That's the third, right? reading, reading and writing to be able to kind of prove, prove that thing in. And then for leaders, it is communication. And that is why you know this. I haven't really created social media before. I haven't, you know, I was we were very happy, you know, behind the shadows, working behind the scenes and everything. but more people need the message. right now in terms of what we're doing, in terms of how we're educating more founders across the globe. the last thing is communication, Nathan. No leader exists. You can we talked about this in another episode, right? That CEOs could be replaced by AI agentic, fine, but the leadership ac aspect of it is irreplaceable. It's irreplaceable. So if a leader couldn't communicate what the vision is, this is where we're going. This is where we're going left and going right. And I've an agentic says, you gotta do these things. You just read that agentic. You're I don't know if we're at that point. Or I don't even want, you know, humans to rely on that version of the future. Because we are crafting, Nathan. Nathan: Mm-hmm. Yep. PAT: Right now, every decision that we make, even here for every single one of you listening at Innovation Philosophy, that's how critical these conversations are. Every decision as leaders, yeah, that you make would craft the future of economies. A founder in AI, a founder in agriculture, a founder in VC funding, even the decision making for VCs, how how much risk can I take? Do I want to bet on this one, or do you want, or do I want to bet? Because there are a lot of like technologies right now that process these VC pitch applications and the AI decides if they're a good fit or not. We've lost that. We've lost that connection too, even for VCs and angel investors in terms of let me get to know the founder first. Because now, Nathan, there's now a science and an art to optimizing pitch sticks. There's now a thing, right? Before In closed rooms, of course, it it was not a perfect world. Transparency is even better now. Transparency is even better now. But now for VCs and LPs and angels, if you are solely relying on the technology, the CRM that funnels through 1000 startup applications, right? And you don't get the chance to really meet the founder, you won't get that moonshot connectivity to what they have in mind. Nathan: Right, yeah. PAT: How would you know what the moonshot is on five pages? For sure, that's the point of the pitch tick. But VCs are betting on founders, not on the business model alone. The business model changes, it evolves, you know. Even for even for Uber, even for Airbnb, there has been a lot of transition ever since they Nathan: Yeah. PAT: started. The founders knew, even at the development of 12 years, the founders knew what the scale is, even though the world couldn't comprehend it. Just yet. I don't understand. I don't understand. But one, two, three VCs had come in and said, like, yes, we're gonna believe in this because the founders, it is their moonshot. Right now, that's that is getting cut down. And so yeah, it is a big, big, big responsibility. So one, two, three. If I missed one, we're just gonna add that in the show notes, Nathan. But it's it's a massive responsibility, really. Nathan: Definitely. To to bring it back to taking ideas from other areas, you've said previously that you need to look completely out of the box. You need to you know, you could look at something as different as ancient history. How PAT: Mm mm. Mm. Nathan: do you tell the difference between a collision that is changing something real and one that's just different for the sake of it, without any real substance. PAT: Hmm, I see, I see where you're coming from. Just just to be different. Just so, Nathan: Yeah. PAT: just so I have a different idea. We're yellow today. I see, I Nathan: Yeah. PAT: see what you're coming from, where you're coming from. the difference is again, we do business architecture, right? It is about connecting the dots together. So if you just say on let's go back to the analogy of eggs. If we say, If we paint the eggs blue outside, that might change the flavor. And it's the blue coming in from an organic flower. That's just a super, super innovative. Blue flowered eggs, different flavor, texture, higher concentration of vitamin D. For example, I this is not backed by anything, just an idea. Just Nathan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. PAT: an idea. Or or Or We actually fix the problem on how the eggs are actually getting produced, Nathan. On how the eggs are gonna be produced. Because right now there is there is yeah, I I believe I mentioned this in in one of the episodes too around agriculture. 60 harvest left, right? and very, very, very, very passionate around agriculture. but if I go back to the egg problem, I'm given two different propositions. Yeah. And the other one is not tested, the other one is not even tested. It's just a theory, the same thing, just so we could be different. Just so we could be different. It has a it has a value. Blue blue eggs with vitamins looks interesting. Yeah. Innovation philosophy is what? All about impact, longevity, legacy, vision that changes the world, that changes, right? You want innovation. And so if I was given that three egg problem. I would think because there is a lot of farms out there that manufactures these structures, Nathan, in a way that that's why there's a free range egg. Are you familiar with that? Free range egg. It's more expensive because the chickens can walk a little bit farther. The ones that are not on free range tagging, Nathan, they're actually packed in this one. They are not allowed to move because the point is optimization. Yeah, the point is optimization. Nathan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. PAT: The chickens in the small square footage, I need to be able to optimize that with the fullness of my capital. 100 chickens in 100 square meters of a box. It's still egg because I can input what? Like vitamins and like everything in there, chemicals that brings the biggest egg in the market. Highest profitability, chickens in a box. Highest profit profitability, chickens in the box. And so if I'm given that three three egg scenario, I would see and I would optimize what kind of new technologies can we implement because we're still around that. That's still a problem, you know. The square footage is still a problem. It's still a square footage problem. But is there now a new technology that allows air circulation, vitamin D coming through through layered, multiple layered approach? And there are already existing solutions like this. However, just so they could categoric categorically qualify as free range. Healthier chickens, healthier eggs, the the entire thing, Nathan. Healthier human beings who are consuming organic eggs, right? And so there is merit for two propositions in the framework of their thinking. The other one is blue. The other one actually solves an entire line of multidimensional problems. So for me to summarize that, I would say. Altitude always, Nathan. Altitude always. Because if you're just here, you're just gonna see the blue. You're just gonna see white from blue. You're just gonna Nathan: Right. PAT: see white from blue. What I want to challenge founders, because you're founder, you're a founder, you're a founder. There's a reason why you're you're a founder, right? Expand that and always challenge yourself in terms of how can I how can I fix this? And it's always about impact. Innovation is always about moonshot. Innovation is always about scaling. Innovation is always about impact. You can, Nathan, you can still problem solve from the the blue egg thing. Blue egg could still be a business. Blue Nathan: Yeah. PAT: egg is still a business. People will buy the blue eggs. They would cook it. They would it's so fancy. It is still a business, right? Impact is different. Nathan: So to a founder who's stuck right now listening to this, PAT: Hm. Nathan: what is something that they should do this week to widen where they're getting their information from, to broaden their scope? PAT: I mean, first and foremost, listen to our podcast. There really is. There is a this is a Nathan: All the answers are here. PAT: reason. Obviously, yes. Listen to innovation philosophy. Listen to innovation philosophy. Listen to innovation philosophy. Apply those four to five things, because I I believe I like I missed one. And then always, always, this is a good thing too, Nathan. Always meet That is so important. Even outside of your social economic structure, Nathan, that is so important. Even outside of your race, socioeconomic structure, your circle, your niche. Because if you're just within people who are thinking about blue eggs, you cannot come out with a different perspective. But if you surround yourself with, for example, our event in November. If you're surrounding yourselves with eight nine-figure founders, the conversation is different. Problem solving is different. And that challenges you always to level up. That challenges you to grow. So I would leave everyone who's listening here right now with the most demanding challenge of all, which is to widen your ability to connect with people. Founders who are just stuck in a room. Because again, it's just one of the four to five things that I mentioned. Don't get move, move about. talk to everyone. Talk to that lady in the bus. Talk to like that gives you so much idea, like, and also gives you all the world doesn't revolve around me. Humans lives, it's it's different. And so even talking to that lady in the bus would give you like a whole new different perspective on how they be view the eggs. Maybe maybe for them it's the saltiness and the thing. But that that gives you an idea of like, interesting. I could problem solve like this. So yeah. Nathan: And if we were to drill down even smaller, what could a founder do in the next hour? PAT: Listen to Nathan: Listen to the listen to the rest of this episode and then go back to the beginning. PAT: go back to episode one stream. get obsessed with innovation philosophy, sign up on our wait list, so you could get the beta apps of the innovation philosophy app. Those are honestly, Nathan, I couldn't think of anything else. That was that's it. Nothing else. Yeah, honestly, that's it. Nothing else. I couldn't. Yeah. Nathan: Brilliant. So we've had that every CEO needs to read, a lot of them probably do. PAT: Hm. Nathan: what's a domain outside of that that you think every CEO should spend time in that almost none of them do? We've had reading, we've had walking. What else is there? PAT: Meditation, really. I I Nathan: Meditation. PAT: believe I believe almost everyone at the high performance stage knows meditation is mandatory, but it's still not as prevalent as we want it to be. Meditation is the ability to get bored, really, right? Nathan: Right. PAT: And so that ten to twenty minutes, twenty minutes really is the more scientifically effective number. So it's meditation. Nathan: Gotcha. Meditation. Okay. Lovely. Well, I need to get back into meditation. I just do some deep breathing before I go to bed. PAT: Yeah. You do, 'cause you're a co founder now. Nathan: Yep. So that's all the time we have for today. A massive thank you to Pat for joining me once again. Most people don't have an idea problem, they have an input distance problem. When you're stuck, don't search your industry harder, leave it on purpose. If you like this episode, please check us out at the Innovation Philosophy Instagram. Leave us a comment or send us a question. See you next time, Impact Maker.