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Bruce Vojak — The Hourglass Model of Breakthrough Innovation · The Innovation Show

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  This is the Hourglass Model suggested by Bruce and his co-authors in
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  the book, Serial Innovators.
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  Welcome back, Bruce Vojak.
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  It's great to be back, Aidan.
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  It's great to have you back, man.
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  We could have created several episodes out of the conversations we had off-air
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  I know.
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  I know.
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  So let's get stuck in here, and we're gonna give it a short little episode here.
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  , I wanted to just offer people a shorter episode for those people
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  , with limited attention spans.
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  Maybe you'll give a little introduction, Bruce, to what this
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  we're seeing on the screen is.
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  basically this is presented, , in contrast to what a phase gate
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  or stage gate model might Be.
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  Whereas a phase gate, a stage gate is a very linear model starting with this idea
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  of having some concept or an insight.
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  The insight's bought into, and then you develop it sequentially or stepwise.
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  In the hourglass model, it's not prescriptive the way a
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  stage gate or phase gate is.
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  It's descriptive.
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  It describes really the, basic places where innovators reside
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  as they move through this idea of creating some new business
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  model or a new product or process.
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  And it begins at the upper left.
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  As we had already talked a bit about the, people who are very
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  successful at innovating, the serial innovators who succeed well, become
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  motivated to solve customer problems.
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  They're motivated to solve not only customer problems, but to advance
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  the company, to to make the company profitable and to really help
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  everybody in their environment.
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  they're usually initially assigned some kind of a problem, but in the process
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  of being assigned it, sometimes, not always, but often they'll go back and
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  they'll redefine the problem so they deeply understand the problem, and
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  they may change the way it's framed.
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  I had shared a bit about Tom Osborne with with the Always Ultra product,
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  and he was looking to make a feminine
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  hygiene product.
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  It was designed and functioned like a diaper, it turned out a lot of people
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  in that organization came from that product area, so that was a
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  mindset that was appropriate and it worked, and it was actually a very
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  successful product at the time.
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  But he began to look at it more carefully and more deeply, and he
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  changed the definition of the problem.
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  So the innovation in his case was really the redefining of the problem to say,
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  "No, it shouldn't necessarily look like a diaper. It should look like a
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  garment. It should conform to the body and have all these other functions as
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  a result." Be comfortable, if you will.
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  But that's really this upper left phase where, the innovator often but
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  not always will really in the process of coming into the proj- project
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  have an assigned problem, but then really maybe redefine it in some way.
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  I thought about this as well, that there's a famous goalkeeper for
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  Manchester United, his name was Peter Schmeichel, and I used to call our
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  organization Sch- Schmeichel sometimes because nothing would get past it.
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  And then I thought of, I can't remember who the quote is by, but it
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  was, like, some quip by somebody who said, "Ideas, we don't ship ideas
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  here. They're lucky if they escape."
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  And r- that's the context for what I'm about to say, so sometimes I found
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  when you get an idea that has least resistance, even if it's not the right
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  problem to solve you'll, go with it.
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  And actually, that's the origin of the Innovation Show.
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  I worked for an organization, it was worse than Schmeichel.
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  It was the best goalkeeper in the world.
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  And the Innovation Show was one of those ideas that escaped from it,
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  and I kept it going afterwards, after that, that, left that organization.
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  But I just wondered what you found with that in your studies and research
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  on people, because I know you've done deep research on innovators.
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  And sometimes it's not exactly the problem you wanna solve, but it's a problem,
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  and it gives you a bit of progress.
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  I want to be really clear that the serial innovators were an interesting
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  mix of being pragmatic and idealistic And in this case, I'd say there
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  is a certain level of pragmatism.
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  I'd have to be-- I'd have to really think to give you a couple
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  of crisp, clear stories on it.
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  But it's not like they all had to change and redefine the problem.
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  And that's why I wanna, step lightly on that, that upper left circle because they
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  really would look to change it if it's, if it really solved customer problems better.
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  not everybody has the luxury of that, of find the right problem.
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  And it links to something we're gonna talk in the next episode about this
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  navigating the corporate politics, that sometimes they have to have a really
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  good relationship, with the customer in order to solve the right problem, and
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  actually to get people who are bored of their jobs engaged to be working on
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  these things in their spare time as well.
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  But we'll talk about that in the next episode.
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  I'll quickly follow on that.
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  You think about this whole area of design thinking and
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  empathy of customers.
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  the innovators and this a little bit, a step or a half
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  step away but I think
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  it's a good place to mention this at least that, the serial innovators were
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  doing things like being empathic and really doing, I'll say, aspects of
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  design thinking before a lot of these things were ever really even concepts.
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  And I know I've alluded to this in the past, but this is a good example.
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  They, don't do things just for the sake of saying, "I have to really redefine the
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  problem." They say, "What's necessary to be successful in the organization?" as
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  you said, there can be times where you go with what you've got, and other times
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  where you say, "No, this other concept is so important to pursue that if we
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  don't do it the competition might do it.
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  So we have to pursue these things.
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  And so they apply these things really flexibly.
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  and we'll cover that in depth because that very much comes to the fore in
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  the next episode on navigating the politics of breakthrough innovation
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  Yeah.
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  So, then moving from defining the problem, they move to the upper right where this is
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  where you deeply understand the problem.
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  I always like to qualify this and say it's not an academic study,
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  but it is a very deep dive.
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  say this upper right in particular, I'm I find is very appealing because it's
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  counter to the idea that we're, all tightly h- well, it's counter to the
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  idea that we just have to let loose.
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  We have to be free thinkers, and The pattern that we saw wasn't, just being
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  crazy and, again, I-- there's this, view that we just have to have beanbag
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  chairs and foosball tables, and we can be innovators, no, it's this deep
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  understanding, it's a beautiful thing to look at because because these are people
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  who really understand the problem at hand.
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  They understand the customer need deeply.
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  They deeply understand the technology, not only the customer, but the market,
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  the financial aspects, the manufacturing.
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  They understand what's acceptable in the organization at different levels.
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  And it's through that deep understanding that they begin to collect enough dots
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  that they can begin to connect them.
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  And that's when they begin to see, okay, there's a pattern here.
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  I think I see something worth trying.
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  And they drop down into that middle section.
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  And that middle section is the cusp between what we might call the
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  fuzzy front end and the actual stage gate itself in a, linear model.
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  section is where they try things, they maybe do some small sample studies.
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  They'll go talk in more specifics with customers.
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  If it's a, if it's a B2B sale, they'll go to purchasing agents and influencers
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  in the customer organization, maybe with prototypes or other types of examples.
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  really begin to try things and iterate and learn from that.
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  And then they drop down to the lower section that's much
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  more the implement lower left.
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  Lower right, the idea there is much more of of not letting go entirely,
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  but influencing the marketplace itself.
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  and really this, model, if you will, is more of a state diagram, if we look at
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  it in terms of using computer language.
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  You have to pretty much touch on all of these five states in the
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  process, there's really no order that they have to appear in.
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  and these arrows suggest where we more often saw a flow.
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  So we might flow from upper left to upper right, then we might flow
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  from upper right back to upper left.
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  Oh we've, learned all this.
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  Maybe we've got the wrong problem.
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  And then sometimes they'll drop down to the middle.
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  Sometimes they'll be in the middle, and they'll be learning things
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  and say "We're, trying things, and this isn't even the right problem,"
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  to go back to the upper left.
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  So those arrows are meant to suggest these are ways we might see the flow.
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  And so again, it describes the innovators that are most successful, and and it
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  suggests that if you're doing this and you recognize this, you're not
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  as crazy as you might think you are.
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  And I think that's an important statement to make sometimes too,
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  because I don't want to say they were all plagued with self-doubt.
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  Later I hope to share a story of someone who began to really understand that
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  she really was doing what was right.
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  But It took a while to really accept that.
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  one of the things that dawned on me, again, looking at this diagram in
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  the greater context of the book, and particularly in the next episode about
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  the politics is it also probably depends on the maturity of your organization,
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  the skill set, the capability, the understanding of the organization in
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  a innovation cycle, and also where the organization is on its own S-curve, where
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  is it on its own maturity, and has it got other people in R&D, other people
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  in innovation, and also leadership.
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  a leadership team nearing retirement who doesn't want to take on a big change
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  is gonna be l- more resistant of this kind of back and forth, et cetera.
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  And I wondered- sometimes about that, is that why you could jump stages
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  here and not even know that you are jumping stages, and just be lucky
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  because the organization you're in
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  Yeah I've, got to say that there are some organizations, and maybe this is
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  because I'm an engineer I'll say this.
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  The ones that rely, and we'll get to this in the next session more,
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  but the ones that rely more on the data and,and facts, it's a little
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  bit, I think anecdotally, it's a little bit easier to navigate those.
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  The ones that even if they say they value data and facts, but actually it's not
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  a, virtue to believe in that there it's tougher because then it, can be a more,
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  decisions can be based more on whims.
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  And I've, seen that, I've experienced it, and yeah, there's only so
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  much any individual can truly do.
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  I don't want to say that, if you dropped any of these people into any
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  organization they'd be successful.
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  But what it does tell me at least is that if you're someone who's behaving
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  in a way that's consistent with this model, consistent with that MP3 or MP5,
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  excuse me, that we spoke about earlier if you're doing all these things and
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  you're doing it right and you continually hit a wall, maybe it is okay to leave.
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  And if you're not doing these things, maybe you better try these
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  things before you say, "It's them, not me." And I think that, that to
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  me is part of the value of this.
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  It, not only, as I said a moment ago, normalizes your behavior, it also
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  gives you a template against which to say, "Am I doing these things?"
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  a funny little thing for you, last when I was looking at this diagram, I
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  kinda thought it looked like a human body, and when the product launches,
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  I'm not gonna say where it goes.
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  It's a birthing process.
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  Ex- oh, even better.
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  Well, that's that's more, more positive than I thought, man, when I looked at it.
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  until after I said it and you laughed.
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  I thought, "Oh man, sorry."
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  Brilliant.
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  All right, Bruce let's, leave it there.
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  And,
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  uh, for those people who have just joined us for this little nugget, this little
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  short episode, thank you for joining us.
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  And Bruce Vojak, author of Serial Innovators, thank you for joining us.
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  Thank you.
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  I gotta love
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  it
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  this short episode was brought to you by the Kyndryl Institute, so I'll keep
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  the sponsorship message short also.
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  You can find Kyndryl and the Kyndryl Institute and a plethora
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  of brilliant thinkers and speakers who've been on the innovation
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  show at K-Y-N-D-R-Y-L, kyndryl.com