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SBP 232: SBP Interview - Why Innovation Fails Before the Idea Ever Gets a Chance. With Fiona Stevenson. · Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Baba podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: People have big ambitions, which is amazing.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have big dreams and big goals, but then you also have to put your money where your mouth is.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean to your agency, I mean internally.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want breakthrough innovation, you want something huge and disruptive that's gonna be worth, you know,$500 million, but you want it ready within 12 months, you want it to, you know, be kind of done in addition to people's day jobs, kind of as a little bit of their like internal side hustle and stuff.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're just like the ambition is not really matching the reality of the conditions you're creating within the organization.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Barber Podcast, the place for business leaders to get the best and most credible information on marketing, strategy, and innovation.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Your hosts, Mark Binkley and Vasilis Duros, share their experiences as they gather insights from the world's leading experts.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on with the show.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome back to the Sleeping Barber Podcast.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_05: We've got a really great episode today.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_05: Imagine this: you've got a CEO that's standing in front of an audience telling everybody in the room that innovation is mission critical.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_05: The ballroom applauds after thunderous applause from everybody.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_05: And two weeks later, with no announcement, the CFO moves 80% of the innovation budget to shore up quarterly earnings.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_05: So nobody was lying.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_05: The CEO meant it.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_05: The CFO was doing his job, and the innovation program was probably dead before anyone got to a whiteboard.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_05: Fiona Stevenson has spent her career on both sides of that room.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_05: She spent 12 years at Procter Gamble in Toronto and in Geneva running brand and innovation portfolios worth hundreds of millions of dollars in retail sales.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_05: And then she left that and built the idea suite, an innovation consultancy that made AdWe's fastest growing agencies three times and Canada's top growing companies list five times.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_05: So she's worked for a lot of different organizations.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_05: She's a best-selling author for Built for Breakthrough.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_05: It's a story about innovation.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_05: And we've got her here today to talk to us about innovation and all kinds of things about what we're doing right and wrong with that.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: So, Fiona, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_05: We're so excited to have you here.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate being here.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad innovation is a relevant topic for your audience.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it well, it it really is.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I we'll get to this in a little bit, but there's V and I have have talked a lot about innovation in the past, but we both did our MBAs in innovation leadership.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_05: And so it was great reading the book again.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_05: It was like, oh, these great ideas and thoughts in here just kind of brought us back.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_05: When when we you know going from PG to where you are now, can you just tell us a little bit about like what was that career to innovation consulting?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_05: Because that's not usually a checkbox on on uh your high school.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: How do you get into innovation consulting?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually, I mean, it was kind of a wonder that I got into PG because I actually studied psychology in University of Queens.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I don't know, I think I was gonna be a lawyer or something else, and then someone said, Oh, you got to go to PG.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: They hire people like you who are kind of like do a lot of extracurriculars.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So landed at PNG in brand management, absolutely loved it, uh, and did have a chance to uh do an international assignment as like, you know, a 23-year-old or whatever, which was very exciting going to Switzerland.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I really got to.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: In Canada, it tends to be more innovations developed in the US, and you're kind of putting your top spin on the innovation and launching it and marketing it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: But in Europe, I got to actually design initiatives for pet food.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Pet care.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so cool.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, is this actually real work?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like inventing products.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I eventually came back to Canada, that passion for innovation never went away.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I ended up at one point judging an awards competition and met someone else, Shelly Boltman, who had worked in innovation for most of her career.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you do this work all the time.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so we sort of started chatting and decided to start this agency, the idea suite.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea was she'd been working in consulting and innovation on the agency side for several years.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I had been client side for 12 years at that point.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so we kind of bring together the best of both worlds.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that creative firepower, but with the discipline of someone who's been in an organization and understands that, you know, it takes a lot to actually get innovation out the door.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: You have to align people, it has to be commercially ready.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it ended up being like one of those, you know, couldn't have predicted it, but kind of like the perfect career path ultimately.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'd love to ask a little bit, and because I think every marketer maybe has this playing in the back of their head a little bit, eventually moving into the consulting space, those that at least have grown up, say, enterprise or on the client side.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_04: What was that transition like for you?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: Because it is two different worlds.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that is such a good question because I had no idea how jarring that would be.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because I guess, you know, at PG, and I was always, I say I was always so nice to my agency partners, but now I realize there's nice.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's like, I had a really important meeting in two days.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Will you stay up all night developing like six different directions for me?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So there was this kind of adjustment to being on the client service side and the extra energy that takes of just always, you know, delivering for clients and then also like hunting for business at all times.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: It took me a while.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: It probably took one to two years to really settle into that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I would have these longings for like, in some ways, it was so easy.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had it so good when I was client side.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_05: I'm with you on that too.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_05: Like from my own consulting practice, it feels like it took me a year to figure out how to make my calendar work.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_05: Like even just the technology part of it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, I couldn't quite get everything lined up.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, it's really interesting.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_05: In the in the book, you've got obviously a great, there's lots of great stories in there, but one of them is about Febreze.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I thought it it does such a good job at setting up a big part of this conversation.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and maybe if you don't mind, if you could just tell it or your version of that story, I think it would be helpful for us to kind of like have something to anchor on and we build from from there for the rest of the conversation.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, and I wasn't working on Febreze at the time, but this is kind of a well-known, very publicized story because it's so interesting.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: So PG went through a phase, I think it was kind of like uh late 90s, of coming up with this very kind of breakthrough innovation, like these amazing technologies.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Freeze was one of them where it actually, unlike air freshener that kind of just like covers a smell, if you will.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna explain this badly, but Fabriz, the technology was actually such that it almost like surrounds the odor and neutralizes it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So truly neutralizes odor in, you know, a dramatically significant way.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, they had this great technology, and sometimes this happens where you have a great technology and you kind of like want to find a home for it or you know, fit it into consumers' lives.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the obvious problem that Fabriz thought it was solving is, you know, when there are these bad smells in a home, a consumer will realize, oh, this smells bad.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I have eight cats or whatever.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let me use Fabriz to neutralize that smell.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened is this this product should have been a massive success, but it actually really struggled at the beginning and was not meeting targets.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And what they discovered through some in-home research is that people actually grow accustomed, which is a bit scary for all of us, to the smells in your home.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you might think it smells great or very neutral.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, someone else could come in and be like, whoa.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem is there's no trigger.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's no, I wake up in the morning, oh, my house smells bad.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let me spray the Febreze.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So Febreze is not really for them.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so, really, what they decided to do to change the strategy once they were in consumers' homes and realized that people couldn't smell the cat smell in their home, which was so obvious to the moderator.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: They changed the strategy to make it more of a habit-attaching strategy, such that the guidance was, hey, whenever you're cleaning your home, use Fabriz as that finishing step.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, Fabriz, I believe, didn't have smells at the beginning.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of again an odor neutralizer, but they ended up introducing all these cool smells, like, I mean, eventually like Hawaiian tropic or this.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this combination of you're spraying it to finish at the end of your cleaning session, and you're also getting this amazing dopamine hit or reward of like, oh, this smells so great.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: My home is so wonderful.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then you want to attach that every time, and you want to attach that when you have guests coming.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you know, the product just exploded and it's a massive brand today.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_05: That's such a and so like just to jump into that, because there's so many things in there about Fabreze.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_05: Like, we we often, from a marketing perspective, just go, oh, well, here's this product and like let's let's market it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: But from an innovation point of view, there's so many from different ways to bring a product to market.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I kind of think there's so much overlap in that sense between marketing and innovation.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_05: Because it's not it's a process, especially if you're talking about future customers, it's a process of building toward a congruence or like a connection to future customers that is different than just like squeezing more blood from a stone.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think, and this is my PG training, I think, coming out, but marketing and innovation are similar in that in both cases, and this sentence is forever in my mind from PG, but the consumer is boss.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and that's kind of our point of view as an agency as well.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: We are an insight-led, consumer-led innovation agency.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So innovation has to start with a problem.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what is, and there are so many.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's like a Jeff Bezos quote like consumers are always wonderfully dissatisfied.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Even now it's like, what else could possibly exist?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: But go through your day, and there's a million pain points.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think, you know, marketing requires that real understanding of the consumer to explain maybe how something fits into their life.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then innovation really requires understanding the consumer, like, what are these weird workarounds that they're doing today?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or as the world evolves, and now the world evolves so quickly, what are they going to encounter?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: What are going to be those future problems?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we create a solution that makes their lives better?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: But in both cases, I just think that fundamental consumer understanding is so important.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we get so many funny briefs.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've done hundreds and hundreds of innovation projects.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And people will sometimes like will get a call from a client, like, oh, I'm so excited.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: The supplier came in and they have this amazing technology.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like this.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: So uh let's launch something, like using this technology, whatever it is, like this exploding, I don't know, thing that explodes in people's mouth, like some interesting senseate or whatever.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, of course, like there are ways to do that, but you still have to find like, okay, what does the consumer need?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because the consumer doesn't necessarily recognize that they need this exploding thing.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So how do we really understand their life?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: So true.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_04: I think this is a perfect segue into defining innovation because I feel like it's one of those words that gets thrown around everywhere, but it always means different things to different people.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: But I would love to kind of centralize that that definition for this for our conversation today.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_04: So when when we do say innovation, what are we actually talking about?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's funny.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I realized for many years that like most of my friends and family had no idea what I did.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because innovation is one of those buzzwords.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, innovation, are you in technology?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you actually do?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of define innovation as it's any idea for a brand, a service, a product, a new way of doing things that creates value once implemented in the world.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the the two really important parts of that, you know, the idea itself is only one component.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So an idea is not innovation, but an idea that truly creates value for the consumer, you know, group that it's supposed to, um, and when implemented.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another thing.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And this is my PG training coming in again, where they always used to say execution is the only thing the consumer ever sees.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can, you know, come up with this great idea and have this great concept and it can test well.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, um, sometimes what a company ends up implementing looks nothing like that idea and scored so well.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so the implementation is really key and how that's done.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_05: So that's kind of a Freeze case, it's like they have this great technology, but nobody was really buying it.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it didn't really create value.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But then as soon as it became, and it doesn't always have to be like an unmet need, it could be like a desire, it could almost be something that, hey, like I didn't, I wasn't like sitting there, I need a finishing touch when I'm finished cleaning.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: But then once you give me that opportunity to do that, it's like, oh, I love that.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, it kind of attaches and becomes something that becomes a habit, and you almost can't imagine living without.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's things, you know, I I tell this story a lot.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really embarrassing story.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: But at one point, very early on, I was approached and kind of like offered, hey, would you want to be considered for, you know, Uber, the service Uber is coming to Canada and they're looking for a managing director and I want to put your name forward.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, let me kind of look into that.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: What is this Uber thing?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of, you know, looked into it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, why?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a like a black limousine that you call.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't Uber X at that point, right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I was like, this is not gonna work.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And now I am probably like the number one Uber customer.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really drive much.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have like thousands of rides.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so and I can't imagine.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when it's not available to me, when I'm in one of those kind of rural parts of the country where they don't have Uber, I'm losing my mind.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes, again, you don't know how to get anywhere in the future.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_05: I wanted to ask also about the types of innovation because to build on what B was saying, like I I had a a former boss that kept talking about, well, we want to do some disruptive innovation.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what you also don't know what you mean by that.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_05: Because what you're proposing doesn't sound disruptive to me, but you're just putting a label.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_05: So can you maybe just also to level set us, give us an idea of what kinds of innovation there are out there and and what you know, building what V was just saying, what what are people mostly looking for when they're talking about innovation?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, there's a few things in that question because again, when we got get calls or get a new project brief, the thing that people are looking for most often is the silver bullet.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it is like, we want the big breakthrough.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they use these words.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they're using them, you know, with formal definitions attached.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's just we want something huge that's gonna transform the business.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or often they have an innovation that maybe launched 12 years ago or eight years ago, and it was the thing that just, you know, changed everything, made them the category leader, and they haven't had anything like that since.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, we need this to be the next, you know, insert X.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, it is almost challenging because they don't necessarily know what that means.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And there are kind of official definitions.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I actually opened the book to that page in case you asked me.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, there's like breakthrough innovation that really is more about maybe like a new technology again.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's also, you know, something like Uber that it was more about combining things from like, you know, you kind of almost like take different worlds and bring them into your category.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, and that can be like really disruptive innovation.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of changing the way people do things or revolutionizing a category.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes, you know, you have game changer innovation where it's both it's kind of this new technology that also kind of like borrows from adjacent categories that completely disrupts the category and changes the way people behave.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's huge and it changes your business.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And 10 years from now, you'll be like, we need another one of those.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, the problem and what we talk a lot about in the book is people have big ambitions, which is amazing.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have big dreams and big goals.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: But then you also have to put your money where your mouth is.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean to your agency, I mean internally, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want breakthrough innovation, you want something huge and disruptive that's going to be worth, you know,$500 million, but you want it ready within 12 months, you want it to, you know, be kind of done in addition to people's day jobs, kind of as a little bit of their like internal side hustle and stuff.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's just like the ambition is not really matching the reality of the conditions you're creating within the organization.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we try to do with our work to try to like bridge those, if you will.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_04: I love that so much because like I'm just gonna tug on one of those things that you said there, like the conditions and really building the conditions for innovation to thrive.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: And it's, you know, I in the preamble, I know I spoke about like why for me, even like these four things being quite distinct, it's a great way to even pressure test what leadership or what organization is really asking for, because they are four fundamentally different things.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_04: However, each and every one of them require a specific set of conditions.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_04: So I'd love to ask you, based on what you've seen over the hundreds of uh clients that you've worked with and kind of working on these projects, where is that miss right now?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_04: Like the one side of the building is saying we want to be disruptive or we want to break through or whatever they're identifying as.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_04: On the other, it's like it's not even being supported or there's not enough money coming in to help support an ambition like that.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think, and this is again my PG training, I feel like I keep seeing that like every five minutes, but you know, stakeholders getting stakeholders engaged in your project from the beginning.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: So in the book, we talk about the six stages of innovation, which is, you know, our process, our kind of unique design thinking process.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the first one, the first step is identify.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the least glamorous step, but the most important, because that's where you're really getting everyone on the same page in terms of like what are your ambitions, A for the project, what does success look like?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then ultimately, when we launch this product or service in market, you know, what are the ambitions?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then making sure everyone's kind of aligned to that, but then going that step further and saying, okay, so then how much are we willing to invest?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and you and you have to, we do a process called an innovation charter on these bigger projects where it is asking those questions.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like if they say, okay, every single thing we launch has to be worth$100 million coming out of this project.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, okay, so if we came up with an idea that was worth$50 million, are we saying we should dismiss that one?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, no, no, no, no, that sounds good too.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so actually it's$50 million or more.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's like this thing, and it's it's it's just easy.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like sometimes you um it's easy from the outside to notice kind of the incongruence between the desire and the, you know, same thing.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we'd never be willing to work with co-manufacturers.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everything has to be done in-house.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're like, okay, so if we had a$150 million idea that could be done with a co-manufacturer, like, well, no, that would be okay.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you kind of have all those conversations and test all those different scenarios to get to, and again, you have like finance in the room, you've got regulatory, you've got all the important people there.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's like, okay, this is what we're all aligning to.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: We said this, this, this.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then we keep kind of going back to that.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes the North Star router project.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: But often what happens again, there might be innovations done kind of on the side, or people don't want to involve stakeholders too early.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: They almost want to like, you know, get it all right, fail in private, and then like, ta-da, here is this amazing innovation and it's gonna be great, and we're about to put it into test.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly you have people saying, What?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we don't, you know, we don't agree with this, it doesn't fit our strategy, it's gonna be cannibalistic.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's that upfront kind of like definition and alignment is really important, but there should be stakeholder check-ins all along the way so that everyone is on the journey together.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_05: I it's funny as you're saying that I'm like, I should have done that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_05: There's this project I've been working on.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_05: Like, the charter would have been so good.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_05: But it's one of those things where I think when I'm reflecting on on some of the experience I've had with that, a lot of people want I I think we're trained, maybe in a way, all of us, to want a ri an immediate return.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_05: And and the innovation charter, in a lot of ways, because it's new, there isn't a past that you can go from.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_05: There is a thing about the future that's unknown that's in some ways scary about like to uh to certain people or certain personalities, maybe, and because you don't know what's coming and you don't know what it's gonna look like, you don't know how you're gonna get there.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_05: And so there's this sort of untrodden path that you have to go down.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_05: And so an innovation charter, as you're describing it, I'm like, that would have been so smart to have had something like that in this project because I recognize all these traps that you could get into where you just start building stuff because people want to see something progress.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So this is, I mean, you've touched on so much.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually sort of why the book exists.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because, and this is certainly not a like, we know better, and so let us, you know, educate you on this.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's because we've done hundreds of projects and seen all of this come to play.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the biggest thing, I think, is you kind of grow up and you look at yourself personally and you recognize, oh, like fear drives a lot of our bad behaviors or, you know, just in general.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same in innovation.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And innovation is so scary because you are truly entering the unknown.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there's this thing that I like to say that when you can see the path ahead, you're actually not innovating.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're just kind of copying a path that already exists.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why innovation is scary because as you go forward, if you're truly creating breakthrough or something new, it feels very unfamiliar the whole way.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't really rely on data.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one thing that at PG, you know, we had these things when I first started, these fact books.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it was this gigantic binder that you would carry with you at every meeting.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that whenever, you know, the president or anyone asked you a question, you could say, well, the postal penetration is 23%.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you had all these stats and data.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in general, decision making was based on, we were told to make decisions based on data and intuition.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so the people who are very successful in that kind of marketing role, and you know, how I learned to do was I really relied very, very heavily on data.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you can take that person who's an absolute superstar and put them into an innovation role.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's like there's no data.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, looking at the data from the past is going to set you off course.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's very, very scary.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so what you need to actually create is evidence versus data, which means you need to be kind of testing your way into things, right?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you create prototypes?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: How do you use test markets?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: How do you talk to consumers and simulate, you know, the environment or the product or whatever that you're creating as much as possible and try to learn from them and use that evidence and those glimmers to guide you going forward?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: But it's very different.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where sometimes marketing superstars can fail in an innovation role.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's, you know, it's not just them, it's like the whole system and all the conditions around them are not set up for innovation success.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we we had a question here for you that was like, why do the exact skills that earn someone a promotion, let's use marketing in this case, sabotage them from the moment that they lead innovation?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_04: What do you think that skill gap actually is?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think like I think back to PNG sometimes.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And again, like this is me, but it was like the deliverables that I deemed most important.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think were deemed most important for promotion.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: They were like these perfect decks, these perfect reports, or, you know, the headquarters is coming to town and you're creating this sort of like dog and pony show.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just, you know, there's substance there, definitely.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're preparing these reports and analysis of the business.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I would, you know, stay up so late, perfectly formatting something and practicing, you know, presenting this stuff in a great way.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: But that is, again, like that can be a trap in innovation because you can, you know, people can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these trend portals for, you know, these some of these amazing presentations and work with suppliers on.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: These are the macro trends that are going to be impacting us for the next two or three years and have a very cool interface that people can go in and like, you know, put them, I don't know, see the consumer in their home and like simulate and all this stuff.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, it's like, that's not really valuable.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just like if you do tons and tons of focus groups or tons and tons of in-home consumer research and you have an amazing hundred-slide report, that might have earned you kind of like the kudos before.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: But in innovation, you still haven't launched anything.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes we're actually brought in where an organization will say, you know, we did all this work, we spent all this money on trends, or we spend all this money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, on understanding the consumer, but our pipeline is still empty.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help us turn this into something?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it's just, again, like a different focus.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, I mean, we love doing that, and we have now a lot of experience doing that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that is some of the trappings of like those reports and everything buttoned up and everything tying together.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't get something out the door.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember even speaking, I'm doing a lot more speaking on innovation right now.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was talking to like a speaking coach, and she was like, You need to make your presentation, like your keynote and your phrase that pays, be like, I get innovation actually out the door.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And like by the URL, which I think I did, like outtheor.com, or because this is what agency or this is what um organizations struggle to do.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, come up with something that gets out the door, that launches, that gets onto shelves.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the challenge.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_05: I wanted to dig into some of the things you were just talking about, too, about the not having data about in the for things in the future.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_05: There's we've had a couple of people on, as we were talking about, as you're going on that that description of of the data part, and I a few people popped in my mind.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_05: One guy's named Eddie Obang, another person is Roger Martin.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_05: Both of them kind of have takes on this that I think are so relevant for this conversation.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_05: Eddie's was that we spend a lot of time responding rationally to a world that we understand and recognize, but doesn't exist.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_05: And I keep thinking about that quote whenever we see AI stuff anymore, like it just the whole world it looks the same, but it's operating, it's beginning to operate differently.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_05: And then Roger has been on the show a couple times and he's worked with PG quite a bit, and he's talked about that a lot.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's like a PG god, or like we all think he's an absolute legend, well, which he is.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_05: He is, yeah.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_05: And he's been on and he's talked about this a lot, where he's like, the problem with the future is there's no data for it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_05: And so you know, we innovation does run on systems, but there's not the predictability in the outcome.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_05: So when you're talking about getting things out there and making it launch, how do you resolve the the tension between a business that wants to the predictability of and the certainty of something with the the process and that kind of thing to give them that kind of comfort, but also explore what doesn't exist yet?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love those examples because it really speaks to this, you know, we're using assumptions that were based on a reality that no longer exists.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so once something is kind of codified as like an assumption, again, it's not applicable like even to the world today, and especially not to two or three years out, which is, you know, when we're designing the innovation for.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was actually listening to a new book, uh, I think it's We Are as Gods.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great book, I highly recommend.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was just talking about Elon Musk and like just in one example, and the way that he, you know, there was kind of this assumption like electric cars are just too expensive, they'll never be widely adopted.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then he sort of took a first principles approach and said, well, like let me question and challenge some of the assumptions.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, what's making the electric car expensive?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And when he looked into it, it turns out it's the battery.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, well, what's making the battery expensive?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the material?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: So what is this battery made of?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like six different metals or something.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then wait, those are not expensive either.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out it's actually like the production of the battery that's expensive.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so just like questioning these things that people took as truths to then understand.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if we can just bring the production cost down, then actually, you know, this could be something more widespread.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how he kind of, you know, I'm very much simplifying, but like changed the course of a future and and created um a future reality that people just couldn't see.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think we do have to be careful that we are not looking for kind of like certainty by clinging to these assumptions that either don't hold true anymore or don't have to hold true anymore, that we can actually interrogate them.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then, as I was saying, although we can't really rely on data for innovation, we can create evidence.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it's like, how can we all along the way create these moments where we can, you know, test something?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where I love AI.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm still in the camp of loving AI for now, which I can again in six months.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's so great for innovation if used correctly because now it's so easy for us to prototype things quickly.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say prototype, you know, you can like if you have an idea for a new, I don't know, app or a new, you know, even like a new service, but you want to kind of create a website to explain it, you can just do that instantly in a matter of seconds and you can quickly get people to react to it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that used to be something that was a bit, you know, stickier before, where a prototype they should be cheap and fast and you know, because you want to learn quickly, a prototype's not supposed to be perfect, but they still were a lot more labor intensive.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now how we can just mock things up and create things and create images, we can get this real-time feedback and quickly create kind of like a body of evidence that can act like data that can help us keep moving forward step by step.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_04: Mark and I were talking, yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_04: Mark and I were talking about this, I think it was just that was it earlier this week, or maybe even last week, just around the idea of how AI helps accelerate, or the the barrier to entry right now is almost like gone.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_04: And you always needed to bring in, say you're building an app, you needed to bring a UX expert, then you needed to make sure you're bringing in the back end to make sure like all the systems.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: But now you can literally query your way within 20, 30 minutes, at least get the idea out of your head to help conceptualize what it is that either you want or help a client get closer to that.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_04: Here's where we think we need to go.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_04: And I love to understand when we look at the world of AI, and I love that you said like we're still kind of in love with it.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm with you.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_04: I love it a lot.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: Where do you see this, or how has it helped you really in this um in this journey to help clients understand how to really build innovation in their organizations?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I do think that this is a period of like incredible creative potential.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And exactly like you said, like this is a chance for finally, you know, we all, we are all our creative beings.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: We all have these ideas inside of us.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so much of that friction and that barrier to entry, which was costs and all kinds of things, is just gone.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's sort of democratized where we can, you know, if someone has a good idea and you can bring it to life at least enough, even to explain it to someone, to test it, to develop it.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's just absolutely amazing.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think where a company could go wrong or is believing like, oh, well, now I can kind of just use AI to, you know, come up with all my innovation.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, look, in 20 or 30 seconds, ChatGPT can like define my pipeline.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where I believe that AI is a great input, but it's not the ultimate output.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's an amazing input in terms of you know getting starter ideas, creating prototypes, those kinds of things, but you need the discernment.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that discernment comes, I mean, in my case, my discernment comes from hundreds of projects and sort of seeing again and again where do things fail, or consumers say they like this, but then they actually in reality don't.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's like these say do gaps.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think for people within a company, they just know inherently, you know, what is when is something like on-brand or off-brand, or they know kind of like how things get stuck or what it takes to, you know, sell something into loblas or whatever else.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it is that like beautiful combination, and I'm sure you've heard this a lot, but that human discernment, but also just like using AI for its play value, for its like productivity in combination, I think is amazing.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_05: Similarly, there's uh it just made me think of this.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_05: There's I think in the book you've talked about we should as a as a problem.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_05: And and as you're just describing that, I'm like, yeah, like the the whole design thinking, like how might we is a very different starting of a question.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_05: And so I wonder, like, if maybe if you could just talk about the we should thing and and why things like how might we, especially in in the context of AI, could be so much more productive.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we should is uh it's funny because sometimes, you know, ideas are dime a dozen, and like leadership often will say things in a we should, as we look at like, you know, filling our initiative pipeline for the next two or three years, we should have something that's sustainable, or we should have something that wins with Gen Z.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, and they say this and like, but that's not an idea, right?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's an ambition.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes even in an ideation session, as people are landing ideas, it's like, oh, we should do something, you know, again, that um is really sustainable.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're kind of landing the idea on a template, and it's like, well, the product has sustainable packaging and it's made from sustainable ingredients.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, okay, that's great, but this is nothing that you could hand off to a developer for them to actually make.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: What you've just said is the ambition.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is what you want, but you need to really define it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: So what is that packaging?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is it bamboo?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, does it break down?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: What is the so you need to actually kind of develop ideas further?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where sometimes people get stuck, even with ideas in general.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like you hear this again, if when we get the emergency call, like, ah, we did a brainstorm last year, we have 200 ideas, um, but we don't know what to do, and nothing's in the pipeline.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you kind of look at the ideas and they're very vague.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I talk a lot, I always use this example in like at the beginning of an ideation session where I say, you know, you could land an idea and say, let's say you're working for an ice cream company.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're gonna develop rainbow ice cream.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: But rainbow ice cream is not an idea.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, again, sort of a should, like an ambition.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Rainbow idea, rainbow ice cream could be something that's made with vegetables and you know, super vegetables and like the red is from beet and the something is whatever.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: It could be vanilla ice cream with sprinkles on top.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: It could be something sponsored by Rainbow Bright.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so if it could actually be executed 500 different ways, then it's not actually an idea that's fully landed.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the thing that we're doing with our teams or with the clients on ideation day is really the discipline of landing an idea more fully.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then to the how might we, when something comes up where someone says, okay, like, well, maybe we could again use bamboo in the packaging.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: And immediately you get a lot of people saying, well, that's not gonna work.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: We tried that 10 years ago, and they're they're genuinely trying to help, but you know, it never works, or the plant had a problem with it.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so the idea is sort of dismissed, and that's where the how might we, like, well, how might we make that work?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or how might we take some of the properties of bamboo and look for another ingredient that also delivers that, or how might we retrofit things?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: So just like switching into that mindset of possibility versus people, and actually, like oddly Canadians, I think sometimes more.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we believe that adding value is actually showing why something's a very bad idea.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we might say it very nicely, but no, this actually won't work.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, we tried that, no, whoever will like this.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you really are trying to add value and help and making sure that people don't, you know, run into a problem down the road, but it is a real way to crush creativity.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll kind of set some expectations at the beginning of an ideation day where it's, you know, this is really about nurturing and greenhousing and thinking about how might we versus, you know, kind of squashing everything that we've ever tried or remotely considered.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_04: My job is to poke holes.
• 36:49
  unknown: Yeah.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_04: You hear that all the time from leadership.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, yeah.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um, a lot of the great work that you've done has been rooted in or the discipline that you've been able to introduce is rooted in a framework, you know, the six eyes.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_04: I wanted to make sure that we did reserve some time for you to kind of walk through those six eyes and also kind of get into some of the nuances, as, you know, because you would argue that there it's a multiplication, it's not really a checklist.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: So I'd love to kind of get into that a little bit.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: So so there are design thinking processes that exist.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: And when we started our agency, I was very much like, okay, we're the idea suite.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we should have a six-step process or a four-step process, whatever it is, but let's have them all start with the word I, because we're the idea suite.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, they're all kind of somewhat the same, but there were some really important nuances in our process, which I've realized are critically important.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the first step I talked about, that is the identify.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: It is the least glamorous part, but the most important part where you're really identifying the goals of the project, you know, the goals of the innovation ultimately, but also those guardrails.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what's in play?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: What can we influence?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: What can we not influence?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're getting all the stakeholders bought in.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a really important step.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: We never move on from that step until we feel like we are very, very clear.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the most important part of that really is what is the problem we're solving?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, who is that target?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: What is the problem that we're solving, and why are we solving it?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: What is it going to do for us from a business standpoint?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: So then we move into insights, the fun part.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's actually talking to the customer or consumer, um, understanding the problem and their lives that this product will fit into or the service will fit into more deeply.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we like to do that in different ways.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like sometimes we're talking to experts, people who are experts about that consumer.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're talking to the consumer themselves.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're actually just watching the consumer.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: We even do something called lurking sometimes, which might be just lurking in a grocery store aisle or lurking at a bar and watching how people order drinks because you're really seeing that real life behavior.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Then the next one is inspiration.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this is one of our kind of secret sauces.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, as you know, every problem has been solved before in another industry or, you know, in a slightly different way.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever the problem is, we're always looking to, okay, let's look at, you know, adjacent worlds or other regions or, you know, just other worlds that might have answers or solutions that could inspire us.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're working on a food product, it might be looking around the world at like trending flavors and uh formats and executions.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: But um that really makes it such that on ideation day, which is the fourth eye, people aren't just starting from kind of nothing.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if you enter a room, kind of blank walls, blank sheet of paper, let's have ideas.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: People are just gonna have the same ideas that they've always had.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so one thing is we meant make them do homework so they get those ideas that they always have out of their head.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: So there's space for new ideas to drop in.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then we have, you know, a room just filled with stimulus, filled with inspiration, so that people, it takes the pressure off.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: They don't feel like, well, I have to be creative or I have to come up with it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: They can more spot the gold in the room and kind of land that into a solution for their business or brand.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: The next one, which is another one like secret sauce, undervalued but so important step, is iteration.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, on ideation day, you might come up with 100, 200 ideas, and then, you know, ultimately down selecting those to the 10 or the 20 that you want to move forward.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but still at the end of ideation, an idea is only like 50 or 60%.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: So iteration is really working that internally, you know, with all the resources internally to make it strong, to make it feasible, to make it, you know, meet regulatory constraints, but then also workshopping that with the consumer or customer.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because sometimes you just don't even realize you think something is very clearly expressed, but they have no idea, they're interpreting it differently.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then implementation is the last step, which we don't tend to get involved in, but that is such a crucial step because again, the consumer, a customer, only sees what is executed.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest problem in the implementation phase is often that's where it's a bit of deaf by a thousand cuts, where oh, well, let's just change this to make it a little cheaper, to make it a little, you know, faster, let's do this to improve the economics.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly you've kind of whittled away all of the gold.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so we often at the end of a an innovation journey like to say, for our top ideas, what's kind of the idea's DNA?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: What are the parts of this idea that are so core to it that you don't want to kind of whittle away because you'll lose the magic that consumers or customers really, really loved.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so those are the six eyes.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I have in my mind that I want to write like a new book at some point, which is like the seventh eye, intuition.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because I actually think that might be the missing eye and the most important eye, which it's there, but we just didn't really, you know, put it officially in the process.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that is just such an important step the whole way because you will be, you know, I remember focus groups where I'm in and a consumer says something, and you do get the goosebumps, like, oh, this is it.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, I've just cracked, you know, I've just heard and I can see that this is the insight, the core insight that the whole product is going to be designed around.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or on audiation day, you see all these different ideas and you see one, and you again you get the it is kind of the goosebump effect of like there's something here.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's so important to be tuned in to that intuition and to not ignore it and think, oh, this is just kind of a soft thing.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that is everything.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Your intuition is telling you something, and even just getting curious about where it lights up and unpacking that uh is important.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_05: It's great.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_05: I love that.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_05: As you're going through it, I was like, okay, this Febreze thing is check, check, check.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_05: Like because you get to the point, especially on the iteration part, you're like, you had this great product, but nobody was really using it that way.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_05: And so then, like going back to the data and insights and like the customers and iterating off of that, it's it's so interesting thinking of it that way.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if it just is urban legend, but apparently with that Babris story, and this is publicized online, they were actually at one point in the house with someone who had eight cats, and whereas like, oh, you know, the moderators gently trying to say, does it smell bad in here sometimes?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: And personal's like, not at all.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no, luckily my cuts don't smell.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you can imagine that was the total goosebum moment of just like this is the insight that people, you know, become desensitized to those odors in their house.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's like that's where you do, and this is why I love innovation because your whole body, like every cell lights up, and you're like, I've cracked it.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know like the whole solution now, but I know that I need to innovate around that insight because that's the one.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_05: And it yeah, it's so interesting.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_05: What is there within the process that you have, is I know you talked about you don't let people move past the charter, the the first stage, but is there one that they aside from that, let's say, is that they they just want to skip.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: Because they think it's going to be a shortcut.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, you know, just given we're in Canada, Canadian budgets are a lot smaller, tend to be, than, you know, the US counterparts.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: We know this broadly about everything.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so often that's where you'll get the calls from Canadian clients where it's like, oh, our budget's really small.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: So can we just skip to ideation?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or we just want to do ideation.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it is really dangerous.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about the multiplication.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there are these six steps, but we say, you know, it's not a plus sign, it's a multiplication sign between each step.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because if any step is missing, flat a zero, and zero times anything equals zero.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: So the whole process falls apart.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there are ways absolutely that you can still move through all six steps in a very efficient way.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, you know, identify as free.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then with insights, you can do things like look through complaints or, you know, it used to be with PG, like 1-800 calls where consumers want to, you know, call and ask about things or whatever.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really rich source of data that exists.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to do research, or sometimes there's just tons of research sitting in people's filing cabinets or now, you know, on SharePoints that have so many rich innovation insights in them.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: They've just never been looked at with that lens.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll do something where we truffle hunt through existing decks that may have served a different purpose, but we're looking for those innovation insights, like those tensions, those workarounds, those, you know, I say this and I do something else, because those can be really rich.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we always suggest like still traveling through the six steps in an efficient way.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if you just jump to ideation, what you're gonna get is a typical brainstorm where you'll leave with 100 or 200 ideas, and then a year later they're still, you know, kind of on your computer, nothing's really happened.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_04: Nothing's happened, yeah.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_04: Is there is there an eye that people or organizations tend to undervalue the most?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think in some ways it's the implementation.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, if you've done, you know, for us, we tend to hand off with concepts.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we write like the 10 or 15 concepts.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: These have been gone through a bunch of iteration, consumers have looked at them, we know they're really strong.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, they ours do tend to score outstanding because we've really gone through that due diligence.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're like, great, in two years I'm gonna see this in market.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's amazing how much stuff never launches, or again, how stuff really, as it goes through the implementation phase, just kind of like change or loses some steam, or people don't necessarily invest.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, PG used to talk about like launch and leave, where you kind of launch something and then just leave it, it's not properly supported.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that even having an outstanding concept is not really enough because it's still not out there in the world.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_05: If we go back to the beginning of the conversation, we started talking about this fictitious scenario where this the CEO is like, we're gonna do this thing, and then CFO's like, I gotta cut the budget.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_05: You know what has to be true with this in and with this process or with innovation in general, so that the budget survives that.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and it's not that the CFO, as we just talked about, it's not that the CFO is a bad guy or bad girl.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_05: It's that they're just trying to do their job and they're managing for the short term.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_05: So, how how do you bridge that gap and show the value in this kind of process and project?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a great question.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, initially, as I talked, if everyone kind of understands, and that's sort of the charter, like this is what we need to do, then there do need to be these milestones along the way.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: So PG had a very rigorous stage gate process, which I think is great.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: You also have to be careful it's not so rigorous that, you know, more unconventional breakthrough innovation is going to be able to survive it.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because sometimes it is a bit of a leap of faith.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there do have to be these check-ins and these milestones where you're saying, okay, we've done this consumer research and here are the glimmers.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've done this kind of prototyping and you know, ABC and this one kind of won.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you're taking people along for the ride, I think is really important.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then innovation strategy really needs to be tied to the business strategy.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: So if people, if innovation's kind of the side gig and people can't see how it relates strategically and how delivering innovation is critical to delivering, you know, the broader business goals, it will just kind of be, you know, slashed first, right?
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's really, really important.
• 48:41
  unknown: Oh.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of get what you measure.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I talked a little bit about this, but it is really dangerous or challenging when innovation is kind of a bunch of people's side jobs versus having a dedicated innovation team, which again becomes more challenging in Canada because the roles are so massive.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's kind of a general manager in Canada, they're doing six or seven different things.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: But having at least a few people who are dedicated to innovation is really, really important because otherwise, and I I remember even at PG where um there was like some commercial innovation that we were working on.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not actual product innovation, but it's kind of, you know, some sort of a scale initiative where you have multiple brands involved or a new way of talking about your product.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there were six of us kind of handpicked to work on this commercial innovation, but we all had full day jobs.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so we try to get together to meet, and it would be like, okay, let's meet Thursday from like 1215 to 1245 while we're eating our lunch and try to make progress on this innovation.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it just doesn't work that way.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's the barcoding that we talk about in the book.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: A bar barcoding refers to what most people's like outlook calendar look like, where it's just meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: And innovation really gets done in these bigger blocks of time.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a book called Deep Work, which talks about this.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, innovation needs dedication.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: So even if it is people's side jobs, you need to have these points, you know, whatever it is every couple of weeks where it's not just an hour standing meeting, but it's actually like a three-hour chunk or a full-day chunk where we're really getting into things, we're ramping up, we're making connections between different things.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: There is time for that intuition to come out and play.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're not in kind of reactive, busy mode because it really is focused teams that get things done and get innovation done, not busy teams.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: There's someone listening to this podcast right now, and they're about to start an innovation project on a Monday morning.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_04: What is the first thing that they should do outside of just call you?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_04: But what what should they be thinking about or doing?
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the most important thing to do is to define the problem that you're solving.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have a template.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a website I can give the link at the end for the book.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the templates is a problem definition template.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it is that discipline of versus like, okay, I just need to come up with a new idea, and it could be anything.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is that, like, who?
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Who am I really, you know, trying to solve a problem for?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: What is that problem?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: And what is that new behavior that I'm trying to create?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if I create it, what is the business outcome that I'm after?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: So really getting clear, this is for innovation or any kind of creative problem-solving challenge.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you can really define that problem, and then you can start to socialize that with people, like, hey, and they can get excited.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, this is the problem that we really need to solve.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because as you've shown, if we solve that, it will lead to X.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then starting to really get into that identify phase of, okay, so who's our core team?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: What are our guardrails?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: What's the vision of success?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that vision of success is important.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we talk about that in the book.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you can have a project objective and all a bunch of numbers, but the vision of success exercise is where you actually make a team think about, you know, if this launches and it's a massive success in the market, what does that world look like?
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are consumers or customers saying about this product?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: What are our retailers saying?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: What are influencers saying?
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: How do we feel?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Are we all promoted?
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is kind of the this like amazing world, this utopia that exists because this project was a massive success.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: And by helping people see that and get excited about what that could mean for them, you start to have like more skin in the game.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the skin in the game is really, really key because innovation will not survive if it doesn't have a champion and really like a lot of champions.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you need one person who's like the tiger, like, I am protecting this innovation, I'm getting this thing out the door.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then along the way, that person needs to be building these other champions so that ultimately the whole organization is like, we need to make this a success.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because I just I do believe that, you know, there are great ideas, but sometimes it's also about like a pretty good idea that people have just decided to take a bet on and are supporting it, and there's belief behind, and that can, you know, snowball something from like a pretty good idea to an outstanding breakthrough idea that changes the game.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_05: The is the problem statement.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_05: Is that really the document you said?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_05: Just asking for a friend, uh, is it ever too late to start filling in one of those?
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, in fact, it's funny.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about like six-step, you know, it's like it looks like it's as perfect.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, first you do identify, then you move to insights, then you move to inspiration.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: But in fact, there's a lot of like going back and forth.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes you might be at your insights phase and you're with consumers and you're talking to consumers again, kind of like that Fabrize example, and you realize we are actually like solving the wrong problem.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go back to identify and change the problem and change what we're actually trying to do and then restart.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's totally okay.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's not going backwards.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's like really preventing a disaster.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you are like, well, too late, like this is the problem, we gotta just stick with this.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like for what?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what kind of that boldness or confidence or whatever to say, we got it a bit wrong.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let's realign everyone, but this really is it.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the evidence that tells us that this is it, not that.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_05: Let's say my friend wanted to find this uh website.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're such a good friend to help your friend find what they need.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_05: I really call her right after this, but perfect.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: What's her name?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_05: Just just out of curiosity, what is the website?
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: So uh please visit our website.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I love URLs.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you get the URL you wanted, but the book is called Built for Breakthrough.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the website is builtforbreakthrough.com.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we do have just a bunch of templates on there for a bunch of sections in the book.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if that's helpful, even just to look at it and then kind of turn it into something that feels you know, custom fit for your challenge or your company, um, helpful starting point.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_04: And how can people find out more about you and all the great work that you're doing?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I'm a LinkedIn lover.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you can find me on LinkedIn at Stiona Stevenson.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also at Fionastevenson.com, and our agency is the idea suite.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, I would love to hear from you, visit, stop by.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Your friend is welcome anytime.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: You can pick up the phone and call.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always here to balance.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_05: I'll be sure to let her know.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_05: You're very welcome.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, thanks so much, Fiona.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_05: This is so good.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,