Latest / The Innovation Show / Bruce Vojak — Identifying, Developing and Managing Serial Innovators (Part 3 of 3)

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Bruce Vojak — Identifying, Developing and Managing Serial Innovators (Part 3 of 3) · The Innovation Show

• 0:00
  But it's just realizing that the executive and the innovator working
• 0:04
  together, it really is a relationship.
• 0:06
  It's a working relationship.
• 0:08
  And it's not,, merely financially transactional, although there
• 0:12
  are aspects of that, , in how they're motivated and demotivated.
• 0:17
  It's not a command and control.
• 0:18
  That'll end it-- I mean, we've already talked about this several times.
• 0:22
  That'll end it in a heartbeat.
• 0:23
  You know, either the person will stay and shut down or they'll, they'll leave.
• 0:27
  And so it's how do you find the right balance of not overmanaging
• 0:32
  or even, you know, not paying sufficient attention to the person?
• 0:35
  What's that right balance, if you will?
• 0:37
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• 1:03
  Welcome to Identifying and Developing Serial Innovators.
• 1:08
  In his best-selling book Range, our future guest on the innovation
• 1:12
  show, - David Epstein, quotes research from today's book and today's author.
• 1:17
  "Toward the end of their book Serial Innovators," he writes, "the authors
• 1:21
  depart from stoically sharing the data and observations and offer
• 1:25
  advice to human resource managers.
• 1:29
  They are concerned that HR policies at mature companies have such well-defined
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  specialized slots for employees that potential serial innovators
• 1:37
  will look like round pegs in square holes and thus get screened out.
• 1:43
  Their breadth of interest does not neatly fit any rubric.
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  They are pie-shaped people who dive in and out of multiple specialties.
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  Look for wide-ranging interests, they advise.
• 1:56
  Look for multiple hobbies and avocations.
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  When the candidate describes his or her work, does he or she tend to focus
• 2:03
  on the boundaries and the interfaces with other systems?" Our guest's
• 2:08
  research revealed that serial innovators repeatedly claim that they themselves
• 2:13
  would be screened out under their company's current hiring practices.
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  A mechanistic approach to hiring while yielding highly reproducible results,
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  in fact, reduces the number of high potentials for innovation candidates.
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  Been there, done that, as have many of our audience.
• 2:33
  It is a pleasure to welcome back for part three, , author of
• 2:36
  Serial Innovators, Bruce Vojak.
• 2:38
  Welcome back.
• 2:39
  Aidan, great to be back.
• 2:41
  I sprung that one on you, man.
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  You didn't know that Epstein had written about you in Range.
• 2:45
  embarrassed, but, , gratified and humbled by it, I tell you.
• 2:48
  That's great.
• 2:49
  It's great.
• 2:50
  I was delighted share that with you, and I'm gonna... I've surely piqued the
• 2:56
  interest of our audience to know what a pie-shaped worker is, and I'm gonna leave
• 2:59
  that little nugget right for the very end.
• 3:02
  And I thought we'd get stuck in, and I'll set you up with some context from the
• 3:06
  book because the way you open here is you say, "Large international corporations
• 3:11
  spend millions identifying and developing managers to optimize serial innovators'
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  potential, yet relatively little time is spent identifying and developing
• 3:20
  nascent serial innovators to generate the future growth that companies will need.
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  So this episode will explore a process for assessing the presence
• 3:29
  of serial innovators within a company." And you outline in this
• 3:32
  chapter methods for identifying and developing serial innovators
• 3:36
  at various stages of their careers.
• 3:38
  That's an important aspect.
• 3:39
  And the key factors for identification are assessing how innovators engage
• 3:44
  with one, problems, two, projects, three, businesses, and four, people.
• 3:49
  Hopefully set you up there, and we'll come back to that pie shape thing,
• 3:53
  later on because I absolutely love that
• 3:57
  Great.
• 3:57
  No, it's-- Aidan, it's, again, it's great to be here.
• 4:00
  Yeah.
• 4:00
  You know, I'm gonna reflect back briefly in the, the first
• 4:03
  session that you and I had.
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  about this MP5 model of motivation and personality and, preparation and so forth.
• 4:13
  we're gonna kinda reframe some of that and say, how do we use
• 4:16
  those concepts to identify people?
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  And there, there are these four areas that you've just mentioned,
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  how they engage with problems, projects, business, and people.
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  And they're kind of a filter that allow you to identify the people.
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  And because they're so rare, it's not an easy task.
• 4:34
  And, uh, know, so why don't I start by talking about how we identify
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  them, and then I'll talk about it a bit chronologically too because
• 4:42
  I think that's important as well given how rare these people are.
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  know, I, I, I mentioned how they engage with problems, and this is really when
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  they're given, assigned something.
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  And we talked about this even just the other day.
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  A lot of times they'll reframe the problem.
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  Maybe they'll rethink it or redefine the question.
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  But these are people that are inherently very curious.
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  They just dig into things, not from a deep academic side, but at
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  just a deep insight perspective.
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  they're systems thinkers.
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  They look not only at the dots, but how the dots form patterns.
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  And they're creative in how they do that, not going outside the bounds
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  of reality, but really trying to deeply understand what's there.
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  And so they really do-- they're good problem solvers.
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  They're good problem identifiers even for that matter.
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  The next, let's-- I'll say, qualifier or quality that you look for is
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  how they engage with projects.
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  I'll distinguish that from problems because problems is how they get into and
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  try to understand The problem at hand.
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  A project is more, you know, how, how hard do they push?
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  How tenacious are they, if you will?
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  And, do they see things through to completion?
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  And, and, you know, you'll begin to see as we've spoken about this, or
• 5:55
  I'm sure you've seen this, that all these characteristics come together.
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  Because if you're, if you're tenacious, you're gonna be crossing that
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  bridge we spoke about the other day.
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  You're gonna be taking and assuming responsibility to drive the organization
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  forward, you're gonna see things through.
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  And, and that characteristic is not all that common.
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  Not only just not crossing the bridge, but just being tenacious.
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  Some people will get to a certain point and give up.
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  And so, uh, and you have to have judgment and discernment too.
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  I don't wanna say that you're bullheaded, but it's people that really
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  see things through to completion.
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  The third, characteristic is how they engage with business, especially
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  because the people we interviewed were, with almost without exception, I
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  think there was one person who didn't have a technical undergraduate degree.
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  And again, not to overly specify that, but it's like a lot of them came from
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  this engineering or science background.
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  But it's really viewing that, we're here to make money.
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  And I know that maybe sounds silly to a lot of people, you know, in an audience,
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  an important statement to make, especially in larger companies, because there are
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  a lot of people still to this day that can kind of hide out, really enamored
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  by the science and technology and, and not really looking to do things that are
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  gonna generate a new product or a new process that's gonna have that kind of
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  financial impact that we spoke about.
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  And then finally, it's how they engage with people.
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  They value the other people that are out there, and they bring the team together.
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  When we spoke again last time, trying to weave some of this together, we
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  talked about how do you build a team?
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  You know, does the innovator build the team?
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  Do they draw on people that they need at a certain time?
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  Or do they get a team assigned to them?
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  And the innovators are just remarkable.
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  You know, and again, I, I-- when I'm done with this, I wanna give you a little bit
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  of an insight of how we even collected and, and sorted through this data, it
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  illustrates this, that the people that they valued, you know, they value their
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  coworkers, they do value the management and executive management because
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  they're trying to solve their problems.
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  They value the customer.
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  I mean, the very last chapter of the book, entitled Love Letters to Our
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  Audience, that was because Tom Osborne said that every time he developed
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  a new product, it was like a love letter to his customers, you know?
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  you know, again, I, I don't wanna go over the top on this.
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  I know I said this in the last session.
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  These are beautiful stories to hear you see the very human side
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  of these people coming out when they talk about these things.
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  So, you know, you're looking at, potential serial innovators and, it's
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  not always an explicit checklist like this you're asking these questions,
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  you know, how do they engage with problems, projects, business, and people?
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  And then briefly, I want to just take a step back.
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  We hadn't discussed this, but the, the way we conducted much of this, research, not
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  all of it, but much of it was, in-depth interviews, you know, extended interviews.
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  We asked the people, that we surveyed, "Just tell us your story." We didn't want
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  to hear their philosophy of innovation.
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  We didn't want to hear their theory of innovation.
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  We stayed way away from that.
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  describe what happened.
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  And, and that really helped.
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  That was something actually that Abby brought from her experience in working
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  in the business literature, s-social science literature, if you will.
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  And we had, you know, you can imagine just reams of interview data, and then
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  we fortunately had some graduate students who could cut these little quotes out
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  and paste them onto three-by-five cards.
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  And the walls in this room we had were like a war room.
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  They were just covered with all these cards, and we're looking , to
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  find the patterns in the data.
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  And it was from doing things like that that we began to see, you know,
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  these four areas, for example, emerge.
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  Same data also told us the thr- the MP5 model, today we're talking about more how
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  do you apply that MP5 model, if you will.
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  So that's kind of a, you know, maybe a little bit of, too much detail, but at
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  least shows kind of how we got there, which I think s- is, is important to hear.
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  Bruce, have you not learned by now, man?
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  There's no too much detail on this show.
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  And I'm-- I'm-- I gotta tell you, I'm loving it.
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  This is, like, cathartic.
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  You've found your tribe, man.
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  You've found your tribe.
• 9:58
  .. So firstly for our audience, the book is So deep.
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  I mean, you heard there about the research students and the
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  amount of depth of research.
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  Also, what's interesting is the cross-functionality of skill sets between
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  you and your co-authors as well that brought together, brought a unique view.
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  Each of you had different specialties that you brought to- the book.
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  So it's very, it's a very deep book.
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  couldn't have planned that.
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  So
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  I heard it
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  started
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  was, an interesting, uh, as you say, I think it was in the preface or in
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  the introduction, it was somebody else who spotted the pattern.
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  Ray and I were talking in the parking lot, and we started working together,
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  and it was a guy at the National Science Foundation that said, "You
• 10:36
  know, Abby's about a mile away from you guys. You ought to talk to her."
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  I love that.
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  I mean, and, and that's the, one of the things a serial innovator does.
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  Maybe, maybe he should have been in your research.
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  But I wanted to just say there's an appendix in the book, so if you are
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  a HR manager or you're growing your business and you are, you've got
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  the foresight to go, "You know what?
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  We need to develop this skill for the future.
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  Maybe right- not right now, but we need to develop it for the future,"
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  there's an appendix in there, which is a mechanical list of things to look for.
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  But in the book, you, in this chapter, you identify five characteristics that
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  all potential serial innovators have, and I thought we'd just share these.
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  So one was systems thinking,
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  Yeah.
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  two was above average levels of creativity, but not extreme levels
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  importantly, three was innate curiosity that extends across multiple domains,
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  mea culpa, four, the ability to develop intuition based on deep expertise, and
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  five was the intrinsic motivation to make things, in inverted commas, better.
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  Yeah.
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  I'm gonna reflect back that those, those characteristics in the problem
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  area alone, how they engage with problems, are just so important.
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  mention, too, I think here, because I'm not sure if or where we'll get
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  it to it later, since we're talking about the chapter of identifying
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  and developing these people, that we feel strongly about that checklist.
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  And, you know, I think you and I discussed that when you have multiple
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  co-authors, some areas, some will feel more strongly than others.
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  And I think I can speak for both Abby and Ray that, that we all
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  like what's in that section.
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  But I'll also say one of the things that we recommend is having the innovators in
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  your organization themselves participate in identifying these people, especially
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  identifying them either right out of school or even early in their careers.
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  Because they're-- It's kind of like we talked about this a while ago, I
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  think, think in the first session, like the sommelier, you know, they're
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  gonna, they're gonna have-- somebody looking at currency to say, "Is this
• 12:38
  a, a legitimate, uh, bill, or is it fraudulent, uh, counterfeit bill?"
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  They're gonna see these things and, and I'll say almost intuitively,
• 12:48
  they'll see these patterns emerge.
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  So, you know, we did the reductionist, you know, science approach, you know,
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  you know, carve out all the dots.
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  And we feel good about the dots, we feel good about the questions, but
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  in the end, it's, it's this whole, the person that we're talking about
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  that, uh, you're looking to recognize.
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  You know, it's this word identify, but it's also recognizing these people.
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  And, and then the whole question becomes how do you nurture and develop them and,
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  and see if that first guess is correct.
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  I love that sommelier.
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  One of the nicest compliments I've had, uh, ever on the show
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  was a guy, Sangeet Paul Choudary.
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  He's brilliant thinker, wrote a brilliant book recently called Reshuffle, also
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  deep understanding of platforms, and he won the Thinkers50 Award for Strategy.
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  And he said that, "The Innovation Show is an ideas sommelier."
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  Love it.
• 13:39
  was like, "I love that."
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  Well, and I,
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  so
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  I'm gonna, I'm gonna
• 13:43
  you're a fine wine, man.
• 13:44
  You're a fine wine.
• 13:46
  here, too, even though that I know this isn't part of any-- Not that we
• 13:49
  scripted this, but I, I, I just have, have loved your show, and I love who you
• 13:54
  bring on and how you engage with them.
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  You go deep in ways that others don't.
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  So, it's
• 13:59
  a pleasure, man.
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  It's an absolute...
• 14:01
  on my part for you, so
• 14:02
  it's a pleasure.
• 14:04
  I- so we get back
• 14:05
  to the, to the, this chapter because you mentioned there career development.
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  You mentioned early stage development, and you break this, and this is so true.
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  Like, even when I think back on my own career, , and I, I was telling
• 14:20
  you reading the book, you said it's cathartic having this conversation.
• 14:23
  For me it was, it was like revisiting old wounds gradually opening
• 14:29
  up and salt dripping into them.
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  But, it's just- it's a v- a visceral feeling 'cause it brings back those
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  memories and in a good way as well, because it shows you that you did follow
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  a pattern that, that is repeatable.
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  That's the other thing.
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  But you mentioned, like, in, in years zero to five,
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  Yeah.
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  this person gets a break in a way.
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  Like, I, I, I got a break.
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  I, I actually, I, 100%, I tell this to the students I lecture to all the
• 14:54
  time, that I tell them that I would not have got hired, I just would not
• 14:58
  fit a normal today's system of how to hire me, and actually struggled to
• 15:04
  get a job when I retired from sport.
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  And it was somebody who saw something in me, and then gave me all the things
• 15:11
  you talked about, gave me interesting... Actually, the way he framed it was, "I
• 15:16
  want you to go around the company and look for problems that need fixing."
• 15:19
  And, you start looking for stuff, and then you come back with these reports.
• 15:24
  And I don't think he, he actually expected very much of me.
• 15:28
  But you were looking for ways to save money, and you're going, you know,
• 15:31
  like, stuff at the start, Bruce, was like, "Those guys are using this water
• 15:35
  supplier and those guys are using that water supplier. Like, we could get
• 15:38
  a group gr- discount if we actually put them all together, like..."
• 15:42
  And, and in your mind you're like going, "That's just stupid. Why is nobody doing
• 15:46
  that?" And, uh, I thought we'd just share the, the different stages, and
• 15:51
  then we'll go into some of the, the ways e- early stage potential in- uh, serial
• 15:58
  innovators engage with problems, projects,
• 16:01
  Yeah.
• 16:01
  business solutions, and then connecting with people
• 16:04
  Yeah, you know, there's-- we, we broke it out, and I think this is...
• 16:08
  Well, first of all, we spoke across the book about how these people
• 16:12
  usually emerge in about the first 15 years of being in an organization.
• 16:17
  in this chapter in particular, we took that 15-year window and broke it into, you
• 16:22
  know, really, we talk about two phases.
• 16:25
  The first phase is, you know, kind of zero to five years in an organization.
• 16:30
  And say that phase, you really want to cast the net pretty broad, that you're
• 16:36
  not worried too much about getting it wrong by over-specifying-- or not
• 16:41
  o-- , by identifying too many people.
• 16:43
  So what I mean by that is, say you look across the organization and you say, "You
• 16:47
  know, there's, there's probably 10 people we ought to think about developing."
• 16:51
  if you think in the end you don't know which three are gonna be the
• 16:53
  ones that hit it out of the park you really probably ought to be investing
• 16:57
  in all 10 of those, 'cause you want to see which ones really truly emerge.
• 17:02
  It's kind of this Bayesian statistics of updating your insights over time.
• 17:06
  And one of the things that, that Ray Price brought from earlier research
• 17:11
  that he did was that one of the best ways to develop someone is to
• 17:15
  give them a really hard problem.
• 17:17
  And so early in their career, giving them a problem or assigning something
• 17:23
  that, , isn't gonna be-- isn't gonna give them a big win necessarily right away.
• 17:28
  I think that's really critical.
• 17:29
  So, you know, you kind of begin to test their ability with these
• 17:33
  problems, projects, business and people by throwing them in the deep end.
• 17:38
  we can go into this more, but then the second s- phase, this five to 10 years,
• 17:43
  that's when you begin to say, "Okay, of this, hypothetical group of 10,
• 17:48
  these three are really starting to show promise that the other seven aren't."
• 17:52
  And again, I don't think we use this word... Well, we do use the word,
• 17:55
  I think, now that I'm saying it.
• 17:58
  We talk a lot in, the business literature and the business world about, about,
• 18:01
  , having someone who's gonna mentor you.
• 18:03
  But we-- In the book, we talk about apprenticeships and not in a traditional
• 18:08
  sense like a machinist apprenticing, but apprenticing as an innovator.
• 18:13
  a lot of times this, unarticulable insight about how to navigate the organization
• 18:18
  and how to do things transferred by a very explicit conversation.
• 18:24
  It's transferred by working side by side.
• 18:26
  And if you've got an active learner, someone who's really emerge like this,
• 18:31
  they're gonna just be like a sponge soaking that up, working side by side
• 18:36
  with, if you will, the master, you know?
• 18:39
  So this apprenticeship role, if you can swing it, having people work
• 18:43
  side by side can be pretty powerful.
• 18:45
  And it's side by side with an innovator, not to disparage a
• 18:49
  manager, but the management role is a little bit different than that.
• 18:53
  And as the innovator matures, I felt this one kind of viscerally as well,
• 19:00
  where sometimes you have a win.
• 19:02
  You talked about one-hit wonders.
• 19:05
  So you've had a win, and there's been a huge personal cost there.
• 19:09
  I know many people listening will go, "Oh, Yeah.
• 19:12
  there was." There, there's a huge cost there, you know.
• 19:16
  And to make it real, you're, maybe you're bringing your work home.
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  You're, you're s- you're dreaming about it.
• 19:23
  You're talking in your sleep about it.
• 19:25
  Like, this happened to me, and my wife's like, "Oh, you were
• 19:27
  talking about the project again." And you, you, you're somewhat
• 19:33
  obsessed, and there's, there's that.
• 19:36
  Then there's all the, the fights you've been through.
• 19:39
  What we talked about the last day also, about going outside the rails
• 19:44
  in the outlaw area to, to get things over the line, getting outside voices
• 19:48
  to speak in, connecting all these dots that people can't even see.
• 19:53
  And you get it over the line, and you're, you're just, y- the company's won.
• 19:58
  You don't get any credit.
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  You're like a catalyst.
• 20:01
  You burn up in the, in the process,
• 20:03
  Yeah.
• 20:08
  one of the things that happened to me, I got hired somewhere else with,
• 20:11
  with, to, for a different role, and then when they found out what I did in
• 20:15
  the previous role, they asked me to do it, and it was digital transformation.
• 20:19
  And from the time I had started it to the time I had finished my previous job,
• 20:23
  eight years had passed, and in that eight years, digital transformation became
• 20:28
  highest priority for the organization.
• 20:30
  And I knew that the, the difference between when I did it the first time
• 20:34
  was kinda nobody knew, really knew what it was, so it was kinda able to be more
• 20:38
  emergent, and that was really important.
• 20:40
  And I knew that the challenge was gonna be so big and so difficult, and it was
• 20:45
  such a toxic organization anyway, that I, I couldn't possibly go through it again.
• 20:50
  So I was just like, gonna go, "Nah, I'm out."
• 20:53
  Yeah.
• 20:53
  you talked about that, and I, I thought that was really important because
• 20:56
  it could be missed that sometimes the serial innovator just doesn't
• 21:02
  wanna go through it all over again.
• 21:05
  Yeah.
• 21:05
  Yeah.
• 21:05
  Yeah, you know, they, um, they develop, you know, again, they develop this
• 21:09
  insight, this wisdom, this judgment, this discernment you know, are they--
• 21:15
  I'll say, are they up to it, if you
• 21:17
  Somebody
• 21:21
  you know, do you really think it's, it's worth the effort?
• 21:23
  And, uh, of the things we didn't talk about earlier, and I thought about it
• 21:27
  actually between our sessions, I wanted to mention, it, it ties into this,
• 21:33
  excuse me, that, that when they, when they decide on a problem to work on,
• 21:38
  you know, we talk about how they're assigned a problem and they, and
• 21:40
  they then take-- maybe redefine it.
• 21:44
  Many of the people we interviewed talked about how it was important
• 21:47
  to them to pick a good problem to work on, an important problem.
• 21:50
  Uh, because it takes just as much time, and this is going
• 21:52
  to where you're talking now.
• 21:54
  Takes just as much time to work on a good problem as a not so good problem.
• 21:57
  I don't want to say a bad problem, but you know, one that doesn't have
• 22:00
  the same impact or, or whatever.
• 22:03
  And why keep pushing a boulder up a hill if it's gonna roll out, you know,
• 22:07
  roll back down on you every day and you don't have that opportunity for success?
• 22:11
  So, you know, the people that are-- that really do this well, they're not
• 22:15
  looking for an easy way out, they're very realistic about these things.
• 22:20
  They're not, uh, uh, inappropriately idealistic about them.
• 22:24
  once told me that, "Oh, being an innovator is.
• 22:27
  a Herculean task," and I was like, "No, no, it's a Sisyphean task."
• 22:31
  is.
• 22:31
  Thank you.
• 22:32
  Yeah, it's exactly right.
• 22:34
  But another, another third category of capabilities that, and this one's
• 22:39
  important too, if you are kinda going, "Oh, yeah, I, I know Jenny from our
• 22:44
  company's like that, or Tom's like that," and you're gonna go, and well,
• 22:48
  you gotta understand there's a difference between an innovator and an inventor
• 22:53
  yes.
• 22:53
  that the innovator will be more conscious of the organization's
• 22:58
  strategy, where the strategic fit is, how the bus- that the business needs
• 23:02
  to make money from this thing, and if it's technology, that the technology
• 23:06
  ne- has a means to an end, usually to make the company more successful.
• 23:10
  And overall, pursuing the greater good for both company and
• 23:13
  customers is the right thing to do.
• 23:16
  Yeah.
• 23:16
  Yeah.
• 23:17
  Yeah, it's, it's very much a holistic understanding.
• 23:20
  Um, and, um, and, you know, again, their innate curiosity is gonna
• 23:25
  lead them typically in the direction
• 23:27
  the
• 23:31
  and, you know, I don't wanna belabor this.
• 23:33
  In many cases, um, not instructed to do these things.
• 23:38
  I mean, I think I'd mentioned the other day, um, and if I hadn't, I know
• 23:41
  it's in the book, maybe one or two people that we interviewed had MBAs.
• 23:45
  These were not people with business backgrounds.
• 23:48
  They were engineers that discovered what needed to be done.
• 23:51
  And, uh, uh, and they jumped into it.
• 23:54
  And they-- and didn't go too far with the holistic view, but they went
• 23:59
  far enough to know what was needed, again, to solve that customer problem.
• 24:03
  bridge that we talked about the
• 24:08
  Yeah, I
• 24:08
  last day are snakes and ladders.
• 24:09
  I love your chart.
• 24:10
  Thank you for that.
• 24:12
  No worries, brother.
• 24:14
  So I, I, now you're gonna, now I'm gonna have to show the chart.
• 24:16
  I'll show the chart on the screen for those people watching this on YouTube.
• 24:19
  No, it's all o- it's all good.
• 24:21
  I'll show that.
• 24:22
  I'll flash it up on the screen.
• 24:24
  But the next part then, talking about nurturing potential serial
• 24:28
  innovators, and you'd say by the end of early stages of their careers,
• 24:32
  they must have crossed the bridge,
• 24:34
  Yeah.
• 24:34
  and understand that this is a political job as much as it is as a creative
• 24:40
  job, if you wanna call it that.
• 24:42
  But other ways to n- or nurture them, and again, speaking my language but
• 24:48
  also the language of people on the show, even people are listening to the show,
• 24:53
  that proves their curiosity as well.
• 24:56
  So one of them is work thr- work trade shoot, uh, work trade show booths,
• 25:01
  Yeah.
• 25:01
  and espe- and actually even just attending trade shows.
• 25:05
  Having budget to go to events, like that's something that I've seen.
• 25:10
  I ran an event last year, and I saw so many brilliant innovators
• 25:13
  struggle, and I funded them to come to the show, to the event, because I
• 25:18
  actually wanted them to have such a, a, a lens-changing experience as well.
• 25:24
  And, and that should never be the case, and the company would not do it.
• 25:28
  The other one was to accompany service technicians, especially to
• 25:31
  customers who have had a catastrophic failure, so there's usually gold
• 25:36
  in there, treasure in the trash.
• 25:38
  Work with a mentor from marketing or strategy who exposes them to the
• 25:41
  strategies and marketing capabilities of the firm so they understand
• 25:45
  cross-silo, and then take classes in NPD, new product development, and
• 25:49
  commercialization, business strategy, market research, and marketing.
• 25:53
  And negotiation, another important thing.
• 25:56
  But I, I just wanted to add on that, that when I read that I was like going, "Oh
• 26:00
  my God, all those things." I remember trying to Myself, uh, in a, in a firm
• 26:06
  trying to get budget to... Like, Bruce, I ran, I r- I created digital products,
• 26:12
  and I wanted to get a course in Prince2, the project management, and it costed
• 26:18
  about a, it cost a grand maybe, and the company wouldn't pay for it, right?
• 26:22
  And I... was like, going, "I am wasting probably a grand's worth, uh, of my
• 26:27
  wage every month by being inefficient. How does this make any sense?" And
• 26:32
  they just wouldn't do it, right?
• 26:33
  The other one was, and this was again talking to these things in curiosity, and
• 26:38
  I eventually left because of this, was I, I wanted to lecture, and I'd been offered
• 26:43
  this lecturing role, and they wouldn't let me because they were like, Oh.
• 26:46
  no, that will dilute your responsibilities, and you'll
• 26:49
  be distracted," and all that.
• 26:51
  And I was like, "I'm, I'm out of here." So I-- was gone a year later.
• 26:53
  But those two things link to those things that You gotta let, let
• 26:58
  them develop because there's a constant need to just, you gotta
• 27:03
  collect dots before you connect them
• 27:05
  Yeah.
• 27:05
  Yeah.
• 27:05
  I-- as you're describing this, it reminds me of a story that we, we
• 27:11
  didn't put explicitly in the book.
• 27:12
  We-- As I reread it, I thought, I think this may be a story that I
• 27:16
  And
• 27:20
  a personal friend and colleague, former colleague of mine, was an
• 27:24
  innovator at a mid-size organization.
• 27:26
  He ultimately moved into a management position.
• 27:29
  And I love the story that he shared that in this, you know, kind of, I'd say,
• 27:32
  executive level role, he had a group of potential innovators working for him,
• 27:37
  and they had this idea about-- I'm not gonna remember the details, but it was
• 27:41
  something about, some activities on loading docks, shipping loading docks.
• 27:47
  they said, to my friend, "Frank, you know, we got this idea." And he's like,
• 27:50
  "Well, I, you know, I don't know." And instead of funding the idea, what he
• 27:54
  did was he gave them six months and a not unreasonable budget to travel
• 27:57
  to the top, like, six shipping docks in the United States and meet with,
• 28:03
  you know, the, the key people there.
• 28:05
  And they traveled around, and they came back and, you know, again, this is--
• 28:09
  You know, Aidan, this is just common sense in hindsight, that that budget to
• 28:12
  go out and talk to potential customers.
• 28:15
  And, they came back and they said, "Well, yeah, our, our solution
• 28:19
  is on the list, but it's, like, not number one or two or three.
• 28:21
  It's, you know, it's maybe number four or five." And, and then
• 28:24
  they had some ideas to work on.
• 28:26
  And, you know- I don't know.
• 28:29
  I mean, I don't know what else to say.
• 28:30
  We talk about being, in the best sense, being empathic for customer needs, doing
• 28:35
  design thinking, and yet how often do these things just not take place because
• 28:40
  of, you know, questions about, you know, the $1,000 for, you know, a class
• 28:45
  or taking the time to do something?
• 28:47
  And, and it's, it's-- unfortunately these things play out and, and I don't
• 28:53
  know how you convince some people.
• 28:54
  I'm convinced, I'm convinced that some people are not convincible, if
• 28:57
  that's the right way to phrase it.
• 28:59
  And, and that helps you decide, as you said, when to move on on these situations.
• 29:04
  we'll talk about that when we talk about managing serial innovators.
• 29:07
  Gary Klein actually talked about this in Seeing What Others Don't, is sometimes
• 29:11
  your budget demands, so stuff you want to spend money on, there's no file for it.
• 29:17
  It doesn't... There's no way to actually expense that.
• 29:21
  Yeah.
• 29:21
  It, you know, and that's one of the challenges I ran into, and it used
• 29:25
  to frustrate the hell out of me.
• 29:26
  So you'd go, "I want to buy my team a subscription to the HBR,"
• 29:34
  so Harvard Business Review.
• 29:36
  "Oh, no, no." And I'd go, Yeah.
• 29:37
  but, like, that, that department over there bring their team out to
• 29:41
  the pub every Friday and spend a,
• 29:44
  a boatload of money." And I go, like, "And you won't let me spend it on
• 29:48
  actually progressing some way?" So th- those are the frustrations, the way
• 29:51
  they actually emerge, and it used to drive me nuts, man, the whole time.
• 29:56
  But we, we... I was... Let's get back to
• 29:59
  the difficulty of hiring in the, in the traditional process of hiring, and
• 30:05
  actually I was thinking and I wanted to say this to you, again, to saying
• 30:09
  this to the students, how difficult...
• 30:11
  I, I definitely would've been filtered out.
• 30:12
  But now AI is f- is fil- pre-filtering CVs before they even get to a human.
• 30:19
  Yeah.
• 30:20
  I mean, how is an innovator gonna get through there?
• 30:23
  Because certainly the AI's, I don't... I would doubt there's an AI out there
• 30:26
  that's programmed to look for and has trained itself on your appendix
• 30:31
  Well, and, you know, not only appendix, but things like, um, you know, one
• 30:36
  of the key features that we saw, and again, this wasn't necessarily a,,
• 30:40
  And
• 30:45
  we interviewed, you know, we saw this pattern emerge because we didn't
• 30:47
  ask this question, but we saw it.
• 30:50
  Very early in their life they had overcome some pretty significant
• 30:53
  challenges in many cases, not everybody.
• 30:56
  may have been a hardship, it may have been a loss of a parent, it
• 30:59
  may have been, a dramatic move.
• 31:02
  You know, not a small move, but one that really was impactful
• 31:05
  to, the whole family situation.
• 31:08
  It could be any one of a number of things.
• 31:10
  Many of the people that we interviewed grew up on farms.
• 31:14
  And so this idea of being self-reliant and again, patterns of challenges
• 31:20
  are things that, how do you develop a questionnaire for those kinds of things?
• 31:25
  And that's why, this p- relational view of understanding who these people
• 31:29
  are often plays out because you're beginning to maybe, you know, maybe
• 31:34
  not in the first interview, but if you get to know people, you're gonna find
• 31:37
  out things about them very comfortably and naturally that you wouldn't get in
• 31:41
  any kind of a formal screening process.
• 31:44
  And I'll go back to something that you raised earlier today, the role of HR
• 31:49
  and, and I really wanna be respectful on this, and I don't want that to
• 31:53
  be a throwaway statement either.
• 31:56
  One of the big studies that we did in addition to understanding, the
• 32:00
  characteristics of the innovators, we had one graduate student, interview, and
• 32:04
  I think he interviewed 60 people, and they were 20 triads of, an executive, an
• 32:10
  HR manager, and an innovator themselves.
• 32:13
  And that was, you can imagine, kind of tricky to find the candidates
• 32:16
  to even interview for this.
• 32:18
  And we interviewed them based on what motivates and demotivates these people,
• 32:22
  and we may get into this next time too.
• 32:25
  it's this whole idea of the role of HR in identifying these people.
• 32:30
  And, they're designed-- You know, really, they're designed for economies
• 32:34
  of scale and economies of scope, and they're not designed to pick the
• 32:39
  outlier out of the crowd necessarily.
• 32:42
  and it also means that a lot of times their policies of what they're willing
• 32:45
  to pay for people, , and, how they wanna allow people to be managed, it's tough.
• 32:51
  And that's a, that's another, you know, another front in the
• 32:55
  activity of navigating the politics.
• 32:58
  Not that the HR team necessarily has veto power, but they really
• 33:02
  do influence these things.
• 33:05
  the other thing that happens as well is you see many serial innovators
• 33:10
  falling victim to golden handcuffs or
• 33:12
  Oh.
• 33:13
  the fur-lined mousetrap where they find an organization, that organization
• 33:18
  trusts them, builds them, they have s- a couple of wins they get them.
• 33:23
  They know who they are.
• 33:25
  Yeah.
• 33:25
  there's a change of leadership,
• 33:27
  Yeah.
• 33:28
  there's a d- or the organization loses its interest in innovating,
• 33:33
  and that person loses interest.
• 33:34
  And it's very, very hard to find somewhere else that gets you.
• 33:38
  First to get in there, it's usually word of mouth.
• 33:40
  It's ex- you know, reputation and stuff like that.
• 33:43
  But it's very, very hard to build that collateral.
• 33:47
  It's, and it's, it's very hard to even put words on it.
• 33:49
  The stuff we talked about, essentially, the connections, The
• 33:52
  reputation,
• 33:54
  yeah
• 33:54
  Yeah, the, and it's, it's, it's also, like, the people knowing who,
• 33:59
  who, what you represent, not by your title, by what you actually represent,
• 34:03
  and you're paid well for that.
• 34:05
  And if the company really knows what you do, they'll pay you well,
• 34:08
  but then there's a new investor, an activist investor, there's a changing
• 34:13
  of the guard, or they wanna sell the company, and all of a sudden,
• 34:17
  Yeah.
• 34:18
  you're superfluous to that.
• 34:19
  yeah.
• 34:19
  yeah.
• 34:20
  And, and, uh, and all these things can and do happen.
• 34:24
  And, and you're right, mid-career or late career, these are, these are,
• 34:29
  these are challenges for people, and it can be very frustrating for people.
• 34:32
  I mean, we know that, so.
• 34:35
  So I, I, w- we're gonna do two separate parts, but I think we'll keep rolling
• 34:38
  because the re- and the reason I wanted to and I call it out to our
• 34:42
  audience, I wanted to do separate parts because now we're gonna shift
• 34:46
  from hiring or nurturing these people to managing innovators for impact.
• 34:51
  and I think a lot of the stuff we talked about actually is very relevant to
• 34:54
  this chapter anyway, so w- we'll keep going because people will have context
• 34:59
  from what we've talked about earlier on, including those frustrations.
• 35:02
  This has become a confessional with Bruce, Father Bruce.
• 35:06
  and I don't want to be a downer here.
• 35:08
  Sorry.
• 35:09
  Okay.
• 35:10
  so I'm gonna set you up here again, once again, for this chapter.
• 35:13
  "By Now we expect that you're thinking, "We have people like this.
• 35:17
  It's just that we didn't know that they existed anywhere else." So having
• 35:21
  identified these rare but not uncommon employees, and having gained insight
• 35:25
  into who they are and how they work, what are the best practices for managing
• 35:29
  these unique, exceptional individuals?
• 35:32
  As one innovator suggested, we advise you let the birds fly.
• 35:36
  Look at Bruce's cover of his book to see about what that's about.
• 35:40
  But what does this really mean, and how will you implement it?
• 35:44
  That's what we're gonna cover now.
• 35:45
  It's full of guidance on best how to manage serial innovators.
• 35:51
  Over to you, Bruce.
• 35:52
  Now I'm gonna start with, uh, a comment that, uh, Ray Price shared when we were
• 35:56
  doing the research, and, uh, it's that thing more difficult to find than a, a
• 36:02
  impactful serial innovator is someone who knows how to manage them well.
• 36:06
  And again, that's-- You know, I, I hope, I hope you've gotten to know me well enough
• 36:11
  these last couple of weeks that I don't, I don't mean to be disparaging people.
• 36:15
  I just wanna be-- It's the engineer in me.
• 36:16
  I wanna just be descriptive, and I think I do at least.
• 36:19
  And, and the description is, it's just tough to find this.
• 36:23
  Um, and especially when you have what I'll say is a, a professionalized, uh, approach
• 36:29
  to management, executive management.
• 36:32
  Uh, you know, I, I've seen, especially in large corporations, the training
• 36:38
  programs that executives go through um, you know, it's, it-- the professional
• 36:43
  management activity is, you know, there's books, there's training programs.
• 36:49
  But at the end of the day, we're talking about a very relational
• 36:53
  , management style that has to emerge, , to be the most effective.
• 36:58
  and I'm not trying to make this sound too soft or squishy or, you know, we've all
• 37:02
  got to sit around a campfire and be, you know, somehow bond in some different way.
• 37:06
  But it's just realizing that the executive and the innovator working
• 37:11
  together, it really is a relationship.
• 37:13
  It's a working relationship.
• 37:15
  And it's not,, merely financially transactional, although there
• 37:18
  are aspects of that, , in how they're motivated and demotivated.
• 37:23
  It's not a command and control.
• 37:25
  That'll end it-- I mean, we've already talked about this several times.
• 37:28
  That'll end it in a heartbeat.
• 37:30
  You know, either the person will stay and shut down or they'll, they'll leave.
• 37:33
  And so it's how do you find the right balance of not overmanaging
• 37:38
  or even, you know, not paying sufficient attention to the person?
• 37:41
  What's that right balance, if you will?
• 37:43
  some guest on the show said to me before that innovation is like a dance.
• 37:47
  Actually, it was Frank Barrett.
• 37:49
  Frank Barrett.
• 37:50
  we have that in the book too.
• 37:50
  It's a metaphor.
• 37:51
  I love
• 37:52
  yeah, I know.
• 37:52
  It's a
• 37:53
  Yeah.
• 37:53
  you're listening to the music and
• 37:55
  Exactly,
• 37:55
  paying
• 37:56
  yeah.
• 37:56
  to each other.
• 37:57
  I love that.
• 37:58
  That's what I thought about the, the leader doing
• 38:01
  sometimes they're leading, sometimes they're letting the innovator It's
• 38:04
  like you, you lead this dance, a tango, and sometimes you have to step back.
• 38:09
  Because I wanna put this straight up front.
• 38:11
  This is not gonna be Pollyanna-ish.
• 38:13
  This is not like, oh, you have to manage the ego of the serial innovator.
• 38:18
  In fact, It's, actually quite the opposite.
• 38:20
  The serial innovator's usually very humble, and actually doesn't
• 38:24
  take credit for a lot of the stuff, because actually they don't get
• 38:26
  a lot of credit for their stuff.
• 38:28
  But I think that's important to call out as well, Bruce.
• 38:31
  It's, um, it's not cowering, if, if that's another way maybe to say it.
• 38:37
  But it's also not getting these, , incentives wrong.
• 38:40
  I mean, if you, if you incentivize the wrong people, if you reward the
• 38:43
  wrong people, you don't reward the innovator with appropriate compensation,
• 38:49
  there's demotivating going on.
• 38:50
  Because again, we talked, you know, in the first session about how these people are
• 38:55
  self-motivated to solve customer problems.
• 38:58
  a lot of times management and executive management thinks about how we have
• 39:02
  to put these incentives in place.
• 39:04
  just want to be sure you don't disincentivize these people.
• 39:07
  You don't want to alienate them in some way.
• 39:10
  And, , they don't n- they-- I mean, for the most part, I'd say they
• 39:13
  don't need their egos to be stroked.
• 39:15
  They really are searching for a shared understanding of reality.
• 39:20
  And maybe that sounds a bit too philosophical, but it's that, that
• 39:23
  engineer or scientist in most of them, they're looking for what's
• 39:28
  this-- what really is going on here?
• 39:30
  to them, discovering the reality of the situation and what that is or process that
• 39:36
  solves it brings great motivation and joy.
• 39:39
  And so when the executive partners with them in that discovery process, you
• 39:45
  know, it's, it's-- Again, I-- not to sound corny, I'll stop using those, those
• 39:49
  caveats, but it's beautiful to read these things when they really work together.
• 39:54
  One of the things I found was you couldn't be the carrot of money or reward,
• 40:02
  financial reward wasn't often... Yeah.
• 40:05
  you want it, of course you do, but it wasn't the thing.
• 40:10
  It wasn't... In fact, for me, what I, I gave up was reward based on outcome.
• 40:16
  So it was more I wanted to actually just build things.
• 40:19
  I was like, "Look, pay me a better base, and I...
• 40:21
  'Cause I'm gonna do this anyway.
• 40:23
  I don't want..." Because, and they couldn't understand why.
• 40:25
  And I was like, "Because if you give me some type of bonus based on some
• 40:31
  type of behavior, I'm inevitably going to bend my decisions based on that."
• 40:36
  And, and it's something you call out, and, and, and maybe we'll cover the
• 40:40
  case of Demco and Sayak that you, you mention in the book, because you see
• 40:44
  that happening, and you see how the reward systems of the organization
• 40:48
  dictate the behavior of the organization.
• 40:50
  Yeah.
• 40:51
  You know, it's, um, the story that you referenced, um, you know, I gotta
• 40:56
  tell you, we were fortunate working at the university, we, we had kind of a
• 40:59
  ready-made network there in addition to our own three personal networks to tap.
• 41:04
  I had gotten to know Dennis Anders, who was the, um, and I think his
• 41:09
  title was probably VP general manager or president of this division.
• 41:12
  It was, uh, the company SAIC, uh, Science Applications, and I'm forgetting what
• 41:17
  the I and C stand for, Corporation.
• 41:19
  But a lot of independent business units.
• 41:22
  So I don't know, like a federation of businesses.
• 41:24
  So not highly overlapping with each other.
• 41:27
  They each operate very independently.
• 41:29
  Dennis was actually originally hired by the founder of this unit
• 41:33
  that was in Champaign-Urbana, Andy Lee, an engineering professor.
• 41:37
  And, Demeco was Defense Electromagnetics Company.
• 41:41
  and, Andy was an electromagnetics expert, or is a electromagnetics
• 41:45
  expert, able to, - design systems that could do identify friend and foe
• 41:49
  systems in, , in aircraft, for example.
• 41:51
  And he founded this company, and it did really well Dennis was brought in
• 41:55
  to, to manage it professionally, , and then eventually, Andy sold to SAIC.
• 42:00
  So kind of places us where we're at now.
• 42:03
  So Dennis is running this business unit and, you know,
• 42:06
  kind of a small to mid-sized business unit and very successful.
• 42:09
  But they became part of SAIC, their financial model was such
• 42:14
  that, you know, they're, sending, profits and they're meeting, their,
• 42:17
  quarterly and annual financial goals.
• 42:20
  But they're all beginning to realize that, and maybe not the well's running
• 42:24
  dry, but, you know, you're not getting this renewal, this constant renewal
• 42:28
  that, that really innovation brings.
• 42:31
  And so one of the things that Dennis did, was because Andy, after
• 42:35
  he sold the business, he retired.
• 42:37
  Dennis went out and he went back to Andy and said, "Hey, would you, would
• 42:39
  you come back for a while?" You know?
• 42:42
  And he brought Andy back into the company, and he carved out a little
• 42:45
  team to work with Andy, and I'm sure-- I don't remember the details.
• 42:48
  I'm sure Andy had a voice in who was on that team.
• 42:52
  they became a little, you know, I'll call it incubator activity for a time period.
• 42:58
  And, in fact, Andy used to tell Dennis, "I don't like J work. I don't like
• 43:02
  J work." And in electromagnetics, J is the imaginary number and so, you
• 43:08
  know, Andy didn't want to do what he felt was imaginary work, which was
• 43:12
  the more formal managing of it, but Dennis could run that interference.
• 43:16
  And, um, you know, Dennis, you know, just a wonderful person.
• 43:21
  Uh, you know, again, we've talked about this with other people in, in our
• 43:25
  conversations, a very humble person.
• 43:27
  Uh, and, and not that he'd be taken advantage of that way,
• 43:31
  but just very humble, very modest, uh, about these things.
• 43:35
  And he knew that Andy was the guy who could, you know, pump
• 43:39
  new life back into the company.
• 43:41
  And, and so they set this group as aside, and they worked for a while.
• 43:44
  They came up with a bunch of ideas and then, you know, it's something
• 43:47
  that we had spoken a-about, I think even offline, uh, last time.
• 43:51
  You have too many ideas for a while, so you set it aside, and maybe you bring it
• 43:54
  back when you need it, an ebb and flow.
• 43:56
  It's a different model, but it's still having this management style
• 44:01
  of saying, "We're gonna set aside resources and do this." I'm gonna,
• 44:07
  I'm gonna tell you, it's not easy.
• 44:08
  There's a story in-- You know, I'm gonna confess, if I told this ago,
• 44:13
  stop me, and I won't tell it again.
• 44:15
  But did I share the story about pheasant hunting in Iowa?
• 44:19
  Yeah, I didn't think so.
• 44:20
  I, I know I had it on my list in my mind when we were talking.
• 44:23
  There's a story that was, I think it was in The New York Times about a decade ago,
• 44:28
  and they were reporting on how pheasant hunting in the state of Iowa was down.
• 44:33
  And what they realized was that The farmers, because they had, you know,
• 44:38
  only so much, you know, tillable land, they were farming right up to the edge
• 44:42
  of their property, and I think precision farming was allowing this to happen.
• 44:47
  so they were each optimizing their own little, you know,
• 44:52
  their own farm, little farm.
• 44:53
  They're not that little, but they were each optimizing their own farm.
• 44:57
  were, they were just taking it to the limit, maximizing production.
• 45:01
  And what happened was all this, this, ground that had, you know, grassy areas
• 45:07
  and maybe natural trees that could have been there for all, you know, hundreds
• 45:10
  of years, you know, they were all gone.
• 45:12
  So there were no nesting places for pheasants.
• 45:15
  so the pheasant population plummeted.
• 45:18
  Pheasant hunting, which was like part of the culture there,
• 45:21
  was, was really dying out.
• 45:24
  you know, I'm reading this story and I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, what
• 45:27
  a metaphor for business." And, you know, we talk about over-managing the
• 45:33
  budgets, being over-restricted, and, you know, I'm gonna-- you know, I might
• 45:37
  even riff on this for a moment now.
• 45:40
  I, I think that we've gone too far in that direction, and that's not just,
• 45:44
  I'll say, someone who's been around too long complaining about today.
• 45:49
  I even think that when we have these fairs at a business unit or
• 45:54
  corporate level where we have-- we pick winners and losers, we're
• 45:59
  losing opportunities to develop managers who are willing to take bets.
• 46:04
  Because now that's been, that's been delegated up in the organization, either
• 46:08
  to a small team or to some executive.
• 46:11
  You know, you want these executives to learn and develop just the way
• 46:15
  the innovators are learning and developing that we talked about
• 46:18
  in this earlier session today.
• 46:20
  And, uh, you know, how do you develop these people?
• 46:23
  And too much of a tight control on the budget is gonna do that.
• 46:28
  And in the same way I think there should be nowhere to hide in an organization,
• 46:33
  there should be places where you can get things done that aren't part
• 46:37
  of the normal... You know, I, I, I figured I'd probably be singing to the
• 46:40
  choir or preaching to the choir here.
• 46:42
  Oh, I love it--
• 46:44
  you know,
• 46:44
  man.
• 46:45
  this, this metaphor of the pheasants in Iowa, I, I
• 46:48
  Beautiful.
• 46:49
  that story, you know?
• 46:50
  It, it reminds me of, um, again, McGilchrist when we had him on.
• 46:54
  The whole idea, you know?
• 46:56
  y- the, the emissary's taken over,
• 46:58
  Yeah.
• 46:59
  It's
• 47:00
  ex- it's exactly, exactly.
• 47:02
  I'm cheering you on, but I agree
• 47:03
  I love it.
• 47:04
  I love it.
• 47:04
  Maybe we'll co-author it, man.
• 47:06
  I, I, you ha- like, there, there are little nuggets I love
• 47:08
  because I think in metaphor, and therefore I write in metaphor.
• 47:12
  I'm gonna double-click on J type managerial responsibilities because
• 47:16
  I think this one f- if you're a manager and you're listening to us,
• 47:20
  I really want you to understand this one, because this one is an absolute
• 47:25
  energy drainer for, an innovator.
• 47:27
  So, in the book you write Dennis, this manager of Andy, the top
• 47:32
  serial innovator, he freed him up from administrative responsibility.
• 47:36
  And when Andy is in pursuit of a vision, he specifically asked to avoid
• 47:42
  J work, a term he derives from the field of computational electromagnetics.
• 47:46
  In Andy's field, every number has a real part and an imaginary part, and the
• 47:50
  imaginary part is denoted by the symbol J. Andy wants to focus always on, real
• 47:56
  work, innovating, not on what he sees as imaginary work, such as attending
• 48:01
  staff meetings, managing others in the group, and worrying about budgets.
• 48:05
  To get the most from Andy, Dennis releases him from J type managerial
• 48:08
  responsibilities and allows him to focus on breakthrough product development.
• 48:13
  If there's anything that makes you.
• 48:15
  not want to work in a company, it's having to go through that sh- now,
• 48:20
  it needs to be done, I totally get that.
• 48:22
  Yes.
• 48:23
  Yeah.
• 48:24
  But, but when it's, y- you're, like, going, "Well, if I'm not doing this, I
• 48:29
  ain't gonna be doing that J type work, then this is gonna be slower, and you keep
• 48:33
  giving me crap about how quicker I can go, so you gotta help me here, chief."
• 48:38
  And as you say, I, and I, I've heard about giving air cover, but you, you actually
• 48:42
  help them fly bel- below the radar.
• 48:46
  Yeah.
• 48:47
  Well, and I'm gonna quickly add here too, 'cause I think this
• 48:49
  is a place where it's relevant.
• 48:52
  I'm not saying that the innovator shouldn't be involved in current business.
• 48:59
  Um, because for example, what I've advocated, uh, at times is that if
• 49:04
  you've got, if you've got a mid-sized company, let's say in particular, maybe,
• 49:09
  let's pick a number, half the time of somebody who's your innovator probably
• 49:12
  should be working on current business.
• 49:15
  that's gonna give them a window to, you know, current customer needs, current
• 49:19
  problems with your product or process, and it's gonna feed that insight pipeline
• 49:25
  that's gonna allow them to innovate.
• 49:28
  It's really keeping them away from, again, this, this, if you will,
• 49:31
  so-called imaginary work, the-- what is perceived as being bureaucratic.
• 49:35
  And I'm not saying that that other work isn't, uh, isn't necessary.
• 49:38
  I really-- I, uh... And I don't think I'm waffling by saying that.
• 49:41
  I think that there, there are reasons to report and communicate.
• 49:45
  There are reasons to control and manage.
• 49:47
  It's just that as we've said, we both said it, when it goes too far, when it
• 49:50
  takes over, you lose sight of really the lifeblood of the organization.
• 49:56
  A few tips here as well, so I'm gonna read out a list here.
• 49:58
  So
• 49:59
  Yeah.
• 49:59
  a manager, you would do this by, one, understanding that their innovation
• 50:03
  process will start with a long period in which it looks as nothing's happening.
• 50:07
  That's so important because I remember Bruce reporting to the board, and I
• 50:14
  used to hold back pieces of information that were wins in order to be able to
• 50:20
  look like there was progress happening.
• 50:21
  'Cause I ne- I would plan out the project and go, "Okay, this is...
• 50:25
  Because this thing needs so much work.
• 50:27
  here, it's gonna look like nothing else." So I, I was kind of giving,
• 50:29
  like, distractions, like the magician's distraction, kind of, "Look over
• 50:34
  here while this thing..." Because they were, like, going, "Are you
• 50:37
  still talking about this project?"
• 50:38
  And you're kinda going, Oh.
• 50:39
  God."
• 50:40
  Uh, so you need air cover on that.
• 50:42
  That's one.
• 50:43
  Two, having patience with and trust in the serial innov-
• 50:46
  innovator for his or her process.
• 50:48
  That's the other thing because when they start going, kinda probing at
• 50:52
  you, it, it... I don't know if this is me personally, but it drives me
• 50:56
  nuts 'cause I'm, like, going, "I'm doing what's best for the company
• 50:59
  here and you're giving me crap for it?
• 51:01
  Yeah.
• 51:02
  screw you," you know? Like, No, one else is taking on this, and nobody
• 51:06
  else probably could, and you're giving me crap over it," you know?
• 51:09
  So three, running interference, I-- love that term, with more
• 51:12
  senior levels of management, so k- that air cover, so important.
• 51:17
  Four, not burdening the serial innovator with inappropriately
• 51:21
  bureaucratic tasks, J work.
• 51:22
  Yeah.
• 51:23
  five, this is a really, really important one, not requiring daily or weekly
• 51:28
  written progress reports because it get... 'Cause it's even Do You know,
• 51:33
  what I was thinking about, Bruce?
• 51:34
  It, it's, it's a brainwave state that you're not in.
• 51:39
  So if you live in an alpha brainwave state, you're kinda
• 51:42
  chilled, kinda, you see things differently, observe differently.
• 51:46
  But if you have to move into, like, beta or high beta, this where you're
• 51:49
  like, "Oh," and, and, and you're dreading it for the whole week.
• 51:52
  You're going, "Oh, it's Friday and I have to do my report," and straightaway that
• 51:56
  day's ruined for you, and you're not gonna be in the creative mode that you're in.
• 52:00
  So I just thought I'd share that list.
• 52:02
  Anything to add to that list?
• 52:03
  No, I-- You know, one thing that came to mind earlier, and it's coming back
• 52:06
  to mind now, and this is more related to the innovator, if you will, selling,
• 52:11
  but I think it relates to this as well.
• 52:13
  There was one person who shared, uh, very confidentially that he had been,
• 52:19
  uh, explicitly diagnosed with ADD.
• 52:22
  And when he went to make certain presentations, he had medication that
• 52:25
  he would take would allow him to focus.
• 52:29
  And I, you know, I was just blown away by that, you know, level of transparency
• 52:34
  in these, these conversations.
• 52:35
  It was just, again, marvelous to hear because you're like, "Of course."
• 52:40
  This is taking it to the next level of what do I have to do to sell this, but
• 52:44
  also what's required by management.
• 52:46
  And if you think about it, so much of management is, is looking to
• 52:50
  control and communication I mean, phase gate, you know, I always tell
• 52:55
  people phase gate is to instruct the neophyte and to remind the expert.
• 52:59
  And it's also to kind of force executives to make decisions.
• 53:02
  But a lot of executives use a phase gate to, to control and to get information.
• 53:07
  And I don't want to deny them that, but when you're sloshing around in
• 53:11
  that hourglass model and going back up to the very first step, a lot
• 53:16
  of people don't want to hear that.
• 53:18
  I, I of- often, I, I've coached heads of innovation and, and I say
• 53:23
  sometimes speaking to a head of innovation or a serial innovator is
• 53:27
  like drinking water from a hose pipe.
• 53:30
  That's actually...
• 53:31
  Yeah.
• 53:31
  'Cause they're so full of ideas, but they can't filter them.
• 53:34
  They, they can't put them in categories that the other side
• 53:37
  Yeah.
• 53:37
  appreciate them.
• 53:38
  And then they actually kind of go, "This guy's a nut job." Like, you
• 53:41
  know, "What, what's this guy, uh, doing in the co..." And then you
• 53:44
  start to raise... Th- then you're now flying below the radar, and they're
• 53:48
  And they're
• 53:49
  "I dunno if this is a good fit for our company."
• 53:51
  on you at that point.
• 53:52
  Yeah.
• 53:53
  That's
• 53:53
  That's it.
• 53:53
  They've got target fixation.
• 53:56
  An- another thing that happened, and this happened, you mentioned this
• 53:59
  with, with the, De Maco, uh, and Sayak, the, Andy and Dennis, that
• 54:04
  that f- that team they'd built, that little unit, eventually fizzled out.
• 54:08
  And you say here, "It is imperative that a serial innovator's ability to tr- travel
• 54:13
  is not hampered, even when the rest of the firm's employee travel budgets are
• 54:17
  cut or eliminated." Again, this is going back to what we talked about earlier on.
• 54:21
  It's usually the first thing that's cut
• 54:24
  Because it's easy, it's easy to manage.
• 54:26
  You know, that's a pr- it's, it's easy to make a company-wide decision
• 54:30
  and say nobody's gonna violate it.
• 54:32
  And it goes back to when we talked about the, the role of HR, I'll
• 54:36
  say the role of accounting and finance in controlling these things.
• 54:40
  you need an executive who's secure enough in their position to make
• 54:45
  these decisions or can run, you know, we've said, you know, run cover
• 54:49
  or, or have a discretionary budget that allows these things to happen.
• 54:55
  And yeah.
• 54:55
  And it's-- And that's why this pair, the teamwork between the
• 54:59
  executive and/or manager, as we rephrase it in the book, the manager
• 55:03
  and the innovator is so important.
• 55:05
  And it's this dance because they both get it.
• 55:09
  knows that they wouldn't be successful if they didn't have this other person
• 55:13
  floating around in their sphere.
• 55:14
  And, and the, and the innovator respects and, and values the manager.
• 55:18
  That's, that's the thing.
• 55:19
  It's not a disdain relationship.
• 55:21
  It's this trusting, um, partnership, if you will, that goes on.
• 55:27
  I- I've seen it working in companies, and it's brilliant when you see it,
• 55:30
  and you see one guy speaks politic and the other person doesn't,
• 55:36
  and they translate for them.
• 55:37
  It's, uh, th- this g- these guys, now they, they won't be recognizable, but
• 55:42
  I just, I used to think of them like, do you ever see the movie Twins with
• 55:45
  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito?
• 55:47
  I love that.
• 55:49
  Metaphors.
• 55:49
  Yeah, keep going.
• 55:50
  Yeah.
• 55:51
  I used to think, I used to think of them as that.
• 55:53
  Couple of things.
• 55:54
  You, you mentioned their ego, and this, this is a difficult thing.
• 55:59
  Like, if you're a manager and you have an ego, you're not gonna even
• 56:02
  listen to me because the guys say, "Managers who have big egos, need
• 56:07
  the limelight, li- limelight, or need to be the focus of attention cannot
• 56:11
  manage serial innovators effectively."
• 56:13
  That's, that happened me big time.
• 56:16
  A leader I had, she, she, and it's why she wanted to stop the show, did not
• 56:20
  want this thing getting out there, didn't want me speaking at events, and I, and
• 56:25
  I couldn't understand it 'cause I was like, I, I was like going, "This is
• 56:29
  what's right for the company." And it was 'cause of this, the limelight, the, the
• 56:34
  reputation, and, and ultimately insecurity
• 56:38
  Yes.
• 56:38
  Yeah.
• 56:39
  Well, you know, and I'll mention too as we're going through this, there was
• 56:43
  a project that Ray and I were engaged on, a consulting project that was-- the
• 56:47
  book probably had just come out by then.
• 56:50
  And it was with a, a large company that had the system where the
• 56:55
  managers and the innovators, uh, competed for the same salary pool.
• 57:02
  And they couldn't figure out why, why they were having these problems, you know?
• 57:06
  And Ray and I are like, you know, "How do we tell them, guys?" And, you know, in
• 57:11
  hindsight it just made so much sense, but to them it was, you know, I'm gonna-- I,
• 57:15
  I don't think it's an exaggeration that to them it was like this major breakthrough,
• 57:19
  and they were so grateful to us.
• 57:21
  And not just the, the, the innovators, but everyone was like, "Yeah, okay.
• 57:25
  Uh, it makes sense." But these are these structures that get set in place
• 57:29
  that, that, you know, okay, I get it.
• 57:31
  But a little bit of scratching beneath the surface and, and you expose these
• 57:36
  things that put them in a competition.
• 57:38
  You see it all the time.
• 57:39
  I experienced it as well where I, I found out that the CFO And
• 57:44
  the CEO were bonused on EBITDA,
• 57:46
  Oh,
• 57:47
  I'm the head of innovation.
• 57:48
  I've got like, I gotta go.
• 57:51
  Like, this, there's no way this is...
• 57:52
  gonna work because everything's gonna be so, like, talk about bureau- J work.
• 57:58
  The amount of J work you're gonna have to do to actually get something across
• 58:01
  the line is just gonna kill any kind of headroom, any kind of pheasant space.
• 58:06
  You're gonna have no place to grow any pheasant eggs to try and create
• 58:10
  something or nurture something.
• 58:12
  So absolute killer.
• 58:13
  You mentioned that actually with the Demaco, uh, example as well, that the, the
• 58:18
  corporate structure also meant that people were putting Band-Aids on stuff rather
• 58:23
  than actually looking for new solutions.
• 58:24
  Yeah.
• 58:25
  Yeah.
• 58:25
  Yeah.
• 58:25
  And that's, you know, and y- once you get into survival mode rather than,
• 58:30
  you know, I'll say renewal mode, and this goes back to this idea,
• 58:33
  you know, I'm not a big advocate
• 58:35
  Oh.
• 58:35
  Everybody has it, man.
• 58:35
  Everybody has some version.
• 58:40
  I've mentioned this to you, the Japanese translation of our book, and I'm not
• 58:43
  gonna get this right, but the title is essentially how innovation occurs in
• 58:48
  large companies not like, Silicon Valley.
• 58:52
  I'm not doing it justice, , but it's saying, you know, you don't
• 58:55
  need to be like these startups.
• 58:58
  This is how it works in a mature company.
• 59:01
  And, you know, again, it's just a, it's a totally different mindset.
• 59:05
  And I'll quickly talk about incentives.
• 59:07
  When I worked at Motorola, the executive for our division was incentivized
• 59:12
  based on invention disclosures of all things, which we could never
• 59:14
  decide why that was the case.
• 59:17
  my direct, you know, VP that I worked for initially.
• 59:20
  And so we'd-- twice a year, we'd set aside a day and everybody had a, everybody
• 59:24
  had to write up invention disclosures, even if they were, you know, I shouldn't
• 59:27
  say even if they weren't good, but, you know, not everything was good.
• 59:30
  And, you know, everybody got, you know, maybe 100 or $200 for a disclosure.
• 59:34
  The executive met their, their, their metric.
• 59:37
  You know, that's two days out of a year.
• 59:40
  That's, you know, maybe pushing 1% of your productive work schedule.
• 59:44
  Do you really want to spend 1% to, to generate J work, if you will?
• 59:48
  So I, you know-- Sorry.
• 59:50
  This Like I said, this is cathartic for me to remember these things.
• 59:55
  I thought I'd share a couple, just la- last thing on this, and then we'll share
• 1:00:00
  for those people interested or intrigued what we were talking about when we
• 1:00:04
  talked about, , the , pie-shaped worker.
• 1:00:06
  I'm gonna share the comparison and contrast with recommendations
• 1:00:10
  of the great Clay Christensen.
• 1:00:12
  So again, everything has its place, and I also, I, I think it's so contextual.
• 1:00:19
  So Tushman and O'Reilly, for example, would say, oh, you don't, you don't have
• 1:00:25
  a unit away from the sucking sound of the core is what Christensen and Scott
• 1:00:29
  Anthony and Clark Gilbert would call it.
• 1:00:32
  You have, you have it in- inside the company because
• 1:00:35
  otherwise it's gonna be orphaned.
• 1:00:37
  It's gonna be rejected like a bad organ transplant because it,
• 1:00:41
  it, it was not invented here.
• 1:00:44
  The great example being Xerox.
• 1:00:46
  So maybe you'll take us through what we're looking at here
• 1:00:50
  We had, , a list that appears in these boxes that we
• 1:00:54
  I love that
• 1:00:58
  to Abby, Ray, and myself, you might get different impressions about which
• 1:01:02
  ones, are more effective or more common.
• 1:01:06
  But one of the things that I'll comment about Christensen's work, and again,
• 1:01:09
  maybe this is the Midwesterner in me, I don't want to bash his work.
• 1:01:13
  I really don't.
• 1:01:14
  I think there's a great value there.
• 1:01:16
  Christensen assumes, as you've pointed out, that operating within the system
• 1:01:22
  is kind of destined to failure almost.
• 1:01:25
  what we felt and found was that with the right management and the right
• 1:01:31
  innovators, you could effectively operate inside the organization.
• 1:01:35
  And so that's the lower half of this box that you're showing here.
• 1:01:38
  And so Christensen would say, he-- I'd say he focuses on the lower left,
• 1:01:43
  and this is the way we've got this chart drawn, that if you're trying to
• 1:01:46
  launch something, a new idea inside the organization, and without explicitly
• 1:01:51
  saying this, I'd say without having enlightened, involved management, lower
• 1:01:56
  left box, and it's just not gonna work.
• 1:01:59
  The lower right box, though, is saying, you know, we've got
• 1:02:01
  a way to, run the gauntlet.
• 1:02:04
  You've got the innovators themselves that are self-motivated.
• 1:02:06
  You've got the executive levels that are willing to advocate with them.
• 1:02:11
  It's not exactly the champion role, but it has features of that.
• 1:02:15
  And you've got this, if you will, the lower one, the normal R&D
• 1:02:18
  employee managed infor- formally.
• 1:02:21
  That to me is the sweet spot because that's the one that I've seen anecdotally
• 1:02:26
  occur time and time and time again.
• 1:02:28
  I don't want to necessarily argue against an innovator group, but I will
• 1:02:33
  say that my feeling is, and that's the upper right here, or en-tire-- spin
• 1:02:37
  it on an entirely separate company, is that when you do that, there should
• 1:02:42
  be an unartic- there, there is an unarticulated message to the rest of the
• 1:02:47
  business that you guys can't do this.
• 1:02:52
  You know, it's, it's a message to the manufacturing and operations
• 1:02:55
  group, "You guys are not up to the task to accept this." And, you know,
• 1:03:00
  nobody ever comes out and says that, but that's really what's going on.
• 1:03:04
  I think that for the company to really benefit from that existing
• 1:03:09
  business unit working within the system, if you can swing it, is
• 1:03:13
  really powerful, and that's why I like the lower right quadrant of these.
• 1:03:17
  We saw the, the, the top two in the lower right, but I felt always that
• 1:03:22
  the lower right is the one that is the, the, if you will, the best approach
• 1:03:27
  because it, it, it helps the main part of the company survive and thrive.
• 1:03:32
  You're not just casting it off.
• 1:03:34
  and I, I think that that's what's happened and I think
• 1:03:38
  Maybe the cases that Christensen covered, they were the successes.
• 1:03:43
  And I mean, if you, if you look at enough data, it's like collect
• 1:03:47
  enough dots and they'll connect in different ways and, and things change.
• 1:03:50
  And I do think that that's actually a reason that that has changed since, since
• 1:03:56
  his work as well, to give it full respect.
• 1:03:58
  I thought we'd finish with the worker
• 1:04:00
  Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  So will I tee you up?
• 1:04:03
  I'll tee up a little quote and you can, you can bring us through the context.
• 1:04:06
  So you say, "Serial innovators develop just the sort of breadth
• 1:04:10
  found in T-shaped people.
• 1:04:11
  However, they also develop deep technical knowledge across multiple technical areas.
• 1:04:17
  They thus may be described as being dynamic Ts or even pi-shaped workers."
• 1:04:24
  And that's work by Macaulay et al., 2010, Miles and Jones, 2008.
• 1:04:29
  You quote that as well.
• 1:04:30
  Individuals with a breadth of learning across domains, but with great depth of
• 1:04:34
  learning in multiple technical domains.
• 1:04:38
  Yeah, you know, they're, what we would refer to as M-shaped, you know.
• 1:04:41
  And, and, uh, and, you know, can go even beyond that it, with multiple-- But the
• 1:04:46
  idea is they're multiply deep and broad.
• 1:04:49
  And usually it's, significant depth in more than one technical area, and
• 1:04:54
  I'll say sufficient depth understanding multiple aspects of the business.
• 1:04:59
  so, if it's a product innovation, they're gonna know enough about
• 1:05:02
  manufacturing processes and costs.
• 1:05:05
  They're gonna know enough about, marketing, not just
• 1:05:08
  individual customer needs.
• 1:05:10
  They're gonna know enough about finance and, how we're really accounting for
• 1:05:15
  this in the company , and does this advantage that we think we're bringing
• 1:05:19
  really translate into financial advantage.
• 1:05:21
  They're gonna know enough about, as we mentioned when we talked about
• 1:05:24
  navigating the politics, they're gonna know enough about their colleagues
• 1:05:28
  and about other executives and the 20 other people they've got to sell to.
• 1:05:31
  And so that M isn't just a chemical engineer or I'm an electrical engineer.
• 1:05:38
  It's I'm an engineer plus, oh, I've learned, I'm not only an
• 1:05:42
  electromagnetic engineer, I'm one who knows enough about computational work.
• 1:05:47
  I'm one who knows enough about the design of aircraft to know how to
• 1:05:50
  do identify friend or foe, to know what structures I'm looking for
• 1:05:54
  and how that translates into this.
• 1:05:57
  And I know enough about the business or I can access that through working
• 1:06:00
  with my management to get these things.
• 1:06:03
  And that's where, we didn't exactly call it pairwise work, or teamwork in the
• 1:06:09
  book, in a way the interaction between the executive and the innovator when
• 1:06:15
  it's the dance that's going on, it's the closest thing to pairwise work.
• 1:06:19
  We've also seen it-- I've seen it anecdotally with a couple of
• 1:06:22
  engineers working together that they become almost, a new entity
• 1:06:26
  in themselves when they innovate.
• 1:06:29
  it's getting those multiply deep and broad activities.
• 1:06:32
  And, again, this-- in hindsight, and it should all come together this way.
• 1:06:37
  I showed you the charts, magic eyes dots, where you look at
• 1:06:39
  it and you see the, the image.
• 1:06:41
  It's collecting the dots.
• 1:06:43
  And it's, and it's a directed col- collecting the dots.
• 1:06:46
  It's not just me sitting here watching YouTube videos all day
• 1:06:50
  or scanning Facebook all day.
• 1:06:52
  It's, it's saying, "Ah, you know, I'm, I'm following my nose on this, and
• 1:06:57
  I'm-- I think I have a sense, I have a belief that there's something here."
• 1:07:03
  Eh, belief might be wrong, but you pursue it for a while, and you
• 1:07:06
  go through this, again, Bayesian process of updating your insight.
• 1:07:09
  And if-- and if these things didn't all fit together, there'd be a problem.
• 1:07:15
  that's why, you know, I just love talking about this because every
• 1:07:18
  time we start talking about one area, another area comes up, and it
• 1:07:21
  really all does-- it fits together.
• 1:07:22
  And so the M shape is a, I think, a handy way to talk about that these
• 1:07:27
  are people that you begin to see as having these depths of domain.
• 1:07:33
  They also have broad, shallow domain areas, but they're
• 1:07:37
  able and willing to go deep.
• 1:07:38
  Uh, one of the people we interviewed, they were interview-- they were
• 1:07:42
  interested in horticulture.
• 1:07:43
  I don't know if it was, uh, roses or some other plants.
• 1:07:46
  They, you know, they bought-- went out and bought a nursery, I think.
• 1:07:48
  You know, it wasn't just like planting two plants in the backyard.
• 1:07:51
  They would just throw themselves into these things.
• 1:07:54
  Yeah, I was at Chuck, Chuck House.
• 1:07:56
  He had a nursery.
• 1:07:57
  you know what?
• 1:07:57
  Then it would've been Chuck, because I remember
• 1:07:58
  Yeah.
• 1:07:59
  sharing the story, so I bet that was Chuck.
• 1:08:01
  Yeah, Chuck.
• 1:08:02
  Chuck did, yeah.
• 1:08:03
  And by the way, I wanna tell our audience, I'm gonna get Bruce back with Chuck.
• 1:08:07
  So they haven't actually met, so I'm gonna get, um, they can riff over
• 1:08:11
  the experience in the field and the experience researching the field
• 1:08:15
  as well.
• 1:08:16
  And another guest that's gonna come, Bruce will be back again to discuss his
• 1:08:20
  other book with Walter, Walter Herbst, and his book, No Excuses Innovation.
• 1:08:25
  Maybe he'll give us a little preview of what that's gonna be about
• 1:08:28
  you know, no excuses innovation was, uh, was, let's say, Walter's and my,
• 1:08:33
  you know, love letter, we never called it that, to, small and mid-sized
• 1:08:37
  companies, and mostly mid-sized companies.
• 1:08:39
  And, and that mid-size can be a standalone company, it can
• 1:08:42
  be a division or business unit.
• 1:08:44
  some of that is because, you know, mid-sized companies, for the most part,
• 1:08:47
  are the lifeblood of a lot of economies.
• 1:08:49
  And I'm gonna tell you, I, I see a lot of those companies just not even
• 1:08:55
  thinking about renewing their business.
• 1:08:58
  And, um, and it has a, you know, it has impact on, on regions,
• 1:09:02
  it has impact on families.
• 1:09:04
  And, so we were looking at how do we make the case to these companies?
• 1:09:08
  And so one thing that we did, and you can tell me if I'm wrong on this,
• 1:09:12
  but I think it's unique in this book.
• 1:09:14
  We have one chapter dedicated to why should you even innovate You know,
• 1:09:19
  'cause most books on innovation start with this, you know, unarticulated
• 1:09:21
  assumption, "Okay, we're innovating, roll up your sleeves, and let's organize
• 1:09:25
  this way," or, "Let's hire these people," or, "Let's structure it this way." Nah.
• 1:09:29
  You know, why are we even doing this?
• 1:09:31
  And that's this very strategic question that we don't even address
• 1:09:34
  in "Serial Innovators" because we didn't think we needed to.
• 1:09:37
  And so we start with that, and then it's-- You know, I don't call it a handbook,
• 1:09:41
  but, you know, we jokingly have said or we've heard people say rather that,
• 1:09:44
  that if you have one book on innovation on your shelf, it ought to be this one.
• 1:09:48
  Because, you know, Walter, who's just a remarkable world's expert on design
• 1:09:53
  thinking and, and these kinds of issues of understanding emotional design,
• 1:09:59
  he took the lead on those chapters.
• 1:10:01
  I took the lead on, on processes even though, see there's a place
• 1:10:05
  for them, but, not a dominant place.
• 1:10:07
  And I took the lead on writing the section on the people who innovate.
• 1:10:10
  And then together we combined to write about strategy.
• 1:10:13
  And so we just pieced this all together and we said, again, if you're in a
• 1:10:17
  mid-sized company and you don't have a lot of time, if you're an innovator in that
• 1:10:21
  company and you want to get executives to think about it, give them chapter one.
• 1:10:25
  You know, if you can't-- In fact, I worked with one company and I gave a
• 1:10:28
  draft of the book to the owner, and I don't want to be disparaging, but after
• 1:10:32
  six months or eight months, I asked for it back 'cause we had a new update.
• 1:10:36
  And I said, "What'd you think?" And he goes, "I don't read." Oh, gosh.
• 1:10:39
  You know?
• 1:10:40
  Well, you do.
• 1:10:41
  And it's okay.
• 1:10:41
  I mean, I shouldn't say.
• 1:10:42
  At the time it didn't feel okay.
• 1:10:44
  But, it's how do you get the message out to these companies?
• 1:10:47
  Because, my view is you-- if you don't renew the business, you're
• 1:10:51
  not gonna survive and thrive.
• 1:10:53
  You're either doing it to survive, and it's an insurance policy,
• 1:10:57
  or you do it to thrive, and it's an option for future growth.
• 1:11:00
  And it doesn't take a lot of money.
• 1:11:02
  It doesn't take a lot of time.
• 1:11:03
  Shouldn't take a lot of time.
• 1:11:04
  It shouldn't-- should never take, a massive investment until you really
• 1:11:08
  think you've got something good.
• 1:11:10
  And then you just hope to find an audience who's able to hear
• 1:11:13
  that message and act on it.
• 1:11:14
  That's what we're here for, man.
• 1:11:16
  That's what we're here for.
• 1:11:16
  You, you over-optimize the field
• 1:11:19
  Oh.
• 1:11:19
  leave no space for the pheasant growth.
• 1:11:21
  That's exactly what happens and why we- this show is about promoting the
• 1:11:26
  pheasants, the pheasants of the future.
• 1:11:29
  And the ph- you know, let's pretend it's pheasants on the
• 1:11:31
  cover of your book as well.
• 1:11:32
  That's right.
• 1:11:33
  It's been a, a pleasure, man.
• 1:11:35
  A, a three-part series.
• 1:11:36
  I'll put it all together and you'll see lots of stuff coming out o-
• 1:11:40
  over the next few days on LinkedIn.
• 1:11:42
  Anywhere people can find you where's the best place?
• 1:11:45
  I'd say, you know, go to, go to LinkedIn.
• 1:11:46
  It's easy.
• 1:11:47
  Um, if you wanna go to a deeper dive, there's a link to my website,
• 1:11:51
  Breakthrough Innovation Advisors, but LinkedIn's an easy way.
• 1:11:54
  It's V-O-J-A-K it's, the Czech spelling and we can discuss
• 1:11:58
  that more another time too.
• 1:11:59
  So that's
• 1:12:00
  Like Kojak.
• 1:12:02
  Kojak with a V.
• 1:12:05
  It's
• 1:12:05
  An absolute pleasure.
• 1:12:06
  Author of Serial Innovators, Bruce Vojak.
• 1:12:09
  thank you for joining us.
• 1:12:11
  Aidan, thank you
• 1:12:12
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• 1:12:15
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• 1:12:20
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• 1:12:24
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• 1:12:28
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• 1:12:32
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• 1:12:35
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