Latest / The Innovation Show / Bruce Vojak — Serial Innovators: The Hidden Power Inside Mature Firms (Part 1)

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Bruce Vojak — Serial Innovators: The Hidden Power Inside Mature Firms (Part 1) · The Innovation Show

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  These are the most important people you've never heard of And not just
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  for solving customer problems, sure they solve customer problems.
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  They address the needs of executives.
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  They address the needs of their colleagues.
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  They're helping people keep employed.
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  They're addressing shareholder needs.
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  I mean, they're really simultaneously solving, if you will, the whole
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  equation in a potentially hostile-- it it may not be hostile, it may
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  be just an indifferent environment.
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  And yet they have the will and the drive and the skill that they
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  develop or have to, pursue it.
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  Before we start into our brand-new series on the work of Bruce Vojak, I
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  wanna thank our sponsor Kyndryl, who runs and reimagines the technology
• 0:38
  systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses.
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  With a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on unmatched managed
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  service capability, Kyndryl helps leaders harness the power of technology for
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  smarter decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge.
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  Also, check out the Kyndryl Institute, where there's a plethora
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  of brillIaint authors and thinkers from all over the world on a
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  wide range of content and ideas.
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  You can find that at www.kyndryl, K-Y-N-D-R-Y-L, .com/institute.
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  Based on years of interviews with over 50 serial innovators inside large,
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  mature corporations, today's book asks, who are the rare individuals
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  who repeatedly create breakthrough products from within big organizations,
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  and how do they actually do it?
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  Our guest and his co-authors find that serial innovators
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  are not just creative thinkers.
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  They are whole system operators who find important problems, invent
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  solutions, navigate corporate politics, and shepherd ideas to market, all
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  without a formal mandate to do so.
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  The book is equally addressed to the innovators themselves, their managers,
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  HR departments, and senior executives.
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  The purpose of the book is to help people and corporations better understand,
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  emulate, enable, support, and manage these unique and important individuals
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  who have the potential to create new breakthrough products that result
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  in large revenue and profit streams, primarily from large, mature firms.
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  In the first of our series on his books, and to be honest with you, just
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  off air we agreed we're gonna do even more , we welcome the author of Serial
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  Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature
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  Firms, Bruce Vojak, welcome to the show
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  Aidan, it's great to be here.
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  Thanks so much.
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  Great to have you on the show, Bruce.
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  It's been a long time coming.
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  We've been planning this for 18 months , so
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  That's right.
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  great to finally put the face to the emails and the voice to all the messages.
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  But I thought we'd start with a few definitions, and feel free
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  to expand on these definitions.
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  One of the things I wanted to really share was, what is a serial innovator?
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  The other was, what innovation is in your view?
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  Because as we were discussing off air, that's the source
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  of so many problems inside of organizations in the first place.
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  Let, so let's start with innovation, then serial innovators, and then
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  we'll build on why they matter
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, you know, I'm so glad you decided to start with definitions.
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  I always like to clear the table with that myself.
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  So , we're in alignment.
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  You know, lot of people talk about innovation as being technology, and as
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  you and I had just briefly discussed earlier, it's not necessarily technology.
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  It could be, it could involve that.
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  Same thing with creativity.
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  A lot of people look at it as, "Oh, I'm creative. I do something
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  different." And one of the examples I often show is a picture with a
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  metal handle and a wooden head.
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  it's very creative, but it's not necessarily innovative.
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  And so it kind of gives you a little bit of pause and really it's something
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  that, that isn't-- It's new to the market, new to customer use But something
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  that has value that people will be willing to pay for, that, uh, that
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  there's, uh, financial implications and strategic implications really as well.
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  then I often personally take it one step further, I talk about
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  how the best cases, innovation redefines the basis of competition.
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  And, you know, I didn't ask for this, but I think if I could just show
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  something that maybe you've seen before.
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  But, don't know if you can see this well or not.
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  A kitchen knife.
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  And, you know, a hundred plus years ago, if you were peeling
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  carrots, you'd use a kitchen knife.
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  And if you're like me, you'd probably cut yourself and, maybe
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  cut too deep or cut too shallow.
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  But really, it was a problem that people, you know, kind
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  of lived with for a long time.
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  And then at one point someone said, "Well, we don't have to do this," they came
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  up with this idea of a safety peeler, and the blades are facing each other.
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  And it has benefit not only of being safe, but it also has much more uniform
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  peeling, and so it's a good, outcome.
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  when people had this, early on at least, they had different design options.
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  And so people experimented within that paradigm, if you will, for different
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  kinds of ways of solving the problem.
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  And then in the 1990s, , there was a design innovator that
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  came up with the idea of putting an, ergonomic handle on it.
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  And in fact, as an aside, , the story goes that his wife had arthritis, and,
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  , she had a hard time peeling carrots.
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  And he'd cut off a broom handle, put it on one of these safety
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  peelers, and she could peel carrots.
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  Now, , we might ask, why didn't he peel them for her?
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  But, you know, that's a separate discussion.
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  But the fact is that, you know, he created a whole new business
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  with this renewal of competition.
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  then, you know, the obvious conclusion is that if you really
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  want to renew competition, you make, pre-peeled baby carrots.
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  you know, in that progression, you've maybe seen this and maybe some of your
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  audience has, but to me it illustrates how when you change the basis of competition,
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  you really kind of reset the, the goal, if you will, of what people are looking for.
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  And it gives at least the person who innovates or the company that innovates
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  that, that disproportionate, at least initial advantage to work within.
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  I ta- heard you talk about this.
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  I did my research.
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  I heard you talk about this example before, and I, it made so much sense to
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  me, but also people would say, "Okay, well, if I do that, others are gonna
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  copy me or emulate me soon, okay?" But
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  Right.
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  To your point, y- you actually create a new market.
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  You, you enlarge the market.
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  I thought about Joe Pine, you know, the idea of the experience economy
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  and the value change between a coffee bean and a Starbucks, and buying
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  the expensive coffee in a Starbucks versus selling the coffee bean, and
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  how the end product actually changes.
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  I also thought about Tesla and how Tesla opened up their chargers to
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  everybody else, because if everybody's winning, the market's bigger.
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  And those were just a few little insights maybe you might wanna riff on.
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  Well, actually, this is way old technology now, but VHS versus Beta format.
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  You know, Beta was at least technically the preferred result.
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  If, if people remember what a, a videotape recording is, it's--
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  I'm showing my age here a bit.
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  yeah, you know, the, uh, the the VHS format was opened, and
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  it opened up all sorts of new growth, and it ultimately won.
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  the thing that I love to challenge people with is to just look at any
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  product that you're looking at and try to look at, you know, what's behind that?
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  Who was thinking about this?
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  Why are they making these changes?
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  And so, this is one I haven't necessarily shown anybody
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  recently, but this is a beer can.
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  You know, back in the day, you'd open it with one of these openers.
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  And then, you know, how did the, competition change?
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  You've got the pop top, and now the pop top is environmentally safe, because
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  you've got, something that holds it on.
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  one of these steps changed
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  I
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  And not just for the sake of changing, because there were some, you know, deeper
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  understanding of what the need was.
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  love that, and I was... I remember those can openers.
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  They were l- they were lethal.
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  Do you remember the little spike on the top and you had to, like... And
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  you'd cut your hands oftentimes.
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  Man, they were absolutely lethal.
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  The other person who's lethal, I know when I read out that intro, so
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  many of our audience were nodding and going, "Is he talking about me?"
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  Because that is the listenership to the show, serial innovators, and
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  maybe not every element of what you describe in the book and the study, but
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  certainly a lot of the characteristics.
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  And as I say many times, I, I truly believe there's a place on the
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  spectrum for a serial innovator.
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  It's we, we belong there because they don't often fit, fit,
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  and they are hard to manage.
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  And actually, it's, it's one of the things you call out.
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  Serial innovators work differently from typical d- uh, development
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  employees, and therefore they need to be managed differently.
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  So maybe we'll use that as a segue to describe what the serial innovator
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  is, and then we'll build on this.
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  And I was actually thinking, Bruce, in the book, you even advise how HR team
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  can hire and interview for these people.
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  How can you attract them to your organization?
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  And I was, like, going God, that could be another episode on its own.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, and, oh, and in fact, just to take that branch briefly, sometimes
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  the best way to hire these people is to use the innovators themselves.
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  And it's a bit like having a sommelier or someone, you know,
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  looking at counterfeit bills.
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  There's hate to say that there's an art to it because sometimes people get
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  dismissive of that, uh, response But that, that, uh, being dismissive of that view
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  really precludes a whole line of thinking that's so valuable in all of this.
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  But you're right, how do you identify and, and develop these people?
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  It's interesting you said that about the sommelier idea.
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  I was thinking, yeah, and you know the, you know the special light that
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  they shine on a, on a dollar bill to see if it's fake or whatever?
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  Yeah.
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  the, that, that is a huge problem.
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  I talked about this before.
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  The, the second innovator problem.
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  When you have a head of innovation who goes into a company, claims they know
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  what they're doing, and s- and actually, I have to say, sometimes they don't.
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  Sometimes they don't know what they're doing and they think
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  they are good for the role.
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  They d- don't know it's a political role in a lot of cases.
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  They don't know how to navigate politics.
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  I've experienced that myself.
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  That, that is a, it- it's soul destroying, t- the amount of politic- politics
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  and politique you have to speak.
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  But when, when that happens, the organization is once bitten, and
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  the next innovator comes in and they're dealing with the history
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  of the previous innovation lead, and that's a huge, huge Challenge.
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  Well, you know, one, one of the things we've been talking about
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  this is how do you id- how do you identify, and I know we can dig
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  deeper on this, going to, like, what
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  I was thinking about that, Bruce, , 'cause you work still as an advisor and a board
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  director for mature companies mainly, and
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  I actually genuinely think sometimes they don't know how they discover
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  their first product anyway, because luck plays a huge role.
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  In em- e- emergent strategy or finding a product in the first place, and you
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  can stumble upon an amazing product.
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  I mean, everybody was a brillIaint property millionaire until 2008 and 2009.
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  We we, a lot of us have scar tissue about that.
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  But the same thing, you can, you can, you can just be in a buoyant market.
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  You can stumble upon a product and it just takes off.
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  Maybe you have some type of patent or some type of IP moat around
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  the product, and it can take off.
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  And then later on, as you say, your S-curve wanes, you're at the top
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  of your curve, and y- y- you never had that skill in the first place
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  because you had early success.
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  And I, I often think about that, the curse of early success.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, it's, it's that i-idea of, know,
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  Because you mentioned Nancy, let's give a flip side, 'cause, uh, one of the
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  really interesting thing was Chuck House.
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  So
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  Oh,
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  y- you love Chuck.
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  We had Chuck on the show.
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  For those of you who don't know, I know regular listeners, you'll
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  definitely have heard Chuck.
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  We had him f- four times on the show . Much like this, Bruce,
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  uh, it was supposed to be one episode and I turned it into four.
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  But
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  Oh.
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  the thing that I found so demoralizing was, so he has the win with the screen.
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  Remember the first product he did, and he w- he, he followed all the rules of,
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  uh, if you wanna call it, or the co- the playbook of your book, The Serial
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  Innovator, followed the, the diagram of circling, et cetera, et cetera.
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  We- we'll come to all that and describe it.
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  But one of the things he experienced was- He had the win, then he went
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  for another win and it didn't work out, and he got punished for that.
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  And I was telling you before, like, I, I don't know where I heard this.
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  It might've been a Nietzsche quote or something, and they said, "If you
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  wanna punish somebody, don't punish them for doing something wrong.
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  Punish them for doing something right, or something they believe is
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  right." And I felt so much empathy for Chuck when he happened that.
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  And I, I wondered, did you stumble upon that in your serial innovators?
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  I love the question and I don't wanna, I don't wanna
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  Thank you.
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  Well,
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  I, I learned, I actually learned so much from him as well, and it was great to
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  see through his eyes what happened and the challenges he had, et cetera, and
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  the lack of ego in, in lots of ways.
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  Like, one of the things we talked about was giving away the credit.
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  I'm sure if you're in P&G, uh, I mean, one of the things you're wondering
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  about, I'm sure, is, like, going, "Do I get a cut of this billion-dollar
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  product I've just I've just invented?"
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  You know?
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  Uh, one of the examples you gave as well in P&G was Tom Osborne.
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  I thought this was a great one to
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  It-- you know, Tom, Tom's story-- Tom's passed away a few years ago now.
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  Tom, uh... I, I mean, in addition to interviewing Tom, I had the good
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  fortune as an opportunity to speak with him at a, a conference once.
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  And, uh, you know, I kind of told the, the pattern across industries and
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  companies, and then Tom shared his story.
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  Tom, um, you know, I, I-- if, if you, if you don't mind, I'm gonna spend
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  a little bit of time to develop this 'cause I think it's, it's worth it
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  as a of, um, a pattern for others.
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  Tom's background was as a physical chemist.
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  He has a Ph-- had a PhD in physical chemistry.
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  After his PhD, he did a postdoc, with Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner.
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  So, you know, Tom's scientific credentials, just impeccable.
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  he ended up, uh, going from, if you will, academia into industry with P&G and worked
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  within analytic chemistry for a while.
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  So the kinds of things you'd expect from a PhD physical chemist.
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  And he then transitioned into the feminine hygiene product area.
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  And, um, y-the, at the time, and this is, you know, y-you-- when you look at
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  these projects in context, in hindsight especially, they make so much sense.
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  the time, feminine hygiene products within P&G, that area was heavily
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  populated by people who came over from the diaper business.
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  And so their paradigm, if you will, of what the product looks like
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  was that it was like a diaper.
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  It was there to catch fluid.
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  and you know, Tom worked in this, and he was given an assignment to, to improve
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  that, that product, and he worked on that.
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  But what he began to sense, and this is the beautiful thing about
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  a lot of these people, began to get these, this sensation, and again,
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  I don't wanna make it sound, um, mysterious or anything, but he began
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  to get the sense of, of disconnect.
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  Like, I'm not sure this is necessarily the right solution, I'm not sure if
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  this is the best way to solve this problem of, of managing menstruation
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  as a, uh, in, in the form of a product.
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  um, he continued working on this, but he began to realize that
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  there might be something more.
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  And so What Tom did, and this is a pattern we saw across so many innovators, he
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  dug very deeply into what was going on.
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  And so very often, uh, there's kind of this, um, uh, entrepreneurial perspective
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  of we've got to let go of our hang-ups.
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  We, you know, we're just too, we're just too tense.
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  We've got to let go.
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  And, and in, in contrast, what we saw with Tom and what we saw with
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  all these other innovators was that they dug deep to understand what
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  the unarticulated assumptions were.
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  And so Tom started studying menstruation.
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  What is it?
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  And how does it, if you will, differ from, and again, uh, urination.
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  And as we wrote in the book, Ray and I learned more about these products
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  than we ever really wanted to know.
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  And, you know, I don't mean to be inappropriate, but, but it, it's,
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  it's fascinating from an innovation perspective, because here you've got blood
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  and urine, very different types of fluids.
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  One's more viscous, one's more, um, liquid, if you will.
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  Uh, uh, one, uh, the, the, the nature of the flow, the timing of
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  the flow, it's just very different.
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  And yet you're taking one model that works well for one situation and trying
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  to apply it for the other, and it worked.
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  I mean, that's the thing.
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  It's a lot like saying, "I've got a safety peeler.
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  It worked." And those safety peelers, you know, 70 years probably
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  of, of legs on that product.
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  eventually somebody said, "Hey, there's something different." Well,
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  it's the same thing with Tom and this.
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  And so he studied the, the biological processes.
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  He worked with, uh, medical models and, um, I wasn't aware of this,
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  but when physicIains are trained, they work with humans to train, to
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  understand about, uh, anatomy beyond just the models, the physical model.
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  They actually work with people to, to more deeply understand.
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  And, and the more he dug into this, the more he was, I'll say, convinced
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  or at least more confident that, yes, there's something different here.
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  And, um, and that was when, let's say, the challenges began for him because
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  he began to view it not as a diaper to catch a fluid, but as a garment.
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  And, uh, the minute that design concept changes, you re- the minute you redefine
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  the problem, that's the innovation.
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  And then the question is, well, okay, are there technologies
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  there that can actually do this?
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  Can I bring the organization along?
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  um, one of the things that was, uh, typical of many but not all of
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  the people we interviewed is that, uh, Tom twice almost lost his job.
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  And, you know, and that, that needs to be shared because he was considered
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  to be, um, disruptive, um, not aligned with the company business.
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  And, you know, and I get it.
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  I mean, I, I gotta say they had just launched the, uh, Always
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  brand, uh, feminine hygiene product.
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  This was after the, um, toxic, toxic shock syndrome problem
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  that P&G had, uh, with tampons.
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  Um, as I'm recalling, I think I got the, I got the order right.
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  I'm not sure how close they were in time, but, uh, they had launched this product.
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  It was really addressing... It s- it was a very-- The, the Always product was a very
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  successful product in the marketplace.
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  And so what Tom was doing was actually challenging that.
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  and it's like, "We've got this good product. You know, Tom,
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  leave us alone," you know?
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  And, uh, they kind of... I don't wanna say it was a mistake they made, but
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  they-- the mistake they almost made was they set him aside, and that gave
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  him even more time to work on this.
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  But, he, he was persistent.
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  he had a passion for his customers.
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  Um, of the, the phrases that he used when we interviewed him was that...
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  this is a very appropriate statement.
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  I never would want this to sound inappropriate about Tom.
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  he said that his products were like love letters to his customers.
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  And, you know, what a beautiful metaphor for, you know, what an innovator is doing.
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  They're, they're motivated to solve these problems.
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  And, um, and he persisted, and he would at times get a, a more senior
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  executive involved, and, and they would advocate with him or for him a bit
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  and, and, uh, help him make the case.
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  And then, you know, he got a setback and then again.
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  So this is not a, a, a linear have an idea, get a buy-in, launch it, and
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  everybody, you know, gets awards for that.
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  It's... It was very, um, m-much a stew almost of, of
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  activity and bootlegging things.
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  And it was at a time when, within the company you could bootleg
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  products, because financially, the accounting systems weren't
• 24:35
  as tight as they are today.
• 24:37
  And, uh, if you don't mind, at some point I've got a story related to that, that I
• 24:40
  think, I think you might find interesting.
• 24:43
  So, so he was able to finally get this launched, and it was
• 24:47
  the Always Ultra brand, which was the next step in the product.
• 24:51
  Billion-dollar brand for P&G.
• 24:53
  That's how they defined their big winners, billion-dollar brand.
• 24:56
  And, uh, and it was a, it was an innovation that almost didn't happen.
• 25:01
  And, uh, and again, a marvelous guy.
• 25:04
  you know, we saw this in the people we interviewed, that, uh, um,
• 25:08
  just exceptional people in terms of their passion for customers.
• 25:12
  Their, their deep insight, and I'll say that not to disparage academic
• 25:17
  insight, but not in a, in a detached academic sense, but very much, "I just
• 25:22
  wanna deeply understand this." And, and then now I'm gonna bounce back.
• 25:26
  You know, you talk about how you identify these people.
• 25:29
  Well, these are the kinds of things you look for.
• 25:30
  How deeply have they looked into things?
• 25:32
  Do they look under the hood, or do they accept answer?
• 25:36
  And, um I don't know, marvelous, marvelous person, and I'll then extend
• 25:41
  it to say marvelous people that, uh, that we've had, you know, really the--
• 25:45
  We've been just so fortunate in, in this project to meet these people.
• 25:48
  So may- I hope this wasn't too much, Aidan, but
• 25:51
  joy.
• 25:51
  Beautiful, man.
• 25:52
  Well, and, and it's a, to me, it's a beautiful story, and I
• 25:56
  don't know how else to say it.
• 25:57
  And these are stories I want out there, that's why I'm, I'm really meaning this.
• 26:01
  I'm so glad to be on this podcast with you.
• 26:04
  I love to have these stories out there because I think they need to be heard to
• 26:08
  encourage people, to challenge others, and to say that this is, this is what
• 26:13
  innovation can be in a beautiful way.
• 26:17
  Well, for me, man, every episode is a love letter to the audience.
• 26:21
  Yes.
• 26:21
  Yes.
• 26:22
  Yes.
• 26:23
  And I,
• 26:23
  I don't know where I came up with that, but I just came up with it.
• 26:26
  Yeah, but it's true, though, you know, and actually, I've told you, I've
• 26:29
  listened to him over time, but again, more recently, and I love-- I, you
• 26:32
  know, not only Chuck House, uh, Iain McGilchrist, my gosh, I mean, I could,
• 26:36
  I could just, you know, just wallow in his, uh, r- sessions with you.
• 26:42
  Yeah, there are some beautiful insights that are
• 26:44
  Absolutely.
• 26:44
  But I, I'm gonna come back to a few things.
• 26:46
  We wanna come back to your CFO story, your finance story that you just
• 26:50
  teed us up for there a moment ago.
• 26:52
  But one of the things was, I, I... We had Jeff DeGraff on most recently.
• 26:57
  We did a three-parter with Jeff, and he was telling me about
• 27:01
  this guy in the Army, sure.
• 27:04
  So this guy had created processes to get stuff done, innovation done
• 27:08
  better, and his then, his process was co-opted for the COVID vaccine.
• 27:15
  So, huge win, and he was celebrated briefly.
• 27:20
  The champagne was put away quite quickly, and then he got passed over for promotion.
• 27:25
  And I do, I do want that to be known because that's what, where
• 27:29
  I was going with, you know, Nancy was celebrated and she was then put
• 27:33
  on other products and she, she was celebrated and she was known to be,
• 27:38
  but it doesn't always work that way.
• 27:39
  Sometimes you go against the grain, you'd uncovered something,
• 27:43
  and then you're actually, you're punished for doing the right thing.
• 27:46
  And I always think about, like, uh, an, there was a famous story of one of the
• 27:51
  coaches in NFL and he punished one of his players who did a play at the end to
• 27:55
  win the Super Bowl, but it wasn't what the coach told him to do, and he actually
• 28:00
  marked the guy down, even though they won the Super Bowl because he broke the rule.
• 28:05
  And, uh, for me, that's actually the lesson that, that that happens.
• 28:08
  And
• 28:09
  not always, it, just like the whistleblower in any company,
• 28:13
  it doesn't always end well.
• 28:15
  Same for the innovator.
• 28:16
  It doesn't always end up well.
• 28:17
  And, and I think it's important to call that out, that not every organization's
• 28:21
  mature enough to go, "Okay, they, they deserve a medal of defIaince."
• 28:25
  Yeah.
• 28:25
  You know, Aidan, absolutely.
• 28:28
  And, and, um, as I just briefly stated earlier selected on the positive stories.
• 28:35
  when we went out looking for people to interview, we framed, "This is
• 28:39
  our definition of a serial innovator.
• 28:41
  Do you have people like this?" And I'll quickly add that one person told
• 28:45
  us, "Yeah, we have people like this.
• 28:47
  I didn't know anybody else did." But that's kind of a-- that's a rabbit trail.
• 28:49
  But, say that, that what we didn't do, and this would be a whole other
• 28:55
  study, although I think it'd be a can of worms, to interview the people who
• 29:00
  had these experiences you're describing became kind of bitter and cynical
• 29:05
  and, and checked out, if you will.
• 29:07
  And I mean, and I mean this as no disrespect to the
• 29:11
  people I'm gonna allude to.
• 29:12
  Obviously, I wouldn't mention names.
• 29:13
  I've known people like this.
• 29:16
  And, uh, and I, and I understand how they can feel that way.
• 29:20
  And it's, it's sad.
• 29:22
  I, uh, I don't wanna say that the serial innovators are more resilient
• 29:25
  because I think that's a bit of a, an easy answer for me to give.
• 29:29
  I think there may be some truth to that.
• 29:31
  refer to s-- a lot of this being luck.
• 29:33
  I think that that can be part of it too.
• 29:35
  It's being in the right situation.
• 29:36
  But I I think so-- The question is, you don't wanna have either error.
• 29:40
  You don't wanna have things go to market that are just stupid ideas,
• 29:44
  and you don't want things stopped that are, are wonderful ideas.
• 29:48
  And those two types of errors, how do you walk that line is a, is a big challenge.
• 29:55
  And I think how we even navigate that today is different than
• 29:58
  it even was a few decades ago.
• 30:00
  But you said there, like situational is, goes beyond the organization.
• 30:04
  So I've seen people like this, and I know sometimes it's
• 30:09
  like, "Man, I just had a baby.
• 30:12
  Man, I have a massive mortgage.
• 30:15
  I done this before and my wife can't tolerate me doing it again." Like,
• 30:19
  there's those situations, and they have to make really tough calls knowing
• 30:24
  that, in a way, they're giving up and they're putting their brain in the
• 30:28
  desk, you know, putting it away and just checking in and just getting a paycheck.
• 30:33
  The br- great Dee Hock, who was a great mentor to me, he wrote the forward
• 30:37
  to my book, he, he was the founder of Visa, he told me, he, he had a term for
• 30:41
  it, he called it retiring on the job.
• 30:43
  Yes.
• 30:44
  he said that, that moment, he had that moment, that moment... And I think a lot
• 30:48
  of people have these moments where, I had it where I gave up on a company I was
• 30:52
  working in as head of innovation, and I remember one day coming in, looking at
• 30:56
  myself in the mirror and saying, "I'm well-paid, I have a pensionable job.
• 31:02
  It's not, it's not any effort here.
• 31:04
  It's easy.
• 31:05
  But do I want to be here checking in every day?" And, and I'd look around the,
• 31:10
  uh, the building and the company, and people looked older than they should look.
• 31:15
  And I actually think it's a little bit like DorIain Gray.
• 31:18
  Yes.
• 31:19
  out, you're dying on the inside a little bit.
• 31:22
  You might have great hobbies, but you certainly hate
• 31:24
  going to your job every day.
• 31:26
  and I've seen that too.
• 31:27
  And I, and I think everybody-- all of your viewership, I think, will have seen that.
• 31:33
  That's a horrible thing.
• 31:33
  And, and also, I mean, you, you're, you're like, we were talking
• 31:36
  about you, you don't, you haven't retired, you don't intend to.
• 31:39
  Also, retirement, I mean, you see people decline massively when they retire.
• 31:43
  So
• 31:44
  Yeah.
• 31:45
  whole different episode to talk
• 31:47
  Well, it is-- But I'm gonna quickly add one thing, and I don't wanna lose this.
• 31:50
  It's not that everybody who isn't a serial innovator is, uh, uh, you
• 31:55
  know, should be on, uh, Prozac and, uh, has given up on life . I mean,
• 32:00
  and I'm, I'm, I'm exaggerating to make the point because, you know, there,
• 32:04
  there are these other-- and we'll get into this, I think maybe still today.
• 32:08
  There are these other roles that are a perfect fit for other, for other, if you
• 32:12
  will, personalities and perspectives.
• 32:15
  um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use a quote that my colleague, Ray Price, one of the
• 32:20
  co-authors, his wife was a pIaino teacher.
• 32:23
  And she said, "I can teach anybody to play pIaino, can't have all my students play
• 32:29
  at Carnegie Hall." And so not everybody's gonna be a serial innovator, you know?
• 32:33
  And, you know, I am one in 500 in some companies.
• 32:36
  In smaller companies, maybe it's one in 100.
• 32:39
  But, but, you know, you get the idea.
• 32:40
  It's not that everybody's doing this and, and, and it's not to dis-- to diminish
• 32:45
  the other people, 'cause there's such important other complementary roles,
• 32:50
  whether it's executives or whether they're colleagues in other areas.
• 32:54
  it's just the ones that we're saying, as you had pointed out, that are checking
• 32:57
  out where, eh, maybe that was something that wasn't the right choice for them.
• 33:03
  I wanna be clear, I don't wanna say that we live in a, a society of
• 33:05
  people who are checked out, but, but, but is everybody fulfilling their
• 33:10
  potential in the role that they're in?
• 33:12
  Maybe that's a better way for me to think about it
• 33:14
  Yeah, well said, man.
• 33:15
  Really well said.
• 33:16
  I'm glad you said that.
• 33:17
  But d- I think we need to, one more definition, which is the idea of you
• 33:23
  work, we mentioned you said companies forget maybe their origin story or
• 33:28
  how they did it the first time, and they're stuck in the second iteration
• 33:31
  of, "How do I jump the curve?"
• 33:32
  Or, "How do I do this again?
• 33:33
  How do I, how do I regenerate innovation or, uh, culture of
• 33:37
  innovating within the organization?" And you say in the book, "Firms need
• 33:41
  to support two types of innovation to stay competitive in business.
• 33:45
  They need incremental innovation, exploit, and breakthrough or
• 33:49
  radical in- innovation, explore."
• 33:51
  So let's share those two, because they set us up then, and I
• 33:55
  want to get our audience ready.
• 33:57
  If you're listening to this on a podcast, you're prob- uh, like a podcast platform,
• 34:01
  audio only, you're probably better off for this episode from now on anyway,
• 34:05
  moving to video, 'cause we're gonna go through a series of diagrams that
• 34:09
  we've had designed especially for this episode, and Bruce is gonna kindly bring
• 34:14
  us through them, and they bring us on the evolution of the stage gate process
• 34:19
  into how a serial innovator does things and has succeeded over these 50 different
• 34:23
  people that have been interviewed.
• 34:25
  So I'm just teeing you up for that.
• 34:26
  But let's start up first with this idea of incremental
• 34:29
  versus radical or breakthrough.
• 34:30
  Your definitions and anything else you wanna add around that, Bruce.
• 34:34
  Yeah.
• 34:34
  You know, it's great.
• 34:35
  And in fact, I'm gonna just briefly go back to this, um, the idea
• 34:39
  that we discussed earlier with the par- carrot peeler, because the
• 34:43
  No, you're good.
• 34:43
  peeler is, to me, a real rich example of what incremental versus
• 34:47
  breakthrough might look like.
• 34:49
  You know, I'd shown in-- You know, actually, Aidan, you're
• 34:51
  mentioning to look at video.
• 34:52
  I've got two different types of safety peelers here, very different.
• 34:56
  And I-- I mean, I can't with confidence say exactly why
• 35:00
  these two designs were done.
• 35:01
  This is-- This was actually purchased on eBay as a vintage vegetable peeler.
• 35:06
  I, never knew that you could Google that, so go figure.
• 35:08
  But, but, uh, you know, my guess is that this one uses more metal.
• 35:13
  It probably requires a, a, a manufacturing process that's more costly.
• 35:19
  And so to me, incremental innovation is this idea of how do we, as, you
• 35:23
  know, Thomas Kuhn would have said, how do we optimize within that paradigm?
• 35:27
  And it's important.
• 35:28
  I mean, it includes things like, you know, adding a different flavor to a,
• 35:32
  a, a beverage or adding a different fragrance to a, a laundry detergent.
• 35:37
  And I'm, I'm kind of limiting us, if you will, at least initially,
• 35:41
  to, uh, consumer products.
• 35:42
  But, you know, you could envision that these are any kind of product
• 35:46
  where you're exploiting the existing platform of product, uh, to win.
• 35:53
  And it's not only different designs.
• 35:55
  It includes, uh, using a lean implementation, Six Sigma, and it's really
• 35:59
  working to optimize within that paradigm.
• 36:02
  And now I'll take a step back.
• 36:04
  You mentioned the S-curve.
• 36:05
  Critical, um, and even in the second book, we even emphasize it more because, you
• 36:10
  know, you start with the stew of activity.
• 36:12
  It emerges.
• 36:13
  There's a rapid growth, and you hit this plateau.
• 36:16
  And it's at that plateau where companies increasingly rely on
• 36:20
  incremental innovation 'cause they're looking to extend that success.
• 36:25
  And what, what breakthrough does, um, is it renews this basis of competition.
• 36:30
  It's-- You know, to me, it, it's the definition that I love to keep going
• 36:34
  back to because it's like saying, "Okay, we're all playing, uh, football." Uh,
• 36:40
  I'm thinking American football, but I'll, I'll let you go any direction.
• 36:44
  But-- And then, and then between seasons, we're gonna change the rules,
• 36:48
  and it turns out that the rules are gonna favor teams, you know, with or
• 36:51
  without running backs or with or without certain kinds of kickers, you know?
• 36:55
  And suddenly, if your team has a player like that, you're either
• 36:58
  propelled up or propelled down.
• 37:01
  And, um You know, what you're kind of looking, and it's not
• 37:03
  always that explicit, but you're looking for these opportunities.
• 37:07
  And, uh, so to me, that's the difference between what I would say
• 37:10
  is a breakthrough versus incremental.
• 37:12
  Um, it's not one is good or bad, , it's just that you need both and that
• 37:17
  you, you want to squeeze everything out of a product that you have.
• 37:23
  you can't do that necessarily at the expense of a really
• 37:25
  great renewal opportunity.
• 37:27
  And, you know, go back to Tom Osborne's story.
• 37:30
  They were squeezing, um, profits out of the, the Always brand, and
• 37:35
  that was a new, relatively new, uh, product platform for them.
• 37:40
  So it was difficult to challenge that.
• 37:42
  think of emotionally difficult for people who were invested in
• 37:45
  that to, to keep extending that.
• 37:48
  Um, and so, you know, there can be these tensions even, and I'll
• 37:52
  quickly add, and again, I alluded to Iain McGilchrist earlier.
• 37:56
  He talks about S-curves.
• 37:58
  Um, and I'm stunned because when I listen to him, I think, "Oh my gosh,
• 38:02
  there are so many parallels with businesses," when you think about
• 38:06
  left and right brain and exploration versus exploitation, if you will.
• 38:10
  And it's these concepts, they maybe don't repeat, but they rhyme
• 38:15
  across these different areas, and these patterns are there.
• 38:18
  And, uh, I'd say that's the tension that you have.
• 38:21
  And, and, um, one of the things that we found was that, you know,
• 38:26
  you've got this optimization culture, and you've got what I'll call,
• 38:31
  um, an innovator-friendly culture.
• 38:33
  it.
• 38:33
  doesn't have to be like a startup innovator, but at least friendly to that.
• 38:38
  And in the best situations, they're gonna work in tension with each other.
• 38:42
  They're never gonna be fully resolved.
• 38:44
  In fact, you mentioned the DeGraaffs.
• 38:45
  I'd say a bit of what they talked about was, was a tension, this idea
• 38:49
  of conflicting or complementary views.
• 38:52
  And, um, and when they're in tension and they're managed in tension, it works.
• 38:58
  But it's just way too easy, and it's deadly if you don't manage that tension,
• 39:02
  and you tend to let, you know, again, going back not to belabor the McGil-
• 39:06
  McGilchrist view, when you let, let the emissary rule and you don't let the
• 39:12
  master at least appear periodically.
• 39:14
  So maybe I'm getting way off
• 39:16
  it.
• 39:17
  Now,
• 39:17
  on it.
• 39:18
  I, I was the same and it's why I had Iain on the show, because I, I
• 39:21
  have his tome of work there, the two massive books, The Matter With Things.
• 39:27
  But the, the left and r- right-brain thing made absolute sense to me, and there were
• 39:31
  so many things where we went deeper, where he was actually talking about how, um
• 39:37
  it literally is the idea of exploit and explore with the left and right brain.
• 39:41
  And an example he gives, uh, you probably remember, was the pigeon, um, or a bird.
• 39:46
  You know, we say a bird brain.
• 39:48
  Well, the bird's brain is so small that it's split into two.
• 39:51
  And, and, and actually the sight, so when you see a pigeon, uh, if you ever
• 39:55
  see this, I see it everywhere now, of course, once you're aware of it, the
• 39:58
  pigeon is, looks at you with one eye But what, it'll look down with the other eye.
• 40:03
  So w- if it's looking for a piece of, like, grain amidst a load of grit on
• 40:07
  the ground, it will use a different part of, it'll use a different eye 'cause
• 40:10
  that eye is associated with one side of the brain, and then it'll look for
• 40:13
  the bigger picture with the other eye.
• 40:15
  And I was like, going, "Well, that's just we're exploring, exploring."
• 40:18
  back and, and look for that 'cause I had missed
• 40:20
  Yeah.
• 40:21
  I-- See, those are beautiful stories because again, you know... Boy,
• 40:25
  again, I can-- I apologize 'cause this
• 40:28
  Yeah, I lo- I love making those parallels, and that's the beauty of doing the
• 41:29
  show, is that, and being a little bit eclectic with the guests and going a
• 41:34
  little bit in neuroscience, a little bit understanding different things.
• 41:37
  But I, I would've spent a year with Iain.
• 41:42
  I, would have loved to been a fly on the wall
• 41:44
  Oh, man, it was great.
• 41:45
  Really great.
• 41:46
  So, and I had him twice.
• 41:47
  I had him for The Master and His Emissary the first time years ago,
• 41:51
  and then for his, we did a two-part, three-part on his recent book as well.
• 41:54
  But I could've easily done a three-year with him, uh, weekly.
• 41:58
  It was so much knowledge.
• 41:59
  But he gr- lovely man as well, by the way.
• 42:02
  So
• 42:02
  I can imagine
• 42:04
  one of the things you said there was really important, the idea that, say,
• 42:08
  blue ocean or any type of framework, that we, we s- somebody puts a name on it, and
• 42:15
  then people go, "Oh, that's how you do it.
• 42:17
  That's how you innovate." But the famous stage gate process, I r- I
• 42:20
  remember actually when I went to move from my first job, which was in
• 42:24
  digital transformation, I was going to go to a role in a company acquired by
• 42:29
  Mastercard called Orbiscom, and I was interviewed about the stage gate process.
• 42:33
  And they, and I was like, I didn't know what it was 'cause, and even
• 42:38
  though I was in development, because I was using an i- iterative process.
• 42:43
  And when they said it, I was like going, "But that makes no sense." It's
• 42:47
  b- 'cause I was doing stuff like app development, and our process was get an
• 42:52
  ugly version out into the marketplace, see how people react to it, because-
• 42:57
  An, an MVP, an
• 42:58
  Yeah.
• 42:58
  Yeah.
• 42:59
  And, and, and the reason was because initially I, I, I learned the hard way
• 43:03
  where I'd put out a survey and go, "If we had this in the app, what would you use?"
• 43:07
  And they're like, "Yeah." Then put it out there and nobody even touched it,
• 43:10
  and we're like going, "That... Well, that was a waste of time." So then
• 43:12
  we're like going, "Well, let's just keep updating, updating, updating."
• 43:15
  And plus, the audience go, "Wow, these guys really care." '.. So when
• 43:19
  I saw a stage gate process, it was like going, "This makes no sense."
• 43:24
  Plus, you're gonna have to manage a board where the board are like going, "How is
• 43:27
  that product coming along?" You're going, "Well, here we are midway through this
• 43:31
  stage in the stage gate process." So with that, I'm gonna put on the screen,
• 43:37
  Please.
• 43:38
  Any of our audience who have been listening to us so
• 43:40
  far, switch over to YouTube.
• 43:42
  If you do, I never ask this, and I'm terrible at asking this, d-
• 43:46
  please leave a like or a comment.
• 43:49
  'Cause I... And, and smash that subscribe button.
• 43:53
  I've never, ever said that, Bruce.
• 43:55
  But I, my, my kids keep saying to me, "You never ask people to do that." And
• 43:59
  I'm like, "I'm, I'm gonna ask you now." So if you're with us now still, please
• 44:03
  do that, and subscribe to the show as well, 'cause it, it helps our sponsor
• 44:07
  Kyndryl know you're with us as well.
• 44:09
  So let's... I'm gonna tee up now on the screen the stage gate process, and we're
• 44:14
  gonna go through this and the evolution of these different diagrams, and Bruce
• 44:20
  is kindly gonna take us through these.
• 44:21
  And Bruce, I'll be sharing little excerpts of these on LinkedIn as well,
• 44:24
  little segments, little bites for people
• 44:26
  so take us through this, and you tell me when you're ready for the next image
• 44:30
  Yeah, you know, uh, this is, uh... the-- this first slide is, uh, what I
• 44:34
  think everybody would probably agree is, uh, a pretty generic stage gate or
• 44:39
  phase gate type project or, uh, process.
• 44:42
  Uh, you know, the left side is the fuzzy front end.
• 44:44
  The right side we've identified as the gates and stages itself.
• 44:48
  The fuzzy front end is kind of that stew of, let's say a shapeless, stew
• 44:53
  of where does the insight come from?
• 44:55
  And then the idea is that once an insight is generated or an
• 44:59
  opportunity is, recognized, that there's a next phase where somebody
• 45:05
  catches that idea and says, "Oh, I think we can do something with this.
• 45:09
  We can make it into a product," or, "There's a need that we've identified."
• 45:13
  And then you put it through a series of developmental steps where you'll, you'll
• 45:17
  make a small additional investment.
• 45:19
  Maybe you'll begin to assess the market for this idea, if
• 45:22
  it still looks good, continue.
• 45:25
  If it doesn't look good, maybe you'll put it on the shelf and,
• 45:27
  and, and set it aside for a while.
• 45:29
  And then the next phase is you build, as you suggested, you build maybe a,
• 45:34
  a, a, a, a more realistic prototype.
• 45:37
  You use that to test the market, and you iterate like
• 45:40
  that until you get to a launch.
• 45:41
  And, you know, the-- and I really mean this, the, the beauty of a
• 45:45
  stage gate process or this model is that it does allow, um, executive
• 45:51
  management to see where things are.
• 45:54
  And, um, and, you know, it's because they're often-- and I-- this is n-not
• 46:00
  meant to be dis-disparaging, because they're often detached from the
• 46:04
  day-to-day activity, this is a simple, uh, way of communicating to people.
• 46:11
  , I'd say processes too, .. in fact, I've, I've used this in the second book
• 46:16
  more, , that processes instruct the neophyte, the newbie, they remind the
• 46:22
  experienced person about what to do.
• 46:25
  'Cause I've seen, you know, experienced innovators like, one, an amazing
• 46:28
  concept, and after probably about a year in development, they realized there
• 46:31
  wasn't enough niobium in the world to make this product a reality, you know?
• 46:37
  And so those are things that could have been avoided if you had gone through
• 46:41
  the steps in an appropriate way.
• 46:43
  , So, you know, there's value to these things, but it is kind of
• 46:46
  a, deconstruction of what really goes on and a reconstruction.
• 46:50
  And so, you know, what we found was that-- and I think maybe if you go
• 46:53
  to the next slide now, this slide, uh, to me, just kind of sums it up.
• 46:58
  There are different roles that we observed we conducted our, our
• 47:02
  research and, like anything, you know, we tried to discern the patterns.
• 47:07
  We didn't want to necessarily impose these roles, but, we felt pretty comfortable
• 47:11
  that these patterns were out there.
• 47:12
  That on the far left side, in the fuzzy front end, you've got a role
• 47:17
  that we would refer to as an innovator, very often, a technical person,
• 47:21
  engineer, maybe a scientist of some form in a technology-enabled company.
• 47:25
  And I'll include, you know, consumer products,
• 47:27
  Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble.
• 47:29
  You've got technical people in those companies.
• 47:31
  You might not consider them the same as, Intel or a Google in terms of
• 47:35
  technology, but they're enabled by these technologies, clearly important.
• 47:39
  And then the idea of this, hero inventor has an idea,, and then the champion
• 47:45
  is a, someone who very often is very market-focused, who gets the idea and
• 47:50
  says, "Oh, I think we can do something with that." maybe they tell the inventors,
• 47:55
  "Here's some need," then it flows through.
• 47:57
  And if the idea is considered least viable at that early
• 48:01
  stage, it goes to an implementer.
• 48:03
  And these are three different profiles of people.
• 48:07
  Again, the one on the far left tends to be more technical.
• 48:10
  The one in the middle might be a technical person who's moved into marketing.
• 48:14
  And then the one on the far right, the implementer, is very often a
• 48:17
  project manager, and these are very different roles, from each other.
• 48:21
  And if you go to the next slide then, what we observed with the
• 48:24
  serial innovators, they were people that played across all these roles.
• 48:30
  They didn't necessarily play at the same level across all these roles,
• 48:34
  but they did play across them.
• 48:35
  And so, they had these insights.
• 48:39
  Understood the market needs sufficiently.
• 48:42
  while they weren't necessarily the one responsible for implementing, they very
• 48:47
  often-- and we'll see this more as we get to the hourglass model in a later slide.
• 48:52
  But very often they saw it through, not that they led the implementation, but
• 48:58
  they stayed tethered to it because what you don't want is to have a great idea,
• 49:02
  let go of it, and then find out that it's been corrupted down the road somewhere.
• 49:07
  That somebody's, you know, made some changes that make sense to get it out
• 49:10
  the door, they maybe lose the value of, of the product concept itself.
• 49:17
  that tethering plays an important role even in, um, uh, influencing and
• 49:22
  creating market acceptance at some point.
• 49:24
  Again, we can share a couple of stories later.
• 49:27
  And then the next slide I just want to briefly go to because the inventors
• 49:31
  tend to give what, has been commonly called a technology push solution.
• 49:37
  champions are gonna give you what's historically viewed
• 49:40
  as a market pull, , solution.
• 49:43
  And there's times and situations where, both are appropriate.
• 49:46
  I want to be really clear.
• 49:47
  So, uh, you know, for example, technologists may have some idea to do
• 49:51
  something that, that the marketing people would never have even dreamed to ask for.
• 49:56
  And they'll, "Oh, you know, it's interesting.
• 49:58
  We'll take that and run with it." The one that is more commonly understood would
• 50:01
  be the other way, where the marketing person might say, "Oh, you know, my
• 50:05
  gosh, if you just add a peppermint version of this in addition to the fruit
• 50:10
  flavored version of it,, it'll be great.
• 50:12
  And so then they send the technologists, if you will, back to the lab, and they
• 50:16
  come up with the right formulation that'll not only work in that physical product,
• 50:20
  but, you know, persisted with good shelf life and all the other good features.
• 50:24
  And so, we look at those two as different areas, but the serial
• 50:29
  innovators, they operate across both.
• 50:32
  It's not an either/or, it's a both/and.
• 50:34
  You know, and we wrestled, you know-- Aidan, I have to tell you, we wrestled
• 50:37
  with what charts to even show over time because, again, these morphed over time,
• 50:43
  but they almost always started with understanding the customer need deeply.
• 50:48
  So they weren't always necessarily what we would call market-driven.
• 50:51
  It was customer-driven.
• 50:52
  And Osborne's story, I think, is a great example.
• 50:55
  I jokingly said it's not marketing, it's customering, because it's really
• 51:00
  understanding the person who buys the product, and that's where Tom's
• 51:05
  investment of himself into the needs of the individual was so critical.
• 51:11
  so, as you see in this chart, you know, you start with this customer need.
• 51:15
  And as they're looking at it, they're saying, "Well, I
• 51:17
  can do something with this.
• 51:18
  I think that there's some technical solution that might be viable, within
• 51:23
  this customer need." And then they're like, "But wait a minute, if I do
• 51:26
  this, will the customer still need it?" And they go back and they, okay,
• 51:29
  they tweak it a bit, and they go back to the technology, and then all of
• 51:32
  a sudden it's, "Well, wait a minute.
• 51:33
  Is the market big enough even make this worth our time to invest ourselves in?
• 51:39
  is there that level of viability?" And they go out and they probe the market, and
• 51:42
  it may be with this idea of a, of an MVP.
• 51:45
  It might even be with a prototype.
• 51:47
  Just a mock-up to say, "If you had this, would you consider it?"
• 51:51
  And then, and, as you had mentioned earlier, you know, to what extent
• 51:54
  do you believe that information, relative to someone just paying money
• 51:58
  for a product, the ultimate goal.
• 52:00
  So they would go back and forth, and even this idea of going back and forth,
• 52:05
  it suggests a process, it-- I hate to say that it's not really a process.
• 52:10
  It's more of what I will call a state diagram, borrowing from the old
• 52:15
  computer literature, that you go to all these different points, but the
• 52:20
  order, how you do it, the simultaneity of it versus sequential nature of
• 52:26
  it, that's all kind of a side issue.
• 52:29
  It's just that you have to touch on all these things
• 52:31
  before something is a success.
• 52:34
  And I'm gonna briefly step back too and say something that I was thinking
• 52:38
  about as I was preparing for our conversation, that, ... And I wanna be
• 52:42
  sure I say this right, that our approach was to come at this multiple ways.
• 52:46
  We looked at who they are, we looked at how they innovated, we looked at how
• 52:49
  they're motivated, how they're managed.
• 52:51
  And even how we looked at these people changed over time.
• 52:55
  And I do not want to say that Ray and Abby and I are innovators, goes to
• 53:00
  this idea of how dis-discovery occurs.
• 53:04
  say that we were at some level discoverers.
• 53:06
  We were discovering who these people are.
• 53:08
  And I'll say that's what the innovators do.
• 53:10
  They discover.
• 53:11
  They discover the market.
• 53:12
  They discover the customer, the personal need, even in a B2B situation.
• 53:17
  What are people-- You know, what is the buyer willing to pay for?
• 53:20
  Uh, they discover the market.
• 53:22
  Is the market big enough for us?
• 53:23
  Is it attractive enough, enough over time?
• 53:26
  Is the technology there?
• 53:28
  And they immerse themselves in all these things, they see them in a, in what I
• 53:32
  will say is more of a simultaneous, it's an overused word, but a holistic way.
• 53:37
  And, um, I'm gonna then briefly, since we're on this, I'm gonna show a book.
• 53:42
  I don't know if you can see this.
• 53:43
  Magic Eyes.
• 53:44
  Are you familiar with these
• 53:46
  No.
• 53:47
  It's a children's book, um, and they have these amazing, uh, images.
• 53:51
  I don't know if you've seen these.
• 53:53
  and if you look at them just right, uh, you'll see an embedded 3D Image
• 53:58
  Oh, I know them.
• 54:00
  Yeah, I know the posters.
• 54:00
  Yeah,
• 54:00
  you--
• 54:01
  Yeah.
• 54:01
  Posters or, again, I say children's books, but, I've, I've loved to use
• 54:06
  that metaphor for how these people work.
• 54:08
  Now, it doesn't mean that if you're able to view these, you're gonna be a
• 54:10
  successful innovator, but everybody sees just a mass of dots or a mass of colors,
• 54:15
  and, oh, that's nice, pretty picture.
• 54:18
  The innovators, though, they have this posture of how to look at
• 54:21
  these, and they see it holistically.
• 54:23
  They've got this bifocal vision, they see a pattern other people just don't see.
• 54:29
  And again, I don't want to make this too mysterious, but I want to call
• 54:33
  out that this is what discovery looks like, it's innovation in the company
• 54:38
  or it's whether, I'm learning how to use my gas grill in the backyard
• 54:42
  without burning the fish, you know?
• 54:45
  I'm discovering a pattern.
• 54:46
  It's interesting you, you said that.
• 54:48
  Br- bringing it back to Iain McGilchrist.
• 54:49
  Yeah,
• 54:50
  sorry.
• 54:50
  I, I
• 54:51
  but it's true, like Iain, Iain, bringing it back to Iain, w- we talked about
• 54:54
  this, and in one of the books he has the picture of what looks like a load of dots.
• 54:59
  And
• 55:00
  Yes.
• 55:01
  I look at it, I saw, well, straight away it's a DalmatIain.
• 55:04
  And he's like, "Well, that's cause you've honed your right brain a little
• 55:07
  bit." But mo- a lot of people will look at it and go, "Well, what is
• 55:10
  that?" And it, and that was the point.
• 55:13
  Um, and actually I wanted... I'm glad you stopped on this diagram because
• 55:20
  the innovator, it's, it's really import- It's a really important thing
• 55:23
  if you're a manager of an innovator.
• 55:26
  The motivation is not always financial.
• 55:30
  It, it, it's, uh, you can't help yourself.
• 55:33
  Like, it's like, I was thinking about how it's the exact same as stuff in life.
• 55:38
  Like say for example, something, I know a piece of information about you that
• 55:44
  you should know, and loads of people know about it, but they don't tell you.
• 55:47
  I have to tell you It, it's, it's like I cannot hold myself back from telling you.
• 55:53
  If I think you should benefit from this to know this, I need to tell you.
• 55:57
  And it's the same dynamic, the same mechanic where,
• 56:02
  like, it's very different from having an insight and taking action on that insight.
• 56:07
  And it's like that thing or, of like you have an idea, and you're
• 56:11
  kinda going, "Well, what are you gonna do about your idea?"
• 56:13
  You know?
• 56:13
  It's like, "I think I should write a book. I'm going to write a book."
• 56:17
  It's a very different thing where you actually take action on your insight.
• 56:22
  And I think it's, it's more than just, it's, it's to be able to see di-
• 56:27
  diverse... It's like you were saying about the Iain McGilchrist thing.
• 56:29
  I straightaway thought about Iain when you said it.
• 56:31
  I knew exactly what you're talking about.
• 56:33
  And it's, it's to see the same theory or the same mechanic or
• 56:37
  the same mechanism appear and be applicable in different fields.
• 56:43
  And, and it's a very, very f- different thing.
• 56:45
  But oftentimes what happens, and, and definitely happened to me, and I'm sure
• 56:49
  many of our audience happened, is you end up getting in trouble because you're kinda
• 56:54
  going, "Well, that's a marketing role.
• 56:56
  But what are you do- what are you doing messing with marketing, Aidan?" And you
• 56:59
  go, "Well, well, I'm, well, I'm try..." And you're like, "I'm just trying to,
• 57:02
  I'm just trying to help because I actually know what this thing should be
• 57:05
  positioned as." And they go, "No, no, no.
• 57:07
  That's marketing.
• 57:08
  You stick to your innovation stuff."
• 57:10
  And you kinda go, "And you don't see it that way." And then you're
• 57:12
  like, "I know the sales guys are struggling to sell this.
• 57:15
  Let me do a session with them and teach them what it means and how to articulate
• 57:19
  it and what to say to the customer." And they're kinda going, "No, no, no.
• 57:21
  You stick with their, you stick with sale, you know, we'll stick to the sales."
• 57:25
  And you're kinda going, "That's..." And, and that's why this diagram of going
• 57:29
  back and forward and scribbling all over the page totally makes sense to me.
• 57:33
  'Cause to the serial innovator, it's a red thread.
• 57:36
  It's not a lot of lines.
• 57:37
  It's right.
• 57:38
  You know, and, and it's funny that you even mentioned a lot of lines because
• 57:42
  to talk about how the innovators spoke
• 57:44
  I'm gonna show you, um, something.
• 57:46
  I'll show this for our audience as well.
• 58:38
  So just so I, I give full attribution to this, this is a A company called
• 58:45
  Gaping Void, and they, they share these, um, these beautiful images.
• 58:50
  So there's this one that you just reminded me of here.
• 58:53
  I'm gonna show it on the screen.
• 58:54
  Oh, yes.
• 58:55
  one?
• 58:57
  I, haven't seen the conspiracy theory, but
• 59:01
  The conspiracy theory is brillIaint.
• 59:02
  Love that.
• 59:03
  That's-- This is a version I've not seen, so please, if you
• 59:06
  don't mind, if you email me that
• 59:07
  100%.
• 59:09
  the others, and the others are so stepwise, and I love that.
• 59:12
  But, but I love the last one.
• 59:15
  And, well, you know, there's the movie, "A Beautiful Mind." And, you
• 59:18
  know, and so, you know, then the question is, what's the real pattern?
• 59:22
  What isn't?
• 59:23
  And, you know, I, yeah, I love this.
• 59:26
  So I'll share that one.
• 59:27
  L- l- let's get back on the track of,
• 59:30
  I didn't mean to do this to you,
• 59:31
  of the next, uh, of, uh, in our diagram.
• 59:34
  So w- we share this idea of, of how the convergence of generating customer and
• 59:38
  technology understanding, that idea, that idea of the MVP going back and forward.
• 59:43
  And actually, one more thing on this diagram, Bruce, I'd love you to share, is
• 59:47
  the willingness to also kill your darling.
• 59:50
  So
• 59:51
  Oh.
• 59:51
  birthed this thing, you've done a lot of work, and the
• 59:54
  willingness to actually do that.
• 59:56
  But the organization doesn't understand that and think you've wasted a fortune,
• 1:00:00
  and you're kind of going, "No, no, I've saved us a fortune." It's glass half
• 1:00:04
  That's
• 1:00:04
  versus glass half empty.
• 1:00:06
  "I saved us a fortune because I proved it was wrong or it was too early.
• 1:00:09
  Let's put it on the back burner and reemerge it when things are
• 1:00:12
  a bit better or the technology's
• 1:00:14
  Well, you know, I, I love where this conversation, all these
• 1:00:18
  different places we've gone with it because one of the things when
• 1:00:22
  100%. And, you know, just, just full disclaimer, Bruce owns a
• 1:00:27
  company that sells carrot peelers.
• 1:02:35
  No, no.
• 1:02:35
  You know, and it's funny, I almost always tell people that I don't
• 1:02:40
  make any money on these things, so thank you for for sharing
• 1:02:44
  Okay.
• 1:02:45
  Oh, actually,
• 1:02:45
  So
• 1:02:46
  I
• 1:02:46
  w-
• 1:02:46
  pre-peeled carrots is what I... No, I don't.
• 1:02:49
  I
• 1:02:50
  so let's jump onto the MP5 model.
• 1:02:53
  That,
• 1:02:53
  Yeah.
• 1:02:54
  to MP5 and then we'll, we'll land the ship on chapter one
• 1:02:58
  with, uh, figure 1.7 as well.
• 1:03:00
  So jumping onto MP5 now, over to you, Bruce
• 1:03:04
  Yeah.
• 1:03:05
  You know, MP5, and again, as I had alluded to maybe about 10 minutes
• 1:03:09
  ago, came at this with multiple studies over time, multiple ways.
• 1:03:14
  , As a quick aside, this project with Ray and Abby and I, it
• 1:03:19
  just emerged very fortuitously.
• 1:03:21
  We mentioned it in the book just briefly.
• 1:03:24
  I started looking at what I call technical visionaries.
• 1:03:27
  I started getting some data, and I shared it with Ray Price in a
• 1:03:30
  parking lot, of all things, one day.
• 1:03:32
  Said, "You know, what are you working on?" I said, "Ray, look at this
• 1:03:34
  data." And Ray's like, "Oh, I used to work on people, you know, like
• 1:03:38
  this in companies." And Ray's got a background in organizational behavior.
• 1:03:42
  Me, you know, a PhD in engineering, but then, you know, engineering executive.
• 1:03:47
  We were told by people at National Science Foundation, "Oh, by the way,
• 1:03:50
  about a mile away on campus, there's Abby Griffin, who if you don't know
• 1:03:53
  her, you ought to talk to her." She's working on product visionaries.
• 1:03:57
  And so the three of us came together, and we did these multiple
• 1:04:00
  studies over about a dozen years.
• 1:04:01
  So we did not start out saying, "We're gonna write a book. We're gonna, you
• 1:04:06
  know, we've got this image." It just emerged with these different studies.
• 1:04:10
  And I'd say that one of the things that this MP5 model does is it documents we
• 1:04:16
  made about what these people look like, if we wanted to just describe them.
• 1:04:22
  another way we've talked about them, is how, how their activities
• 1:04:27
  play out, I'll probably talk about that with you another time.
• 1:04:31
  But this is v- meant to be very descriptive.
• 1:04:34
  if you look at it, there's an inner set of circles, and then
• 1:04:37
  there's the outer two rings.
• 1:04:39
  And the inner set of circles are things that, for the most part, people bring
• 1:04:43
  with themselves, if you will, to the game.
• 1:04:47
  , Perspectives on the world, and at some level, even how
• 1:04:50
  they're prepared to innovate.
• 1:04:51
  And these are things that, that I don't want to say they're hardwired,
• 1:04:56
  I'd say that it's just the way these people, for the most part, are.
• 1:05:00
  And, as a quick aside, I've been asked, is it nature or nurture?
• 1:05:04
  And, again, I'll go back to-- I'll default to Ray Price's wife's comment, you know,
• 1:05:08
  "I, I can teach anybody to play pIaino, not all gonna, play at Carnegie Hall."
• 1:05:13
  I, This a whole separate discussion.
• 1:05:16
  I don't believe that everybody can truly be an innovator of
• 1:05:18
  the type we're describing.
• 1:05:20
  I just think it's not there.
• 1:05:21
  It's like saying everybody ought to be Pavarotti.
• 1:05:23
  It's just not gonna happen, their personality is, are they,
• 1:05:26
  are they curious about things?
• 1:05:28
  You know, we talk about left and right brain.
• 1:05:29
  Do they have some tolerance for ambiguity?
• 1:05:32
  Are they systems thinkers?
• 1:05:34
  Do they persist with problems?
• 1:05:36
  These are things that just kind of who you are as a person, whether you're
• 1:05:39
  gonna be in a business situation or, at home over a cup of coffee
• 1:05:44
  with, you know, family members.
• 1:05:46
  The perspectives they bring, -- it's fascinating.
• 1:05:48
  They're, they're kind of simultaneously idealistic and pragmatic.
• 1:05:52
  pragmatic because if they're technical people, they say that, you know,
• 1:05:56
  technology is there to serve the business.
• 1:05:59
  They're not just, if you will, having fun tinkering in the lab.
• 1:06:03
  But they're idealistic in that they really want to do their best, best.
• 1:06:06
  Earlier, you had talked about this insight, and you just have
• 1:06:09
  to share it with people, you know?
• 1:06:12
  And it's like that.
• 1:06:13
  They're just like this.
• 1:06:14
  And then I'm gonna just jump to the motivation side.
• 1:06:17
  They're internally motivated to solve customer problems, and that
• 1:06:21
  motivation just is just-- they're just drenched with that motivation.
• 1:06:26
  I was in a meeting, Friday with a group of CEOs, but also senior executives
• 1:06:31
  and general managers of divisions.
• 1:06:33
  And they were talking about the challenges they had in, if you will, they didn't call
• 1:06:38
  it this explicitly, but motivating their employees and how do we get, how do we get
• 1:06:42
  someone to rise up and do this and that?
• 1:06:44
  sitting there thinking about the serial innovator work, and I'm thinking, you
• 1:06:47
  ought to hire-- and not to disparage them because they're amazing people.
• 1:06:51
  But I'm thinking, you're trying to, with your energy and effort, people to act.
• 1:06:58
  The better approach would be to hire people that are self-motivated and then
• 1:07:02
  provide them the context to work within.
• 1:07:05
  And yet all these people got there because they are just so in the best
• 1:07:08
  sense, driven and motivated, and then they have to let go of that to find other
• 1:07:14
  people who are driven and motivated in a different, very complementary way.
• 1:07:17
  Because these serial innovators, none of them are aspiring to be the CEO
• 1:07:21
  of the company, and, that's why I draw the distinction with Steve Jobs,
• 1:07:25
  because these are different people.
• 1:07:27
  And then preparation, you know, I've often talked about these, the serial innovators
• 1:07:31
  as being multiply deep and broad.
• 1:07:34
  They usually start with one technical domain.
• 1:07:36
  I mean, Tom Osborne, technical domain with, chemistry,
• 1:07:40
  related analytic chemistry.
• 1:07:43
  But then, you know, he goes into the, to the workplace, and he
• 1:07:45
  learns deeply about feminine hygiene products, and then he learns deeply
• 1:07:50
  about the market and customer needs.
• 1:07:52
  And then they're broad in that, you ask these people about their hobbies and oh my
• 1:07:56
  gosh, I mean, you know, all over the map.
• 1:07:59
  And it's just because they're-- they go back to their personality.
• 1:08:02
  They're curious about things.
• 1:08:04
  So that's kind of what you bring to the table.
• 1:08:06
  And then the process and politics, are the things that you see
• 1:08:10
  emerge more likely in the business setting, and they can be developed.
• 1:08:15
  If I were to do this chart today, would probably less of a distinction about what
• 1:08:22
  you bring and what you develop, because I think at some level, the process and
• 1:08:27
  politics are inherent in the people who are more naturally successful.
• 1:08:32
  But the politics, and we'll-- I'm sure we'll discuss this at a later
• 1:08:35
  time, a choice that these people make, at times because they're not always
• 1:08:39
  inclined to navigate the organization.
• 1:08:42
  But they ne- if they want to serve the customer need, they
• 1:08:45
  know they have to do that.
• 1:08:46
  And so the politics is taking ownership, of this idea.
• 1:08:51
  Again, this, your comment earlier about I've got this insight, I
• 1:08:54
  just have to share it with you.
• 1:08:55
  I have to bring people along with this.
• 1:08:57
  As we'll discuss later, we used to refer to that as crossing the
• 1:09:00
  bridge because it's, you know, as another quick aside , you know,
• 1:09:04
  I'm an engineer, , by personality.
• 1:09:06
  I don't know if you've heard engineers are-- You can tell if an engineer
• 1:09:10
  is an extrovert 'cause they're looking at your shoes, you know?
• 1:09:13
  so, so it's painful at times for me to sell myself.
• 1:09:17
  In fact, when you earlier said, you know, "I hate to ask for
• 1:09:19
  people to click," I thought, "Oh, I can relate to that," you know?
• 1:09:22
  but it's the politics.
• 1:09:23
  It's bringing people along the organization because you know you can't,
• 1:09:28
  you can't fulfill those customer needs unless you bring people along with you.
• 1:09:33
  And then the process-- And this goes back to, I don't wanna say
• 1:09:37
  shattering the phase gate or stage gate, 'cause that's really not fair.
• 1:09:41
  It's a useful process to look at, saying, you know, it really doesn't describe
• 1:09:47
  what goes on, and we have to overlay something, maybe this is disparaging,
• 1:09:51
  more nuanced than the stage gate.
• 1:09:54
  But, stage gate is great for incremental, projects.
• 1:09:57
  It's great for technology push or market pull, for the most part.
• 1:10:02
  But when you're looking at things that are breakthroughs, that are
• 1:10:04
  really redefining competition, it's not gonna look like that.
• 1:10:08
  And this is just from observation.
• 1:10:11
  This is-- In fact, I'll quickly say none of this is meant to be prescriptive.
• 1:10:15
  It's all descriptive, Aidan.
• 1:10:17
  And we'll describe the Hourglass Model, which is the main core model
• 1:10:21
  in the book,, on the next episode, but we'll finish chapter one.
• 1:10:24
  I pulled a little excerpt and I just thought it was really worth
• 1:10:27
  saying, and I had loads by the way.
• 1:10:28
  I just shut up today I stepped into the
• 1:10:31
  Please.
• 1:10:31
  cause I had so many little l- nuggets I loved.
• 1:10:34
  You said here that, " unlike other highly creative individuals studied previously
• 1:10:38
  in great depth-" These serial innovators operate in the context of an organization.
• 1:10:44
  Serial innovators tend to work at the , middle level of their
• 1:10:47
  organizations, whereas the previous literature has focused on
• 1:10:50
  individuals creating independently outside an organizational context.
• 1:10:54
  That's a big thing.
• 1:10:55
  Serial innovators do not hold positions of power that would
• 1:10:58
  force acceptance of their projects.
• 1:11:01
  That is huge.
• 1:11:02
  That point is huge.
• 1:11:03
  Consequently, they must develop the ability to interact successfully within
• 1:11:07
  their organizational environment.
• 1:11:09
  They must manage the politics of the organization to gain acceptance for their
• 1:11:13
  customer problem they want to solve.
• 1:11:16
  They know that they must sell their ideas to others, and they have to
• 1:11:19
  work the political issues upwards to management laterally with others needed
• 1:11:24
  to do the job, externally with customers and other expertise who they need.
• 1:11:29
  They depend on influencing others to gain acceptance and resources.
• 1:11:33
  Generally, they focus on positive influencing actions rather than
• 1:11:37
  coercion or negative mechanisms.
• 1:11:39
  This political understanding enables these serial innovators to transfer
• 1:11:43
  interesting ideas and creative concepts into the implementation-focused
• 1:11:47
  commercialization process.
• 1:11:50
  That whole piece is exhausting to say for me.
• 1:11:54
  W-
• 1:11:54
  Yeah, I'm glad you read it.
• 1:11:55
  I would've wanted to read it, so thank
• 1:11:57
  exhausting for an innovator, exhausting to have to do that, and I, I often think
• 1:12:03
  about it like a game of Snakes and Ladders because not just the concept of you go
• 1:12:09
  up the ladder and then y- meet a snake, but there are snakes in the organization
• 1:12:12
  who will actually be out to stop you.
• 1:12:15
  Like you were saying, I'm not saying it didn't happen, Tom Osborne, but
• 1:12:19
  people who have their identity tied to the status quo of the existing product
• 1:12:24
  that you're attacking or undermining in their view versus improving and doing
• 1:12:28
  the what's best for the organization.
• 1:12:30
  But in there, there's a huge, huge job that is the job , do I want to do this?
• 1:12:36
  Because it is a huge weight.
• 1:12:38
  It's a huge drain on energy.
• 1:12:41
  It's hard enough to do your job anyway without having to do this.
• 1:12:45
  I used to say this idea, Bruce, that it was like in, in a previous
• 1:12:50
  organization I worked in was very innovative and commercial, and I was
• 1:12:56
  able to touch my toes very easily.
• 1:12:58
  Then I went into this organization that was a public organization.
• 1:13:02
  Everybody, most people did not want to change, and it was like somebody
• 1:13:07
  put a massive fat suit on me, and I couldn't touch my toes anymore.
• 1:13:11
  And I was like, "This used to be so easy." And that was draining.
• 1:13:16
  It was actually demoralizing, draining, damaging.
• 1:13:19
  You felt gaslit, ostracized.
• 1:13:22
  There's so much that you take on when you go for this, and I always
• 1:13:27
  just want to ensure somebody who is thinking of this role understands
• 1:13:32
  this part that you talk about as
• 1:13:35
  Oh, you know, uh, several things come to mind.
• 1:13:37
  One is it's, it's a bit like Sisyphus.
• 1:13:39
  You just keep pushing that boulder up a hill every day.
• 1:13:42
  The other is, and this probably would've come up naturally later,
• 1:13:45
  but it's so appropriate to say now.
• 1:13:47
  One of the people we interviewed said, "I wanna hire people , not that
• 1:13:52
  they wanna be an innovator, but they wanna do the work that innovators
• 1:13:55
  do." And think about that distinction.
• 1:13:58
  And so that, that paragraph or so that you read, that's the work that innovators do.
• 1:14:04
  And that's partly why I will-- And I don't think we had this in the book.
• 1:14:07
  I think this is something that kind of struck me later.
• 1:14:10
  These are the most important people you've never heard of And not just
• 1:14:13
  for solving customer problems, but I often talk about how they, they,
• 1:14:17
  sure they solve customer problems.
• 1:14:19
  They address the needs of executives.
• 1:14:21
  They address the needs of their colleagues.
• 1:14:22
  They're helping people keep employed.
• 1:14:24
  They're addressing shareholder needs.
• 1:14:26
  I mean, they're really simultaneously solving, if you will, the whole
• 1:14:30
  equation in a potentially hostile-- it it may not be hostile, it may
• 1:14:34
  be just an indifferent environment.
• 1:14:37
  And yet they have the will and the drive and the skill that they
• 1:14:40
  develop or have to, to pursue it.
• 1:14:43
  And so, yeah, that's why the politics is, is huge.
• 1:14:46
  I think it's always so important to say because I know so many serial
• 1:14:50
  innovators and they feel they're the problem because the organization
• 1:14:54
  makes them feel they're the problem.
• 1:14:56
  But it's also, it's not commercially driven.
• 1:14:59
  It's in you.
• 1:15:00
  It's like you have to solve it, and there's that problem about, like,
• 1:15:04
  well, I also have a family and a mortgage or whatever responsibilities
• 1:15:08
  you have, and you're kinda going, "I need to balance that."
• 1:15:10
  So that's why I say it's situational, that sometimes you might go, "I'm not
• 1:15:13
  up for this fight. It's too big at the moment. Maybe this period of my career."
• 1:15:19
  And I c- I can understand all of that.
• 1:15:21
  But let, let's land the ship on the last diagram from this because you do have
• 1:15:26
  another diagram that goes, well, this is more like what a serial innovators does,
• 1:15:30
  which is, , diagram 1.7 from the book.
• 1:15:32
  And by the way, for anybody who's a Substack member, you can find my
• 1:15:36
  show notes on our Substack as well.
• 1:15:38
  And, Bruce, for people, before we finish and go through this, where is
• 1:15:42
  the best place for people to find you?
• 1:15:43
  Oh, um, uh, I have a website.
• 1:15:46
  Uh, the consulting business that I operate is, uh, called
• 1:15:49
  Breakthrough Innovation Advisors.
• 1:15:52
  Uh, so if you just look for breakthrough-innovation-advisors.com,
• 1:15:54
  you'll find that.
• 1:15:57
  But, you know, LinkedIn, Aidan.
• 1:15:58
  I should have started with
• 1:15:59
  LinkedIn.
• 1:16:00
  I,
• 1:16:00
  I'm,
• 1:16:00
  I'm
• 1:16:01
  that's the go-to place,
• 1:16:02
  gonna link to you.
• 1:16:03
  that'll, get you anywhere you need,
• 1:16:04
  I'll link to you, and I'll put those links in as well.
• 1:16:07
  But I'd love you to take us through this innovation process,
• 1:16:10
  uh, used by serial innovators.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah, you know, this is in contrast to the Stage-Gate, as we talked about earlier.
• 1:16:17
  And it starts in the upper left.
• 1:16:19
  I often liken this to, like, the Bohr model of an atom.
• 1:16:23
  You know, you know, where's the electron in this model?
• 1:16:25
  Well, it's kinda-- it could be just about anywhere at any point in time.
• 1:16:28
  But usually these people come into the situation where, you know, as
• 1:16:33
  you said, and I've maybe belabored this, but they're motivated to solve
• 1:16:36
  a customer problem, and they're very often assigned something to work on.
• 1:16:42
  And, , but it may not be the right problem.
• 1:16:44
  And so they'll often, initially at least, try to understand
• 1:16:47
  what's the right problem to solve.
• 1:16:48
  And, we look at, again, to use Tom Osborne's story as a An overlay to this.
• 1:16:53
  His deep understanding-- Well, I'll come back to that.
• 1:16:58
  He didn't-- In the end, he didn't necessarily solve the
• 1:17:01
  problem he was assigned to solve.
• 1:17:03
  But we'll come back to this.
• 1:17:04
  So they look to try to find the right problem, and then once they're- they
• 1:17:07
  have a problem that they're generally satisfied with, actually, a number
• 1:17:12
  of them said that it takes as much time to solve a good problem as a bad
• 1:17:15
  problem, so why not solve something that's important address something?
• 1:17:19
  And then they really deeply understand it.
• 1:17:20
  And this goes to what I had mentioned earlier about how not just letting go
• 1:17:25
  of your hang-ups, it's that deep dive.
• 1:17:28
  It's collecting the dots, if you will, and in some way finding the meaning
• 1:17:32
  of, of a collected set of dots.
• 1:17:34
  What's the pattern?
• 1:17:35
  necessarily the dragon in your conspiracy theory that you showed a
• 1:17:38
  moment ago, but it's looking for the pattern that really truly does exist.
• 1:17:43
  then once you think you've understood it enough, then you begin to say, "You
• 1:17:47
  know, I think there's a concept, a product concept." Or-- And I should add,
• 1:17:51
  too, the book's written heavily from a product perspective, but you know,
• 1:17:55
  innovation processes, business models.
• 1:17:59
  Again, we're talking discovery here.
• 1:18:01
  This could be overlaid on any-- It c- this could be overlaid on
• 1:18:04
  me, as I said earlier, learning how to use my gas grill, you know?
• 1:18:07
  , You try things, you, you invent things, and you validate.
• 1:18:10
  You come up with ideas, and you test them.
• 1:18:11
  And, the extent that you find something good, you move down to the lower left.
• 1:18:16
  That's kind of the stage gate, , the right side of that process
• 1:18:19
  that I spoke about earlier.
• 1:18:21
  developed iteratively.
• 1:18:23
  And then before market launch, there's an activity that these people get involved in
• 1:18:28
  often of helping create market acceptance.
• 1:18:31
  An example that I might use is if you have a consumer product, , that involves
• 1:18:36
  something that's ingested, , let's say a toothpaste, for example, you're gonna
• 1:18:40
  be working with the FDA to be sure that not only the person who picks it
• 1:18:43
  up off the shelf is gonna buy it, but the FDA is gonna allow you to buy it.
• 1:18:47
  Or in Nancy's case, that you can't call Pringles a chip, a potato chip.
• 1:18:53
  It's a crisp, you know?
• 1:18:54
  And she can tell the story better than I can.
• 1:18:56
  But you're working to create market acceptance by, by not just
• 1:19:01
  limiting yourself to that one area.
• 1:19:03
  And then you launch.
• 1:19:05
  And what makes this different, a couple things, but one of the big
• 1:19:08
  ways it's different from the stage gate is that y- you don't necessarily
• 1:19:12
  go through this in a linear way.
• 1:19:14
  And so you might get to the, let's say you get to the invent and validate
• 1:19:18
  stage, and it's just not working for you.
• 1:19:22
  And in a way you could argue that Tom Osborne was given a problem,
• 1:19:25
  he understood the problem deeply.
• 1:19:27
  He was inventing and validating based on this diaper paradigm.
• 1:19:31
  And he's saying, "You know, I don't think this is the right problem."
• 1:19:35
  back and tries to understand it more.
• 1:19:37
  "I don't think it's the right problem." He goes back to innovate
• 1:19:39
  and v- "I, I don't think this is the right problem." And you know, he
• 1:19:42
  didn't maybe say it quite that way.
• 1:19:44
  And he goes back to the upper left and he goes, "Ah, this might be the
• 1:19:48
  problem." And then it's not as much finding a technology that solves the
• 1:19:53
  initial problem, identifying a problem that needs to be solved and addressed.
• 1:19:59
  so the-- and you'll see this when we get to the hourglass model,
• 1:20:03
  I'll anticipate it, but I will-- we don't need to go there now.
• 1:20:06
  We shouldn't go there now.
• 1:20:07
  The point of all this is that these are all different states
• 1:20:12
  have to reside in at some level, before a serial innovator succeeds.
• 1:20:18
  The upper half is typically consistent with the fuzzy front end.
• 1:20:22
  The lower half is typically consistent with the stage gate.
• 1:20:26
  Consistent.
• 1:20:28
  And, , , again, it's just, it's very different.
• 1:20:31
  But again, I would challenge anybody who's learning to play a musical instrument to,
• 1:20:37
  uh, again, learn to use that gas grill.
• 1:20:40
  And, you know, I'm not bad at it, but I'm not where I need to be on
• 1:20:42
  some things, is to look at this.
• 1:20:44
  And I mention that in part because , did a workshop once with a group
• 1:20:48
  of people who were on a production line talking about innovation.
• 1:20:51
  And that's a whole separate discussion because I don't even think that's really,
• 1:20:55
  you know, this idea box approach to life.
• 1:20:58
  saying, "Look, you guys are doing this at home.
• 1:21:00
  You've got these hobbies." We talked earlier about hobbies.
• 1:21:03
  You've got these other interests.
• 1:21:05
  How do you discover what to do there?
• 1:21:07
  And I'm gonna bring it back to, you mentioned about,
• 1:21:10
  what a process looks like.
• 1:21:12
  A lot of companies will try to boil it down to plan, do,
• 1:21:16
  check, and act, the Deming view.
• 1:21:19
  And I'm gonna be clear, I am a big fan of Deming.
• 1:21:22
  I'm a big fan of Lean and Six Sigma, so you know, none of
• 1:21:25
  this is meant to be negative.
• 1:21:27
  But have you ever asked yourself, where does that plan come from?
• 1:21:31
  It's like asking the question about the fuzzy front end.
• 1:21:33
  Where do those ideas come from?
• 1:21:35
  And that's really where my interests have been since.
• 1:21:38
  And I think this model is consistent this act, this very human, very personal act
• 1:21:44
  of discovery that I see innovation to be.
• 1:21:49
  why I'm so, such a big fan of these people that w- we've met, because just live it.
• 1:21:54
  They just d- they just do this as a, an activity.
• 1:21:57
  And I'm realizing the time, Aidan.
• 1:21:59
  I almost apologize.
• 1:22:00
  at all.
• 1:22:01
  Not at all, man.
• 1:22:02
  You ne- you never have to do that with this show.
• 1:22:04
  have.
• 1:22:04
  Okay.
• 1:22:05
  It's a, it's an absolute joy, and I just wanna tell our audience,
• 1:22:08
  we've only got through chapter one.
• 1:22:11
  We, we covered the, a little bit of the intro, but chapter one, and I, I'm
• 1:22:16
  very grateful for you, Bruce, for going through those diagrams with that depth.
• 1:22:19
  I think the richness, along with reading the book, I, I also, by the way, I have
• 1:22:24
  the Kindle version and the audiobook, and now the opportunity to go through
• 1:22:29
  this, and, and you know, it's one of the things I wanna say, you mention
• 1:22:33
  it and I, I talk about this often, is that to connect dots, you first have to
• 1:22:38
  collect them, and it's one of the things that I think innovators do naturally.
• 1:22:45
  And as you say, just because you collect some music CDs or vinyl doesn't mean
• 1:22:51
  you're gonna be playing in Carnegie Hall.
• 1:22:53
  That's
• 1:22:54
  right, even
• 1:22:54
  but at least you gotta be.
• 1:22:56
  You gotta, you gotta, you firstly gotta have some knowledge in the
• 1:22:59
  first place, and I really do see it as the reason why we do this work.
• 1:23:03
  For me, it changed my life when I had new dots and I had new lenses and
• 1:23:09
  I could see the world differently.
• 1:23:10
  Changed my world because my worldview changed, and I had lots of
• 1:23:15
  different ways of seeing the world.
• 1:23:16
  I could now articulate it in ways I never could before with confidence, and
• 1:23:20
  I think that that's what this work does.
• 1:23:22
  That's what this book does.
• 1:23:24
  It opens it up for other people.
• 1:23:25
  But you gotta do the work.
• 1:23:27
  Like, you can't bluff this.
• 1:23:29
  You can't bluff it.
• 1:23:30
  absolutely.
• 1:23:31
  I'm cheering you on here, Aidan, 'cause I, you.
• 1:23:34
  In fact, a lot of the way I view even discussing this today is
• 1:23:37
  informed on things that I've seen since we wrote the book.
• 1:23:40
  Well, it's a, a joy having you, Bruce, and I look forward to part two.
• 1:23:43
  So, so,
• 1:23:45
  That's great.
• 1:23:45
  Thank you so
• 1:23:46
  author of Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver
• 1:23:50
  Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms, part one, Bruce
• 1:23:54
  Vojack, thanks for joining us.
• 1:23:56
  Thank
• 1:23:56
  you.
• 1:23:57
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