Tag / innovation

by jcuene

Liberal Arts is A SuperPower

All day, everyday, I swim in “digital” alongside the coders, designers, and makers that create the internet. When we do our best work, we’re inventing and innovating.  You’d think I look to the scientists and coders to help me crack hard cases at work, but time after time, I find the best ideas come from non-engineers in the room.  When in doubt, I turn to the history majors and English lit nerds to guide me.  They have super powers.

The press writes stories about the lack of workers with engineering, math and science skills. Those of us running  businesses that depend on digital know there is a legitimate need for all those STEM graduates. But, I am concerned about the decline in the number of Liberal Arts degrees being granted in the US. We need their skills as much as we need people that can design algorithms. America needs more poets!

Liberal Arts degrees – English/literature, history, philosophy, etc. – create the thinkers and leaders we need to keep innovation happening. Beyond the domain knowledge that these degrees cultivate, they all build skills needed to create and shape innovative solutions. The insights that lead to new ideas come from the habits built doing liberal arts work:  Pattern matching, understanding and defining the contexts, making associations across domains.

And, just as importantly, Liberal Arts work – reading, writing, creating, analyzing – gives us practice in the skills required to get new to ideas built. Creating new things and making them useful requires working with and translating  abstract concepts clearly enough that others want to invest, literally and figuratively (e.g try explaining what a “platform business model” is to someone that’s never heard that term before). Before the coders and engineers make the ideas real, the liberal arts folks make them understandable and applicable.

I recently went to the retirement party for a business leader I’ve worked with over the years. She’s had tremendous success, building and selling technology companies worth millions, creating strong organizations where his employees flourished. An undergraduate degree in history pointed her in the direction of her first dream in life: A high school history teacher. But, tech, business and the startup life got in her way.

I believe her success was partly due to her understanding of how history works. She saw patterns unfolding in the culture and in her industry, patterns she recognized from her study of culture and history, and knew there were openings for for innovators. She was able to communicate beautifully, probably due to her training as a teacher: Clearly, simply, and to everyone. She used anecdotes and stories from American History to make current business decisions relatable. She could explain the hard concepts in language anyone could understand, getting consensus and buy in for her recommendations. I doubt those skills would have been developed as well if she studied math and engineering.

I’m a tech optimist. I know how important math, science and engineering are for the continued growth of our culture. I am  inspired by the the entrepreneurs who have built the culture-shaping, world-changing tools and platforms that we all use everyday. But, I also know those companies weren’t winners because of their tech. They won because the inventors and founders had folks around them – on their leadership teams, in the investor groups – that could translate the tech breakthroughs to everyone else. The non-techs – the language majors, the history wonks, the poet/writers on the leadership team – were just as important to the success.

Are you struggling at work to get traction on your idea? Are you feeling a little aimless in your work and want a boost of creativity? Try writing some poetry, go read a little history. Crack open that primer on philosophy. See what happens when you come at those problems in a new way and find your own super powers.

by jcuene

Innovation Framework From Doblin

It seems like there are just as many ways to talk and think about innovation as there are reasons to innovate. To get the conversations started with clients, i’ve always liked to use a framework to jumpstart the thinking.

I’ve mostly relied on simple 2×2’s or some variant of the incremental/disruptive comparison. Mainly because they’re simple to understand and most leaders can immediately apply the framework to their situation.

But, after reading a bunch of thinking from Doblin Group, i’ve come to really like their framework. It takes some work to fully understand all the dimensions, but that depth makes it versatile and forces the conversation beyond the obvious topics. Especially for folks like me who are deep in “digital”, a framework like this gets the conversation away from the basic stuff – technology, digital advertising, content – and should force a conversation about more potentially transformative options: business models, partnerships, etc.

 

by jcuene

From “Labs” to “Core”: Transitioning from Digital Experiment to Core Business

It’s pretty clear by now that smart CMO’s are seeking ways to accelerate growth by looking at digital products and platforms to energize their product mix and boost their marketing. As they ask their team to explore faster, both CMO’s and CTO’s need to be ready for the bumps ahead as the innovations go from “experiments” to “core business”.

Often, the leaders who are being asked to lead innovation are explicitly tasked with finding new ways to work in addition to defining new product/service offerings. They might be leading Innovation, New Products, New Ventures or Business Development. So, they are expected to explore new tools, new technology, new partners or new methods for working with a goal of injecting innovation into the organization while defining new revenue streams.

But, while there is a growing set of best practices on how to invent and launch new products inside the enterprise, there aren’t as many best practices for the transition period when those products go from “innovation” into “run the core business”. Worse, few innovation leaders have a clear plan for enlisting the support of the functional leaders (IT, Product management, sales, etc.) who have to maintain and manage an innovative product once it’s launched and proven.

As a result, one of the biggest threats to capturing the benefit from innovation activities is the slow death that comes when the original strategic intent is second guessed, re-thought, and challenged by the core business.

For example, imagine a scenario where the VP of Innovation for Enormicon Inc saw a legitimate market opportunity for a new product with a different business model. Over the course of a year, his “Enormicom Labs” team moved quickly, working like an agile startup to create the first iteration of the product including customer growth, market traction, press awareness and lots of insights into how the product could succeed. But, to scale the product, Enormicon would have to move the product from the “Labs” team into the core business.

As the product moves from the “Labs” team to the mainline business, the strategic intent of the innovation project will probably clash with the functional strategies that support the business. The tech choices that were made to enable speed and quality in the “innovation” phase will probably run counter to tech strategies that guide the main business (i.e. repeatability, cost reduction, leverage core technologies, scale efficiencies). The marketing approach used to quickly gain new customers for the innovative product will probably not be supportable by the “core” marketing team’s strategies.

To successfully grow businesses via innovation, Enormicon will need support in launching innovative products, but also in re-integrating those products into the business once the new product is proven.

Innovation leaders will need strong support as they think through the start up process AND the phase of introducing their new products and services into the main business. Change leaders will need to develop stronger support for:

  • Tech Strategy – Choosing tech (the software, the programming language, the development methodology, the support model) that will work for both the start up phase (agile, fast, easy and cheap to build and support) and the re-entry phase (software that’s scaleable, supportable by the corporation, bullet-proof and fits into the rest of the company’s architecture)
  • Maintaining Strategic Support – Building the strategic rationale and the  business case for doing things differently, so functional leaders will invest the extra effort and time and money to support the experimental efforts (tech, marketing, etc.
by jcuene

The BlockChain is the Beauty Inside Bitcoin

I need to come back and write up a clear article on this, but i’ve been digging deep into Bitcoin. Not the cryptocurrency part, but the actual protocol behind it. The think i’m curious about: What else could we apply the blockchain concept to. That is, what kind of decentralization can happen when there is a secure, transparent, open, scriptable, public ledger holding the system together.

Lots more to think about,  but here’s a couple important articles for my own future reference:

 

by jcuene

Why Didn’t Honeywell Invent Nest? The Value of Purpose

Evidently, Nest is worth a couple billion dollars in the minds of investors. That company didn’t really exist a couple years ago, but investors see the potential and Nest is a good example of how a purpose-lead company can spark new growth by reimagining old businesses.

But there are higher risks, of course, with hardware-focused products like Nest, compared to software-only investments, due to the more costly ramp up for such products. But said one investor, “This is a company that could change how we live our everyday lives,” noting the tight integration with mobile phones was a key step in the evolution of such devices.

via Nest Raising Huge New Round From DST, Valuing Smart Home Startup at Upwards of $2 Billion | Re/code.

Why didn’t Honeywell invent Nest? There is no doubt the halls of Honeywell are filled with incredible technologists. They have installs in god knows how many homes in the US and around the globe. Is it because their business model is so heavily focused on resellers and contractors? Is it because they forgot what business they are really in (e.g. “we’re in the comfort business” vs. “we’re in the thermostat and electronics business”). Is it because the actual product would have cannibalized the rest of the line? Perhaps the actual Nest product wouldn’t have been a big enough opportunity for a 72Billion dollar company. Finally, perhaps the leaders at Honeywell have a really healthy and profitable thermostat business already in place and didn’t see a chance for a significant change in their growth curve from real innovation from their core products.

Here’s a clue,  from Nests “about us” page that reveals how purpose guides their approach: 

About_us___Nest

Simple. Beautiful. Thoughtful. They’re focused on “unloved” things. They know no one loves their thermostat.  But, their purpose is to make things you’ll reconsider and then fall in love with. It’s a design approach and a laser focus on the consumer mindset. They are an end user oriented company that has empathy as their core lens. Tech, coding, sales, marketing and everything else come afterwards. Rethinking old problems to help consumers is core to their culture.

Now, check out Honeywell’s “About us” page (actually, there are a number of Honeywell “About us” pages. This one is for their consumer products):

About_Us_-_yourhome.honeywell.com

While it’s great that they are customer focused, it’s pretty clear that their customers are NOT consumers. They’re focused on resellers, builders, etc. They are designing products they know their real customers will buy, not products consumers are going to fall in love with.

Business school students will be reading case studies about Nest for years to come. It’s going to be interesting watching Honeywell’s response. Not only do they have a product challenge, but they are going to have a business culture problem, as well. They can compete on technology, but will they be able to get over the internal cultural barriers that will make it difficult to truly put the consumer needs first? Will they be able to reconnect with their core purpose as a way to re-orient their product and marketing efforts?