by Robyn Bolton | Jan 6, 2025 | Innovation, Leadership, Metrics, Stories & Examples
Here’s a head-scratcher when it comes to scaling innovation: What happens when your innovative product is a hit with customers, but you still fail spectacularly? Just ask the folks behind Smashmallow, the gourmet marshmallow company that went from sweet success to sticky situation faster than you can say “s’mores.”
The Recipe for Initial Success
Jon Sebastiani sold his premium jerky company Krave to Hershey for $240 million and thought he’d found his next billion-dollar idea in fancy French marshmallows. And initially, it looked like he had.
Smashmallow’s artisanal, flavor-packed treats weren’t just another fluffy, tasteless sugar puff – they created an entirely new snack category. Customers couldn’t get enough of their handcrafted, churro-dusted, chocolate-chip-studded clouds of happiness. The company hit $5 million in sales in its first year, doubled that the next, and was available in 15,000 stores nationwide in only its third year.
Sounds like a startup fairy tale, right? Right! If we’re talking about the original Brothers Grimm versions. Corporate innovators start taking notes.
The Candy-coated Vision
Sebastiani and his investors weren’t content with building a successful premium regional brand. They wanted to become the Kraft of craft marshmallows, scaling from artisanal to industrial without losing what made the product special. It’s a story that plays out in corporations every day: the pressure to turn every successful pilot into a billion-dollar business.
So, they invested. Big time.
They signed a contract with “an internationally respected builder of candy-making machines” to design and build a $3 million custom-built machine and another with a copacker to build an entirely new facility to accommodate the custom machine.
Bold visions require bold moves, and Sebastiani was a bold guy.
The Scale-up Meltdown
But boldness can’t overcome reality, and the custom machine couldn’t replicate the magic of handmade marshmallows. It couldn’t even make the marshmallows.
Starch dust created explosion hazards. Cinnamon wouldn’t stick. Workers couldn’t breathe through spice clouds. The handmade ethos of imperfect squares gave way to industrialized perfection. Each attempt to solve one problem created three more, like a game of confectionery whack-a-mole.
By 2022, Smashmallow was gone, leaving behind a cautionary tale about the gap between what customers value and what executives and investors want. The irony? They succeeded in their mission to disrupt the market – by 2028, the North American marshmallow market is projected to more than double its 2019 size, largely thanks to the premium category Smashmallow created. They just won’t be around to enjoy it.
A Bittersweet Paradox
For so many corporate innovators, this story hits close to home. How many promising projects died not because customers didn’t love them but because they couldn’t scale to “move the needle” for a multi-billion dollar corporation? A $15 million business might be a champagne-popping moment for an entrepreneur, but it barely registers as a rounding error on a Fortune 500 income statement.
This is the innovation paradox facing corporate innovators: The very pressure to go big or go home often destroys what makes an innovation special in the first place. It’s not enough to create something customers love – you must create something that can scale to satisfy the corporate appetite for growth.
Finding the Sweet Spot
The lesson isn’t that we should abandon ambitious scaling plans. Instead, we must be brutally honest about whether our drive for scale aligns with what makes our innovation valuable to customers. If it doesn’t, we must choose whether to scale back our ambitions (unlikely) or let go of our successful-but-small idea.
After all, not every marshmallow needs to be a mountain, but every mountain climber (that’s you) needs a mountain.
by Robyn Bolton | Dec 4, 2024 | Innovation, Just for Fun, Leadership, Metrics, Uncategorized
Last week, InnoLead published a collection of 11 articles describing the root causes and remedies for killers of innovation in large organizations. Every single article is worth a read as they’re all written by experts and practitioners whose work I admire.
I was also inspired.
In the spirit of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I gave into temptation, added my own failure mode, and decided to have a bit of fun.
The 12 Killers of Innovation
(Inspired by the 12 Days of Christmas yet relevant year-round)
On the twelfth day of innovating, management gave to me:
12 leaders short-term planning
11 long projects dragging
10 cultures resisting
9 decisions made too quickly
8 competing visions
7 goals left unclear
6 startups mistrusted
5 poorly defined risks
4 rigid structures
3 funding black holes
2 teams under-staffed
And a bureaucracy too entrenched to change
Want to write a happier song?
Each of the innovation killers can be fended off with enough planning, collaboration, and commitment. To learn how, check out the articles:
12 leaders short-term planning – Why Innovation is a Leadership Problem by Robyn Bolton, MileZero
11 long projects dragging – Failing Slow by Clay Maxwell, Peer Insight
10 cultures resisting – How to Innovate When Resistance is Everywhere by Trevor Anulewicz, NTT DATA
9 decisions made too quickly – Red Light, Green Light by Doug Williams, SmartOrg Inc.
8 competing visions – The Five Most Common Innovation Failure Modes by Parker Lee, Territory Global
7 goals left unclear – Mitigating Common Failure Modes by Jim Bodio, BRI Associates
6 startups mistrusted – Developing a New Corporate Innovation Model by Satish Rao, Newlab
5 poorly defined risks – Strategic Innovation is too Scary by Gina O’Connor, Babson College
4 rigid structures – Corporate Innovation is Dead by Ryan Larcom, High Alpha Innovation
3 funding black holes – Failure Modes by Jake Miller, The Engineered Innovation Group
2 teams under-staffed – Why Innovation Teams Fail by Jacob Dutton, Future Foundry
And a bureaucracy too entrenched to change – Building Resilient Teams by Frank Henningsen, HYPE Innovation
How are you going to make sure that you receive gifts and not coal this year for all your innovation work?
by Robyn Bolton | Oct 30, 2024 | Innovation, Leadership, Metrics, Strategy
It’s that time of year again – the annual ritual of strategic planning. But as Seth Godin points out in “How to Avoid Strategy Myopia,” we often mistake annual budgets and operational efficiency plans for true strategy. Strategies are not plans or guarantees; they’re informed choices to pursue possibilities that may or may not work.
Godin’s insights, while often associated with innovation, are fundamentally about strategy in its purest form. They challenge us to look beyond next quarter’s earnings and focus on transformative potential just beyond our current vision.
The Myth of “Strategic Planning”
Consider for a moment the last strategic planning session you attended. Was it dominated by discussions of cost-cutting measures, market share percentages, and incremental improvements? If so, you’re not alone. Many organizations focus on optimizing their current operations, behavior that is reinforced by the processes, templates, and forms required to secure next year’s funding.
However, as Godin warns, “When the boss demands a strategy that comes with certainty and proof, we’re likely to settle for a collection of chores, tasks, and tactics, which is not the same as an elegant, resilient strategy. To do strategy right, we need to lean into possibility.”
The Realities We Must Confront
Godin challenges us to confront several uncomfortable truths:
Today’s data doesn’t predict tomorrow: Executives rely heavily on easily measurable metrics based on false proxies when they make decisions. While these metrics provide a sense of control and comfort, they close our eyes to emerging opportunities and threats. When AT&T’s executives considered exiting the cell phone market in the 1980s, they turned to McKinsey to find data to inform their decision. Estimating that the total worldwide market for cell phones was 900,000, AT&T executives were comfortable exiting. It’s unknown if that comfort was worth the $11.5 billion AT&T spent to acquire McCaw Cellular in 1995.
Serving everyone serves no one: “Strategy myopia occurs when we fail to identify who we seek to serve and focus on what we seek to produce instead.” AMEN! True strategy begins with a deep understanding of our customers’ evolving needs, not just their current preferences. This requires empathy, foresight, and a willingness to challenge our assumptions. It also requires us to listen and act on what we hear from customers and not just from our bosses.
“All of the Above” is not an option: Strategy requires that we make choices and is as much about what we choose not to do as what we commit to doing. It requires the courage to say no to good opportunities in service of great ones. It requires facing your FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), loss aversion bias, and finding the courage to keep going.
5 Practical Steps You Can Take
If any of these sound familiar, it’s because they’re also innovation best practices.
- Dedicate One Day per Month for Strategic Thinking: Set aside one full day each month for long-term strategic questions, free from the “Tyranny of Now.”
- Cultivate Diverse Perspectives: Invite and listen to voices from different backgrounds, disciplines, and levels within the organization.
- Embrace Small-Scale Experimentation: Run a series of small, low-cost, low-profile experiments instead of betting everything on a single initiative.
- Redefine Success Metrics: Move beyond traditional financial metrics to include indicators of future potential, such as customer lifetime value and adaptability to change.
- Foster a Culture of Questioning: Channel your inner two-year-old and ask “why” with genuine curiosity. Encourage your team to challenge assumptions because the most transformative strategies often emerge from questioning the status quo.
As we continue through this season of strategic planning, let’s challenge ourselves to think beyond the annual budget. Let’s envision the future we want to create and chart a course to get there. After all, in the words of Godin himself, “It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re headed in the wrong direction.”
by Robyn Bolton | Oct 1, 2024 | Innovation, Leadership, Metrics, Stories & Examples, Strategy
In the often murky world of corporate communication, a leaked MrBeast document has emerged as a beacon of clarity. Far from being your typical vague, jargon-filled memo, this onboarding document is a crystal-clear recipe for success that’s as refreshing as it is rare.
But first, let’s address the elephant in the room. MrBeast’s empire isn’t without its share of controversy. Reports of toxic work environments, unsafe conditions for contestants, and allegations of rigged games cast a shadow over his content creation machine and his leadership capabilities. These are serious issues that merit investigation and discussion. As a result, this post isn’t an endorsement of MrBeast as a leader, it’s an endorsement of an onboarding document that he wrote.
The Secret Sauce: Clarity Meets Innovation
What sets this document apart is its razor-sharp clarity and relentless focus on creativity. Unlike the vague platitudes that plague many corporate communications, job descriptions, and performance matrixes, this document clearly outlines expectations, success metrics, and the strategies and tactics to fuel continuous innovation.
This clarity is transformative for people and organizations. When team members understand both the guardrails and the goals, they channel their creative energy into groundbreaking ideas rather than second-guessing their approach and worrying about repercussions.
Expectations: Always Be Learning
The first principle is a clear directive: always be learning. In MrBeast’s world, this isn’t just about personal growth—it’s about staying ahead in a rapidly changing digital landscape. This commitment to continuous learning fuels innovation by ensuring the team is constantly exploring new technologies, trends, and creative techniques.
While some see the definition of A, B, and C-players as evidence of a toxic workplace, the fact is that it’s the reality in most workplaces. It’s the absence of clarity, usually disguised by claims of family-like cultures that value diversity, that makes workplaces toxic.
Metrics: The Start of a Feedback Loop
The focus on specific success metrics like Click-Through Rate and Average View Duration isn’t just about measurement—it’s about creating a feedback loop for innovation. Clear benchmarks developed over time allow teams to quickly assess the impact of new ideas and iterate accordingly. It also removes the temptation and ability to “move the goalposts” to create the appearance of success.
Strategy: Structure Meets Creativity
After describing what success looks like for employees and how they’ll be measured, the document outlines a structured content formula akin to an innovation strategy. It provides a clear framework of priorities, goals, and boundaries while encouraging creative experimentation within those boundaries.
Starting with a step-by-step guide to making videos with a “wow” factor, the document also emphasizes the criticality of focusing on “critical components” and managing dependencies and
Far from the usual corporate claims that direction and “how to’s” constrain creativity and disempower employees, this approach creates a safety net that allows employees to be successful while still pushing the envelope of what’s possible in content creation.
How to Become Your Version of (a non-controversial) Mr. Beast
You don’t have to be a content creator, social media savant, or company founder to follow MrBeast’s lead. You have to do something much more difficult – communicate clearly and consistently.
- Clearly define what success looks like (and doesn’t) for your employees and projects.
- Establish frameworks that encourage bold ideas while maintaining focus.
- Define objective success metrics and consistently measure, track, and use them.
This leaked MrBeast document offers more than just a glimpse into a YouTube empire; it’s a masterclass in leadership in the era of hybrid workplaces, geographically dispersed teams, and emerging cultures and norms.
The document’s approach shows that innovation doesn’t have to be chaotic. By providing clear expectations and frameworks, leaders can create an environment where creativity thrives, and groundbreaking ideas can be rapidly developed and implemented.
When viewed in the bigger context of the MrBeast organization, however, the document is also a reminder that no matter how clear you think your communication is, you must be vigilant for those who claim that bad behavior is just a “misunderstanding.” Leaders know that no amount of views, clicks, or revenue is worth sacrificing the well-being of their teams.
by Robyn Bolton | Dec 4, 2023 | Innovation, Metrics
“I would argue that it was an innovation success!”
At that moment, I started to deeply empathize with Alice because I felt like I was tumbling down the rabbit hole.
For the previous several minutes, I had been on one of my usual soapboxes – Innovation needs to generate quantifiable, and specifically financial, results; otherwise, it’s theater at best and performative lie at worst. As Alexander Osterwalder says, “ROI is the only thing that matters in innovation.”
That’s when my conversation partner brought up Kickbox.
Way back in 2012, Adobe’s Chief Strategist and VP of Creativity, Mark Randall, packed “everything an employee needs to generate, prototype, and test a new idea” into a little red box to encourage employees to unleash their inner innovator. One thousand Kickboxes were distributed to interested employees in that first year.
In the decade since, Kickbox has been used at thousands of organizations from multi-nationals (3M, Cisco, Caterpillar, MasterCard, Swisscom, P&G, Roche, Implenia, Zurich Insurance) to educational institutions (ETH, UNSW, USC), government agencies (DARPA, United Nations) and non-profits (Peace Corp, Gates Foundation, Kickstart-Innovation, Careum). It is widely regarded as the world’s most “successful” Intrapreneurship program.
But what does “successful” mean?
Widely adopted?
Highly regarded?
The source of:
- New projects (using Kickbox, Swisscom validated 400+ innovation projects in just two years)?
- New revenue?
- Cost savings?
- Higher profit?
Effective at:
- Increasing employee morale?
- Reducing employee turnover?
- Building a culture of innovation?
Something else?
For Kickbox, “success” means increasing employee engagement, creativity, and collaboration.
Let me be clear: this is an AWESOME outcome. Very few programs have even a temporary impact on employee engagement and the organization’s culture of innovation. So, to have a program that makes a measurable and lasting impact is incredible. To have a program that is so effective that other organizations around the world adopt it AND experience similar benefits is almost unbelievable,
But is that enough?
If Kickbox was the ONLY thing Adobe did to encourage innovation, would Kickbox be considered a success?
I don’t think so.
Kickbox was successful because it was part of a holistic approach to innovation. It was part of a portfolio of efforts to encourage employees to be more creative and collaborative and to build and acquire new sources of revenue.
If Kickbox was the only innovation effort Adobe invested in, it would not have lasted even the two years between its 2012 test and 2014 Adobe-wide launch. It would have been like all other hackathons, shark tanks, events, and gimmicks companies use to encourage innovation without thinking about how to carry on after the event.
Speaking of the two years from test to internal launch…
For Kickbox, “success” also means surviving internal scrutiny.
Each Kickbox contained instructions, a pen, two Post-It notepads, two notebooks, a Starbucks gift card, a bar of chocolate, and a $1,000 prepaid gift card that could be spent on anything the employee needed with NO need for approval, justification, or even an expense report.
Think about that for a moment.
The 1,000-box test cost $1M in gift cards PLUS the costs of all the other materials, and that’s before you factor in the costs of design, assembly, and distribution.
If Kickbox was a grassroots effort instead of one championed by the company’s Chief Strategist and VP of Creativity, a highly respected executive who joined Adobe when it acquired the company he led as CEO, would the company have spent $1M+ on the test and an additional two years refining the concept before launching to the rest of the organization?
I don’t think so.
Kickbox was successful because it survived financial scrutiny and organizational skepticism, protected by a senior executive motivated to deliver on a request to teach his skills and approach to innovation to the rest of a giant organization.
“Success” ultimately means money.
After a week of tumbling, I think that I may have reached the bottom of the rabbit hole and a way to reconcile my money-grubbing capitalist view of innovation with my colleague’s extremely true and data-based assertion that success can be something much softer and more intangible.
Yes, and.
Yes, a successful innovation can be something with qualitative benefits, AND those benefits need to translate into quantifiable (financial) benefits, AND it needs a senior executive to shepherd it through the years of scrutiny and skepticism that kill most efforts.
After all, employee engagement, lower turnover, and more ideas have quantifiable and meaningful financial benefits. So, ultimately, it is all about the money.
Or maybe I’m still in Wonderland.
What do you think?
by Robyn Bolton | Aug 21, 2023 | Innovation, Leadership, Metrics, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
You are a rolling stone, and that means you gather no moss! You read the September issue of HBR (and maybe last week’s article), tossed out your innovation portfolio, and wove yourself an innovation basket to “differentiate the concept from finance and avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities, where the goal is usually to maximize returns through diversification [and instead] remember that innovation projects are creative acts.”
Then you explained this to your CFO and received side-eye so devastating it would make Sophie Loren proud.
The reality is that the innovation projects you’re working on are investments, and because they’re risky, diversification is the best way to maximize the returns your company needs.
But it’s not the only way we should communicate, evaluate, and treat them.
Different innovation basket views for different customers
When compiling an innovation basket, the highest priority is having a single source of truth. If people in the organization disagree on what is in and out of the basket, how you measure and manage the portfolio doesn’t matter.
But a single source of truth doesn’t mean you can’t look at that truth from multiple angles.
Having multiple views showing the whole basket while being customized to address each of your internal customer’s Jobs to be Done will turbocharge your ability to get support and resources.
The CFO: What returns will we get and when?
The classic core/adjacent/transformational portfolio is your answer. By examining each project based on where to play (markets and customers) and how to win (offerings, profit models, key resources and activities), you can quickly assess each project’s relative riskiness, potential return, time to ROI, and resource requirements.
The CEO: How does this support and accelerate our strategic priorities?
This is where the new innovation basket is most helpful. By starting with the company’s strategic goals and asking, “What needs to change to achieve our strategy?” leadership teams immediately align innovation goals with corporate strategic priorities. When projects and investments are placed at the intersection of the goal they support, and the mechanism of value creation (e.g., product, process, brand), the CEO can quickly see how investments align with strategic priorities and actively engage in reallocation decisions.
You: Will any of these ever see the light of day?
As much as you hope the answer is “Yes!”, you know the answer is “Some. Maybe. Hopefully.” You also know that the “some” that survive might not be the biggest or the best of the basket. They’ll be the most palatable.
Ignoring that fact won’t make it untrue. Instead, acknowledge it and use it to expand stakeholders’ palates.
Start by articulating your organization’s identity, the answers to “who we are” and “what we do.”
Then place each innovation in one of three buckets based on its fit with the organization’s identity:
- Identity-enhancing innovations that enhance or strengthen the identity
- Identity-stretching innovations that “do not fit with the core of an organization’s identity, but are related enough that if the scope of organizational identity were expanded, the innovation would fit.”
- Identity-challenging innovations that are “in direct conflict with the existing organizational identity.”
It probably won’t surprise you that identity-enhancing innovations are far more likely to receive internal support than identity-challenging innovations. But what may surprise you is that core, adjacent, and transformational innovations can all be identity-enhancing.
For example, Luxxotica and Bausch & Lomb are both in the vision correction industry (eyeglasses and contact lenses, respectively) but have very different identities. Luxxotica views itself as “an eyewear company,” while Bausch & Lomb sees itself as an “eye health company” (apologies for the puns).
When laser-vision correction surgery became widely available, Bausch & Lomb was an early investor because, while the technology would be considered a breakthrough innovation, it was also identity-enhancing. A decade later, Bausch & Lomb’s surgical solutions and ophthalmic pharmaceuticals businesses account for 38% of the company’s revenue and one-third of the growth.
One basket. Multiple Views. All the Answers.
Words are powerful, and using a new one, especially in writing, can change your behavior and brain. But calling a portfolio a basket won’t change the results of your innovation efforts. To do that, you need to understand why you have a basket and look at it in all the ways required to maximize creativity, measure results, and avoid stakeholder side-eye.
