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Shark Tanks are the Pumpkin Spice of Innovation

Shark Tanks are the Pumpkin Spice of Innovation

by | Oct 6, 2019 | Tips, Tricks, & Tools

On August 27, Pumpkin Spice season began. It was the earliest ever launch of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte and it kicked off a season in which everything from Cheerios to protein powder to dog shampoo promises the nostalgia of Grandma’s pumpkin pie.

Since its introduction in 2003, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has attracted its share of lovers and haters but, because it’s a seasonal offering, the hype fades almost as soon as it appears.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for its counterpart in corporate innovation — The Shark Tank/Hackathon/Lab Week.

It may seem unfair to declare Shark Tanks the Pumpkin Spice of corporate innovation, but consider the following:

  • They are events. There’s nothing wrong with seasonal flavors and events. After all, they create a sense of scarcity that spurs people to action and drives companies’ revenues. However, there IS a great deal wrong with believing that innovation is an event. Real innovation is not an event. It is a way of thinking and problem-solving, a habit of asking questions and seeking to do things better, and of doing the hard and unglamorous work of creating, learning, iterating, and testing required to bring innovation — something different that creates value — to life.
  • They appeal to our sense of nostalgia and connection. The smell and taste of Pumpkin Spice bring us back to simpler times, holidays with family, pie fresh and hot from the oven. Shark Tanks do the same. They remind us of the days when we believed that we could change the world (or at least fix our employers) and when we collaborated instead of competed. We feel warm fuzzies as we consume (or participate in) them, but the feelings are fleeting, and we return quickly to the real world.
  • They pretend to be something they’re not. Starbucks’ original Pumpkin Spice Latte was flavored by cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove. There was no pumpkin in the Pumpkin Spice. Similarly, Shark Tanks are innovation theater — events that give people an outlet for their ideas and an opportunity to feel innovation-y for a period of time before returning to their day-to-day work. The value that is created is a temporary blip, not lasting change that delivers real business value.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

If you’re serious about walking the innovation talk, Shark Tanks can be a great way to initiate and accelerate building a culture and practice of innovation. But they must be developed and deployed in a thoughtful way that is consistent with your organization’s strategy and priorities.

  • Make Shark Tanks the START of an innovation effort, not a standalone event. Clearly establish the problems or organizational priorities you want participants to solve and the on-going investment (including dedicated time) that the company will make in the winners. Allocate an Executive Sponsor who meets with the team monthly and distribute quarterly updates to the company to share winners’ progress and learnings
  • Act with courage and commitment. Go beyond the innovation warm fuzzies and encourage people to push the boundaries of “what we usually do.” Reward and highlight participants that make courageous (i.e. risky) recommendations. Pursue ideas that feel a little uncomfortable because the best way to do something new that creates value (i.e. innovate) is to actually DO something NEW.
  • Develop a portfolio of innovation structures: Just as most companies use a portfolio of tools to grow their core businesses, they need a portfolio of tools to create new businesses. Use Shark Tanks to the surface and develop core or adjacent innovation AND establish incubators and accelerators to create and test radical innovations and business models AND fund a corporate VC to scout for new technologies and start-ups that can provide instant access to new markets.

In closing…

Whether you love or hate Pumpkin Spice Lattes you can’t deny their impact. They are, after all, Starbucks’ highest-selling seasonal offering. But it’s hard to deny that they are increasingly the subject of mocking memes and eye-rolls, a sign that their days, and value, maybe limited.

(Most) innovation events, like Pumpkin Spice, have a temporary effect. But not on the bottom-line. During these events, morale, and team energy spike. But, as the excitement fades and people realize that nothing happened once the event was over, innovation becomes a meaningless buzzword, evoking eye rolls and Dilbert cartoons.

Avoid this fate by making Shark Tanks a lasting part of your innovation menu — a portfolio of tools and structures that build and sustain a culture and practice of innovation, one that creates real financial and organizational value.

The Disruption Dilemma

The Disruption Dilemma

by | Sep 7, 2019 | Book Club

It’s been 22 years since the publication of The Innovator’s Dilemma, the book that catapulted Clayton Christensen to guru status, shocked and scared executives at large companies, and brought innovation into the mainstream.

In the decades since, “innovation,” “disruption,” and a host of related terms have become meaningless buzzwords, a massive industry of consultants and advisors (yes, including Mile Zero) has sprung up, and an untold number of books and articles have been written about how to innovate.

Yet nothing has changed.

Large organizations still struggle to launch anything other than incremental innovations, the failure rate of start-ups remains astoundingly high, and executives continue to flock to the latest innovation trend (2019 seems to be the year of Corporate Venture Capital).

Why?

That’s the question that Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, tries to answer in his book The Disruption Dilemma.

He starts by grounding the reader in the core definitions and theories related to disruption, then makes the case that rather than trying to predict disruption (a difficult if not impossible task) organization should instead follow one of four strategies, before wrapping up with a re-examination of the data and research Christensen used to create his original theory of disruption.

“Disruption” is more than a new technology…it is an identity crisis

in their 1995 Harvard Business Review article, “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave,” Clayton Christensen and Joseph L. Bower coined the term “disruptive technology” and defined it as having

“two important characteristics: First they present a different package of performance attributes — one that, at least at the outset are not valued by existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing customers do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade those established markets.”

For Christensen. disruption occurs when management chooses not respond to a new innovation because it does not perform as well as existing solutions along traditional performance dimensions and therefore is unappealing to existing customer.

Interestingly, at the same time that Christensen was studying for his PhD at Harvard, another doctoral student was also conducting research into why successful firms fail in light of new technologies. In 1990, Rebecca Henderson, now one of only two University Professors at Harvard (the other one is Michael Porter), debuted the term “Architectural Innovation” with her collaborator, Kim Clark, in their paper “Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and The Failure of Established Firms.”

For Henderson, disruption, happens when managers are unable to respond because the innovation requires changes to how the firm operates, communicates, coordinates, learns, and makes decisions. Thus,

“Architectural innovation presents established firms with a more subtle challenge. Much of what the firm knows is useful and needs to be applied in the new product but some of what it knows is not only not useful but may actually handicap the firm. Recognizing what is useful and what is not, and acquiring and applying new knowledge when necessary, may be quite difficult for an established firm….”

Gans terms the Christensen theory demand-side disruption and the Henderson theory supply-side disruption. He unites both of these two types of disruption under a single definition of disruption as

“what a firm faces when the choices that once drive a firm’s success now become those that destroy its future.”

What I like about this definition is that it takes disruption beyond the narrow fields of technology, products, or services and considers it in the broader context of markets and industries. It reveals disruption to be something that all organizations are likely to face at some point in their future and one that will call into question many of the fundamental beliefs upon which the organization operates. Further, identifying and understanding both demand- and supply-side disruption can help organizations understand the challenge they face and where and how to focus their resources to navigate the rough road ahead.

Predicting disruption is hard.

What both demand-side Disruption (Christensen) and supply-side Disruption (Henderson) theories have in common is that they are kicked off by the introduction of a new innovation into the market.

However, new innovations launch all the time and very few of them start the domino effect that characterizes disruption. This is because an innovation must do two things in order to be disruptive: (1) offer poorer performance on some dimensions that existing customers value and offer new performance benefits that appeal to new customers and (2) improve rapidly enough that the innovation is able to quickly perform at levels desired by existing customers while offering the new benefits that new customers have grown to love.

As Gans point out, it’s relatively easy to determine if an innovation will meet the first criteria but it takes time to know whether or not the second criteria will be met. “Therefore, both supply- and demand-side theories lead to the conclusion that predicting disruptive events is very challenging, if not impossible.”

Responding is even harder.

To illustrate this point, Gans shares the stories of Polaroid and Kodak, two companies that recognized and responded to a potentially disruptive innovation decades before it transformed the market, but still failed.

In 1981, Polaroid recognized the threat posed by digital technologies. By 1989, it was investing over 40% of its R&D budget into digital imaging. However, while it was investing in technology, it was struggling to envision the right products to commercialize its technological advancement. This struggle was rooted not in its ability to innovate cameras but rather by “razor/blade” business model (and supporting mindset) that resulted in Polaroid subsidizing cameras and making money on film, a model (architecture) that would need to change if the company shifted from film to digital technology.

The company resisted re-organizing itself around the new architecture such that when it eventually developed and launched a digital camera it into the market, there were already 40 established competitors and Polaroid struggled to differentiate itself. Five years later, in 2001, Polaroid declared bankruptcy.

Digital imaging technology had been on Kodak’s radar screen since the mid-1970s. In the 1990s, it partnered with companies like Apple to develop digital cameras and, by 2005, was the market leader in docks that enabled sharing of digital images between computers and cameras.

So prescient were Kodak’s senior executives that “it was even one of the first few companies to consult with Clayton Christensen himself. Managers at Kodak read the Innovator’s Dilemma upon its publication and used it messages to direct Kodak’s product strategy. One example of this was to launch cameras in toy stores as a defense against Nintendo, which had put them in one million Game Boys. Nintendo’s cameras were by all accounts awful, but they were enough to get Kodak worried about disruption. Kodak was able to outpredict the market and to make substantial investments in what came to be disruptive innovations. Though they were initially inferior on multiple dimensions, the improved to take the market in less than a decade.”

If Kodak did everything right, at least according to Christensen’s theory, why did it declare bankruptcy in 2012?

It failed because it did not predict that the dominant design for digital photos would shift from cameras to phones and continued to innovate and invest in “hybrid products that would combine its existing strengths with the new technologies, for example the Photo CD, a way of taking film to photo shops and bringing a digital product home.”

The moral or these stories is that if you are able to identify a potentially disruptive innovation and if you take action to respond, it is nearly impossible to predict the path the innovation will take and attempting to do so is likely to require considerable resources but result in adding only a few years to the organization’s life.

4 strategies for responding to disruption

If you buy-in to Gans’ argument that predicting and trying to stave off disruption is a fool’s errand, it can be tempting to throw up your hands, declare defeat, and simply wait for disruption to claim your organization as its next victim. And, to be fair, Gans does offer this, Wait and Give up, as one of four possible strategies to deal with disruption.

But let’s say you’re not one to declare defeat easily or quickly, what then?

According to Gans, you first need to acknowledge that the two greatest barriers to innovation are uncertainty and cost. Uncertainty is a barrier because, as described above, you can’t be certain of an innovation’s disruptive path until it is well on the journey and this uncertainty is likely to make managers hesitant to take action. However, even if managers are willing to stomach uncertainty, “established firms face a dilemma in introducing new products or innovations because this cannibalizes their existing, profitable businesses….” This reality, “that there are no free lunches, only trade-offs,” has been part of economic theory since Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow named it “the replacement effect” in a 1962 paper.

For organizations unwilling to surrender to disruption, Gans offers three potential strategies to manage uncertainty and cost and position themselves for success:

1. Double Down by leveraging existing strengths to contain a new entrant. This strategy works best when the innovation to which the organization is responding turns out to NOT be disruptive. In cases where it is disruptive, organizations are likely to face the same challenges and fate as Kodak and Polaroid

2. Wait and Double Up by investing heavily only once it is certain that an innovation is disruptive. This approach works because, as economists Richard Gilbert and David Newbury wrote in 1981, “when an established firm can defend a monopoly segment against innovative entry through investment, its incentive to protect its monopoly will be greater than the incentive for new entrants to invade.”

3. Wait and Buy Up a the most promising new entrant. Even though established firms are likely to pay a premium to acquire the new entrant, it offers them certainty of watching the market shake out and saving them the cost of the Double down or Double up strategies. However, this strategy works the best when only market-side (Christensen) disruption is occurring as “the problem faced by established firms is not the acquisition of such knowledge but instead the integration of different ways of doing things into an organization that already has ingrained processes.”

Putting it all into practice

As much fun as it is to nerd-out on innovation theory, let’s get down to brass tacks and outline what all of this means to Intrapreneurs (people trying to innovate within existing organizations).

For me, this boils down to three questions organizations need to ask themselves:

1. Should we act in response to a potential disruption?

2. How should we organize to respond?

3. What should we do to respond?

The questions and their corresponding answers form a basic decision tree:

The answers to question 1 were outlined above — large organizations should WAIT until they are certain that disruption is occurring and have confidence in the path it could take

The answers to question 2 reveal another point of difference between Christensen’s and Henderson’s theories:

Christiansen advocates for independent autonomous units, using Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works as an example. He asserts that, in order to be successful, independent units “cannot be forced to compete with projects in the mainstream organization for resources. Because values are the criteria by which prioritization decisions are made, projects that are inconsistent with a company’s mainstream values will naturally be accorded lowest priority. Whether the independent organization is physically separate is less important than is its independence from the normal resource allocation process.” (The Innovator’s Dilemma)

Henderson recommends integration — a culture and practice in which organizations examine and question the implicit linkages in how they operate, evolve them to meet business needs, and readily assimilate linkages that emerge or are acquired. This approach enables firms to respond to both demand- and supply-side disruption. However, “to proactively use integration to prevent disruption often involves sacrificing short-term competitiveness and even market leadership” and, as a result, Gans argued is best used by companies operating in industries where disruption is frequent.

How an organization answers question 3 is based on numerous factors, including available capital, competitive activity, and market/ shareholder pressure. In my experience, however, the choice usually boils down to how the organization has historically grown. Companies that have grown primarily through acquisition should prioritize a Buy up strategy while those that typically grow organically should eschew acquisition for and either Double up or Double Down.

The bottom line

The book wraps up with a nerd-tastic deep dive into Christensen’s research of the micro-processor industry, the data set he used to develop his theory of disruption, and the logic and analysis flaws in his conclusions. It’s worth reading but, as Gans admits, it shouldn’t significantly alter how we think about disruption

Ultimately, by weaving together multiple theories of disruption with tried and true economic theories, The Disruption Dilemma expands how we think and talk about the dynamics that influence if and how organizations respond to disruption and ultimately how we can be more successful when confronting it.

If you want to read The Disruption Dilemma you can buy it at MIT Press, Amazon, Powell’s, or (hopefully) your local independent book seller.

Do More Nothing

Do More Nothing

by | Jun 9, 2019 | Innovation

“What do you plan to do on vacation?” my friend asked.

“Nothing…”

Long silence

“…And it will be amazing.”

We live in a world that confuses activity with achievement so I should not have been surprised that the idea of deliberately doing nothing stunned my friend into silence.

After all, when people say, “I wish I had nothing to do” they usually mean “I wish I could choose what I do with my time.” And, when they do have the opportunity to choose, very few choose to do nothing.

Why does the idea of doing nothing make us so uncomfortable?

To put it bluntly, busy-ness is a status symbol.

In their paper, “Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol,” professors Silvia Bellezza (Columbia Business School), Neeru Paharia (Georgetown University), and Anat Keinan (Harvard University), wrote that people’s desire to be perceived as time-starved is

“driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and is scarce and in demand on the job market.”

We didn’t always believe this.

For most of human history, we’ve had a pretty balanced view of the need for both work and leisure. Aristotle argued that virtue was obtainable through contemplation, not through endless activity. Most major religions call for a day of rest and reflection. Even 19th-century moral debates, as recorded by historian EO Thompson, recognized the value of hard work AND the importance of rest.

So what happened?

While it’s easy to say that we have to work more because of the demands of our jobs, the data says otherwise. In fact, according to a working paper by Jonathan Gershuny, a time-expert based on the UK, actual time spent at work has not increased since the 1960s.

The actual reason may be that we want to work more. According to economist Robert Frank, those who identify as workaholics believe that:

“building wealth…is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”

We choose to spend time working because Work — “the job itself, the psychic benefits of accumulating money, the pursuit of status, and the ability to afford the many expensive enrichments of an upper-class lifestyle” according to an article in The Atlantic — is what we find most fulfilling.

It’s not that I like working, I just don’t like wasting time.

We tend to equate doing nothing with laziness, apathy, a poor work ethic, and a host of other personality flaws and social ills. But what if that’s not true.

What if, in the process of doing nothing, we are as productive as when we do something?

Science is increasingly showing this to be the case.

Multiple fMRI studies have revealed the existence of the default mode network (DMN), a large-scale brain network that is most active when we’re day-dreaming. Researchers at the University of Southern California argue that

“downtime is, in fact, essential to mental processes that affirm our identities, develop our understanding of human behavior and instill an internal code of ethics — processes that depend on the DMN.”

The results of harnessing the power of your DMN are immense:

More creativity. The research discussed in Scientific American suggests that DMN is more active in creative people. For example, according to Psychology Today:

  • The most recorded song of all time, “Yesterday” by The Beatles, was ‘heard’ by Paul McCartney as he was waking up one morning. The melody was fully formed in his mind, and he went straight to the piano in his bedroom to find the chords to go with it, and later found words to fit the melody.
  • Mozart described how his musical ideas ‘flow best and most abundantly.’ when he was alone ‘traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep… Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.’
  • Tchaikovsky described how the idea for a composition usually came ‘suddenly and unexpectedly… It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms.’

More productivity. According to an essay in The New York Times, “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”

Less burnout. Regardless of how many hours you work, consider this: researchers have found that it takes 25 minutes to recover from a phone call or an e-mail. On average, we are interrupted every 11 minutes which means that we can never catch up, we’re always behind.

That feeling of always being behind leads to burn-out which the World Health Organization officially recognized as a medical condition defined as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” and manifests with the following symptoms:

  • Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
  • Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
  • Reduced professional efficacy

Doing nothing, quieting our minds and not focusing on any particular task, can actually help reset our bodies systems, quieting the release of stress chemicals, slowing our heart rates, and improving our mental and physical energy

Better health. Multiple studies indicate that idleness “produces many health benefits including, but not limited to, reduced heart rate, better digestion, improvements in mood, and a boost in overall emotional well-being — which, of course, affects everything on a biochemical and physiological level, thereby serving as a major deciding factor on whether or not we fall ill, and/or remain ill. Mental downtime also replenishes glucose and oxygen levels in the brain, and allows our brains to process and file things, which leaves us feeling more rested and clear-headed, promotes a stronger sense of self-confidence, and…more willing to we trust change.”

Fine, you convinced me. How can I do nothing?

There are the usual suspects — vacations, meditation, and physical exercise — but, if you’re anything like me, the thought of even finding 5 minutes to listen to a meditation app is so overwhelming that I never even start.

An easier place to start, in my experience, is in intentionally working nothing into the moments that are already “free.” Here are three of my favorite ways to work a bit of nothing into my day.

Make the Snooze button work for you. When my alarm goes off, I instinctively hit the Snooze button because, I claim, it is my first and possibly only victory of the day. It’s also a great way to get 9 minutes of thoughtful quiet nothingness in which I can take a few deep breaths, scan my body for any aches and pains, and make sure that I’m calm and my mind is quiet when I get out of bed.

Stare out the window. I always place my computer next to a window so that I can stare out the window for a few minutes throughout the day and people think I’m thinking deep thoughts. Which I am. Subconsciously. Lest anyone accuse me of being lazy or unproductive while I watch the clouds roll by, I simply point them to research that shows “that individuals who took five to ten minute breaks from work to do nothing a few times a day displayed an approximately 50% increase in their ability to think clearly and creatively, thus rendering their work far more productive.

Bring the beach to you. Research from a variety of places, from the UK Census to The Journal of Coastal Zone Management, indicate that our brains and bodies benefit from time at the beach. But, if you can’t go to the beach, there are lots of ways to bring the beach to you. Perhaps the simplest is to bring more blue into your environment. Most people associate blue with feelings of calm and peace and a study published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that the color blue can boost creativity. Even putting a picture of a beach (or your own personal happy place) on your desk or computer screen can trigger your brain to slow down, relax, and possibly trigger your DMN.

With so many benefits, isn’t it time you started doing more nothing?

The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

by | Mar 2, 2019 | Book Club

Like many people, I have heard the terms “growth mindset” and “fixed mindset.”

And, like many people, I equated “growth mindset” with being open-minded, curious, flexible, and tolerant.

On the flip side, I thought people with a “fixed mindset” were probably sticks in the mud, unwilling to try or even consider something new or a different perspective.

I was wrong.

Let’s start with the basics

My misunderstanding of what it means to have a fixed or a growth mindset is rooted in my lack of understanding of what these terms actually mean.

The fixed mindset is rooted in the belief that a human’s personal qualities are carved in stone. That, at birth, you were granted a certain amount of intelligence, morality, talent, etc. and that there is nothing you can do to develop more.

The growth mindset “is based on the belief that our basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. Although people may differ in every which way — in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests or temperaments — everyone can change and grow through application and experience.”

Yep, I’ve got a growth mindset…or do I?

I was feeling quite good about myself until page 12. That’s where I hit the “Grow Your Mindset” quiz:

Read each statement and decide whether you mostly agree with it or disagree with it:

  1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
  2. You can learn new things but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
  3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change quite a bit.
  4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

My answers were Yes, Yes, No, No.

(note, you can swap out “intelligence” for any personal quality — artistic talent, athletic ability, your personality)

Guess what, questions 1 and 2 are about the fixed mindset and questions 3 and 4 are about the growth mindset.

“I am a horrible person! I have a fixed mindset!” I thought just before collapsing onto the floor, ready to give up on my humanity. But then I rephrased the questions…

  1. A person’s intelligence is something very basic about them that they can’t change very much.
  2. A person can learn new things but they can’t really change how intelligent they are.
  3. No matter how much intelligence someone has, they can always change quite a bit.
  4. A person can always substantially change how intelligent they are.

This time my answers were No, No, Yes, Yes.

I wasn’t thrilled to realize that I had a “split mindset” but it did make sense.

When I think about myself, my capabilities, and my performance I tend to be a perfectionist (ok, I am a perfectionist) and ruminate endlessly on my mistakes (no kidding, I still vividly remember hitting the “hang-up” button instead of the “unmute” button on a conference call in 2010). I am terrified of feedback because I feel like it is a judgement against me. (Of course I ask for it and thank people when I get it but that’s just because these are the things we all agreed to say but none of us really mean. Right?)

But I don’t feel or think any of these things when it comes to other people. I genuinely believe that if you work hard enough and long enough, you can accomplish anything. I deeply believe that sometimes the best and only way to grow is to learn from mistakes. No one needs to prove anything to me and I love people who ask for feedback because it shows they care and that they’re trying and so I try to be as kind and helpful as possible.

I was a bit concerned that having a split mindset was one-step removed from having a split personality but it’s apparently not unusual at all.

People’s mindsets can change for all sorts of reasons — the context they’re in (e.g. work vs. home), who they’re with (e.g. the boss, their co-workers, their partner, friends, their kids, their parents), what they’re doing (e.g. math vs English, work vs a hobby), and any number of other variables. The key is to know when and where a change in mindset may occur.

There is hope!

“Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.”

Thank you page 16.

I will now change my mind.

I had to get all the way to page 254 to figure out how.

  1. Step 1 — Embrace your fixed mindset. > DONE!
  2. Step 2 — Become aware of your fixed mindset triggers. Where does your fixed-mindset self show up. > I tried to answer this question with “life” but it was too general. So I tried being more specific. The list is LONG and still growing
  3. Step 3 — Now give your fixed-mindset persona a name > In progress.
  4. Step 4 — Educate your fixed-mindset persona, take it on the journey with you > I’d rather not as it’s quite an unpleasant travel companion, but fine.
  5. Step 5 — Print out this graphic and tape it to your bathroom mirror > No thank you, it will never survive. But I will print out this one and hang it next to my computer.
  6. Step 6 — At the start of each day, identify opportunities for learning and growth and create a tangible action plan to take advantage of each one. > I’m actually doing this. It’s helping (I think) but it also results in me taking a lot of deep breaths.

I wish the journey from fixed to growth mindset was as easy as simply checking off steps 1 through 6 but it’s not. It’s a daily process that can be frustratingly slow. But I think it’s worth it.

If only so that I can one day get to the point when I say “Thank you for the feedback” and actually mean it.

Other random nuggets of wisdom

In between page 16 and page 254 there was a lot of great stuff about how the mindsets come into play in business, parenting, and coaching. Here’s a sample:

FIXED MINDSET

“The fixed mindset creates an internal monologue that is focused on judging.”

“Effort is for those who don’t have the ability.”

“The fixed mindset is so very tempting. It seems to promise children a lifetime of worth, success, and admiration just for sitting there and being who they are.”

“However, lurking behind the self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?”

“The minute a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse.” — Jim Collins, Good to Great

“When bosses become controlling and abusive, they put everyone into a fixed mindset. This means that instead of learning, growing, and moving the company forward, everyone starts worrying about being judged. It starts with the bosses’ worry about being judged but it winds up being everybody’s fear about being judged. It’s hard for courage and innovation to survive in a companywide fixed mindset.”

GROWTH MINDSET

“You aren’t a failure until you start to blame.”

“…even when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it.”

“Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training.”

“A growth mindset helps people to see prejudice for what it is — someone else’s view of them — and to confront it with their confidence and abilities intact.”

“True self-confidence is ‘the courage to be open — to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source.’”

In business “taking on challenges, showing persistence, and admitting and correcting mistakes are essential.”

“Not only do those with a growth mindset gain more lucrative outcomes for themselves, but, more important they also come up with more creative solutions that confer benefits all around.”

If you want to read Mindset: The New Psychology of Success it’s probably in your local library or you can buy it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or (hopefully) your local independent book seller.

How to Spot an Innovator

How to Spot an Innovator

by | Feb 21, 2019 | Tips, Tricks, & Tools

“I don’t know how I got into the program. I’m not innovative.”

For nearly two years, I’ve been the Dean of the Intrapreneurship Academy, a program I created in partnership with The Cable Center to help the industry’s rising stars learn how to be more effective innovators. Over the course of four cohorts, we’ve taught nearly 100 people from all over the world (US, India, Honduras, Panama, Columbia…just to name a few) the tools and mindsets of successful intrapreneurs and supported them as they did the hard work of making innovation happen in their companies.

And in every single cohort, a significant number of people pull me aside and say, “I don’t know how I got into the program. I’m not innovative.”

To which I respond, “The fact that you don’t think you are an innovator but someone in your company does means that you are.”

Why is this? Why do so many people have a misperception about whether or not they’re innovative? Why do people see others as innovative even if they don’t see themselves that way? While we’re on the subject, what makes someone an “innovator” to begin with?

What is an Innovator?

According to Dictionary.com an Innovator is “a person who introduces new methods, ideas, or products.”

That’s a perfectly good definition but it also means that when my husband says, “I have an idea, let’s install new lighting in my home office,” that he is an innovator and I’m just not willing to concede that (plus he usually chooses to sit in the dark so I’m not sure why he needs new lighting).

A better definition is rooted in my preferred definition of “innovation” and would be something like, “A person who does something new or different that creates value.” The last two words in that definition are critical because they differentiate invention (something new or different) from innovation (something new and different that create value) and therefore inventors from innovators. And, since I’m not convinced that new lighting will create value, gets me out of having to agree with my husband’s claim that his idea was innovative.

How NOT to spot an Innovator

Before we get into how to spot an innovator, I think it’s important to dispel a few myths that often lead to people being misidentified as innovators.

  1. They have a “look.” For a period of time in the early aughts, if you wore a black turtleneck you were likely to be labeled an “innovator” and, as a result, have everyone stare at you with eager anticipation of your next brilliant world-changing idea. Then the magic uniform became a hoodie and flip-flops, or thick-black rimmed hipster glasses ideally paired with a flannel shirt and ankle-length jeans. Hate to break it to you but, unless you live in the Marvel Universe, clothes do not imbue in their wearers with special super-powers, so don’t assume that someone is innovative just because they’re wearing the outfit du jour.
  2. They use innovation words all the time. Just because you can say a word doesn’t mean you know what it means, let alone that you can act on it. I can say “Python” and “Pandas” and “Numpy” (pronounced num-pie) and maybe even use those words in a sentence but I can’t define them for you and I sure as heck can write a program in Python or explain how and why pandas and numpies would be useful in such a program (my husband can, it’s what he does in his home office with the supposedly poor lighting). So if someone is always using terms like “disrupt” or “business model” or “lean start-up” or “design thinking,” ask them to define those terms AND explain how to put them in practice. If they can’t accurately do that, they’re not true innovators.
  3. They tell you that they’re innovative. One of my favorite quotes is by Margaret Thatcher who said, “Being in power is like being a lady…if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” The same thing is true for Innovators. If someone goes around telling people that they’re an innovator or that they’re an “ideas person,” you can be confident that they are not.

How to Spot an Innovator

Now that we know how to spot pretenders, here’s how to spot the real thing:

  1. They ask questions AND they listen to the answers. Lots of people ask questions but Innovators ask questions rooted in curiosity and a selfless desire to make things better. They say things like, “Why are we doing it this way?” and “What if we tried it that way?” and “I know we’ve always done it this way but what if…?” When you give them an answer, they listen and incorporate the new information into their thinking and their ideas.
  2. They’re not afraid to try doing things differently. Maintaining the status quo is safe and no one ever got fired for following the rules. But playing safe and following the rules doesn’t move us forward, it keeps us where we are (and maybe even causes us to fall behind). But doing something different involves taking a risk and that can be scary. Innovators are willing to take on that risk because helping others by improving or creating things is more important to them than their own comfort.
  3. They’re more interested in Doing than Talking. Let’s be honest, it’s fun to talk about innovation. It’s energizing to be part of a brainstorming session with brightly colored sticky notes flying around. It’s exciting to get together a small team to come up with an idea and pitch that idea to a Shark Tank. It’s fun to go on field trips to incubators and accelerators. But innovators don’t stop there, they don’t view those activities as signs of innovation success. They push to prototype and test the best idea from the brainstorming session, they demand dedicated funding and resources to bring their Shark Tank winning idea to life, and they do the hard slow work of applying their field trip lessons to foster a culture of innovation within the organization.

The innovators I teach and work with do all of the 3 things listed above and doing those things come so naturally to them that they don’t realize how uncommon, difficult, and important doing these things is. And yes, some of them also wear black turtlenecks or hoodies or hipster glasses (or all three at the same time!) but they don’t do wear these things because they’re innovators. They wear these things because they’re comfortable. And comfort is of the utmost importance when you’re doing the hard work of innovation.