Ep. 9: The Future of Corporate Innovation

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all right everyone I hate to abruptly stop a great Psalm but it’s time I’m Dan
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seawald and I’m going to be with you today for our ninth installment of the
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deliberate way and I’m joined by none other than one of my favorite people a
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real corporate Innovation Guru yes I said Guru Scott kerstner so Scott thanks
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for being with me today it’s awesome to have you um yeah thanks for having me I don’t
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know if I aspire to being in the guru class but uh thanks for using that word
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I guess everybody on LinkedIn is a guru right like once you’re somebody who has a profile and you post regularly like
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you’re part of that uh that Guru cohort I think you you are whether you like it
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or not well you know that’s the thing you could Aspire or not but you are and that’s I’m gonna tell people why you’re
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a guru so Scott I’m gonna embarrass you a little bit I’m gonna share a little bit about you for folks who may not know
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the real or the Deep profile of Scott kirsner double Legion
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um so if you don’t know Scott you’re really missing out but Scott’s the CEO
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and co-founder of Inno lead which I always know is innovation leader which is a boston-based research and
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Conference company and they work with innovators who are trying to innovate in large organizations not a small feat by
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the way having been there before and and uh Scott You Came From what I would
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consider a somewhat unexpected place you were a business journalist and I found
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that a lot of journalists generally stay on the sidelines you’re not a guy who hangs out on the sidelines you
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definitely mixed things up and before you did this you were an editor or contributing editor at the globe in
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Boston Wired Magazine you’re a fast cup you did work with variety The Times business week and a bunch of others and
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the other couple of really awesome books one of the ones that I personally really liked as I was scanning through it just
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the other day was uh inventing the movies which if I’m not mistaken you you
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did a collaboration with George Lucas on or were you just researching George Lucas
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no I mean it involved him and uh uh you know a book in print that uh lucasfilm
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ran and so you know had lots of great conversations with him about disruption in the movie industry and then he
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obviously has a great Rolodex of people that he can connect you with like Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola and
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James Cameron and so it was a great uh you know great opportunity to get to talk to a lot of filmmakers about
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technology and innovation in that industry not too shabby of company I gotta say so
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um very awesome you have multiple books and uh you know if you by the way if you
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haven’t seen Scott before you might recognize him from The Today Show from
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NPR Science Friday Discovery Channel you’ve been all over the place Scott and also if I’m not mistaken impact which is
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the event that you’re hosting in November um Shameless plug when impact is when
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and where October 25th to the 27th 7th uh it’s in Cambridge Massachusetts so
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right across the river from where I am today in Boston and um we just describe it as you know our aspiration is to make
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it a really useful helpful event for anybody who’s working in a corporate Innovation role um you know which as I
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know a lot of your network um and you know we know that’s a challenging role to be in which I think is what we’re gonna I hope is what we’re
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gonna talk about today we’re definitely going to delve into that and it’s I if you haven’t been to impact you gotta go
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it is awesome it’s not just great for networking it’s just really this this
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kind of Wellspring of ideas of like-minded people so but I think the first time we did did it Dan was when
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you were still at Pfizer and my recollection is you’re you were such a diva as a speaker at impact in 2018 I
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think um that you were like I’m gonna use Play-Doh in my session and so I need you
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to get like 800 canisters of Play-Doh and they need to be these four colors
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don’t get red Play-Doh don’t get blue do you remember this session yeah I used Play-Doh right yeah there were
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particular specifications you’re right it was like Van Halen with no no red M
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M’s no Korean Eminem listen no green Plato we’re not using that
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um so yeah well I’m glad I could have left an impression on you sorry pun intended on that
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um I guess you know so Scott for the folks who who haven’t kind of regularly watched this before one thing I’m going
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to tell you about the deliberate way a long time ago I had this philosophy that the best or most successful people are
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those who really are systematic or deliberate in what they do and how they do it so I kind of made it an ambition a
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long time ago um no business interests in mind just wanted to explore this to talk to all
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different kinds of people whether you’re an artist a musician a scientist a corporate Innovation aspiring Guru uh an
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entrepreneur you name it and find out what are the deliberate things that they do how do they do what they do and I
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consider yourself in what you’ve done in a lead to be very successful and um but
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I want to learn from it and I want other people to learn from it so that’s my goal today is learn a little bit more
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about you hear from you but also to borrow and steal with Glee some
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deliberate practices so that’s my goal if I don’t do it well you stop me tell me Dan you missed some here are some
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that I think you should be sharing so that’s my my promise and my ask for
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today okay so that’s it that’s your job but you also have another job I’m going to
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ask you the first question which I’m going to come out and ask the the first one which I’ve been thinking about for
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days now is Corporate Innovation dead as a function as a function not Innovation
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as a philosophical notion is Corporate Innovation as a corporate function is it
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muerto you’re starting with the tough questions
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I mean I don’t think I know yeah I don’t think it’s dead um I think there’s always a lot of churn
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and turnover and starts and stops you know at your former company Pfizer right
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I know there have been a few different eras of corporate Innovation right and responsibility kind of maybe has popped
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around to different people and I think it you know it sort of sometimes maybe goes into hiding for a little while it
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goes deep into a cave and then it re-emerges when the conditions are right
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um I think that um you know it’s interesting because I know you ran a survey that was like is
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Corporate Innovation thriving is it dead is it what was the in between Is it alive and well yeah or is it a lot yeah
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Is it alive surviving if you will yeah yeah I mean I think the issue is that
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usually when corporate Innovation dies it’s like it’s the death that’s like a sudden heart attack when you’re you know
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running to catch your plane at O’Hare Airport you know it happens really suddenly and there aren’t always a lot
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of signs that it’s gonna happen right and so you get the emails and calls and Linkedin
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messages that I do I’m sure which are like hey it’s Monday we were just let all let no let uh you know informed on
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Friday that the Innovation function is being uh what do they usually say like it’s going to be distributed and
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dispersed into the entire company everybody’s going to be responsible for it but our team of five people all need
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to find new jobs and it is usually pretty sudden I don’t think it’s like one of these you know cancer diagnoses
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where you get and seven years later you know um if things don’t go your way you
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die um I think it’s more like a sudden heart attack I I grew some right but I I think
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it’s really on point that that is the way it’s delivered it is more of a an
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acute uh episode versus a chronic one that lingers for a long time or at least
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people don’t think it’s chronic themselves um Let Me Wind back just a little bit then 10 years ago give or take when you
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uh roughly started in a lead or innovation leader at the time Innovation
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as a as a function was booming there were so many events everywhere I looked
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there was a corporate event there were people out there sharing with round tables and there were so many people
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hiring craze for corporate Innovation teams what was going on then that’s not
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happening now or what’s transpired since then but take me back in time what what happened then
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um it’s a really good question I mean I think there was just you know we did get started in 2013
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um I probably didn’t meet you in 2013 but we were going to a lot of those conferences and there were many many companies running conferences there were
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lots of companies that had new Chief Innovation officers and so I think it
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was kind of like as the startup world started to boom and create these unicorn companies I think there was a lot of you
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know fomo on the part of big companies like Hey we’re starting to see the airbnbs and Ubers and Stripes emerge you
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know and and really um you know in biotech you had you know
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lots of funding flowing into like new startup companies and biotech and drugs
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devices Diagnostics that whole world and so there was probably a sense that
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like we as a large company need to be doing something internally to make sure we’re not going to get disrupted and so
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start an innovation lab create a chief Innovation officer some of us probably also just the culture of looking at
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Google and how beautiful their office is in Mountain View and all the free food
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and um you know and saying we should have part of our culture that kind of like
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emulates Silicon Valley and you know some of that was well-intentioned
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um and a lot of it has you know now seems kind of um dated if not like totally extinct
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it’s interesting is this uh I’ll put a hypothesis out there how much do you
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think this ties to the austerity measures that kind of came out of covid or even the cyclicality of the economy
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is that is that a big influencing factor or is it other things is it just sort of
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the wear and tear or fatigue with Innovation what’s your your opinion on
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that well everything needs to deliver results in a big company and so you know that
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you and I could debate this right around training and capabilities and cultural
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transformation and how long do organizations really care about
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something that is not saving the money or generating new Revenue
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um you know whenever we ask about metrics and what are the metrics that matter to senior leadership and this is
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something we’ve done with a lot of our research in collaboration with KPMG which is a great firm that like
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definitely helps us level up our quantitative research that we do whenever you ask about what metrics does
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senior leadership care about number one is revenue number two is efficiencies and cost savings and number of new ideas
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or number of people trained or you know positive NPS scores on how
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welcoming and open and supportive of innovation is our culture like that stuff is way way down the list wow it
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was it has it always been that way or have you seen a shift just from a you know a quantitative perspective from the
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time that you’ve started doing that type of analysis to today no I think it has I
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think it has always been that way I mean the question is just like how long on
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the calendar how long how much time do you have on the clock before you have to start showing some quantitative outcomes
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from Innovation like just as an example to cite some recent research
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um we did a report uh in August called building a productive Innovation portfolio and we asked about is your
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Innovation process delivering quantifiable and concrete outcomes and
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about half of the respondents agree I’m just trying to do the math in my head like 56 of respondents will agree with
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that statement and so you know it leads you to ask the question if you’re in that other 44 who either disagree
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strongly disagree or are kind of neutral on that you’re in a bad place and you
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know there is you have to hear the the sound of the ticking clock when you have some kind of responsibility for
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Innovation or r d or transformation or whatever the language that’s being used which is like there is going to need to
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be a concrete or quantifiable outcome at some point otherwise you know you’ve
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seen the the churn I’ve seen the churn probably a bunch of people in the audience on LinkedIn have seen the churn
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um and you know the churn can be okay for some people as individuals like many
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of them like you they start Consulting practices um they
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um some of them wind up in big consulting firm terms some of them wind up in startups where like the Innovation
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um cycle time just is realistically like a whole lot faster and more stuff gets shown to customers and gets launched and
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maybe it’s a less frustrating place for True innovators to be yeah it’s a great a great Insight I know I started with
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the hard questions not that the next I’m going to ask you is an easy question but it’s just a it’s a really nice segue
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um you know when I when I think about some of the things that you’ve done you visited some really cool companies and
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um you know Google’s Labs Disney uh you’ve done some stuff it’s Sundance the United Nations you really had a chance
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to to tour companies and see their their natural habitat what are the telltale
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signs to the companies that really endure uh that that Thrive and don’t go
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down the tubes with their Innovation Investments after just a few years what
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do you what have you been seeing that are those signals out there well I mean that you know the
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anti-signal is when you visit a lab where it’s just like you know clearly
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um intended as a showcase for cool stuff you know they have the Oculus goggles
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and they have a 3D printer and they have um you know giant screens or whiteboard
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walls or you know just all the um window dressing of we want to make
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this look like a cool um like a cool space you know soon when the Apple AR glasses are you know are
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out and available like those will show up in Innovation labs and so it shouldn’t be just a a place with like
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all the latest toys and cold brew on tap or beer on tap if you can get you know
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your uh security compliance HR people to listen yeah yeah
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um I definitely remember writing about one company that had beer on tap you know for after 5 p.m at their innovation
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space somewhere in Ohio I think and it was like we wrote about that and it
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caused a bit of a problem when we made it public that they were serving beer at like a healthcare wow
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um Scott cursor behind the curtains that’s that is a warning there yeah I mean I
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think the positive signs are just that like look you know you need to be prototyping real stuff and it can be
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very um you know it can be very rough you know prototyping with cardboard or with
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um you know uh wireframing software but like you should be letting customers in
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or letting Partners in to actually see what you’re working on I mean everybody really is trying to get I think Labs that are successful are actually
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prototyping stuff that’s going to roll out in some way either internally in the company or externally and so you know it
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doesn’t have to look pretty I mean when you go to Walt Disney imagineering um you know in Glendale it’s you know
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it’s not it doesn’t look like a Disney theme park it’s not super glamorous there’s lots of you know
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junk around and you know componentry sitting around and so it’s not it
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doesn’t look like a Disney theme park inside that’s right it looks more like the underground of a Disney theme park
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you know we’re just like Hey we’re putting some stuff together we can show it to you you know they will there are like half-built audio animatronics that
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they can show you um but yeah it’s a it’s about like what is this gonna look like what’s the
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customer experience going to be like I would say the same is true with Starbucks you know if you visit them you
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know we went we were thinking about the Marriott um Innovation lab that they had for a long time I think they moved to New
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headquarters in Maryland since we visited them but like they just got the basement of Marriott headquarters given
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to them as a place to prototype like hey what what is the future of guest rooms hotel lobbies Hotel Bars
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um you know and so so building stuff is a pretty good you know good sign for
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these Innovation spaces I I love the the stories the little anecdotes of what you’re seeing and um and I don’t like
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the sort of the the counter of you know this is what good doesn’t look like because sometimes it’s easier to spot
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that um what I’m hearing is they’re they almost feel like small startup shops a
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lot of the startup companies that I’ve worked with it’s uh it’s it’s all hands on deck it’s very Scrappy but I guess
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going back to the Innovation lab sort of notion if a company has an innovation
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lab or or let me reframe that our Innovation Labs um are they a good investment for for
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companies should they be you know should they have them it sounds like for a lot of people at show are you seeing great
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examples or solid examples of innovation Labs that are are really churning out true innovation
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I mean I think they’re they’re often necessary and great examples for companies that are building physical
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things like you know hotel rooms or coffee shops in the case of Starbucks or
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Theme Park attractions and cruise ships in the case of Disney I think there were a lot of innovation Labs like in
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Pharma companies Med device companies financial services cpg companies right
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where it was like pre-coveted it might have worked when everybody was in the office five days a week but now post
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covid like it’s very hard to activate those spaces you know like I can definitely think of a Healthcare company
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here in Boston that has like a great Innovation space and it’s very hard to
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activate and make it feel like it’s productively populated by people
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um you know who need it for prototyping as opposed to just sitting around and having a meeting that’s outside of your
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house like so I do think a lot of I would say a lot of non-physical product companies
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may still have vestigial Innovation Labs post covid um but you know a lot of places
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um a lot of places you go um most like most companies you go to I don’t know if this if you would validate
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this like most companies you go to you’re like where is everybody at like there’s not a whole lot of energy in the
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office period yeah do you dispute that I I definitely don’t dispute it I think
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it’s uh it is a grind for people to attract uh their employees into the
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office that’s not any great Epiphany um but there’s a lot of the stuff you do
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is like training events where like everybody does come into the office to get trained by Dan and his team right I
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would distinguish that that actually they use that as a reason to come together somewhere else and that is kind
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of the model you know I’ll I’ll share my my two cents the model I’m seeing people are not going to the office but they
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will go to a location where they can come together and they can create an experience and Innovation often thrives
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outside the office and you have to create the conditions it it’s uh but but that that’s uh I think becoming more and
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more of a norm for my observation uh I will just note that questions are
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rolling in and I’m gonna we should take some we should definitely take some questions and then I wanna I wanna see
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if I can provoke you a little bit by talking about the problem that that Consultants cause with Corp in the
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corporate Innovation space all right I will accept your provocation before we take a couple of the questions and
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there’s a provocation out there I love a good provocation um I I want to just turn back to you for
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a minute because I I can’t let you off the hook yet you were a journalist you started as a journalist you worked for
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years as a journalist and as a contributing editor um why does a journalist go into an
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entrepreneurial startup world it’s not easy I know you’re a business journalist but a lot of people will stay on the
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sidelines what brought you into what I would consider a startup and a lead was a startup uh in my eyes what yeah what
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brings you into that and mean peer pressure is the short answer like my two co-founders Frank Hertz and Scott Cohen
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you know had done some media startups together before that were successful and
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it got Acquired and you know built really great communities of people and they were sort of always we would get together for lunch or for coffee every
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once in a while they’d be like come on you must have an idea for a publishing media conference startup that we that we
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should do together and um you know a lot of the problem with journalism to be totally honest is like you know it’s
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really fun to go someplace you know like Walt Disney imagineering as an example like I went there as they were heading
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to the 50th anniversary of that organization and like so they hang out at Walt Disney imagineering for a couple
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days and like meet people who work directly with Walt and see a lot of their prototypes and test like that’s
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super fun but like that’s a product that you then sell once you know like it gets sold to Wired Magazine it runs in print
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in Wired Magazine it shows up online and then you’re like oh that whole multi-month process of writing that
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article like is now behind me versus like you know when you have a community we now have like dozens and dozens of
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research reports like recorded webinars um articles by people like yourself that
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they’ve written and so it really becomes like a collection of content plus a community of people you know on
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the website in our slack Channel and at our in-person events that gets a little bit more value you know
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it’s not just a piece of content that I am selling to a magazine you know that gets published and I feel proud of for a
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couple days and then move on with my life but it you know it has turned into something bigger and hopefully like more
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useful hopefully you know in service to the people who love this kind of role and know that
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it’s hard and are trying to to move the needle inside companies inside government agencies inside non-profits
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do you have you have you been able to kind of borrow uh some insights or
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practices from some of the innovators or organizations that you’ve um you know observed or visited worked
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with because you’re constantly surrounded by people in The Innovation space I’m curious how much how much is
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rubbed off if you’ve been able to kind of borrow some of that wisdom and apply it to in a lead
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oh it’s it’s really a good question I mean I I think we just do a lot of you
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know the best people in corporate Innovation roles like have good antenna for like
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how is our customer changing and how is technology changing and they’re not afraid to like actually test stuff so
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like we do do a lot of like Hands-On testing to understand like what are the capabilities what are the limits of
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things I mean as an example just in the last couple weeks we were looking at various
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um generative AI platforms and like poking and prodding and seeing like okay what can you do with
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um you know with Adobe and what can you do with Dolly and chat GPT and Bard and you know Microsoft Bing and literally
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just getting getting the group together and banging on those things um to see what they can do and what we
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like about them and what we don’t like about them I I like that as a deliberate practice if we’re going to talk about
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something we should go out and experiment ourselves and fail learn so that we then have some primary
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experience um we don’t always do that it’s easy to talk about things but not actually do
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them let me uh I I you know I mentioned this to you before we we jumped on uh
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for the for this podcast but one of the things I always love to explore is deliberate practices there’s something
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you just put out as a moderated panel which I thought was awesome on Twitter and maybe it’s on LinkedIn also people
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should look it up it’s really nice practices when you’re doing a fireside chat um what are some things that you would
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advise people from The Innovation world to some practices that that you think
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have worked really well for other companies or individuals even that you would share with uh with a friend who
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who comes to you to ask for advice around how to be a better innovator a better corporate innovator
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you know it’s such a good question I mean I think that Communications and making sure that you are messaging and
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branding what you’re trying to do is really important and making sure it’s it’s very inclusive that it you know
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often people will tell me as they were having that call the like post-mortem of
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like hey your team got shut down or you got let go what went wrong they’re like well we didn’t really communicate enough
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about what we were trying to do and what was going well and what results we were delivering like you guys were experts at
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this at Pfizer in terms of creating the whole dare to try brand and you know stickers and you know just the you
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remember that yeah no it was a great example that’s when we refer to a lot just because people in big companies are
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really busy and they don’t care about stuff that is not specifically their job and is not related to their bonus and so
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if you’re doing something around Innovation it’s very easy to get like a forgotten or B like vilified quite
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frankly like oh those are the cool kids that you know they just got the company to rent them an office down in SoHo and
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the rest of the company is here in Midtown and they’re off office has the cold brew on tap and they have yogibo
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chairs to sit on and we’re sitting here in like you know uh uncomfortable chairs
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from Staples or whatever I have no chair that is but now I gotta research that why don’t I have one yeah you know like
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a bean bag it’s like a high-end beanbag chair Yogi Bose um so you know so I definitely think
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communication is a practice I mean like people need to create videos and do
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webinars and publish like we we ran into a guy at Bechtel the construction company who had published a hardcover
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book talking about the results of their Innovation program like literally a coffee table book you know where you
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could just thump it on the coffee table and say like if you want to know what we’ve been doing like here it is plunk you know love that that’s clever you
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know to build on your point there was a company I think it’s United Therapeutics years ago their annual report they found
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people weren’t reading it so they made it a comic strip um I think they made it into some other
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kind of show they used all these different unexpected mediums and I what I get from you on this is if you want to
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innovate you got to be Innovative and you also need to brand you need to communicate well because you could
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easily get lumped in as those guys or those fools for that matter that’s that
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that’s a real problem I think that that could be the source yeah I think there’s always a risk when you’re doing you know we definitely have written about you
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know people doing comic books as a way to communicate like your you know Lowe’s Home Improvement did one at one point
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that we have some excerpts from on our site um there’s always a risk in like looking
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like a lightweight and so I do think you know figuring out how to get c-level Executives to you know be on your
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internal podcast or be on your webcast um and and sort of give them some
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visibility and show that they’re supportive of what you’re trying to do like that that is definitely important I
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like it Scott I’m going to stop monopolizing all the questions for the moment there are a few that have been
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rolling in I’m gonna I’m gonna Turf them over to you maybe I’ll even add my two cents but I really would like to hear
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from you on it uh so somebody asked do you feel that Innovation accelerators or more popular now in corporations than in
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the past what’s your thought about that are they more pervasive and popular I don’t
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really know what like when you say accelerator maybe you have to be a little more specific because there’s
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like a set of terms like Innovation accelerators Innovation Labs incubators there’s sometimes now called Venture
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Studios I don’t know you know because when when people say Venture studio to
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me I usually think oh that’s like an outside firm like high alpha or Mach 449
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that has some entrepreneurs maybe has some funding and is really creating something with a corporate externally
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but then a lot of people use the term Venture Studio to basically mean the same thing as an incubator like a place where you
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sort of incubate cultivate ideas for new businesses or new product offerings yeah
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they do get used interchangeably a lot I often think of accelerators as taking a piece of your startup Capital
30:12
um incubators being internal but maybe these are just all false distinctions and just uh being used interchangeably
30:19
and I guess when you also say did the person sorry I’m not looking at the LinkedIn Stream So did the person say Innovation accelerator right like so
30:26
probably not startup you know because startup accelerators I think there definitely has been a
30:32
decline in like corporate interest in sponsoring accelerators
30:38
um I I don’t think that’s been like a growth business you know Tech Stars was was really trying to Foster that for a
30:43
long time and many of the people in that team are now off doing other stuff uh in
30:49
the last year or so just because I think that model maybe it worked well when you
30:54
were getting 10 or 12 startups to come to Minneapolis or to come to Boston or come to LA and spend some time with your
31:01
Executives and on your campus and then when everything went virtual I think a lot of that value of like the contact in
31:08
The Interchange started to started to go away too there was a question that’s a little bit of an adjacency here what do
31:15
you think about companies that use private sector accelerator incubators like Plug and Play or the new lab is
31:21
part of their open Innovation strategy I I think it can work really well I mean
31:28
it’s better to have some kind of startup engagement and interaction than to have none but I
31:35
think like the ultimate place you need to get to is a mindset where like whatever industry you’re in there are
31:42
probably a handful of places around the world that have relevant startups to you right like if we said
31:49
okay you’re an industrial company and you’re thinking about how Robotics are going to change your your life you know
31:57
in your organization’s business like you would start off by saying like Okay you want to be looking in Pittsburgh Boston
32:03
Silicon Valley and I’m not sure where the fourth place would be like maybe it’s in you know Beijing Shanghai Hong
32:10
Kong somewhere in Asia maybe it’s in Tokyo like so that where you really need to get in terms of startup scouting is
32:17
not saying oh let’s just have a relationship with Plug and Play or you know Mass challenge which is across the
32:23
street here but like let’s think about our industry where are the startups that are going to be relevant for us to
32:29
invest in partner with acquire they are much more geographically dispersed now
32:34
than they were pre-covered and let’s have a strategy for like tracking them being aware that they exist thinking
32:41
about how we want to engage with them and then yeah potentially sometimes it is investing and acquiring
32:48
um but you know Silicon Valley is not the end-all and the be-all New York Boston Tel Aviv or not the end-all and
32:55
the be-all and so like I do worry about that the company where it’s like they feel like they’ve checked the Box
33:00
because they have a relationship you know with us startup you know accelerator like Los Angeles
33:07
cleantech incubator it’s a great place but like every Energy company is not there in the LA area it’s pretty I I’ve
33:14
got one more question I’m going to throw out to you it’s a short one but I thought it was kind of interesting what’s one of the wildest ideas you’ve
33:21
seen coming out of an innovation conference that you’ve hosted or an innovation event something that my
33:28
interpretation is something that that really struck you is is uh memorable and off the beaten path
33:36
I forget which conference it was but like we were talking it may have been like an event we did in Seattle where we
33:41
were hanging out with Starbucks a little bit you know and they’re seeing their their first Reserve Roastery but we were
33:46
talking about smell and you know there’s just this idea of like it’s been wafting around for a while
33:54
like this idea of like okay so there’s we do a lot of stuff visually like zoom
33:59
and reading uh we do a lot of stuff um auditorily but like how could you
34:05
sort of commercialize scale mass-produce smell um and I remember I think I remember
34:12
that coming out of one of our Seattle events just because smell is such an important part of like so much stuff
34:17
right like hotels probably think about how they want to smell when a guest first opens the door of the room it’s
34:23
not just in food and beverage but it’s in all kinds of places um gardening companies like you know uh
34:30
you know someone like a Home Depot or Lowe’s like they they think about how their Garden Center maybe should smell
34:36
and then I think there have been some startups like there was one that was doing a kind of iPhone attachment that
34:43
would be able to like communic allow you to communicate over the internet via
34:48
smell so that’s probably the weirdest thing definitely off the beaten path I’m very intrigued now I’ll have to search
34:55
for that you know especially as the fall comes in the New England and even the East Coast by where I am they’re the
35:02
smells of fall you see it but you can actually the scent there’s a particular scent that tells you Summer’s over and
35:09
fall is here so I love that that’s an interesting one I’ve got I have one more
35:16
um sort of ask of you I have a game that I like to play that’s called myth or reality and I generally like to ask just
35:24
read out a statement some conventional wisdom and then put you on the hot seat to tell me do you think it’s a myth or
35:30
is it a reality as you could probably guess in life very few things are black and white and these won’t be black and
35:37
white either but I’m interested to get your read on it are you uh you up for playing a game yes I am up for playing a
35:44
game all right always I’m gonna throw this out to you Scott the first one very
35:50
much hitting at home for you the Boston area is the premier hotbed of
35:55
Entrepreneurship and Innovation is that a myth or is that a reality
36:02
um I think that’s um myth unless you look through really specific lenses like
36:07
biotech or robotics tell me more I know you did The Innovation Trail so you have some deep insights about Innovation yeah
36:14
I would say like the reality is yeah Boston has been doing science medicine Technology Innovation much longer than
36:21
Silicon Valley but like Silicon Valley you know starting in the PC era was
36:26
really great at getting technology into people’s homes and then you know with uh apple and the iPhone and
36:33
um getting technology into people’s hands and so they have built a lot of the really important
36:40
consumer technology and platform companies out there and so Boston today
36:45
is really good at a few specific sectors of innovation a lot of it really science
36:51
based and kind of Discovery based so I would say like myth in terms of the way you you framed it yeah that that’s a
36:58
fair answer thank you I’d like the Nuance in that all right this one is a little bit more about the corporate
37:04
Innovation function that we were talking at the start of the conversation Innovation requires executive buy-in is
37:12
that a myth or is that a reality it’s a myth actually I don’t think you
37:17
need Executive buy-in I think you could really successfully innovate with Frontline employees and middle managers
37:24
and maybe a few directors here and there being on board um you know
37:31
the the reason that’s a myth is that if you see a customer need or you see a way to streamline something and you make it
37:37
happen and you build something for that need like I’m spending some time over at a trade show at the Boston Convention
37:43
Center like it’s a run by a company talking to their customers so if you see a customer need
37:49
and you serve it and the customer wants to buy it I don’t think you need c-level buy-in for that kind of innovation you
37:57
know but obviously that stuff with a very short path to deployment um but yeah I think it’s I think it’s a
38:02
myth that you need executive buy-in and their blessing for everything that happens in a big company
38:08
I I appreciate that one because it’s almost always conventional wisdom if you don’t have the CEO and the senior
38:15
Executives on board you’ll never be able to get lift off in any real corporate Innovation so I like that which leads me
38:22
to the next myth of reality question in a very sort of a kind of tangential way
38:27
are startups always more Innovative than established companies
38:33
myth a reality to you no I think that’s a reality I mean large
38:38
companies are in the business of leveraging brands that they’ve created and extending product lines that they’ve
38:45
created and in a way the Pharma industry I think is ahead of most other
38:50
Industries right and that they’ve spent the last 10 to 15 years acknowledging that that most Innovation comes from the
38:59
startup sector and smaller biotech and Pharma companies you know it’s a it’s a
39:04
small distinction of what’s a biotech startup versus a Pharma startup you know but I I do think that that industry has
39:11
said like a lot of Innovations come from startups and so like we were just discussing like let’s figure out who they are let’s meet with them all the
39:18
time let’s make investments let’s do deals where we’re buying rights to them and
39:23
let’s let’s just acknowledge that maybe startups are more Innovative than big
39:28
companies um you know if it were a baseball game and it was like the startup team versus
39:33
the big company team um I would definitely bet on the startup team this is some kind of innovation
39:40
baseball game and you know involves quick movement and Agility and actually getting something to the market
39:48
um that’s that’s relevant to the consumer to play on that stuff to play in that motor for it then it’s possible
39:54
that somebody could get up to the plate and hit a home run but they’re not gonna they’re not gonna win the long game it’s
40:00
possible but they’re probably not going to be the startup Yankees sorry Red Sox fans and Scott
40:07
maybe not this year either that’s a bad metaphor for 2023. yeah I mean I just
40:13
don’t think big companies should dilute you may have other questions that we should get to I just don’t think big companies should delude themselves about what they’re good at and so like I wrote
40:21
a whole Harvard Business review article basically saying why I don’t think we should use the word entrepreneurship or
40:27
say corporate entrepreneurs because it really does delude you into thinking like oh yeah we have this great guy Dan
40:34
and we’re gonna have him set up a startup with seven of his friends from the big company and oh yeah it’s it’s
40:41
not going to be exactly like a startup because they only have one investor which is our big company and we can shut
40:47
off the funding whenever we want like that’s not how startups work no and you
40:52
also don’t have the same skin of the game either that’s a it’s a real yeah right what is the upside for you right
40:57
we’re not going to turn you into a billionaire because then all your co-workers would be jealous if you became a billionaire are there any
41:03
companies you’ve come across that do have a thriving entrepreneurial culture like a real entrepreneurial culture
41:10
um where they have kind of mini startups have you seen that uh a bit of an aside but I can’t help but ask you that yeah I
41:15
mean there’s definitely some good examples of companies like Intuit or companies like WL Gore or
41:22
um who else in the in the Bay Area like Adobe has done a lot of good entrepreneurial stuff but then like when
41:28
you really are looking for okay who has built a you know really valuable true startup it tends to
41:35
be like the ex Adobe employee or the ex-google employee just because I mean I
41:41
I think that the you know the key difference between a
41:48
startup in the real world and a startup bouncing around inside a corporate entity is like is what I just touched on
41:54
single funding versus multiple sources of funding and startups in the real
42:00
world get a chance to Pivot a lot you know they just need to kind of figure out how to keep raising money
42:06
um there’s never that one person that can turn out the lights in the way that there is inside a large company and so
42:12
that persistence in real startups is often what gets them to you know two
42:18
really big League success yeah it’s a great that’s a great point it is that Diversified Investment Portfolio you are
42:25
constantly fundraising it’s uh it is a reality um I have a penultimate myth or reality
42:32
question for you AI will simulate creativity to a level which will make
42:38
human beings as creative engines obsolete in the not so distant future
42:44
is that a myth or is that a reality
42:49
and I’m scared to hear your answer yeah it’s a big business yeah I know it’s a big question and I don’t think I know
42:57
the answer to it yet I mean I I guess I feel like it may
43:03
be a reality in terms of just generative AI producing so many different options and kind of letting you tune and turn
43:10
dials on the options until you get the song you want or the marketing copy that you want or the exact article you want
43:18
um so I think that may be a reality in that like we really are going to face a moment where kind of have to ask the
43:23
question of like okay so what are humans gonna do now and that we’re not going to
43:28
do a lot of these jobs that involve stringing words together or creating images designing stuff writing music
43:37
um I think we’re getting close to that for sure which I hope isn’t too depressing a note to end on but I always
43:45
feel like it’s a little too polyanish to just say like oh AI is our friend AR is going to be a tool don’t worry too much
43:51
about AI yeah I I have one last thing to ask you and I know we’re we’re running
43:57
out of time I could talk to you all day Scott I really and I always say that but I immediately do mean that this is
44:03
there’s I feel like man we always scratched the surface there’s so much more and there for the folks who’ve
44:08
asked questions that we don’t get to I promise we’ll jump into LinkedIn we’ll respond
44:13
um but if you had to give advice to somebody entering this corporate
44:19
Innovation game um what would you tell them what would you tell them to do where could they
44:25
learn and get better aside from go to impact go to Inno lead which I would
44:31
tell them because there’s so many so much great stuff you almost can’t run out of out of of content but aside from
44:37
that what would you advise them what would you tell them yeah I wasn’t going to plug impact or in a lead but like I
44:44
do feel like the number one thing is that like is to understand what is the expectation here let’s create a
44:50
reasonable expectation of what this group of people can do inside of five thousand ten thousand twenty thousand
44:55
person company so to understand that expectation from whoever hired you or whoever kick-started this
45:03
and what are the metrics for Success over what time period right those are
45:08
kind of the three basic things and it gets back to what we were discussing before like there’s always a clock that’s ticking where people are going to
45:15
want to see some concrete results from you and so that’s that’s
45:21
the advice that I would give I mean it troubles me sometimes you know Word of Mouth travels slowly and so over the 10
45:27
years we’ve been doing inner lead when someone discovers us and they’ve been in the job for two years we’re like and
45:34
they’re kind of still in the exploration learning mode we’re like first of all you should wish you discovered a sooner
45:39
you know and second of all like two years have gone by and you’re still doing meetings with stakeholders and
45:45
you’re still like figuring out what the Innovation strategy should be like you know part of you know part of being
45:52
networked and being part of communities is like to help you move faster right and get you know get to those concrete
45:58
outcomes sooner because you don’t have two years to research what should this job be and
46:04
to take a lot of meetings and to throw your first Innovation day and buy everybody cupcakes like that can’t be
46:10
the plan you know I I you know I said it was going to be one of the last words but I have to just comment on that Scott
46:17
I think the kind of the unique recipe that not just what inner lead does but great innovators is that
46:23
cross-pollination from other Industries other jobs we always say that great ideas they basically have come from
46:30
somewhere from someone outside of your domain and it’s hard to do that if
46:36
you’re looking this way with tunnel vision which many people are so it seems to me that maybe one of the the great
46:42
takeaways from this is you have to go outside you have to look outside you have to scan and you know it’s not easy
46:49
to do it just by yourself but there are things out there that can help you so I am just adding adding my my Builder
46:56
contortion to your your uh your input there I recognize I didn’t answer your
47:02
provocation I very successfully dodged it I don’t know if we do we have time
47:07
for one mo one last thing yeah my provocation is just you know I
47:14
do think that there’s you know there’s kind of this tautology around Innovation
47:19
which is like you know how do you know if an innovation like how do you set this the how do you create the
47:25
foundation for a successful Innovation program well you create it by enduring and by lasting for more than two or
47:32
three years you know and so like you know success means circular you you survive a few a few CEO changes or a few
47:40
strategy changes or a few ups and downs in the stock market and that’s how you know you’re successful and it also
47:46
creates the you know lays this lays the groundwork for more success so like the
47:51
provocation is I do think that there’s a lot of folks in the world of advising and Consulting and training that it’s
47:58
hard for them to talk about Innovation as you know this is a 5 10 15 20 year
48:04
commitment of like really building a muscle and building a capability I think a lot of folks want to position things
48:11
as a quick fix you know one Workshop can do it one Consulting engagement can do it maybe even one keynote speaking gig
48:18
like just throw a great Innovation day and have the right keynote speaker there and like all that stuff like is
48:27
just you know is can be constructive but I don’t think I think we’re we’re you
48:33
know there’s many people in the advising and Consulting world that are scared to talk about this as like a 10-year
48:39
project you know which it truly is to really impact the culture of a large
48:44
company and get people working in new ways versus is it Innovation day or innovation week
48:50
you know so maybe that’s for a future conversation I think it is that I’ll just say this one thing Scott is that as
48:57
an advisor or a consultant if you don’t come out and tell your clients that we
49:02
can come up with ideas but if you’re not committed to the Long Haul to actually creating real and Lasting change this
49:10
might solve your problem a little bit now but it won’t transform things for later the reality is is that was it was
49:17
it John Maynard Keynes who said we’re all dead in the long run all right and everybody everybody is a
49:23
short attention span thinker and you know likes quick fixes to stuff who carries about 10 years I’ll be at
49:29
another company or maybe I’ll maybe I’ll be working with Inno lead who knows you know that’s so people don’t know and
49:36
they just sort of focus on the here and now but I do think you said from the very beginning that good stories will
49:43
travel if you communicate them well and you brand them and maybe that’s the challenge keep those stories relevant
49:49
and I can’t think of any better Storyteller than than you and also the work you do at interleach so I I want to
49:56
just say first off thank you for the provocative conversation um I thoroughly enjoyed it I hope all
50:02
the folks who are listening have enjoyed it people who watch these on replay or shorts you’re definitely going to enjoy
50:07
it but for now I thank everyone for tuning in and uh come to to our next one
50:13
where we’re going to deliberately explore something else and new and don’t be shy reach out to Scott and hopefully
50:19
we’ll see you guys at impact as well but for now Scott thank you again and uh tune in next time for our next delivered
50:26
episode take care everyone all right thanks Dan catch you later Scott