Casanova for Chief Innovation Officer?

The dating game can teach us how to innovate

I’ve been married for nearly 20 years so clearly I like giving others advice on dating.  So here’s my simple formula for finding a partner:

1.   Opposites attract – so practice being the ‘real you’, in fact, become a ‘super you’.  Be louder about what you believe in, accentuate your idiosyncrasies.  Don’t bland out.

2.   Lower your standards – kiss a lots of frogs, dating is a volume game and if you’re not in stock no one will buy.

3.   Be tenacious – if you keep asking eventually you’ll get what you want.  (I once made the mistake of asking my wife why she dated me and she said it was because I kept calling, was punctual and ‘in work’. Hmmm).

Right now innovators everywhere can learn a lot from these ‘attraction strategies’.  When we first started ?What If! nearly 20 years ago innovation was all about extending products and services further into their category, to grab more shelf space, throat share, wallet share.  Over the last two decades the pace of change has accelerated and markets have become more blurred.  Fuelled by opportunities the internet has provided and stimulated by brands like Virgin - overnight we’ve all become experts at category mental gymnastics.  

Most innovators I know have gotten very good at thinking broadly beyond their market and toying with adjacent territories.  We’re no longer shocked at Vodafone becoming a bank (M-Pesa), at Tesco becoming a mobile phone company or Amazon selling golf clubs.  What’s next?  KFC buy an airline? (hmmm – long flight, good movie, snuggled up with a bucket of shame – hang on, that's not so bad…).  Innovators today have to think very flexibly about core competencies, the role their brand could play in someone’s life - they’ve learnt to ignore category labels.  My little electric car isn’t a car – it’s a dry cycle, it competes directly with my bicycle and on rainy days it wins. 

So we’ve got good at thinking flexibly about markets and categories, but what about doing something about it?  Can you become the kind of business that doesn't just talk about mashing categories but actually does it?

Here’s where the rules of dating come in.  How can corporations use the laws of attraction to find new partners?

1.   Don't bland out:  Suddenly it’s become very easy to publish a point of view.  Social media affords brand owners more edge, more of a provocative voice, something they need if they’re to meet new organisations that could end up being great bedfellows.  Cisco have a futurologist called Dave Evans, who told me that soon we would all live to 1000!  Provocative perspectives like this attract unimaginable conversations and opportunities.  Partnerships aren’t made just on rational terms, there needs to be some electricity, a punchy perspective on how the world is going to be is a prerequisite for partnership.  A silent company without bloggers, clubs, controversial speakers, a visible opinionated CEO – all this reduces the chances of attracting a mate and co-creating something new.

2.   Incubate new relationships:  You wouldn't go on a first date to your parent’s house.  So too Telefonica subsidiary O2 has pioneered a wide range of partnerships through attracting talent from outside it’s area of expertise and allowing it to flourish away from head office.  O2 looks increasingly unlike a mobile phone company and more like an entertainment business.  Contrast this with Tesco who acquired banking skills bringing them ‘in-house’.  No time or space for a fresh category-busting identity to emerge?  Looks like just another bank to me.

3.   Be tenacious:  Organisations that strive for something beyond current revenue are more likely to develop in unexpected and exciting ways.  IKEA’s corporate purpose has always been to improve lives through making good design more widely available.   It’s because IKEA don't let go of this ‘higher purpose’ that they now make flat pack houses, in partnership in the UK with LiveSmart@ Home.

So let’s promote Casanova to CIO – sounds like fun to me!

Innovation: Strategy or Serendipity?

Can you plan innovation or get good at being lucky?

In my last blog I wrote about my buddy Dave Green, CEO of Boston based Harvard Bioscience and pioneer of regenerative medical equipment.  (Scroll down or go to July 25^th entry at http://mattkingdon.blogspot.com/ ) Last week Dave and I had a long conversation about how the development of his stem cell bioreactor actually happened.  I was interested in the detail of where the idea came from and how he got it ‘over the line’.   What he told me confirmed a long held belief I have about innovation - that it’s more fruitful to see it as a game of ‘managed serendipity’ than strategy.

So here’s the story in a nutshell:  As far back as 2004, CEO Dave Green became fascinated with regenerative medicine and the power of harvesting human stem cells to recreate tissue and eventually functioning organs.  Dave’s interest and vision for the company was well known throughout his business.  But it wasn't until 2008 that three of Dave’s sales team mentioned to him on separate occasions that customers were requesting unusual modifications to Harvard’s equipment. In each case the customers were asking for Harvard’s product to be super-sterilised.  As Dave says “I got curious and called the customers myself, why did they want us to modify our kit?  I found they were all trying to do the same thing, the race was on to grow bits of humans and they were using our equipment to do it!”  At the same time as Dave was quizzing his customers he read an article in the Lancet about surgeon Paolo Macchiarini who was pioneering in this field. “So I called him up, jumped on a plane to Italy to meet him and the rest is history, we ended up licensing the bioreactor invention”.  Now Dave’s 100 year old medical supplies company is morphing into the leader in this fast moving and exciting new field. 

What’s fascinating about this story is Dave’s self commentary on the process: “I’m struggling to see where and how we innovated, this felt like the antithesis of the creative process, there were lots of us, lots of analysis, no eureka moment, no crazy genius, no burning platform – we just got on and did it”.  I’ve heard this before – the innovator doesn’t think they have been that innovative, just got on and grabbed what felt at the time like a pretty obvious opportunity and diligently delivered on it, whereas to the outsider the same activity looks like a spectacular act of innovation, almost genius.

Digging deeper into Dave’s story I notice several critical activities:

1.       He was fascinated in regen medicine, held many meetings to discuss it - effectively he primed his team to be on the look out for any angle, any opening into this new branch of science.

2.   He sat near the sales team, it was easy for his guys to wander in and say “hey boss, I just had a weird request…”

3.    Dave is pretty widely read, but not only did he make a connection to the article in the Lancet he had the guts to make a call, drop everything, get on a plane and seal a deal.  No process, no form filling, no committees, just the CEO making a decision.

I think these are significant.  What Dave was doing was creating an environment in which ‘happy accidents’ can end up driving company innovation strategy.  Think about the critical elements here – CEO is personally engaged with company products (so everyone at work’s antennae is primed), CEO throws up a vision but not the solution (so people at work bring ideas to him), CEO is physically proximate (makes it easy to wander into his office), CEO reads beyond his brief, can make ‘adjacent leaps’ and CEO takes personal responsibility for landing the deal (only he had the power to do this).

Serendipity is what happens when you discover something really great but not exactly what you were expecting.  It happens to the ‘prepared but open’ mind and to those who can capitalise fast on their discovery.  (The link between serendipity and innovation is strong; Alexander Flemming pioneered anti-biotics when he accidentally left a petri dish of staphylococcus bacteria open and mold grew that appeared to kill the bacteria).  But serendipity isn’t the same as luck, it’s based on lots of hard work and clear thinking.  What might look like a happy accident is actually the result of setting a vision, lots of communication, exploring beyond the brief and critically swift decision making. 

PS: At school I was told Issac Newton was sitting under an apple tree and the falling apple caused the theory of gravity to pop into his head.  Clearly I shouldn't have gone to school and had Wikipedia existed I’d be better off as I’d have found out that Newton had been grappling with various theories of physics for years when one day he recalled apples falling in his grandmother’s orchard.  He was also connected and wealthy enough to drive his theory ‘over the line’ and launch it to world.