Adam Burns
Jack Anderson, Innovation Specialist, Chevron
We have a lot of ground rules, like, “Don’t judge,” “Be open to new ideas.” And, by the way, don’t these sound like lovely sentiments?
But how do you make them happen in a real culture?
Kimberly Thompson, Senior Director Global Branding & Public Relations, Whirlpool Corp.
People need to know that there’s a time for the blank sheet of paper, and there’s a time to start honing in and start thinking about, now, what would make that successful.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
They say an army marches on its stomach. For business, innovation is food – it’s never not important. Everyday, no matter the economic climate, organisations have to eat. This, then, is a cookery program for your company – the recipe for innovation success.
Bracken Darrell, President, Whirlpool Europe & EVP, Whirlpool Corp.
I think what most people want to hear is you know go put bean bags on the floor. Bring a pool table into the lobby. You know have a – everybody wear flip-flops to work, and you’re going to get more innovation.
Vince Voron, Associate Vice President, Coca-Cola
We tear down walls. We play music. We have a lot of white space…
Bracken Darrell, President, Whirlpool Europe & EVP, Whirlpool Corp.
But I guarantee you, the companies that do that, don’t only do that. They have processes that drive, that attract and drive innovation.
Vince Voron, Associate Vice President, Coca-Cola
That interaction and designing around a round table through an integrated marketing approach – a lot of companies talk about it, but Coca Cola's actually really, really doing it. We have the same team and group that's designing television commercials, Idaho billboards, packaging, in-store merchandising and digital marketing and we're all on the same team. And it fosters a lot of – we create serendipity for innovation I guess is how we like to talk about it.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
Vitally, innovation is not just for creative thinkers. Pragmatists and those with business brains have a variety of solutions at their disposal – including the Six Sigma Thought Map, which creates a visual representation of a team’s thoughts, ideas and questions relative to accomplishing their project goal.
And the biggest stumbling block to success is often the very foundation of your business: your structure.
Robert LoCascio, CEO, LivePerson:
When we started to reach $100 million in sales, about 500 employees, I thought we started to lack innovation because we got very structured.
The first thing is when things grow, you just want to control them more. And when you control, you basically drive out the innovation below and so a year and a half ago, that’s when I set out and said, “We’re not innovating, and we have to blot the structures, we have to flatten the organization, and we’ve got to give people the power to create.”
Kimberly Thompson, Senior Director Global Branding & Public Relations, Whirlpool Corp.
You know, whatever it is that you’re working on, we always ask three major questions. Will it win with the consumer, does it beat the competition, and does it bring shareholder value. And so throughout the entire process, and, as you can imagine, the creativities and the business side, they have different perspectives on how to answer those questions, but when we ask the same questions of both groups, it’s good for them to hear each other’s answers and then think about how that comes together.
Jim Swartz, Chief Information Officer, Sybase
It’s very critical – not that IT be aligned with the business, because aligning means that they’re someone in separate silos and they’re sort of trying to get in line, but actually coming together and working very closely as a team. And so what we’ve tried to do is bring our IT people together with our business people on projects and it’s not so much an alignment issue as it is working together on a team in a project basis to achieve an end-goal. Now what is critical, though, is that this comes from the top down.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
One person who understands the absolute importance of innovation to his company’s business model – and the importance of driving that understanding from the top down – is Herbert Hainer, CEO of global sports colossus Adidas.
Herbert Hainer, CEO, Adidas Group
When I took over in 2001 I still do remember in my first press conference when we did the annual results, and I put five points on the chart which I said, “This is where I want to have as a company steered,” and one point was innovation, and the sub-line was that we have to bring out one innovative product every season.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
Since 2001, Hainer’s Adidas has nearly doubled annual revenues, from €6.1 billion, to €11.99 billion in 2010. Flattening the organization to better allow for- and promote the importance of innovation was a vital first step.
Herbert Hainer, CEO, Adidas Group
When I formulate the new agenda for Adidas, we had around 30 people who were working in R&D. And there were two hierarchic levels in between until they come to the board member. We took out the R&D department and let them directly report to the board member of marketing so that they go to the highest level. This on the other hand also showed the importance which we gave to the R&D department within the organization.
V/O
Another example of flat being best comes from one of Fortune magazine’s ‘most admired software companies’ and a ‘top 100 company to work for’, tax software provider Intuit. As vice president for innovation, Roy Rosin says his job is all about…
Roy Rosin, VP Innovation, Intuit
Removing obstacles so people could experiment very quickly.
Roy Rosin, VP Innovation, Intuit
If you have an idea that requires putting up a customer facing website but it takes three months to get into a highly secure lock down data center, well three months just went by before figuring out if you're right or not. So those are obstacles that you have to remove. People have ideas. I don't know if it's a good idea or not. How do I vet it very quickly with ten customers to see if I'm moving in the right direction?
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
This build quick, test small process is a common trait in companies that consider innovation a core value. Why is it not more commonly deployed?
Roy Rosin, VP Innovation, Intuit
So the typical company is still very much focused on top and bottom line and when you're trying to get people to take some risks and do some new things that can be difficult.
How do we get people to pursue more divergent thinking where they're not getting anchored too quickly on one idea, but they're actually going to explore different directions that'll help them see new things that other people have missed.
It has to do with the environment you create. It has to do with saying you don't have to solve out of the gate for large revenues. That you can actually focus first and did you solve the problem well?
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
Google maps is perhaps the most globally famous of these divergent thinking innovations, but Intuit has its own wins.
Roy Rosin, VP Innovation, Intuit
The TurboTax refund card was an example where people on the front lines were looking at some of the customer words coming, the customer feedback. And there's a lot about people who didn't have a bank and that was a surprise to us. We didn't really think we were focused, we weren't focused on that market and we weren't really doing a lot for people who are unbanked.
And these folks figured out a way to move the refund onto a debit card. So not only did it go from six to eight weeks before they got their refund and then they had to pay a lot in check cashing fees. Now it takes one week to get their debit card and there's no fees and they keep a lot more of the money in their pocket.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
So breaking down the walls and fostering a culture of divergent thinking around problems rather than financial goals can have huge benefits. But a silo mentality is more than corporate construct. Like opposing rappers, different job roles spit different lyrics…
Jack Anderson, Innovation Specialist, Chevron
The thing I’m most worried about, and I mean this with all my heart, is the inability of people who have great ideas to express themselves in a way that other people can understand.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
And you don’t have to be a devotee of Biggie or Tupac to know that can create tension. Does innovation reward those who shy away from confrontation?
Jack Anderson, Innovation Specialist, Chevron
The clash is where the relationship is built, and in the clash is probably where the innovation will happen.
So a lot of times what I’ve found in the past is we avoid these uncomfortable points of time, and people – it’s like the elephant in the room – “Oh, we never talk about that.” Or, I have a boss – “Don’t bring that up with Peter.” He’s gonna hear this. He’d love me saying that. “Don’t bring it up with Peter ’cause he’ll get upset.” No. Bring it up with Peter. Talk about it. That’s where the breakthroughs are gonna happen.
When people feel passionate about something, when they’re worried about something, diving in a little bit about what they’re worried about can actually help you get to a breakthrough. You don’t hide them. Bring ’em out. Be transparent about them at least. And then talk about it if you can. You can’t build forward if you don’t go over these stumbling blocks or road blocks or speed bumps. You can’t go forward without addressing some of these.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
Which leaves us with just one elephant of our own…
Robert LoCascio, CEO, LivePerson:
We’ve got to give people permission to fail and that’s one of the things we got to say at the organization, “It’s okay to do it and mess up, it’s okay.” We should have a lot – about half amount of failures as we do successes so let’s do it.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
Chevron has experimented with a lot of different techniques for modeling its approach to failure – including the learning system advocated in the book ‘Failing Forward’.
Jack Anderson, Innovation Specialist, Chevron
How can you learn from what might be called a failure out there? Failure. I plan to go in my project from step A through B through C to D, but our project, by the time we got to B, ends up at X. It’s a good learning! But in some cultures, if you don’t predict that, if you’re not perfect, you’re given a budget to get to D. So it could be looked at as a failure rather than a learning.
How can you change it so that your managers, your leaders, the peers of other people, are looking for the learning rather than the success? And then, if something changes from how you predicted it might go, celebrate that for its learning.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
Whatever your approach, like death and taxes for all of us, two things are certain for innovation.
Bracken Darrell, President, Whirlpool Europe & EVP, Whirlpool Corp.
If the culture you work in is one where people are scared to death to make a mistake, it makes innovation tougher to draw out.
The second thing is, I think if you don’t have a system where you manage risk well, even if you are in a culture where people are willing to take risks and it’s okay to take risk, you’re probably not going to do very well, because if you don’t risk well, then you go out and you’re just making an inordinate number of mistakes per attempt. So, it’s striking that happy middle ground. I think having good risk management which is about great management process, great tollgate processes for this execution of innovation.
Adam Burns, Editor-in-Chief, MeetTheBoss TV
To quote Gordon Ramsey: Innovation – Done. Here’s that recipe again.
1. Collaborative, cross-functional working teams are key. (Beanbags and flip-flops are optional)
2. Use the right tools to enable equal collaboration between business and creative thinkers.
3. Drive innovation from the top.
4. Build quick, test small.
5. Embrace points of friction and change your perception of failure. (But never be afraid to stop a project, and quickly)
Bracken Darrell, President, Whirlpool Europe & EVP, Whirlpool Corp.
High expectations, management excellence, and then managing risks. I think with those three things you really can, any company anywhere can deliver innovation.