Before we begin, I want to introduce our two speakers.
So it's a pleasure to host everyone here today.
And it's an honor to host our two distinguished speakers,
Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn.
Perry is a seasoned entrepreneur, product designer,
chief executive and co-founding member of the
d.school faculty with over 20 years of experience.
He is the founder of Atlas Snowshoe Company,
which grew out of his master's thesis and which remains
the leader in snowshoe design and technology.
Uh, um, I think we all wish we had
a master's thesis that [LAUGHTER] turned it into a successful company.
He was also the head of sales and marketing for Patagonia and
then went on to be named the CEO of the bag company, Timbuk2.
And I think for anybody in the Bay Area or California,
probably the world, uh,
his success there's pretty self-evident because both are
such iconic California and especially Bay Area brands.
Even though, uh, Patagonia is- is down in the Central Coast.
And yet despite his years running startups in corporations,
Perry's true calling is teaching.
Jeremy, meanwhile, never expected to be a designer.
He has a background as a management consultant focusing on economic development.
We'd love to hear more about that.
And then in 2008,
the d.school derailed him completely.
And my understanding, and I think we'll learn about that a little bit today,
is that's kind of the point of the d.school to
derail things and get you to think differently.
His time there showed him that how he worked was more important than what he did.
And today he is dedicated helping others along the same path to becoming a designer.
He currently leads the d.school's work with
organizations as Director of Executive Education,
advising professionals and organizations in how to embed the tools and
design thinking and cultivate an innovative organizational culture.
So with that, it's my pleasure to introduce both of them, uh,
and to turn the presentation over. Perry, Jeremy. [OVERLAPPING]
Thank you, Pax.
Yeah. Thanks very much, Pax.
You did a better job of introducing us than we would have done ourselves.
So Perry and I were planning on using this slide to, uh,
introduce the topic today, uh,
and introduce one another,
but you've done a great job.
So maybe we'll just jump right in, Perry?
Yeah. Go ahead.
Um, at the outset,
what we wanted to say is this question of how to
innovate faster and better in the time of COVID, uh,
is a question on many organizations minds as we're
interacting with leaders and certainly our students as well,
uh, both in the accelerator program and
then also in the executive education programs we run at the d.school.
The question on everyone's mind is how do we make sure that this crisis, uh,
accelerates our firm's ability to innovate and accelerates
the kinds of output that we are looking forward to.
And what we'd say is most folks are focused on output.
And output tends to be the- the focus of many conversations.
And for us, the key actually to innovating faster and better in times
of crisis is to shift focus from output to input.
And I actually spend more time thinking
about what are the inputs that I need to be seeking?
What are the disciplines I need to be undertaking?
What are the practices that I need to be engaging as a business leader,
as an innovator, as a catalyst myself,
um, knowing that outputs are a function of it.
But if you think about wanting to stimulate your imagination,
imagination is triggered by unexpected input.
And so when we think about innovative output,
it's not agnostic of some input.
The question really is,
how do I get deliberate and better at the,
uh, intentionally seeking unexpected inputs that are gonna trigger my thinking.
And so for us, the question of how to
innovate faster and better in times of COVID is really a question
about personal practice in seeking unexpected sources of inspiration.
Yeah. As we- as we go forward, a, we wanted to, um,
introduce with a quote from our favorite two-time Nobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling.
Um, at the- at the core sort of foundation
of what we're gonna talk about in terms of practices,
uh, we ask you this full question about, um,
really the- the- one of the themes you'll hear us talk about this idea of- of generating,
um, enough, uh, creative ideas if you're trying to solve a problem.
Um, so this was something that I know many of you probably saw.
The talk with Bob Sutton and how you round
Bob Sutton did a bunch of research we're gonna reveal.
But we asked a Pauling question really to get a core, um,
concept out- at the very beginning of this talk that's gonna sort of
allow us to talk about some practices but sort of establish,
um, with some data.
Um, essentially putting some numbers behind this quote from Linus Pauling, uh,
how many ideas do you need to have to come up with a commercial success?
So let- let's look at the poll results and see what,
um, what you all, uh, commented.
So we have, uh, you know,
the middle of the curve here around 400 ideas to get to 2-3 commercial successes.
So great, so thanks for participating,
let's show you the results.
So this is some research that [OVERLAPPING] , uh, yeah.
I would say that that's pretty consistent with what we see in organizations.
There is a- there's- there's this- when we think about what- the Linus Pauling quote,
you get a good idea, you need a lot of ideas.
The question essentially is, what's a lot of ideas?
What's the definition of a lot of ideas?
And we see folks routinely underestimate the volume of
material that's required to ultimately deliver a successful commercial output.
So here's the research that Bob Sutton has conducted in
a longitudinal study of innovative firms.
Um, and what you see on the right-hand side is 2-3 old commercial successes.
And this is what we would call an exploration funnel.
But if you work backwards through the funnel,
you see ultimately to get 2-3 successes,
Perry, what needs to happen to get there?
The 12 represents, um, offers that were,
uh, sustained, meaning we would call this term
incubated in the vernacular here at Stanford.
But it means that there was- there was an effort to- to put, um,
a real offer in front of, uh,
customers and sustain them as real offers for a short period of time.
That's the 12. Preceding that,
the 226 is the number of ideas that were actually prototyped,
made in some way,
but we talk a lot at- at Stanford about low resolution prototyping techniques.
But nonetheless, sort of wrap your head around, you know,
already we have 226 things were built,
concepts were put on the- under some type of a, um,
of a prototyping effort to get to the 2-3.
And then the first column is just a number of ideas generated.
The number of independent, um,
ideas maybe on a post-it,
or a piece of paper, on a white board.
But those are the,
the what we'd say is what's interesting is the,
the loss of ideas.
That 95 percent of the ideas don't go on and get prototype.
Ninety five percent of the prototypes don't get incubated.
You know, if you think about that, that's a,
that's a core premise to what we're about to discuss, that Jeremy mentioned.
That so many, um,
leaders and organizations and teams underestimate
the amount of material they need to come up with in the front of their,
what we, we might call this the, the innovation funnel.
But it's, you know, it's the exploration funnel is to,
to come up with new ideas that are gonna be successful.
Are they generating enough material?
And so [OVERLAPPING]
So you can read further if you want some night-time reading.
This will maybe put you to sleep.
Um, so if you need [LAUGHTER] that's great,
but it goes into a lot more detail,
um, to this research.
And again, credit where credit is due.
This is, um, some,
uh, research that Bob Sutton did.
But for us, when we think about this question of innovating faster and better,
it's liberating in a sense to think the first question for the innovator is actually,
how are we filling the funnel?
What is the source of inspiration to,
to get that funnel is f-full as possible.
If you know you're ultimately driving towards commercially successful output,
thinking that your first tool is actually a question of volume, is pretty liberating.
And the, the process does a good job of down selecting,
or getting rid of the material that shouldn't be in the funnel.
But the, the innovators job and the innovative leader's job is actually,
what are the practices where I can routinely be filling the funnel as full as possible?
And this for us, the word that we would use is inspiration.
How are you inspiring or provoking
fresh thinking about solving new problems in the business?
And for us as executives,
and as teachers who interact with executives,
we would say inspiration isn't a word that's really on the corporate agenda.
[inaudible] If folks think of inspiration,
they think of those 1980s posters that hang in the hallways.
They say things like teamwork,
and have like a picture of a l-little boy,
you know, uh, at Tee Ball practice or something, right?
Their inspiration is this kind of fuzzy thing.
But if you think about creative individuals, artists, musicians, designers.
My wife is a fashion designer,
right, uh, er, by training.
And when she wants to go to Paris,
it's not for a vacation, even though it's great.
We love macarons, that's all well and good.
But the reason she wants to go to Paris is
because that's what designers do to get inspired,
to provoke their thinking.
When a design team goes to New York,
they're seeking fresh inspiration.
And we would say that folks who are who's- who see
the responsibility as creative output and generating a,
a high volume of output,
are way more deliberate about sources of inspiration,
than the typical kind of leader or professional in a business environment.
Inspiration is not on the radar at all.
I had a chance, uh,
this past fall to teach a class with
the Grammy Award winning hip-hop artist named Lecrae.
And Lecrae and Brandon and Adam and Sheamus and I,
were interacting with a bunch of students at Stanford,
and we were prompting the students to be really deliberate.
Using a particular tool we teach to be really deliberate about seeking fresh inspiration,
to provoke their thinking as they were solving a challenge in a class.
And we'd given them the assignment,
and then I stepped back and I said,
er, one of the students said, " You know,
I have never really thought about inspiration before."
And I said, "Lecrae, do you have any comments about inspiration?
You know, how do you think about it as a musician?".
And this is what he said, it really struck me he,
he very simply said,
"Inspiration is a discipline."
And he went on to define that discipline.
But for me there wa- that was kind of an ah-ha moment.
I don't hear [NOISE] professionals talking about their discipline of inspiration.
I hear creative professionals,
I hear my wife, I hear my co-teachers,
who are- who see their job as delivering created output,
being really intentional about inspiration.
But it's not something that most of us spend very much attention attending to.
And so today, what we wanna do is,
we wanna share a few practices.
And we use that word practice deliberately,
because a lot of times there's a,
the, uh, w-we can think about, I need a new idea.
It's like I wanna go to the grocery store.
Just gonna pick it up on my way home.
Just like a gallon of milk or something like that, right,
or I'm just gonna grab a head of lettuce.
And what we'd say is,
if you want to be building a robust funnel of creative output,
what you actually have to be doing is
thinking less like a- like somebody going to the grocery store,
and more like a gardener.
Are you cultivating practices that are likely to yield the creative output downstream.
And thinking more like a gardener,
ideas aren't something like,
I just go buy- I go by grocery store,
[NOISE] and quickly pick it up, and I'm on my way home and I'm fixing dinner.
Not at all, there a outflow or an output
of a disciplined cultivation and careful practice.
And so we wanna, er, -explore today,
are what are some of those practices that we have gleaned from
and observed in creative professionals.
That we believe there's a kernel of wisdom there,
that professionals from far beyond, uh,
creative fields can apply to routinely fill their funnels full,
and drive a different kind of output down the funnel.
So let's quickly, Perry, if you want to cover
the [NOISE] practices that we're gonna dive [NOISE] into in then we'll get started.
Okay, so we're gonna go through, um, five practices.
And again, the, the frame is [NOISE], uh,
innovation in time of Covid,
with the crisis if you- your lives are anything like ours,
and Jeremy and I are moving classes online.
We're trying to have, you know,[NOISE] previous things that
there were gonna be trade shows and how are we gonna pull those off.
And we've gotten nothing but sort of,
um, those types of things coming at us.
And so given that,
if we sort of, um, take it as granted,
the Bob Sutton research,[NOISE] the biggest challenge is we need to generate, you know,
enough new ideas, fresh ideas,
to actually vet, to get a breakthrough, and change something.
These are practices that, that,
uh, are proven, and will help you do that.
Okay. So we're gonna talk about combining
perspectives, um, a project-to-product-mindedness.
Um, this practice of reversing polarity,
which I think is, is a hoot,
and then embrace- embracing distractions,
and finally commissioning a portfolio.
So we'll go through each and tell in some cases a few quick stories.
We invite, as Pax said, your questions,
um, so we- we'll hopefully reserve a little bit of time for that.
So the first one is combining perspectives.
And, uh, so Jeremy, you found, uh,
an article from, uh,
a school I didn't recognize.
So it's on there.
Yeah. I, you know, I like to,
I like to scour kind of the,
the, the outer reaches of the Internet.
And I found this website called Harvard Business Review.
I hadn't, um, heard of it before, but it's pretty interesting.
Uh, but, uh, you know,
in all seriousness, diverse teams are smarter.
There's a great simple article that we'd recommend.
Um, and there's a lot of research that indicates,
especially when you're trying to do new work,
um, homogeneous teams aren't the right answer.
And so when you're thinking about,
if we want to be filling the funnel with a lot of material,
one of the simplest levers at your disposal is,
being more deliberate about incorporating unexpected perspectives.
And we'd say this- this is a magical practice to incorporate,
especially in the area of COVID,
because it's not- it's,
it's easier than ever to incorporate an unexpected perspective on your team, right?
Your team's already meeting on Zoom,
all you have to do is think.
What's a perspective that isn't represented in our team—in our team,
or someone whose input might provoke our team's input in a fresh way.
What we'd say is that the shelf life of,
uh, diverse perspectives is pretty short.
Meaning it doesn't take long for an intact team,
to quickly be homogenized in their thinking.
And one of the simplest tactics and practices you can employ as a, uh,
professional as an innovation leader,
is being deliberate about incorporating unexpected perspectives.
This is something that is so easy to do right now,
and yet it's so easy to overlook,
because we're just booking meetings back to back to back to back, and were executing.
And what we'd say is that the leaders who raised their heads up
over the waterline or over the horizon, it's fine to say,
"Who could I bring into this meeting that will provoke
fresh thinking or a fresh input to our team?"
It's a hugely important question,
because new ideas are a function of unexpected connections or new connections.
And if you think about, and you if- I'm sure everybody has seen network models, right?
But you add one person to a network or to a collaboration,
there's exponentially more connections that come.
And a lot of times, that's demonstrated to show the difficulty of
communicating across network, granted, that's true.
But what we'd say, is it also represents
the innovation potential of adding an additional perspective to an early-stage team.
The number of unexpected connections that emerge,
and thus the number of potential ideas.
So you can pour into the top
end of that funnel is truly profound.
Jeremy has got a really, really great example from his days at Patagonia,
that shows just how meaningful it is when you bring
someone that you wouldn't have ordinarily thought to bring, to a new endeavor.
So this is for those of you, uh,
Patagonia is an outdoor,
uh, clothing and equipment company.
Um, started in the '70s by Yvon and Malinda Chouinard, still owned by them.
It's a great company, has a,
uh, big environmental mission.
I- I invite you to take a look at it.
Um, this is a- if you fold it,
a catalog open, I was there in the early 2000s,
and this was a product we launched.
Imagine folding a catalog, opening and spreading in flat.
That's what you're looking at.
This is a product we launched which is still quite, quite innovative.
It's a wet suit.
For those who don't know, a wet suit is something in colder water.
Surfers or divers, or people wear this to stay warm.
Traditionally, it's- it's a onesie, if you will,
like a onesie of neoprene,
and it keeps you warm in the water.
And, um, in that time in Patagonia,
we were very focused on a problem which was,
we needed a stronger set of products,
um, in the spring.
In the winter, you can buy an outdoor equipment, we sell jackets.
Jackets cost more.
It's- so our challenge was,
we had to sell a lot of shorts to make any money.
We need some, some higher priced products and we want to have a presence
in the- in the business of selling things that are associated with spring and summer.
So, um, we thought about, uh,
getting a surfing line going, and,
um, wanted to enter the wet suit market.
And wet suits are, you know,
made of neoprene and,
um, [NOISE] and sourced in certain places.
And we went off and started down the path that
we're going to make a better wet suit with a mindset,
I will- I will say full,
I- I, of cour- of course I'm a surfer.
So I invited myself along on this junket, but, um. [OVERLAPPING]
It's only reasonable, it's a great part of the team.
Yeah, exactly. We had that mindset if it's going to be a neoprene wet suit. I remember,
you know, going on this- this trip and with everybody.
But we did something different and,
um, process of including these different perspectives.
We brought along, um,
a person who is a fabric designer,
who's involved with fabric and sourcing fabrics.
Traditionally in clothing companies,
you- you have, you know,
a designer designs something new, a set of drawings.
A developer develops it,
finishes it, and it goes on through sales.
And it's very much a, you know, waterfall.
It goes from one person to another person, that's another person.
We created if you will sort of a more agile structure with
this- this diversity and brought in this fabric person,
Tatsuya, went on to have a great career and some other organizations.
Um, but came along on this trip,
I remember vividly, Tatsuya is not a surfer,
he just understood fabrics.
I remember him picking up a wet suit and the first thing he did was he smelled it,
he thought smells kind of funny,
and that- that was interesting.
He's, uh, very, uh,
very skinny and the water was quite cold,
so he put on the wet suit and went in the water and was cold.
So he walked away with this new idea which was,
"Wow, this the fabrics wrong.
I could change the fabric."
And ultimately what we have here is the Patagonia wet suit line,
which is in my understanding,
it's still the only wet suit that uses wool,
so it uses wool because wool is, uh,
an antimicrobial, antibacterial, doesn't tend to smell.
It's warmer by weight than neoprene.
Um, the outer part is- is made of some different materials,
it's natural rubber, not- not synthetic.
Um, so it's quite, quite different.
And it actually allows the wet suit to be thinner and lighter,
which gives a better experience,
um, for folks using it.
And to me, it was a good example,
had we not combined perspectives in that early stage and
gotten basically a whole bunch of new fabric ideas at the very, you know,
think of our 4,000,
we all of a sudden had a whole bunch of new ideas because of this fellow
Tatsuya adding them and ultimately resulted in a- in a,
um, very, very innovative product that has stood the test of time,
to be still in a- in a line since I was there in the early 2000s.
That's an incredible story Perry,
just of how much of an impact someone who
has no experience with the particular space you're considering, right?
If you think about inviting a collaborator,
probably pretty low on the- on the average person's lesson would be.
Someone who knows absolutely nothing about surfing, right?
What business does that person have making a wet suit?
And yet it was that kind of naive and totally,
uh, paradigm-less perspective, right?
I'm sure all the other surfers are- are saying,
"Of course it's bulky,
it's a wet suit, of course it stinks, it's a wet suit."
And somebody with a completely different perspective came in and said,
"Well, does it have to be bulky?
Does it have to stink?".
They asked some fundamental questions that folks who are
used to the status quo never even considered questioning.
What we've done is we've considered- we've asked our alums and our programs to- to be
thoughtful about choosing collaborators who represent a different perspective.
We put a few different dimensions,
and granted, these may even be superficial dimensions,
but the idea is being thoughtful about selecting
collaborators whose perspectives are different from your own.
Knowing that it's those differences in
perspective that lead to the fresh thinking that fills the file.
So that's the first practice that we recommend to gain inspiration.
The second practice that we wanted to- that we want to mention is
this idea of moving from a product- a project mindset,
to a product mindset.
In many organizations, whenever new work is commissioned,
it's the- the- the blank project team.
Everything is in terms of project teams.
And what we want- what we- have seen is there is an enormous and untapped,
uh, wealth of resources.
If organizations will start thinking about
some internal capabilities that they've developed to
service their organization as potentially productizable, innovations.
A great example is Amazon.
Amazon web services makes up a nontrivial percentage of their market cap and,
uh, and investor, you know,
anticipations of growth for the company.
And the interesting thing about AWS is it started as an internal function.
It wasn't designed originally as a product that they would sell to developers everywhere,
which now is driving their business and
driving all sorts of meaningful growth for the company.
It started as an internal hack that developers made to make their own lives easier.
And if you trace back the story of AWS. We're not the insiders there.
But as far as we understand it,
you can do a little digging on this yourself.
One of the things that, uh,
precipitated the development of AWS,
which is such a game-changing,
disruptive technology, was, uh,
internal memo Bezos sent to their organization at one point,
maybe even years before AWS has developed,
where he basically said every single function
must be externalizable or you're fired, thank you very much.
Essentially, meaning every line of code that was internal to Amazon,
Bezos was pushing the organization to make everything externalizable,
where folks outside the organization can hook into it.
And for us, there's an amazing question to consider as a leader.
What projects inside my organization a world-class capabilities
that we could actually sell as a product to other customers?
And further, what products do we currently have that
could be entire businesses on their own if we thought differently about them?
And again, we've got a great example from Perry's career,
a little bit of a missed opportunity here you might say.
We had the success story with the- with the wetsuits. So we'll share this story.
But good example of that mindset,
not being present and missing an opportunity.
Yeah, so this is one that is, um,
you know, it's just self,
and this is the straight talk.
We- we- we think that telling you the- all the successes is,
everything goes up and to the right.
This is one that's just something I've reflected on as
a- as a leader at Patagonia, you know,
we- we had an amazing history for those of you, I'm sure everyone,
um, has had some experience with
a fleece jacket of some time and which is a polyester product.
And Patagonia was actually the inventor of that with a- small company,
Malden Mills back in the '70s and the first,
uh, people to commercialize and build fleece jackets.
That technology, um, turn into,
um, many, many products in Patagonia's case,
but one of them was really successful line of base layers, undergarments, uh,
fast wicking t-shirts called Capalene as a liner,
the name of the product.
And we- this was a great line of products.
We had terrific, uh,
people involved with designing and doing it.
And I- I as a- I did not have
this project's product mind and decided-
I had a mindset of I got other problems to do with.
Why would I- why would I worry about something we do world-class?
Well, why would ever- why would ever wear at?
And almost a- I wish I had a mindset of, "Oh,
maybe we want to look at something we're doing
really well and see what opportunities there are."
Instead, I- I- I took the attitude,
I got problems with my spring product mind,
I need to help that team innovate.
I need to go on that surf trip.
Um, and in this period of time I was there.
There was this - this upstart company that started doing
all kinds of things with the same fabrics and the same technology called Under Armour.
People may have seen this, they - they sell in general sporting goods,
they do all kinds of products for um, team sports.
And I remember vividly,
it's just a personal sort of - Patagonia does really well.
The capaline line has grown.
They've, they've innovated there, they're doing terrific.
They're joining things with the product lines.
This is not a story of um, um,
a mistake that's - that they didn't navigate through.
But I'd say as a personal leader I never
thought of looking at the Under Armour example and say,
uh, wow, we - we do amazing things with these same fabrics.
What if - what if we thought about other customers.
Maybe we don't want to sell as, now,
for a company to football teams.
Which is, I think what I saw and just let it alone and never looked at it again.
Instead of saying, wow,
they're doing some really interesting things with the fabrics.
They're changing things.
And y'know ultimately uh,
Patagonia had done a lot of stuff with the technology of capaline.
But as a leader, what I never thought of is simply saying,
we have a capability,
we have - we have innovated.
We have built this business with that capability.
Could I generate a funnel of ideas?
If I took ah - ah - ah - a product mindedness and say,
our ability to do things with this fabric as a product.
What are the many - many ways?
What is - what are my four thousand ideas that would be
something I would say I've learned as a lesson from this - this circumstance.
We have - we have a good friend who's recently written a book where
he talks about oak trees only - only uh,
grow to a certain height,
but they drop acorns.
And if the - if the only focus of
the business leader is to grow the tree taller, there's a problem.
And his question is essentially,
how do you strategically drop acorns which can result in a forest?
And what we'd say is the example of AWS and many others we've seen.
You know, uh, another example comes to my mind.
We recently spoke with the leader of a large hospitality company.
And this leader told us a story about how there's
an internal team that if there's under-performing um,
uh, retail locations, they have a team that comes in and helps bump up their NPS score.
And this leader mentioned how that internal team is
in high demand across the organization.
But hundreds of locations across the organization and many locations are asking,
and we asked a simple question,
have you sold that to restaurants,
to other hospitality comp - to other retailers?
And there was this moment were you can see the leader said,
we've treated it as a project.
We've never thought about that as a new business.
And as long as it's only an internally facing function, that's fine.
It'll make the existing business better.
But there are many functions that could be maybe
even bigger businesses if you shift that mindset a little bit.
So Perry, this your favorite topic here.
This is the third practice.
So this one is reversing polarity.
So it's ah, um,
a deceivingly simple concept.
And one in practice um,
I would say both Jeremy and I,
this is the one we routinely use,
particularly when uh, we're kicking off a project.
Um, it's basically a simple idea that um,
you brainstorm or generate ideas on the opposite.
So um, a good example is recently we have a class called Launchpad,
it's an accelerator at Stanford.
One of the seminal things that happens in that class, when it's in-person,
which sadly that classes are not in person currently,
um, is a trade show.
And the - the founding teams, you know,
put together for the first time their booth,
we have hundreds of people and it's just this amazing event.
And uh, we're sort of seeing the calendar,
we've still called the - the - this event is called night launch.
And they um, we've left it on the calendar.
We block in on it, and we're going - going - going and finally,
I think one of the moments at Jeremy had was,
okay, it's super challenging to see how we are going to pull this off.
And one of the things that was really helpful,
I remember where Jeremy said,
what if it's no longer - what if it's just a class?
What if it's a class? What it's going to be.
What would it be if it was just a class now and it was just a class period.
What would it be? When do they end it?
It was the opposite.
We suddenly sort of brainstorming the opposite rather
than trying to figure out how to solve this thing.
We said, what if it's not that?
Um, oftentimes with business leaders um, they will brainstorm,
you know, we're trying to hit the budget for
the year let's brainstorm ways to not hit the budget.
What will you spend money on if we're going go over budget?
What would it - you know, and then you take
those ideas and you put them down in the funnel.
It sounds goofy, but it's a - a lot of times you can
take out a bad idea and it generates,
starts to help you generate those four thousand ideas about what you could do.
So tools for doing it, um,
we would say um,
it's all about, put this in a place in your head.
It's all about getting to four thousand ideas.
Remember four thousand ideas get,
you know, 95 percent of them don't go forward.
And another 95 percent.
So this basically the practice,
and Bob Sutton has talked to us about this is,
what - when you're generating ideas,
what's happening in your head - your head is just making a series of connections.
And if you keep asking the same question in your brain,
you're - you're driving some of the same connections.
When you - you reverse polarity like this,
you just open up a whole bunch of new connections and more ideas start to come.
So if you don't believe me,
try it in practice.
I - we - we - ah,
we certify these results,
um, you will generate more ideas.
My name is Perry Klebahn and I certify this.
Yeah, another example we're - we're going to give a bunch of
little micro examples of this broader idea of reversing polarity.
But again, the point is to shake up your thinking.
And I was struck over the weekend,
I was reading something and saw a - about a ritual.
The Rock Band - the hair metal rock band,
Aerosmith, um, Steven Tyler mentioned to a - to an author at one point,
something that the band did,
he said once a week,
they had a ritual called a dare to suck meeting,
where every week we get together and we say,
we each bring an idea that we think is probably terrible.
And we're embarrassed that we even have this as an idea, and we'd present it.
And then here's the Steven Tyler quote,
he said "Nine times out of ten,
the idea is actually terrible.
But one time out of it and you get dude looks like a lady."
And - love that as a - if the goal is
always best material - best material - best material,
sometimes that runs you right up against a brick wall.
Is there space?
Is there a time where you say,
what if we're gonna bring some that we know is absolutely terrible just for
the sake of broadening our aperture and broadening our thinking a little bit.
That's a great practice of uh, reversing polarity.
The other ones are more ac - academically uh, established rule.
This is one that we - we actually use in um,
I think most of
our project-based classes as an experience to - to put the students through.
Um, it's called a Pre-Mortem um,
Huggy Rao does some amazing things with this in
his class because you were on the - on the last webinar with him.
Here's uh, there's a link in here for um,
SAP to big great breakdown of um,
a way to do this with a set of scaffolds that we thought was really well done.
So there's a link here. Essentially it's
a practice so - so imagine we've got startup founders that are,
you know, going through getting their first products in the market and getting results.
One of the things we - we find very - very effective to use this - this um,
- this idea of sort of reversing polarities,
we - we basically have a newer Pre-Mortem,
which is essentially saying, hey,
if six months from now and your startup is out of business,
why did it go out of business?
What - what caused it to fail?
And then you take those aspects of failure you've come up with,
and you think about,
well, how do I actually generate some ideas that I want to happen on each one of those.
And it ends up generating all kinds of possibility.
And we think it's a super powerful aspect to just
simply go through a short process with a team and say,
hey, if the jury is in and we haven't been successful, why haven't we been?
Use that material to generate ideas.
The basic, uh, another,
another simple tactic is to say,
what's the worst possible thing we can do?
What's the worst version?
If we need to make a presentation,
what's a presentation we would never want to give?
The point is, a lot of times thinking of,
what's my good idea, is really hard.
What's my bad idea?
What do I definitely not want to do?
Sometimes it just- I love that notion of reversing polarity.
It just eases the pressure enough that ideas begin to flow again.
Bill Burnett, who's a famed author of, uh, Designing your Life,
is the Executive Director of the Product Design Program here at Stanford, said, uh,
he says this to his product design students,
Never let your pen stop moving,
because if your pen keeps moving,
your brain keeps moving.
And a lot of times, when we defeat these roadblocks,
the question isn't, what's really bad ideas?
It's how do I keep my pen moving?
And reversing polarity is a really great way to ensure that the pen remains moving.
The next, uh, practice that we wanted to
mention is the practice of embracing distractions.
Uh, Questlove, who is the drummer of,
uh, of the, uh, hip hop band,
the Roots, wrote a great book recently called Cre- Creative Quest,
we recommend you check it out.
But it's got lots of these kind of artist inspired
ideas for how do you get ideas to start tumbling from your head again?
One of the simplest and often overlooked,
an easiest implement in the midst of COVID,
is leave your computer,
especially in the midst of all these meetings and all, you know,
Perry and I were joking yesterday, we,
we're planning a class for running executive programs,
we're, we're planning summer program,
and all sorts of stuff.
And we're saying, well, where was that?
And usually spatially, our ideas are represented, right?
We've got a space for our class plan,
and we've got a space for exec ed ,
and we got a place for the accelerator,
and on and on and on, we got a place for online classes.
But now everything is happening through this little baby portal.
And I wonder why I can't keep anything straight, right?
And, and we're in meeting after meeting after meeting,
and then we go back to e-mail then we go to the next meeting,
go back to- and are we surprised that we are not getting fresh ideas?
We shouldn't be surprised.
One of our, our mentor,
David Kelley, the founder of IDEO and the founder of the d.school,
he once remarked to us casually,
many of his best ideas happened on
the bike ride between Stanford and IDEO's headquarters.
We don't think that's accidental.
It's- there's this, there's this notion of cognitive disinhibition,
meaning a lot of times our,
our inhibitions are high,
we're saying we need to focus,
and when we focus, what do we do?
We don't let in extraneous information.
But what do we need when we're trying to come up with new ideas?
We actually need to let in extraneous information.
It's totally paradoxical, but one of the things we have to do is stop
focusing a little bit and taking a walk or going on a bike ride is a really great way.
Amos Tversky, who, along with Daniel Kahneman,
is the father of behavioral psychology and behavioral economics,
I love this quote,
The secret of doing good work is always to be a little underemployed.
You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
And especially in this time where because we cannot face time in this COVID era,
we're all so glued to our screens.
And it's no wonder therefore why there's no new ideas,
because we never have the time to be a little bit
disinhibited and to allow unexpected inputs to come in.
And one thing we'd say that's really critical about
this is you have to have a frame in the world.
So don't go on a walk and try to clear your mind
completely or go on a walk and be empty headed,
that's not gonna really help you.
The question is, when you've got something you're trying to work out,
is the- is your- is the solution for working it out,
is it pushing harder and harder and harder and harder on the screen?
Or do I say, I'm going to work it out, but I'm going to go on a walk.
I'm going to work it out, but I'm going to read a magazine.
I talked with a- a wonderful leader the other day,
he said- one of the things he always says is he reads outside of his discipline.
He subscribes to a wallpaper magazine.
He is not into design at all because he's- he wants some unexpected inputs or filter in.
And so we'd say, when you have a frame, then embrace distractions.
And one of the- one of the really interesting tactics here is this idea
of deliberately leaving work unfinished.
We were really inspired by Adam Grant in his Ted Talk,
his book Originals is great.
But one of the things that he references is a, uh,
Russian psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik,
who did a lot of research around,
once a task is finished,
it leaves our minds,
but when it's unfinished,
it stays on the back burner so to speak,
is it's still processing,
it's still looking for an answer.
And so, if we leave work unfinished,
there's an opportunity our minds are still trying to resolve it.
And we'd say, it's really important when you think
about trying to solve some persistent problems,
trying to come up with new ideas that you actually have a problem in mind when you leave.
It's a way- it so to speak, where you're,
you're almost leaving the receptors open to receive new information.
If all your problems are solved,
when you leave work for the day, when you go on a walk,
you're receptor-less, uh, receptacle, right?
But if some of the work is unfinished,
all of a sudden your receptors are open and you're going through the world
and this idea comes and you go, oh, you know,
I was sitting reading the other morning,
Perry and I had spent about half of our time working through this deck,
and I was sitting reading something unrelated.
And all of a sudden,
the idea of gardening versus grocery store came into my mind.
I was trying to think, what are we getting at exactly?
And I hadn't solved it but I couldn't solve it sitting here and I was reading the Bible,
I was reading nothing related to innovation or anything,
and I was sort of just like gardening and the grocery store.
And I texted Perry frantically,
we gotta have a slide, right?
But the point is it was- that problem wasn't
resolved with me and Perry on a Zoom call batting it out.
What's the right metaphor?
We left it unfinished and the creative task
yielded to our willingness to embrace distractions.
Okay, the last practice that we're going to share before wrapping and going to Q&A.
Commissioning a portfolio. So, um,
when we looked at those,
those bar 4,000 ideas, 226 prototypes,
12 things incubated, we think of those when we use the team- the term portfolio,
we think of that as the- as a port- it's a portfolio of 4,000 ideas.
It's a portfolio of 226 prototypes.
It's a portfolio of 12 things being incubated.
So that's, that's our term, portfolio.
There's, uh, there's amazing research about,
you know, problem-solving in general.
Uh, Scott Klemmer, one of the founders of the d.school,
um, gone on. He's done loads of great research,
there's an article we will reference here, um, about, uh,
parallel prototyping, which is another term for commissioning, um, a portfolio.
But the- what he, what he writes a lot about,
and there is a lot of amazing, um, research about,
uh, teams that are solving problems,
particularly problems you don't necessarily have a good sense of the answer.
If you build simply,
let's say, as Bob's numbers show us,
if you build multiple versions,
if you think of your output as a portfolio,
what it- what we need right now,
for example, um, in our teams at Stanford different developing, uh,
a new, um, executive education thing,
you know, Catherine works with us, Jeremy, Harry.
We may all come with, you know,
posted notes, schedules for a couple of versions of the program.
So we arrive at a meeting with, you know,
in this case now pictures, because they're on the Internet,
but we'll arrive each with a couple versions of something.
And we all of a sudden have this rich sort of, um,
discussion about all these other directions
knowing what's the eliminate- elimination rate,
you know, for coming with something new,
95 percent of stuff won't go forward.
So we're- we're understanding in advance,
we need to generate a mountain of material.
If we think of our output is how did we constantly talk about how big is our portfolio,
if we feel like we're not getting, um,
somewhere and get into new solutions,
we- we- we've diagnosed it a lot of times is we don't have a big enough portfolio.
We're, we're not building enough things to actually pick through.
The other thing interesting about, uh, Scott Klemmer research,
it also talks a little bit about teams getting through,
uh, projects with a lot of uncertainty if they're doing parallel prototyping.
In other words, building portfolios,
they tend to function better,
because there's less argument,
because there's a lot of solutions on the table.
It's not my solution I'm trying to push forward,
I already have- we have many,
many things we're looking at and we're sort of picking our way through
this uncertain problem by- by seeing some results. Um.
What we, what we love is this idea of the portfolio being your output.
It is not- if you think about the one or two ideas,
the one or two commercial successes as the output,
it's the- that's the wrong way to think about it.
In the beginning, the- the myriad
of potential directions is actually the meaningful output.
If you know that,
that very- a very low percentage of
the total sum of the things you do are going to succeed,
what does a smart person do?
They do a lot of things.
So if you wanna succeed, do more things.
You know, we've got, uh,
some very close collaborators at a, uh, you know,
multinational corporation who they run an, uh, internal incubator.
And they've specified a failure goal.
And the, the leaders of the incubator are actually
punished if they don't reach the failure goal. Why?
Because they know that if they aren't, ah,
failing enough, they're probably being too safe,
they're probably exploring too narrowly.
And so the point is just having a totally different mindset when our goal is exploring.
If we aren't failing a significant portion of the time,
we're probably being safe,
and that's a dangerous place for us to be when we say our goal is to do something new.
Great.
So we- we'll wrap up- so we'll wrap up here,
I think we'll- we'll say our last comments on each,
um, each of these five practices.
[NOISE] Combining perspectives, about deliberately inviting folks
outside of the scope of your team into your team setting to provoke fresh perspectives.
Um, moving from a project to a product mindset is considering
commercializing world-class capabilities in order to launch new businesses.
Yeah. And reversing polarity is that idea of literally
double- it may potentially doubling
the connections in your head by just asking the opposite question.
Uh, embracing distraction is about,
ah, triggering new connections by seeking fresh input.
And remember, make sure that your brain is actually open to
new input by leaving some questions unresolved or some problems unsolved.
And finally, commissioning a portfolio,
this idea that at the very beginning,
think of the- the,
if you will, that bar,
the output being the portfolio,
not the individual success.
And actually, ah, a- allowing teams to see that- that,
um, diversity of those concepts and navigate through using the portfolio.
As we move into, ah, Q&A time,
we've got about, ah, 12 minutes left here for Q&A.
We thought we just leave this Kevin Kelly quote.
He recently turned 68 and he posted a list of
68 truths that he wanted to impact the world on his 68th birthday and we love this.
This is all about preserving the,
ah, the gardening mentality.
Preserving the space to create.
Knowing that as we attend to the input and as we develop and
cultivate those practices of inspiration seeking,
that's what allows, um,
innovation to flow faster,
more routinely and even better.
So with that, I think we'll turn it back over to Pax who'll,
uh, introduce some of the first questions.
Great. Thank you, Perry and Jeremy.
That was, ah, fantastic.
I'm gonna start with a question I saw that's- that's echoed through, um,
uh, some of the comments over and over,
which was, um, sorry to dive in.
But I wanna make sure I cover this because it's just so practical and it's- it's,
many of you have asked this is in some way, shape, or form,
can you discuss how this approach- approach fits into lean organizations,
ah, that have very real budget constraints?
So I would say, I don't- I don't know.
I mean, and there's a few that- that aren't but most,
ah, companies now are facing enormous budget constraints.
And, um, what- what- I'd say about these things is a- oftentimes,
when we- we give a talk like this,
the assumption is while I've got to schedule a time for this,
I've gotta- I've gotta make space for this on people's schedules.
It's going to cost something for me to take on any one of these practices.
And what we would say is, you know, um,
something like brainstorming the opposite, something like, um,
ah, getting a different perspective on a problem is- is as simple as,
you know, calling a friend and saying,
"Hey, I'm working on this project, we're doing the thing.
What are your thoughts? You have a different take on this."
It doesn't mean you've gotta, um, ah,
get ready and change, um,
a lot of things that might, um, incur costs.
We would say starting with these practices as
low resolution as you can is a- a terrific strategy initially,
and also these things combine.
I mean, the reason we did multiple tools is as a- as a leader or a member of a team,
some of these could work really well for you in your life and your business and
some might not be that easy though to- to bring in,
but we'd say all of them have a role of the idea of, um, embracing distractions,
taking along a- a- a stack of post-it notes the next time you take
a break and- and take a short walk and- and let the ideas come.
But you build that into your practice,
meaning I- I do that as a- as a leader,
as a somebody on a team trying to solve a problem.
I'm- I'm making space using one of these techniques.
We're hoping that's- that's not construed at least in- in your mind.
It's something that's gonna take a lot of effort,
a lot of budgeting and a lot of scheduling.
Running something like a pre-mortem with a team is something I would take on as a leader.
Once you've established, there's something about brainstorming
the opposite that's- that's actually really working for myself.
I'd like to introduce it to a team.
Then there's a practice that you can take, you know,
20 minutes of a team's time and do something to help generate some ideas.
I have a- there's another question that I thought was pretty, ah, cool.
I'm just looking at them as they're coming in.
Um, how do we do idea generation asynchronous- asynchronously as well as synchronously?
What's better? I guess you're creating a portfolio. It's kind of, ah-
Yeah.
-I like the, ah, stream-of-consciousness there.
Um, I would say they're both really useful.
I would say a synchronous meeting is very important
if it's built on the shoulders of asynchronous consideration.
So a lot of times,
when folks are brainstorming or trying to generate ideas together,
which is, by the way, one of 1,000 ways of coming up with ideas, right?
And this notion of inspiration more broadly that we've been
undertaking today and the basis of the new,
ah, as I need course on inspiration,
is exploring the other 999 ways.
But like brainstorming is important.
That only works if people had been thoughtful coming into the meeting.
If there's been no thoughtfulness coming into the meeting,
there's no surprise that the result is frivolous or unrealistic, right?
Justin Berg has done some really interesting research that we reference in that course,
and we can send along here as Pax is mentioning as well, um,
Justin Berg has done some really interesting research on,
there's always a trade-off between novelty and usefulness.
And his research indicates that one of
the most important indicators of long-term success is what he calls the primal mark,
or to use kind of an artist,
kind of, ah, metaphor.
The first brush stroke is really important in determining the ultimate,
um, implement ability of a solution.
Meaning if it's- if- if- if the first brush stroke is entirely frivolous,
it's really difficult to get that idea into useful territory.
If on the other hand,
the- the- the first brush stroke is very,
very pragmatic and- and reasonable,
it's very hard to move into new territory.
And so what we'd suggest is if you're going to have a synchronous meeting,
allowing folks the time individually,
asynchronously, especially respecting the-
the spectrum from extroversion to introversion,
re- respecting where folks are in that huge kind of spectrum.
Um, giving folks time to consider what is
the unique contribution they're gonna bring to the meeting is really important,
and having that thoughtfulness is really important.
And then being able to facilitate that meeting to not only
express and to showcase the diversity of perspectives and ideas,
but also to- to start to ladder up, so to speak,
or to form the basis of those ideas from the foundation of those ideas,
to build someplace where none of the folks
in the room had imagined prior to entering the room,
that's another art in and of itself.
So there's real values to the asynchronous stuff,
and then there's real merits to the synchronous as well.
And for us, it's not an either or,
it's a both end,
and being deliberate about when to do what is the important thing.
Um, so there's a- there's a couple of questions there.
They're so heartfelt I- this one in many ways,
I've seen in a- in a lot of the comments and I- I, um, take a cart.
How do you do all this under big pressure?
Um, you know, I just was talking this morning before this with,
uh, a really good friend that's gotta accompany American Giant.
And he was lamenting because I've sold
clothing and I love all that stuff anyways, it's a clothing company.
But he was talking literally about this,
it's I know I need to solve some things and
yet I have no time in my day, none- none whatsoever.
And I'd say that the- the thing to think about is um,
maybe we've done you a disservice by showing, "Hey, there's all these tools,
there's all these things you can be doing,
things ING many, many things.
It sounds super interesting.
You've carv- we appreciated as time evolved,
carved out the time to be here.
And we do believe these are- are needed.
Something as simple as combined perspectives.
I know Jeremy and I have found this time in particular, uh, during COVID,
um, we're finding, um,
peers are available, meaning people are- are willing to help.
Um, and I know we've called friends with
our classes that are suddenly moving online and we're having to change everything.
We've definitely had these short quick conversations to gain
some different perspective and just adjust our thinking so we can get some fresh ideas.
But that would be an example of something that's
a 10 minute phone call that's- that's talking to somebody that's out of Stanford,
not teaching there, working in a different environment.
But we wanted to some- some creative new ideas.
Um, so we'd say,
"Be selfish about saying if I only had minutes.
If I'm not busy,
let's use something like that.
That's- I can fit a quick phone call with him,
um, and call in a favor."
But trying to right size them to
the circumstances right now and not taking the attitude of,
"How do I stop and reconfiguring and begin to bring all of these things in,
in a way that's higher resolution or bears any burden?"
I think all of these tools could be used in a very quick,
um, and simple way that allows you to, um,
handle all the burdens you have and all that stress but our hope is you begin to see them
actually increase your performance in solving the- the problems that are so pressing.
All right. Speaking of pressing,
there's three minutes laughs, and I'm dying to answer one more.
By the way, there's a ton of questions. It's awesome.
I feel like- it's- like writing a book on this.
But the- here's- here's another question which is really great.
Um, how do you test your ideas in times of COVID?
What are some of the examples of measures of success?
Oh, this is such a great question.
I love it. Kelly and I just did a session actually last week
with the Biodesign fellows and the Biodesign team.
Um, you know, it's a bunch of undergrads and doctors and
practitioners and fellows making biomedical engineering devices.
And they are- when they think about prototyping,
they're always thinking about like, I mean,
the- we went to their presentations,
they're thinking about microns of depth into an ear canal.
For example, it's not 0.00009 it's 0.000008, right?
The- that's how they think about prototyping.
And to me, when- when you think about
testing or prototyping and the need to test in terms of physical,
that way, it- it can be constraining.
This COVID environment can certainly be constraining, right?
And it is, that's a reality.
But when you think- the- there's multiple streams of prototyping,
this is actually critically important.
One important stream of prototyping is the product.
Can we make it?
Is it technologically possible?
That's very important. Another one is kind of a business viability.
Can we make money making it?
And there's all sorts of prototypes you can deploy there.
Another type of prototype and one that's actually really
well-suited to this COVID environment is,
uh, eh, is a desirability. Should we make it?
Do people want it?
And that it what- we would call that promotional prototyping.
The way to answer that question is not asked people if they want something, right?
What your goal- what- your goal should be to create
high credibility data and it's a root- like surveys are generally very low credibility.
Why? Because you're paying people to answer your questions,
and they're not [LAUGHTER] paying you.
It costs someone nothing to tell
you to do- that your idea is great, "Go do a bunch of work."
Right? "Wow, that sounds amazing.
Spent a $100,000 building that,
and send me an email that I'll ignore and put in my spam," right? That's not what you want.
So promotional prototyping over here, right?
It specified kind of three lanes.
Promotional prototyping, we take to making
offers where someone has to make an actual decision,
which gives you what we would call proprietary and much higher credibility data.
For example, if you know that your target user is this kind of a person,
m- mothers, you know,
with- with multiple kids who are trying to,
um, do homeschooling in COVID.
Great, you had your target user.
And you think their problem is blank.
Great. Use Mailchimp or something.
Set up an AB test where all you're testing as a subject line of an email, right?
And all you're tracking is open rates, right?
You'll be shocked that the value pro- proposition that you think is
mind-blowing gets an open rate of like one percent, right?
But if you start thinking about, "Okay.
Well, what are other ways I could express the value I'm creating here?
I'm going to put it in a different subject line.
I'm- I'm gonna compare it to the base case, right?"
There's really- and then you put the same copy in both emails.
You put a link in both emails,
and you try click-through rates.
And then if you have different instances of your website,
you can track dwell time and sign up for more information or PDF downloads.
But my point there is someone's not telling you what they will do,
they're showing you what they do do,
and you want a high credibility data.
And it's really simple through
simple pro- promotional prototyping techniques to
be creating data that you can put a lot more confidence in.
There's just as important data as the, you know,
to the micron level of accuracy for the- your canal.
Both our critical, COVID is particularly well-suited for promotional prototyping,
and there's really great ways to do that.
Hopefully that's helpful. I'm gonna hand it over to, um, ask Pax.
[LAUGHTER] Thank you, Perry and Jeremy.
That was really wonderful. I appreciate.
I hope everyone, uh, took something valuable,
away something that they can implement, uh, right now.
And I wanna thank everyone who participated today.
Uh, this has- I think was the best Q&A that I've ever seen.
And- and so we'll- we'll be, uh,
compiling these questions and see the ways that we can address them.
And again, a recording will be sent out.
And I want to especially thank Perry and Jeremy, er,
for the wonderful presentation and ideas,
uh, during this challenging time. Thank [OVERLAPPING] you, everybody.
Thank you.
