I was able to attend a great seminar at work today. Guy Kawasaki of Apple Mac and Garage.com fame delivered an excellent presentation titled "The Art of Innovation." Below are my notes on the presentation.
The first and most important thing about this presentation is this: it was brief, to the point, and entertaining. In fact, he only covered 10 points (plus 1 bonus point). Those points were:
1) Make meaning
The opening point of Guy's presentation was to make meaning with your business. Instead of focusing on making money, he strongly encouraged everyone to do business that makes life better. If what your company does has the effect of improving the quality of life, then people are going to buy into it. If, instead, all you care about is making money, then it's very hard to get good, consistent buy-in. Why should people care about your business if you don't care about people?
2) Make mantra
This theme has been echoed in other books, too, such as Jim Collins' Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
So, instead of developing a mission statement, he advocated creating a mantra. A very short mantra. Somebody in the audience asked him during Q&A what his mantra was and he said it was "empower everybody." Pretty good mantra. I certainly feel empowered to keep questioning what gets thrown at me every day, to make sure it's really benefiting the company.
3) Jump to the next curve
So, your company is making meaning and it's defined a nice mantra. Now, it's time to get ahead. And here, it's not just inching ahead in the same old game. Instead, it's jumping to the next evolutionary progression, getting onto a totally different plane of existence. Guy said that it's extremely difficult for companies to do this. He used an example of ice. First, there were ice harvesters in the north who would cut blocks all winter long. Then, there were ice factories that would freeze blocks of ice and send them out on trucks. And then there were home refrigerators and freezers. Interestingly enough, the ice harvesters did not build ice factories, and the ice factory owners did not go on to build refrigerators. These are all different curves, but people/business oftentimes are stuck within their own curve. This was excellent advice.
4) Roll the DICEE
Ok, so here we're getting into qualities of a successful, innovative business. DICEE stands for the following:
- D: Deep -- developing products that go well beyond the basic/common feature set. Example given: Reef sandals with built-in bottle openers in the sole, or that even have integrate flasks.
- I: Intelligent -- this is essentially talking about well-engineered products. Example given: The Panasonic BF-104 flashlight, which takes 3 different types of batteries. Very ingenious!
- C: Complete -- put together the whole package, rather than just pieces of it. Example given: Lexus provides a quality car, quality support and service, and so on.
- E: Elegant -- this seems to continue the theme of good engineering by talking about solutions that are elegant. Example given: iPod Nano with its unique UI.
- E: Emotive -- your product should evoke an emotional response. Example given: Harley Davidson, who has very passionate customers.
Putting it all together, this point seems to really speak to the need to have very good, smart engineers who are able to develop creative solutions that not only meet needs, but anticipate other needs, all while producing a product that will result in an emotional response.
5) Don't worry, be crappy
Plain and simple, products have to go to market. There will be bugs. There will be other feature creep. However, if you never go to market, you'll never be successful. So, assuming you've done a good job with engineering and innovating up to this point, you have to eventually take a leap and hope the landing isn't too hard.
6) Polarize people
Tying into DICEE, it's important not to expend energy trying to make everyone happy. The simple fact is that people are different, and thus have different needs and tastes. Therefore, you won't be able to appeal to everyone, and nor should you. Thus, find your audience and get them something about which they can be passionate.
7) Let a hundred flowers blossom
To be honest, I think I must have spaced on this point, because I don't recall the description. The best I can figure, he was talking about making sure that there was adequate room for innovation to occur. The imagery I recall was his saying "don't limit yourself to a small flowerbox, but instead find a large field." Meaning, I think, that if we only do small amounts of innovation in a crammed space, there simply won't be enough breathing room to actually excel at innovation. I could be way off here...
8) Churn, baby, churn
Product evolution should be a part of normal life. Yes, you need to get the product out the door (see #5), but once it is out, then it needs to be constantly evolved, grown, matured. If you don't do this, then there's really not much point.
It seems that many companies that are successful in the tech industry are able to do this today. They are constantly updating, adding features, etc. It's those who appear to be standing still that are being or will be left behind.
9) Niche thyself
Guy's point here is really commensurate with the point of LONG TAIL, THE: WHY THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS IS SELLING LESS OF MORE
To illustrate, he showed a 4 corner matrix where the X axis was labeled "Value to customer" and the Y axis was labeled "Ability to provide unique product or service." The ideal place to be is in the upper right corner, maximizing both of these axes. In the lower right corner he talked about it representing price point competition. Cheapest wins. In the upper left corner, he added the label "Stupid." If you develop an extremely unique product or service that nobody needs or wants, then what's the point? Amusingly, he labeled the lower right corner "Dotcom" -- pointing to all the failed Dotcom startups who were not unique and didn't provide value to customers. Pretty funny stuff.
10) Follow the 10/20/30 rule
As I'm running out of steam on this blog entry (and still have 700+ pages of Harry Potter 5 to read in a couple days...) I'll sum this up very quickly: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font. Basically, if you can't boil down the presentation of your innovation according to these rules, then you're saying too much and you quite likely don't have something very impressive. Figure out what you need to say, and just say it, plain and simple. Don't launch into long diatribes about mission. Don't waste peoples' time (can I get an 'amen'?!?). Very sage advice.
Someone later asked him during Q&A how long an elevator pitch should last. His answer: 10 seconds. Why? Because your goal is not to get the sale, but to not get rejected. The same goes for this 10/20/30 presentation style. You're trying not to get cut or rejected.
11) Don't let the bozos grind you down
Lastly, he ended his 10-point presentation with a special 11th point. Here he simply talked about needing to walk the fine line between being thick-skinned while innovating and then being highly receptive to customer feedback once the product was out the door.
There will always be naysayers when you're innovating. The more you push the envelope, the crazier people will think you are. Moreover, if you're jumping to the next curve, people are going to think that you're out in left field, because they're still seeing things from the perspective of the previous curve. Don't listen to them.
However, once you get that product out there, you need to then start listening intently. Customer feedback will help you drive evolution of your product (#8). It's highly necessary and valuable.
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So, I hope that you found this summary of value. I found the presentation highly engaging, informative, and energizing. I only hope that I can live up to the challenge! :)
