Podcast appearances and mentions of david schonthal

Are we focused on adding more fuel to get the circular economy going – when, really, the problem is too much friction?Those terms stuck with me a few years ago, from a book helping people to get new ideas going, and succeeding, by looking more closely at the 'frictions' that create resistance. The book, The Human Element is written by organisational psychologist Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal, a specialist in entrepreneurship, design, and innovation.They say that most people working to create change focus on increasing the appeal of the idea itself – we're convinced that if we add enough value, people will say “yes.”' Whilst it's definitely helpful to ‘sell the sizzle' of our idea, to help move it forward, we tend to overlook the power of all the concerns, confusion, and other factors getting in the way of the change – the friction.Of course, fuel is necessary for success. Frictions, on the other hand, are difficult to spot. We are naturally convinced that our idea, our project, our new service, is the best thing since sliced bread. So it's hard for us to see what's getting in the way for our audience, customers, or investors. Understanding and overcoming frictions requires empathy. We have to see the world, and our idea within it, from the perspective of those affected.Over the last series of podcast episodes, we've talked about quite a few fuels and frictions relating to the circular economy. Reflecting on those conversations helped me see some recurring themes, including:Systems thinking, and the need for seeing a connected whole instead of separate parts, or sub-sectionsCulture, language and how we understand and interpret the circular economyMindsets – what's our worldview, and does this mean we're stuck in our ways?Information technology, especially ‘legacy' software systems.In this episode, I'm going to pull out some of the fuel and friction insights shared by our guests. International speaker, author and strategic advisor, Catherine Weetman helps people discover why circular, regenerative and fair solutions are better for people, planet – and prosperity. Catherine's award-winning book: A Circular Economy Handbook: How to Build a More Resilient, Competitive and Sustainable Business includes lots of practical examples and tips on getting started.  Stay in touch for free insights and updates...  Read on for more on our guest and links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention.  Don't forget, you can subscribe to the podcast series on iTunes, Google Podcasts, PlayerFM, Spotify, TuneIn, or search for "circular economy" in your favourite podcast app.  Stay in touch to get free insights and updates, direct to your inbox...You can also use our interactive, searchable podcast index to find episodes by sector, by region or by circular strategy. Plus, there is now a regular Circular Economy Podcast newsletter, so you get the latest episode show notes and links delivered to your inbox on Sunday morning, each fortnight. The newsletter includes a link to the episode page on our website, with an audio player. You can subscribe by clicking this link to update your preferences. Links for the episode: Catherine's work: Circular Economy Podcast on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/showcase/circular-economy-podcast/ Circular Economy Podcast website: circulareconomypodcast.com Catherine Weetman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-weetman-9419107/ A Circular Economy Handbook: How to Build a More Resilient, Competitive and Sustainable Business - buy from any good bookseller, or direct from the publisher Kogan Page, which ships worldwide (free shipping to UK and US) https://www.koganpage.com/CircEcon2 Interactive podcast index https://www.rethinkglobal.info/circular-economy-podcast-index/ Rethink Global www.rethinkglobal.info Sign up to get the podcast player and shownotes for each new episode emailed to your inbox Books, films, people and organisations we mentionedThe Human Element,

David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on newventure creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation, venture capital, and creativity.Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory – a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promisinginnovations and change initiatives struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences – and more importantly, what to do about it. This work is popularized in David's WallStreet Journal and National Bestselling book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas (Wiley). Support the Show.

What can we learn from recent secular literature about the practice of Christian pastoral leadership? Head of Ministry at Sydney's Moore Theological College Archie Poulos looks at how the 'The Infinite Game' concept, popularized by Simon Sinek, can be applied to ministry. Sinek explores the consequences of short and long term thinking in business and life. Long term success is more likely when an infinite perspective is taken.Then we examine Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal's book ‘The Human Element: Overcoming the resistance that awaits new ideas.'Archie considers the emotional and psychological hurdles (inertia, effort, emotion, and reactance) that congregations face when change is suggested.We look back to ‘After the Ball' by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, a 1989 secular play book for effecting LGBTI societal acceptance.  Archie suggests there are lessons from aspects of that strategy for Christian mission.Plus Archie talks about what impressed him about Andrew Heard's soon to be released book ‘Growth and Change - The danger and necessity of a passion for church growth.Purchase/download links to the books discussed this week:Growth and Change - by Andrew Heard - The danger and necessity of a passion for church growth The Infinite Game - by Simon Sinek - exploring the consequences of short and long term thinking in business and life The Human Element: Overcoming the resistance that awaits new ideas - by Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal After the Ball - by Marshall Kirk and Hunter MadsenHuman Sexuality and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate - by Mark Thompson (Editor)Support the show--To make a one off contribution to support The Pastor's Heart's ministry go to this link, or to become a regular Patreon supporter click here.

This week on The Melting Pot with Dominic Monkhouse, we learned from David Shonthal, ward-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management and co-author of The Human Element. Overcoming The Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. You will know this feeling if you're an entrepreneur or an innovator inside your business. Something that makes sense to you is being resisted by everybody at every turn. It's often why people leave larger companies and go to smaller ones. Or start up their own where they feel there would be less resistance. It's true for a while, but some of these elements will creep back in if that business succeeds. David has been involved in entrepreneurship, design and innovation for over 20 years, and his work has led to the creation of over 300 products, services, and new ventures worldwide. In this episode, he dives into the four types of friction that stand in the way of new ideas going forward. He also explains why it is important to recognise human behaviour to drive change, whether in B2C sales or B2B. A fantastic conversation with David about how to take your idea and move the organisation to adapt to the change. Download and listen to learn more. On today's podcast: There's more than one flavour of entrepreneurshipThe Friction Theory FrameworkThe four frictions against innovationHow recognising human behaviour can drive change Follow David Shonthal:WebsiteLinkedInTwitter Book recommendations: The End of AverageDemand Side SalesCompeting against luckA Man's Search for Meaning Enjoyed the show? Leave a Review 

In his book, “The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas,” Kellogg professor David Schonthal challenges the default assumption that selling an idea requires the seller to heighten its appeal. Instead, he makes the case that failure to adopt ideas, strategies or products is often due to the four key psychological frictions that oppose change: inertia, effort, emotion and reactance. He argues that successful leaders and innovators must identify, understand and overcome these to achieve novel outcomes. David Schonthal is a clinical professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches courses in new venture creation, design thinking, business acquisition, corporate innovation and creativity. He also serves as the faculty director of Kellogg's Zell Fellows Program. Outside of the Kellogg School of Management, David is a senior director of business design at IDEO, where he focuses on helping organizations build and launch new ventures, design transformational new business models and establish novel go-to-market strategies for products and services. *This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2021 interview.

After I listened to this episode on the Hidden Brain podcast I had an ah-ha about how this fits into burnout. We often think we need MORE of something. More help, more money, more vacation time. But what we really need is LESS. We need to find our friction points and minimize them. For example, what if you're a working mom and you have zero time or zero patience after work? Getting a big fat bonus check won't make you get unstuck. But, if you work fewer, but more efficient hours, you'll have more time. What if you didn't have to help the kids with homework and cook supper every night? Identifying your pain points and then brainstorming how to let them be easier will change your life. Also referenced is this book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas. Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal, Wiley, October 2021.

一家專門生產客製化沙發的公司，推出時市場反應熱烈，訂單數卻寥寥無幾。美國西北大學凱洛格管理學院教授大衛・尚塔爾（David Schonthal）提出「心理摩擦力」的概念，入選 2022 年 Thinkers50 年度重大思想。他指出不是產品的問題，而是人們對如何處理舊沙發感到猶豫，因此遲遲無法下單。加入幫忙客戶處理舊沙發的服務後，銷量直線上升。 銷售新產品、說服他人、推動新政策⋯⋯。將產品和服務做好很重要，但慣性可能會阻止人做出新的改變，如何降低人們心中的「阻力」？ 本集由《經理人月刊》資深採訪編輯盧廷羲與採訪編輯莊彙翌，一起導讀《心理摩擦力：為何人們抗拒改變？不是你不努力，是你不懂人性阻力》。

In his book, “The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas,” Kellogg professor David Schonthal challenges the default assumption that selling an idea requires the seller to heighten its appeal. Instead, he makes the case that failure to adopt ideas, strategies or products is often due to the four key psychological frictions that oppose change: inertia, effort, emotion and reactance. He argues that successful leaders and innovators must identify, understand and overcome these to achieve novel outcomes. David Schonthal is a clinical professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches courses in new venture creation, design thinking, business acquisition, corporate innovation and creativity. He also serves as the faculty director of Kellogg's Zell Fellows Program. Outside of the Kellogg School of Management, David is a senior director of business design at IDEO, where he focuses on helping organizations build and launch new ventures, design transformational new business models and establish novel go-to-market strategies for products and services. *This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2021 interview.

I had the prvilidedge of interviewing Steve Blank (Author of Four Steps to the Epiphany and the Startup Owner's Manual) and David Schonthal (Venture Capitalist and author of the Human Element) for the second time on the Matt Brown Show. In this episode we talk about the art and science of scaling a startup with a live audience.Get interviewed on the Matt Brown Show: www.MattBrownShow.com

Today's book is for anyone who wants to introduce a new idea or innovation into the world. Most marketers, innovators, executives, activists, or anyone else in the business of creating change, operate on a deep assumption. It is the belief that the best (and perhaps only) way to convince people to embrace a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself. We instinctively believe that if we add enough value, people will eventually say "yes." This reflex leads us down a path of adding features and benefits to our ideas or increasing the sizzle of our messaging - all in the hope of getting others on board. Our guest calls this instinct the "Fuel-based mindset." The Fuel-based mindset explains so much of what we do, from adding countless trivial features to software to bolting a sixth blade onto a shaving razor. By focusing on Fuel, innovators neglect the other half of the equation – the psychological Frictions that oppose change. Frictions create drag on innovation. And though they are rarely considered, overcoming these Frictions is essential for bringing new ideas into the world. In his book, Our guest highlights the four Frictions that operate against innovation. It is a pleasure to welcome the author of The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas David Schonthal    Find David here: https://www.davidschonthal.com

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David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on newventure creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation, venture capital, and creativity.Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory – a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promisinginnovations and change initiatives struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences – and more importantly, what to do about it. This work is popularized in David's WallStreet Journal and National Bestselling book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas (Wiley).

In today's edition of Sunday Book Review: The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas by David Schonthal and Loran Nordgren The Startup Owner's Manual and The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank The Invincible Company by Alex Osterwalder Pirates in the Navy by Tendayi Viki Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deepa Purushothaman: The First, The Few, The Only Deepa is the co-founder of nFormation, a company which provides a brave, safe, and new space for professionals who are women of color. She spent more than twenty years at Deloitte and was a first herself: an Indian American woman and one of the youngest people to make partner in the company's history. In her time there, she helped grow Deloitte's Social Impact Practice, served as a National Managing Partner of Inclusion, and served as the Managing Partner of WIN—the firm's renowned program to recruit, retain, and advance women. Deepa speaks extensively on women and leadership. She has been featured at national conferences and in publications including Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Huffington Post, and Harvard Business Review. She is the author of The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color can Redefine Power in Corporate America*. Key Points The corporate space has not fostered true equity. Often, many of us don't see the systemic examples each day of friction. “We can't find you,” is an often believed delusion when companies intend to attract more women of color. “I don't see color,” is often a well-intended belief, but in practice often marginalizes the lives experiences of women of color. “DEI will fix it all,” is an illusion. We all should be supporting peers in formal DEI roes to volunteer, show up, and be key partners in the work that benefits all of you. “You got white-manned,” reflects the belief that the world has to be a zero-sum competition. Resources Mentioned The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color can Redefine Power in Corporate America* by Deepa Purushothaman Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes Start Finding Overlooked Talent, with Johnny Taylor, Jr. (episode 544) The Way Managers Can be Champions for Justice, with Minda Harts (episode 552) Overcome Resistance to New Ideas, with David Schonthal (episode 557) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.

Cassandra Worthy: Change Enthusiasm Cassandra Worthy enables organizations and individuals to grow through major change and significant shift by harnessing the power of emotion. Whether undergoing a merger, acquisition, start-up, explosive growth, or significant contraction, the strategies and tools of Change Enthusiasm are motivating and energizing workforces worldwide. Her consulting firm was birthed from the pain and challenges she overcame as a corporate executive. Cassandra's client base spans the Fortune 500, including Procter & Gamble, Allstate, Jones Lang LaSalle, Centene Corporation, ConferenceDirect, and WeWork. She's a chemical engineer by training and also brings over a decade of M&A experience distilled down into the critical leadership traits required to lead with exception during times of change and trans-formation. She's the author of Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success*. In this conversation Cassandra and I explore the critical importance of emotion in the change process. We detail some of the critical places where leaders often miss opportunities to prioritize employee well-being. Then, Cassandra shares some practical steps leaders can take that will help employees better recognize signal emotions so they can eventually find opportunity and choice during the change process. Key Points Many leaders tend to diminish or ignore negative emotions during change. Actively doing that may prevent employees in getting to a place where they see opportunity — and eventually choice. Beware focusing too much attention on vision, roles, and responsibilities — and not enough on employee well-being and fulfillment. The change process is like driving in a car. The structure of the process is the vehicle itself and the people are their fuel. Have discussion about handling change a regular item in 1:1 agendas and team meetings. Leaders can enter into the opportunity that change provides by sharing their own emotions. One way to do this is to be explicit in conversation about what is genuinely inspiring you about the change. Resources Mentioned Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success* by Cassandra Worthy Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes How to Build Psychological Safety, with Amy Edmondson (episode 404) The Way Innovators Get Traction, with Tendayi Viki (episode 512) Overcome Resistance to New Ideas, with David Schonthal (episode 557) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.

Welcome to the What's Next! Podcast with Tiffani Bova.  David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation and creativity.   Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory – a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promising innovations and change initiatives often struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences – and what to do about it.  This work is popularized in David's Wall Street Journal and National Bestselling book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas (Wiley).   THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… people who want to innovate businesses products and services with new ideas that put people first.   TODAY'S MAIN MESSAGE… Whitney doesn't think the term “The Great Resignation” accurately describes the workplace culture shift, rather she believes in “The Great Aspiration” - the idea that people are aspiring to jobs that give them greater fulfillment and more opportunities for learning and growth.   At the heart of any business lies a product that helps people and it's our job as business leaders to focus on the humanity these products can deliver. But sometimes there are challenges we face in implementing new ideas - what David calls “frictions” - that stand in the way of innovations. Ultimately, he believes that by identifying those sources and addressing the issues, we can pave the way for growth and progress.   WHAT  I  LOVE  MOST… David understands that at the core of customer service, design thinking must place the customer first. Human-centered design must consider not only the functional value the product brings, but also the social and emotional value for people as well.     Running time: 29:12  Subscribe on iTunes    Find Tiffani on social:  Facebook  Twitter  LinkedIn     Find David online:  Official Website  Twitter  LinkedIn    David's Book:  The Human Element 

David Schonthal: Overcoming The Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation, and creativity. Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory […] The post Overcoming The Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. – #320 appeared first on James Taylor.

David Schonthal: Overcoming The Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation, and creativity. Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory […] The post Overcoming The Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. – #320 appeared first on James Taylor.

2,500 years ago, Greek philosopher, Heraclitus famously observed that “there is nothing permanent in life except change.” And anyone who's lived just a few years on our planet knows old Heraclitus was speaking truth. Despite our intellectual acceptance of the ancient sage's observation, we humans tend to strongly resist & even reject change – something […] The post David Schonthal: How To Overcome The Resistance That Always Awaits New Ideas appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

Leaders of digital and ecommerce are always trying to influence the adoption of new ideas - new products and brands by shoppers, and new ideas for how internal teams must transform to both meet the challenges of a shopper-led buying journey and to maximize growth. David Schonthal, professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School, is co-author of The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. For every marketer that's been brought up on The Law of Attraction, this book illuminates the other side of influencing behaviors - the Frictions that stand in the way, and the best strategies and processes for identifying and overcoming them. Molly Schonthal (yes, a relation) joins Peter Crosby as co-host.

Kelly connects with two professors at the Kellogg School a Northwestern to discuss their new book The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas.

David Schonthal: The Human Element David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation and creativity. In addition to his teaching, he also serves as the Director of Entrepreneurship Programs and the Faculty Director of the Zell Fellows Program. Along with his colleague Loran Nordgren, David is one of the originators of Friction Theory – a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promising innovations and change initiatives often struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences – and what to do about it. He is the author with Loran of The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas*. In this conversation, David and I discuss how leaders can do a better job at helping others overcome resistance to a new idea. We explore the distinction between friction and fuel — and why leaders tend to miss opportunities to reduce friction. David also shares several, practical strategies that almost all of us can use to reduce the weight of friction with those we are trying to influence. Key Points When introducing something new, we tend to think more about fuel than we do about friction. Both are essential for traction. Repetition is missed opportunity in most organizations. Leaders tend to want to perfect the details too much. Start small with a beacon project to prototype the value change may bring to the organization. Leaning in on making a new idea prototypical will help it be more familiar to those you are trying to influence. Emphasize what is similar — not just what is new. Analogies can help bridge the gap between the new and the familiar. Use an analogy the audience can relate to. Adding an extreme option and/or an undesirable can help transform inertia from a friction into a fuel. Resources Mentioned The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas* by Loren Nordgren and David Schonthal Related Episodes How to Succeed with Leadership and Management, with John Kotter (episode 249) How to Pivot Quickly, with Steve Blank (episode 476) The Way Innovators Get Traction, with Tendayi Viki (episode 512) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.

David Schonthal is an award-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University), the Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at Kellogg and the Faculty Director of the Zell Fellows Program.  During the pandemic, David and his colleague, Loran Nordgren, wrote The Human Element: a book centered around their original concept, Friction Theory, which is a ground-breaking methodology that explains why even the most promising innovations and change initiatives often struggle to gain traction with their intended audiences as released. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience during book release event; its content travels between personal stories and inspirations, career pivots and evolutions, academia: how it succeeds and fails and, especially Friction Theory/The Human Element.

This episode is about the friction we face as innovators. Jeff is joined by David Schonthal, Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and co-author of The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. Jeff and David discuss the headwinds that stand in the way of innovation; the four frictions that, unless overcome, will prevent new ideas from succeeding. We're hard-wired as humans to focus on new product features and functions. While important, Jeff and David had a rich conversation about the inevitable friction and resistance that innovators inevitably face when designing and bringing new ideas to market. We all face friction; David offers a creative roadmap to get past it.

無論是說服他人或說服自己採取某個行動，很多時候我們以為只要把提案弄得夠吸引人即可，但問題可能不是出在提案不夠吸引人，而是心理摩擦力（Friction）。 在這集【心情Studio】中，我們就要來談談這個讓人難以推動改變的一個關鍵（卻有很多人忽略）的心理因素，以及我們可以如何在生活中察覺心理摩擦力、巧用摩擦力成為助力。

In this episode, I'm really excited to have as my guest, David Schonthal, an award-winning Clinical Professor and Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, healthcare innovation and creativity. David is also co-author with fellow Kellogg professor Loran Nordgren, of The Human Element, a book about overcoming people's resistance to innovation and change. Outside of Kellogg, David has been a practitioner of entrepreneurship, design, and innovation for over 20 years. He has spent a decade working at world-renowned design firm, IDEO, and currently serves as an Operating Partner at 7Wire Ventures, a healthcare technology-focused venture capital firm. David is a Global Advisor at Design for Ventures (D4V), a Tokyo-based early-stage venture capital fund that invests in design-led Japanese startups, and is the Co-Founder of MATTER, a 25,000 square-foot innovation center in downtown Chicago focused on catalyzing and supporting healthcare entrepreneurship. In our discussion, David talked to me about: Human behaviour that underpins the resistance to change Being problem-focused rather than product-focused Co-designing solutions by framing changes as an experiment Listen to the podcast to learn more. https://innovabiz.co/davidschonthal (Show Notes and Blog) https://innovabiz.com.au/innovabuzz/ (The Podcasts)

Loran Nordgren is Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. His research explores the basic psychological processes that guide how we think and act. David Schonthal is Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Kellogg, as well as Faculty Director of Kellogg's Zell Fellows Program, a selective venture accelerator program designed to help student entrepreneurs successfully launch or acquire new businesses. Their new book, The Human Element, focuses on how to get people to say yes to a new idea or innovation. Many believe that the best (and perhaps only) way to convince people to embrace a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself. However, the authors argue, this neglects the other half of the equation — the psychological “Frictions” that oppose change. In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Insitute, the authors share insights from the book, explore the causes of frictions, and provide guidance on how we can identify and overcome them. *** About the BCG Henderson Institute The BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group's think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Why do good ideas fail to succeed? How come genius products and businesses can't make it off the ground? It often isn't the idea or product that causes a business to fail — it's the people. In his new book, The Human Element, David Schonthal breaks down friction theory, which explains why people resist change and what slows them down from making progress. Bringing something to market or trying to create change involves both fuel and friction. Schonthal says most entrepreneurs focus on the fuel, or creating a great product or service and acquiring customers. But the other aspect of friction theory is the friction itself, or the human beings you're trying to influence. Schonthal and co-author Loran Nordgren identified four primary sources of friction or resistance that stand in the way of a product's success in the market. These are the main reasons great ideas fail — they aren't tackling the friction of getting people to change and adopt something new: 1. Inertia. No matter how good your idea is, people naturally resist change. Inertia is the tendency to stick with the status quo. Schonthal recommends tackling inertia by making unfamiliar ideas more familiar and highlighting the improvements and differences of a product so people can make the mental leap to adjust how they live, work, and use the product. 2. Effort. Change requires physical, emotional, mental, and economic effort. If a customer has to put forth a lot of effort to use a new product, they likely aren't going to do it. Great products need to be well-designed in all aspects so that they require as little physical or cognitive effort as possible for customers. 3. Emotion. Adopting a new idea often leaves people with new emotions and feelings. If they are scared to try something new, they may be feeling fearful or intimidated. Too often, Schonthal says the emotional impact on customers isn't taken into account, which can lead to more emotional friction. Focus on how the product makes people feel and what they will feel as they change. 4. Reactance. This is a psychological term that refers to people's aversion to being changed by other people. No matter how good the idea is, people don't like feeling like an idea is being imposed upon them and will resist change because it takes away their decision-making power. Countering reactance involves reframing to provide autonomy and include customers in the decision-making process. Bringing something to market isn't just about creating a great product — it's also about appealing to customers and addressing their reluctance to change. Appealing to the four main causes of friction can help entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level and lead to stronger adoption by customers. We frequently get asked things like: What do we use for courses and email marketing? What platform do we use to find people to join our team? What tools do we use for project and task management? Where do we host and publish podcasts and how do we transcribe them? And More.  Well, we just put together the Entrepreneurs' Online Business Toolkit PDF which will give you a complete breakdown of the tools we use to run our 7-figure businesses and how we use them. Click here to grab a copy, it will be an invaluable resource in your entrepreneurial journey! Connect with us: Website: https://www.byobpodcast.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byobpodcasting  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebyobpodcast  Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebyobpodcast  Newsletter: http://www.byobpodcast.com/newsletter 

We spend a lot of our professional days trying to sell ideas to colleagues or clients, don't we? We may not like the idea of selling but that's exactly what we're doing. It might for support for an initiative or investment in a project - from a Board, Exco, or external investor.We'd like to think that do it well - describing its features, explaining how it works and selling the benefits. No doubt with conviction, emotion too. But sometimes the answer is 'no'. Perhaps it wasn't compelling enough so we try harder. Often the real problem is that we haven't invested enough time in understanding their resistance.My guest, Prof. David Schonthal argues that innovators neglect the the psychological frictions that oppose change. And though they are rarely considered, overcoming these frictions is essential for bringing new ideas into the world. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fuel-Friction-Taming-Forces-Stand/dp/1119765048Book site: https://www.humanelementbook.com/David's profile:  https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/schonthal_david.aspx.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up to my newsletter Flashes+Sparks for stimuli, ideas, guidance and tips on how to lead your team, organisation or self more effectively, delivered straight to your inbox: http://bit.ly/36WRpriIf you're not subscribed already and would like to join this youtube channel you can do so here: http://bit.ly/3cFGk1kYou can also find me here: LinkedIn. https://bit.ly/2Z2PexPTwitter: https://bit.ly/36XavNIPersonal website: http://bit.ly/3jA0MlNHighlights of my workEvery Leader Has Flaws. Don't Let Yours Derail Your Strategy (HBR): https://hbr.org/2021/09/every-leader-has-flaws-dont-let-yours-derail-your-strategy5 strategies to infuse diversity & inclusion into your organisation (HBR): https://hbr.org/2021/05/5-strategies-to-infuse-di-into-your-organization4 actions transformational leaders can take (HBR): https://hbr.org/2021/05/4-actions-transformational-leaders-takeFour building blocks of transformation (S+B): https://www.strategy-business.com/article/The-Four-Building-Blocks-of-Transformation?gko=5a1aaHow to be a visionary leader and still have a personal life (HBR): https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-to-be-a-visionary-leader-and-still-have-a-personal-lifeHow to practise strategy in an uncertain world (Strategy+Business): http://bit.ly/2OaojhB10 principles of strategic leadership (S+B): http://bit.ly/3q14kQmHow to reinvent your organisation in the middle of a crisis (HBR): https://hbr.org/2021/02/how-to-reinvent-your-organization-in-the-middle-of-a-crisisHow to convince people that a crisis is also an opportunity (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/sites/lbsbusinessstrategyreview/2020/04/28/how-to-convince-people-that-a-crisis-is-also-an-opportunity/?sh=441e32b830f8

In his book, “The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas,” Kellogg professor David Schonthal challenges the default assumption that selling an idea requires the seller to heighten its appeal. Instead, he makes the case that failure to adopt ideas, strategies or products is often due to the four key psychological frictions that oppose change: inertia, effort, emotion and reactance. He argues that successful leaders and innovators must identify, understand and overcome these to achieve novel outcomes.

We'll be back later this fall with another full season of Agile Giants, but I wanted to interrupt our break to share a conversation I had with David Schonthal. David is the Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Business, and the reason I'm interrupting this is he's got a book that came out on October 5th called The Human Element It looks at how resistance to innovation and change can be overcome using some really interesting techniques. I think there are applications obviously, for introducing new products and services, but there are also a ton of applications around how you just create change in many of your larger established organizations, and really drive towards transformation.  Get the book here: humanelementbook.com

Welcome to episode #797 of Six Pixels of Separation. Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation - Episode #797 - Host: Mitch Joel. David Schonthal is a Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches courses in new venture creation, design thinking, business acquisition, healthcare entrepreneurship, corporate innovation and creativity. He also serves as the Faculty Director of Kellogg's Zell Fellows Program, a selective venture accelerator program designed to help student entrepreneurs. Outside of Kellogg David is a Senior Director of Business Design at IDEO, David focuses on helping organizations build and launch new ventures, design new business models, and establish go-to-market strategies. David also serves as an Operating Partner at 7WireVentures, a healthcare technology-focused venture capital firm, and is a Venture Partner at Pritzker Group. He is also a Global Advisor at Design for Ventures, a Tokyo-based early-stage venture fund that invests in design-led Japanese startups. David is a co-founder of MATTER, a 25,000-square-foot innovation center in downtown Chicago focused on supporting healthcare entrepreneurship and serves as a member of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's technology, innovation and entrepreneurship council, ChicagoNext. More recently he co-authored the book, The Human Element - Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas with Loran Nordgren. This is for anyone who wants to launch new ideas and innovation into the world and your work. Enjoy the conversation... Running time: 53:57. Hello from beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at Apple Podcasts. Please visit and leave comments on the blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on Twitter. Here is my conversation with David Schonthal. The Human Element - Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. Loran Nordgren. Kellogg School of Management. Follow David on Twitter. Follow David on LinkedIn. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'.    

On today's episode of The Human Factor, Eric speaks to David Schonthal, a Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... Product Mastery Now with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  Today we are talking about a key challenge with product innovation—the change innovation necessitates. If there is no change, there is no innovation. Helping us understand change and how to properly navigate it in an organization is David Schonthal. He is an award-winning Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, innovation and creativity. He has also been a practitioner of entrepreneurship and innovation for over 20 years, including a decade working at design firm IDEO. Also, one of his early jobs was product manager at Arthur Andersen.

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with David Schonthal, Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and Coauthor of the new book, The Human Element. David and I talk about what keeps ideas from gaining traction and what you can do to avoid friction and resistance to new ideas. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with David Schonthal, Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and Coauthor of The Human ElementBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation, I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have David Schonthal. He is a Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and Coauthor of the new book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas. Welcome to the show, David. David Schonthal: Thanks, Brian. Nice to be here. Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm excited to have you here. You have spent a lot of your career thinking about and watching what it takes to make new ideas happen. You've spent time at IDEO. You were co-founder of Matter, which is that 25,000 square foot innovation center in Chicago. Has some venture capital experience and that. And I thought we could start by telling the audience how you got into the innovation space in the first place. David Schonthal: By accident is the answer. It's sort of a long story, but I wound up becoming the COO of a medical device company in San Diego, California based on a radical shift from what I was doing before, which is tax software in London. To make a long story short, one of my former bosses called me up when I was just at my lowest point with tax and the UK, no offense to the UK, but it was winter, and it was like dark 18 hours out of the day. And he called me up and all of a sudden, I just, all I remember is him saying, yada, yada, yada San Diego, yada yada, yada. I was like, oh please.He's like, would you like to know what the business is? I was like, no, not important. So, I wound up going and being the head of operations for an early stage medical device company. And then basically from that point forward was just bit with the bug around bringing new ideas to market either in the startup space, through entrepreneurship or venture capital or in the corporate space through design and innovation.Brian Ardinger: And you've got a new book called the Human Element. I would imagine it packs a lot about the things that you've learned over that career. Since you've spent a lot of time seeing how early ideas get traction or not, what is the most striking problem that you see most people making when it comes to kicking off an idea?David Schonthal: I think maybe the best place to start is by most innovators and entrepreneurs' instinct that the idea is the thing that needs to be addressed. So, if a new product or service or strategy isn't being adopted by the market, most innovators instincts says well, let's make the product a little better. Let's change the way we talk about it. Let's drop the price. Let's promote it differently. And they make the thing or the strategy or the movement, the center of their attention. And in the course of my career, I've worked on some really amazing, I mean, some terrible, but also some really amazing innovations and products and services. And I was always surprised by how, even though clearly if these things were adopted into the market, they would make the world a better place, no matter how much we tweaked or change the idea that wasn't always the key to success of getting it introduced.And so about four years ago, turned my attention to thinking about what is it that stands in the way of change and partnered up with one of my colleagues at Kellogg, who was a behavioral psychologist named Loran Nordgren. And together we've been studying this problem from both the applied side, as well as the theoretical side.And that was the genesis of the book, which is that our instincts about innovation are too heavily biased on making the thing more appealing and not focused enough on helping the market adopt it by removing the friction that stands in the way. Brian Ardinger: Yeah. I love that. You kind of start off the book, this battle between what do you call fuel and friction. The idea that a lot of times, just to make an idea better, all you have to do is add more facts or more features or try to get more folks bought into it. But really, it's a lot about how do you eliminate the frictions around that? So, in the book you talk about four frictions. Let's outline and tell the audience how they can avoid them.David Schonthal: Sure. So, if you think about a new idea, like an airplane leaving the ground or a projectile flying through the air. Fuel, to your point Brian, are all of the things that propel that idea forward. The need that the customer has, features and benefits, promotional strategies, but like an airplane leaving the ground there are also forces that stand in the way, whether it's wind resistance or sheer or gravity. And so, the book is really focused on these forces, these headwinds of innovation and the four that we specify in the book, the four frictions, our number one inertia, which is our desire as human beings to tend to stick with the status quo. Despite the fact that we know the status quo might be imperfect, our habits are surprisingly powerful. And so, recognizing that inertia is a play anytime you're trying to get somebody to change from what they're doing today, to what you'd like them to do tomorrow. Effort is the second one. All of the ambiguity, all of the costliness, all of the exertion required to get somebody to make that change. The third friction is emotion. All of the anxiety and fear that comes along with changing from something that you do today to something you do tomorrow. And you might not think that emotion comes into play for small things, but emotion comes into play when you're buying a pack of gum or when you're putting on a new shirt.And then the fourth is what we call reactants, which is people's aversion to being changed by others. And each of them show up in varying degrees, depending on what you're working on in spotting them appropriately forecasting them ideally, so that they can be muted and mitigated is really the key. Brian Ardinger: And a lot of those frictions, they're almost not necessarily irrational, but they're definitely not something that you can take an economic model and say, well, clearly there's a cost benefit analysis and everybody should end up on this side of it because of the cost benefit analysis. But there's a lot of underlying things. And it seems a lot of this frictions around ambiguity or being comfortable with failure. How can you get folks more comfortable with that environment of ambiguity? David Schonthal: There's a couple of things that are packed into that question. Number one, ambiguity maps to the friction of effort. Effort we assume is like exertion, which is how much time and money will it take me to make a change. But you're pointing out appropriately that the other way effort comes in is ambiguity or a lack of clarity about how to go about doing something.And sometimes that ambiguity can be so overwhelming that people are afraid to get started because they don't necessarily know how to get started. We talk in the book about a couple of methodologies specifically around helping people with ambiguity. One is around road mapping in simplification. Oftentimes our desire to get people to change is to like keep adding or keep making something better, add facts or add arguments to get somebody to change from what they're doing, to what you'd like them to doing.I mean, just look at vaccines. For example, in the states. Like there's no ambiguity about the evidence that vaccines help protect against severe illness. There is no ambiguity. There is no doubting, the fact that if you get vaccinated, it will make the world a safer place. But that doesn't stop people from having resistance to that idea.And one thing might be around the ambiguity about how to go about getting a vaccine. One might be around the perceived effort of getting a vaccine. The fear about getting a vaccine. And so understanding why people do or don't do the things that they do is really the key to addressing it. So simplification, streamlining, making unfamiliar ideas more familiar. Oftentimes innovators have this instinct that because their idea is new and radical. We need to highlight its newness and its radicalness is part of its allure. Oftentimes that actually works against us because the newer and more radical something seems the less familiar it is. And the more anxiety we have about how we're going to start to use it. And the great example of that comes from Apple. And if you're old enough audience to remember the introduction of the Macintosh OS. In addition to creating a new machine, one of the things that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created was a created was a new operating system for how computers are used. And unlike PCs or DOS-based systems, which you really needed to learn the language of computers in order to do something on a computer, Steve Jobs and other great innovators tend to have their products and services operate the way the rest of your world works.So, when you're working on an Apple home screen, you're working on a desktop. And when you're creating a document and you want to store that document, you put that document in a folder. And when you want to get rid of it, you drag it into the trashcan. And these might seem sort of like cute user interface principles, but these were deliberately designed to make something wildly unfamiliar to people who had never worked on a computer to immediately feel more comfortable with it because it works, sounds, and it feels the way the rest of your world works. So even though something is new, doesn't mean that it should be projected as radically.Brian Ardinger: So, if I'm a new innovator or I'm a startup entrepreneur, I've got a new idea I want to start building that out. Do you recommend mapping out these particular frictions or how do you find out what your audience or what your customers are fearful about? David Schonthal: That's a great question. There are a couple of tools we bring to life in the book. One is called a Friction Map, which is anticipating the frictions that might stand in the way of your new ideas. So, it is a document that you can fill out with your team. Where you forecast based on some clear questions that are asked in the Map. What is the relevance? What is the amount of inertia that might be present? What's the amount of effort, friction that might be present? Emotional friction that might be present in reactants? And then there's another framework around remedies. How might you take each of these frictions, test them in the market, but also test possible remedies to overcome. And the more you can bring this into your design process.So, people will fill out a Business Model Canvas based on Osterwalder's work, or they'll fill out a Horizons Framework as they're forecasting what opportunities might exist. We also recommend filling out a Friction Map, which is what are the forces of resistance that might stand in the way. And what might we prototype to overcome those forces as a way of introducing this product or service or strategy.Brian Ardinger: And then do you go out and actually test those assumptions? David Schonthal: Absolutely. Each of them can be prototyped. And yes, testing them with different audiences, testing different ways of communicating or making unfamiliar things familiar. Or identifying the sources of emotional friction so that they can be addressed in the messaging, and the way products are communicated. All are easy enough to test in low fidelity and oftentimes save us a lot of effort down the road when it comes to scaling offers up. Brian Ardinger: One of the other things I liked about the book is that you have not only these frameworks, that people can understand the methodology and that around it, but you also bring out some case studies in the book. And one of them is around Flyhomes, which is a startup company that built a new business model in the real estate space, designed to address some of the frictions in the market. So, can you talk a little bit about that case study? David Schonthal: It's a great story. So Flyhomes, for those of you who are living in the United States while you're watching this can appreciate, we are in the midst of a bananas housing market, residential housing market. Debt has never been cheaper. Inventory has never been lower. And as a result, desirable homes are just flying off the market almost the same day that they're listed, which creates a whole conundrum for people who are trying to buy homes, particularly first-time home buyers. Because when inventory is low, typically the offers that get accepted by sellers, particularly when they have multiple offers, are all cash offers or offers that are perceived to be low risk. And low risk offers are ones that don't have contingencies attached to them. Don't have home sale contingencies. Don't have loan contingencies. In order to compete, in order to get a home buyer, you have to either bring all cash to the table or convince sellers that despite the fact that they've got these contingencies, that there's actually a high degree of certainty, that something will close.Flyhomes is a business that helps address this problem by making all buyers, all cash buyers, they have focused their business model on removing the friction that stands in the way of somebody buying a home in simultaneously removing the friction that stands in the way of a seller accepting the new one offer forum.They didn't start this way. Flyhomes began, in fact, the namesake doesn't come from homes flying off the market. It came from the fact that Stephen Lane and Tushar Garg who were young entrepreneurs, started the business by thinking, all right, in the world of real estate tech, in the world of residential real estate tech, the big names or the new market innovations where things like Trulia and Zillow and Redfin, that had two primary value propositions.One we're either going to take all home inventory off the MLS that exists only for real estate agents, and we're going to democratize it and make it so that anybody who's interested in looking at homes can see all available inventory, which is great. And then the second thing they typically did was discount brokerage. Meaning that if you worked with one of their agents, you would get cash back, they would discount their service fee and you would get some of that back in a rebate. And Steve and Tushar figured there was probably more that could be done in this market. And they being millennials themselves in doing some research, found that millennials, in addition to wanting to own homes, also desired travel, adventure, freedom.And why is it that when we make big purchases on electronics or appliances on a credit card, we get all the benefits that come with a credit card, like points and travel miles. Why don't we get something like that with homes? And so, they created a product called Flyhomes, which is for every dollar you spend on the purchase of a new home, up into a half a million dollars, you would get points on an airline.And they partnered with Alaska and Jet Blue. And Jet Blue actually sent out this mass email to all their frequent flyers saying we're now in this arrangement with Flyhomes, buy a home through Flyhomes get up to 500,000 frequent flyer miles on Jet Blue. In the first day, thousands of people signed up for the platform.And Steve and Tushar looked at themselves like this is going to be huge. And then nothing. Like nothing happened. Nobody was buying a home through Flyhomes. Nobody was actually using the service. There was enough alure or to the idea that got people interested to like check it out and sign up. But that wasn't actually helping people make the progress. They really wanted to make, which wasn't getting 500,000 airline points. It was actually getting the home that they wanted. Flyhomes could address the real problem or address the real progress. All of these bells and whistles wouldn't make things easier. It would just be bells and whistles for the sake of bells and whistles.So almost at the point of going out of business, they decided to pivot. And because they both had their real estate license started selling real estate. And by studying people in this kind of ethnographic way and actually getting out and selling real estate as realtors, they understood that the problem wasn't the points in adventure.The problem was is that people desired homes in competitive markets that they were unable to access. And after two or three chances of putting in bids and having those bids rejected, people were just giving up on real estate all together. And so Steve and Tushar decided that if they could help address the problem of democratizing the ability for home buyers to buy homes in really competitive markets, that would be a revolutionary change. That would really change the game. And so, they pivoted over from points to friction removal. And today. Flyhomes is growing like crazy. They do billions of dollars a year in transactions. They just raised a really big Series C at $150 million. It's all because they changed their business model from fuel addition to friction removal.Brian Ardinger: Excellent example. Now you've got a number of them in the book and that. What other hidden gems in the book that people should be excited about when they pick it up? David Schonthal: I think the most interesting stories and we try to have as many of them as possible in the book, so the ones that are counterintuitive. Like the ones that really check our biases and our assumptions about what we think the right way to do something is relative to what the science and the data tells us. And one of the things that I think readers who read this book will find is that in many cases, our instincts about what we ought to do to affect change are actually in some ways the opposite of what we ought to do to impact change.And we actually start the book off with a really fun story about the world's most successful car salesperson. A guy named Ali Reda, who works in suburban Detroit, in Dearborn, Michigan. Who outsells every other average car dealer in the United States, by a factor of 12 to one. He single-handedly sells as many as 1500 cars a year, which is more than most dealerships sell in total.And when you study Ali, and when you interview him and when you understand how he approaches car sales, that is so much different than his peers, what you learn is that he just frames his job radically different than every other salesperson. And I won't divulge too much about the secrets of how, but there's lots of examples in this book about how people who go left when everybody else goes right. And to succeed, but it's not just that they go left, it's understanding the psychology of what it is that they're doing differently than enables them to experience that success. Which is really, I think the beautiful thing about partnering with Loren on this is not only do we have examples about how these things work in practice, but we can also help people understand why they work psychologically.Brian Ardinger: So, you've been in this innovation industry for quite a long time. What are some of the biggest changes that you've come across and how do you see the innovation space kind of evolving? David Schonthal: That is a, the ability for people to create new ideas and make them real has never been easier. The cost of starting a new business, the cost of creating a new product or service with digital technology has enabled everybody who once had an idea on a napkin sketch.You now have the ability to make that sketch into something real and tangible and available in the market. And what I find now is, we've got a different problem, which is that the world is flooded with new ideas and flooded with new technologies. And whereas before it used to be hard to make an idea into a real thing. Now it's getting people to notice and pay attention and actually adopt your real thing. And one of the ways that we think about doing it is spending a lot of money on marketing and advertising and SEO and SEM. And yes, that's part of building awareness. But we don't often think about awareness as being one side of the equation. The other side is how do you make it easy for people to say yes. Well, one of the things we noticed about new products and services, particularly when you're creating a new consumer product is people will learn about it. They'll even go to the website, they'll put it in their cart, but at the moment before they check out, they'll abandon their cart, which means you've done half the job, right.You've gotten them interested to come to the site at the beginning. You've gotten them interested enough in the features and benefits to actually add that, or imagine that in their lives, but something is holding them back from actually pulling the trigger. And I think, now we've created a world where making the idea come to life has never been easier. But how do we make sure that it's easy for people to adopt that into their lives so that they can say yes, and to get noticed in that way. It's no longer about features and benefits. Now it's just about making things as frictionless and as effortless as possible for people to adopt. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: And the great thing about that is that's becoming easier as well. And people like yourself are helping in that process. So, David, thank you for coming on Inside Outside Innovation, to tell us a little bit about some of the secret sauce behind all that. I encourage people to pick up The Human Element. If people want to find out more about yourself or the book, what's the best way to do that? David Schonthal: HumanElementBook.com is a landing page that shares information about the book. You can find me on the Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management faculty page, just Google my name, David Schonthal. And usually, you can find me there and I'd love to hear from you. Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you David, for being on the show and look forward to continuing the conversation as the years and the innovation evolve. David Schonthal: Thanks Brian. Me too. It was great to be here. Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. 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On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with David Schonthal, Clinical Professor and Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at the Kellogg School of Management and Coauthor of the new book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. David and I talk about what keeps ideas from gaining traction and what you can do to avoid friction and resistance to new ideas. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with David Schonthal, Clinical Professor and Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at Northwestern University and Coauthor of The Human ElementBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation, I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have David Schonthal. He is a Clinical Professor and Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at Northwestern University and Coauthor of the new book, The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas. Welcome to the show, David. David Schonthal: Thanks, Brian. Nice to be here. Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm excited to have you here. You have spent a lot of your career thinking about and watching what it takes to make new ideas happen. You've spent time at IDEO. You were co-founder of Matter, which is that 25,000 square foot innovation center in Chicago. Has some venture capital experience and that. And I thought we could start by telling the audience how you got into the innovation space in the first place. David Schonthal: By accident is the answer. It's sort of a long story, but I wound up becoming the COO of a medical device company in San Diego, California based on a radical shift from what I was doing before, which is tax software in London. To make a long story short, one of my former bosses called me up when I was just at my lowest point with tax and the UK, no offense to the UK, but it was winter, and it was like dark 18 hours out of the day. And he called me up and all of a sudden, I just, all I remember is him saying, yada, yada, yada San Diego, yada yada, yada. I was like, oh please.He's like, would you like to know what the business is? I was like, no, not important. So, I wound up going and being the head of operations for an early stage medical device company. And then basically from that point forward was just bit with the bug around bringing new ideas to market either in the startup space, through entrepreneurship or venture capital or in the corporate space through design and innovation.Brian Ardinger: And you've got a new book called the Human Element. I would imagine it packs a lot about the things that you've learned over that career. Since you've spent a lot of time seeing how early ideas get traction or not, what is the most striking problem that you see most people making when it comes to kicking off an idea?David Schonthal: I think maybe the best place to start is by most innovators and entrepreneurs' instinct that the idea is the thing that needs to be addressed. So, if a new product or service or strategy isn't being adopted by the market, most innovators instincts says well, let's make the product a little better. Let's change the way we talk about it. Let's drop the price. Let's promote it differently. And they make the thing or the strategy or the movement, the center of their attention. And in the course of my career, I've worked on some really amazing, I mean, some terrible, but also some really amazing innovations and products and services. And I was always surprised by how, even though clearly if these things were adopted into the market, they would make the world a better place, no matter how much we tweaked or change the idea that wasn't always the key to success of getting it introduced.And so about four years ago, turned my attention to thinking about what is it that stands in the way of change and partnered up with one of my colleagues at Kellogg, who was a behavioral psychologist named Loran Nordgren. And together we've been studying this problem from both the applied side, as well as the theoretical side.And that was the genesis of the book, which is that our instincts about innovation are too heavily biased on making the thing more appealing and not focused enough on helping the market adopt it by removing the friction that stands in the way. Brian Ardinger: Yeah. I love that. You kind of start off the book, this battle between what do you call fuel and friction. The idea that a lot of times, just to make an idea better, all you have to do is add more facts or more features or try to get more folks bought into it. But really, it's a lot about how do you eliminate the frictions around that? So, in the book you talk about four frictions. Let's outline and tell the audience how they can avoid them.David Schonthal: Sure. So, if you think about a new idea, like an airplane leaving the ground or a projectile flying through the air. Fuel, to your point Brian, are all of the things that propel that idea forward. The need that the customer has, features and benefits, promotional strategies, but like an airplane leaving the ground there are also forces that stand in the way, whether it's wind resistance or sheer or gravity. And so, the book is really focused on these forces, these headwinds of innovation and the four that we specify in the book, the four frictions, our number one inertia, which is our desire as human beings to tend to stick with the status quo. Despite the fact that we know the status quo might be imperfect, our habits are surprisingly powerful. And so, recognizing that inertia is a play anytime you're trying to get somebody to change from what they're doing today, to what you'd like them to do tomorrow. Effort is the second one. All of the ambiguity, all of the costliness, all of the exertion required to get somebody to make that change. The third friction is emotion. All of the anxiety and fear that comes along with changing from something that you do today to something you do tomorrow. And you might not think that emotion comes into play for small things, but emotion comes into play when you're buying a pack of gum or when you're putting on a new shirt.And then the fourth is what we call reactants, which is people's aversion to being changed by others. And each of them show up in varying degrees, depending on what you're working on in spotting them appropriately forecasting them ideally, so that they can be muted and mitigated is really the key. Brian Ardinger: And a lot of those frictions, they're almost not necessarily irrational, but they're definitely not something that you can take an economic model and say, well, clearly there's a cost benefit analysis and everybody should end up on this side of it because of the cost benefit analysis. But there's a lot of underlying things. And it seems a lot of this frictions around ambiguity or being comfortable with failure. How can you get folks more comfortable with that environment of ambiguity? David Schonthal: There's a couple of things that are packed into that question. Number one, ambiguity maps to the friction of effort. Effort we assume is like exertion, which is how much time and money will it take me to make a change. But you're pointing out appropriately that the other way effort comes in is ambiguity or a lack of clarity about how to go about doing something.And sometimes that ambiguity can be so overwhelming that people are afraid to get started because they don't necessarily know how to get started. We talk in the book about a couple of methodologies specifically around helping people with ambiguity. One is around road mapping in simplification. Oftentimes our desire to get people to change is to like keep adding or keep making something better, add facts or add arguments to get somebody to change from what they're doing, to what you'd like them to doing.I mean, just look at vaccines. For example, in the states. Like there's no ambiguity about the evidence that vaccines help protect against severe illness. There is no ambiguity. There is no doubting, the fact that if you get vaccinated, it will make the world a safer place. But that doesn't stop people from having resistance to that idea.And one thing might be around the ambiguity about how to go about getting a vaccine. One might be around the perceived effort of getting a vaccine. The fear about getting a vaccine. And so understanding why people do or don't do the things that they do is really the key to addressing it. So simplification, streamlining, making unfamiliar ideas more familiar. Oftentimes innovators have this instinct that because their idea is new and radical. We need to highlight its newness and its radicalness is part of its allure. Oftentimes that actually works against us because the newer and more radical something seems the less familiar it is. And the more anxiety we have about how we're going to start to use it. And the great example of that comes from Apple. And if you're old enough audience to remember the introduction of the Macintosh OS. In addition to creating a new machine, one of the things that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created was a created was a new operating system for how computers are used. And unlike PCs or DOS-based systems, which you really needed to learn the language of computers in order to do something on a computer, Steve Jobs and other great innovators tend to have their products and services operate the way the rest of your world works.So, when you're working on an Apple home screen, you're working on a desktop. And when you're creating a document and you want to store that document, you put that document in a folder. And when you want to get rid of it, you drag it into the trashcan. And these might seem sort of like cute user interface principles, but these were deliberately designed to make something wildly unfamiliar to people who had never worked on a computer to immediately feel more comfortable with it because it works, sounds, and it feels the way the rest of your world works. So even though something is new, doesn't mean that it should be projected as radically.Brian Ardinger: So, if I'm a new innovator or I'm a startup entrepreneur, I've got a new idea I want to start building that out. Do you recommend mapping out these particular frictions or how do you find out what your audience or what your customers are fearful about? David Schonthal: That's a great question. There are a couple of tools we bring to life in the book. One is called a Friction Map, which is anticipating the frictions that might stand in the way of your new ideas. So, it is a document that you can fill out with your team. Where you forecast based on some clear questions that are asked in the Map. What is the relevance? What is the amount of inertia that might be present? What's the amount of effort, friction that might be present? Emotional friction that might be present in reactants? And then there's another framework around remedies. How might you take each of these frictions, test them in the market, but also test possible remedies to overcome. And the more you can bring this into your design process.So, people will fill out a Business Model Canvas based on Osterwalder's work, or they'll fill out a Horizons Framework as they're forecasting what opportunities might exist. We also recommend filling out a Friction Map, which is what are the forces of resistance that might stand in the way. And what might we prototype to overcome those forces as a way of introducing this product or service or strategy.Brian Ardinger: And then do you go out and actually test those assumptions? David Schonthal: Absolutely. Each of them can be prototyped. And yes, testing them with different audiences, testing different ways of communicating or making unfamiliar things familiar. Or identifying the sources of emotional friction so that they can be addressed in the messaging, and the way products are communicated. All are easy enough to test in low fidelity and oftentimes save us a lot of effort down the road when it comes to scaling offers up. Brian Ardinger: One of the other things I liked about the book is that you have not only these frameworks, that people can understand the methodology and that around it, but you also bring out some case studies in the book. And one of them is around Flyhomes, which is a startup company that built a new business model in the real estate space, designed to address some of the frictions in the market. So, can you talk a little bit about that case study? David Schonthal: It's a great story. So Flyhomes, for those of you who are living in the United States while you're watching this can appreciate, we are in the midst of a bananas housing market, residential housing market. Debt has never been cheaper. Inventory has never been lower. And as a result, desirable homes are just flying off the market almost the same day that they're listed, which creates a whole conundrum for people who are trying to buy homes, particularly first-time home buyers. Because when inventory is low, typically the offers that get accepted by sellers, particularly when they have multiple offers, are all cash offers or offers that are perceived to be low risk. And low risk offers are ones that don't have contingencies attached to them. Don't have home sale contingencies. Don't have loan contingencies. In order to compete, in order to get a home buyer, you have to either bring all cash to the table or convince sellers that despite the fact that they've got these contingencies, that there's actually a high degree of certainty, that something will close.Flyhomes is a business that helps address this problem by making all buyers, all cash buyers, they have focused their business model on removing the friction that stands in the way of somebody buying a home in simultaneously removing the friction that stands in the way of a seller accepting the new one offer forum.They didn't start this way. Flyhomes began, in fact, the namesake doesn't come from homes flying off the market. It came from the fact that Stephen Lane and Tushar Garg who were young entrepreneurs, started the business by thinking, all right, in the world of real estate tech, in the world of residential real estate tech, the big names or the new market innovations where things like Trulia and Zillow and Redfin, that had two primary value propositions.One we're either going to take all home inventory off the MLS that exists only for real estate agents, and we're going to democratize it and make it so that anybody who's interested in looking at homes can see all available inventory, which is great. And then the second thing they typically did was discount brokerage. Meaning that if you worked with one of their agents, you would get cash back, they would discount their service fee and you would get some of that back in a rebate. And Steve and Tushar figured there was probably more that could be done in this market. And they being millennials themselves in doing some research, found that millennials, in addition to wanting to own homes, also desired travel, adventure, freedom.And why is it that when we make big purchases on electronics or appliances on a credit card, we get all the benefits that come with a credit card, like points and travel miles. Why don't we get something like that with homes? And so, they created a product called Flyhomes, which is for every dollar you spend on the purchase of a new home, up into a half a million dollars, you would get points on an airline.And they partnered with Alaska and Jet Blue. And Jet Blue actually sent out this mass email to all their frequent flyers saying we're now in this arrangement with Flyhomes, buy a home through Flyhomes get up to 500,000 frequent flyer miles on Jet Blue. In the first day, thousands of people signed up for the platform.And Steve and Tushar looked at themselves like this is going to be huge. And then nothing. Like nothing happened. Nobody was buying a home through Flyhomes. Nobody was actually using the service. There was enough alure or to the idea that got people interested to like check it out and sign up. But that wasn't actually helping people make the progress. They really wanted to make, which wasn't getting 500,000 airline points. It was actually getting the home that they wanted. Flyhomes could address the real problem or address the real progress. All of these bells and whistles wouldn't make things easier. It would just be bells and whistles for the sake of bells and whistles.So almost at the point of going out of business, they decided to pivot. And because they both had their real estate license started selling real estate. And by studying people in this kind of ethnographic way and actually getting out and selling real estate as realtors, they understood that the problem wasn't the points in adventure.The problem was is that people desired homes in competitive markets that they were unable to access. And after two or three chances of putting in bids and having those bids rejected, people were just giving up on real estate all together. And so Steve and Tushar decided that if they could help address the problem of democratizing the ability for home buyers to buy homes in really competitive markets, that would be a revolutionary change. That would really change the game. And so, they pivoted over from points to friction removal. And today. Flyhomes is growing like crazy. They do billions of dollars a year in transactions. They just raised a really big Series C at $150 million. It's all because they changed their business model from fuel addition to friction removal.Brian Ardinger: Excellent example. Now you've got a number of them in the book and that. What other hidden gems in the book that people should be excited about when they pick it up? David Schonthal: I think the most interesting stories and we try to have as many of them as possible in the book, so the ones that are counterintuitive. Like the ones that really check our biases and our assumptions about what we think the right way to do something is relative to what the science and the data tells us. And one of the things that I think readers who read this book will find is that in many cases, our instincts about what we ought to do to affect change are actually in some ways the opposite of what we ought to do to impact change.And we actually start the book off with a really fun story about the world's most successful car salesperson. A guy named Ali Reda, who works in suburban Detroit, in Dearborn, Michigan. Who outsells every other average car dealer in the United States, by a factor of 12 to one. He single-handedly sells as many as 1500 cars a year, which is more than most dealerships sell in total.And when you study Ali, and when you interview him and when you understand how he approaches car sales, that is so much different than his peers, what you learn is that he just frames his job radically different than every other salesperson. And I won't divulge too much about the secrets of how, but there's lots of examples in this book about how people who go left when everybody else goes right. And to succeed, but it's not just that they go left, it's understanding the psychology of what it is that they're doing differently than enables them to experience that success. Which is really, I think the beautiful thing about partnering with Loren on this is not only do we have examples about how these things work in practice, but we can also help people understand why they work psychologically.Brian Ardinger: So, you've been in this innovation industry for quite a long time. What are some of the biggest changes that you've come across and how do you see the innovation space kind of evolving? David Schonthal: That is a, the ability for people to create new ideas and make them real has never been easier. The cost of starting a new business, the cost of creating a new product or service with digital technology has enabled everybody who once had an idea on a napkin sketch.You now have the ability to make that sketch into something real and tangible and available in the market. And what I find now is, we've got a different problem, which is that the world is flooded with new ideas and flooded with new technologies. And whereas before it used to be hard to make an idea into a real thing. Now it's getting people to notice and pay attention and actually adopt your real thing. And one of the ways that we think about doing it is spending a lot of money on marketing and advertising and SEO and SEM. And yes, that's part of building awareness. But we don't often think about awareness as being one side of the equation. The other side is how do you make it easy for people to say yes. Well, one of the things we noticed about new products and services, particularly when you're creating a new consumer product is people will learn about it. They'll even go to the website, they'll put it in their cart, but at the moment before they check out, they'll abandon their cart, which means you've done half the job, right.You've gotten them interested to come to the site at the beginning. You've gotten them interested enough in the features and benefits to actually add that, or imagine that in their lives, but something is holding them back from actually pulling the trigger. And I think, now we've created a world where making the idea come to life has never been easier. But how do we make sure that it's easy for people to adopt that into their lives so that they can say yes, and to get noticed in that way. It's no longer about features and benefits. Now it's just about making things as frictionless and as effortless as possible for people to adopt. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: And the great thing about that is that's becoming easier as well. And people like yourself are helping in that process. So, David, thank you for coming on Inside Outside Innovation, to tell us a little bit about some of the secret sauce behind all that. I encourage people to pick up The Human Element. If people want to find out more about yourself or the book, what's the best way to do that? David Schonthal: HumanElementBook.com is a landing page that shares information about the book. You can find me on the Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management faculty page, just Google my name, David Schonthal. And usually, you can find me there and I'd love to hear from you. Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you David, for being on the show and look forward to continuing the conversation as the years and the innovation evolve. David Schonthal: Thanks Brian. Me too. It was great to be here. Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. 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Combatting the forces that pull customers away from your product, for product managers Today we are talking about a key challenge with product innovation—the change innovation necessitates. If there is no change, there is no innovation. Helping us understand change and how to properly navigate it in an organization is David Schonthal. He is an […]

In this episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with David Schonthal, a Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1Fz #innovation #designthinking #ideas He teaches courses in new venture creation, design thinking, business acquisition, healthcare entrepreneurship, corporate innovation and creativity. He is also the author of the new book The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas with his co-author Loran Nordgren. Topics covered in this episode: 00:01:45 - What were the forces standing in the way of good ideas? 00:02:30 - The four frictions which prevent innovation: Inertia, Effort, Emotion, Reactance 00:05:00 - People trying to develop innovations usually do not think of the frictions, they just think of fuels 00:07:15 - Inertia: Human beings are creatures of habit and resist change 00:10:30 - Finding out the real frictions and perceived value drivers using ethnographic research 00:14:00 - The need to make people feel familiar with unfamiliar ideas 00:19:00 - Examples of frictions being universal, as exemplified by the animal kingdom 00:21:30 - Case studies of companies that are succeeding with removing frictions instead of adding fuel Links mentioned in this episode: Human Element Book: https://www.humanelementbook.com/ David's faculty page: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/schonthal_david.aspx Bonus: This episode was made possible by our premium innovation and creativity training. Take your innovation and creativity capabilities to the next level by investing in yourself now, at https://www.ideatovalue.com/all-access-pass-insider-secrets/ * Subscribe on iTunes to the Idea to Value Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/idea-to-value-creativity-innovation/id1199964981?mt=2 * Subscribe on Spotify to the Idea to Value Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4x1kANUSv7UJoCJ8GavUrN  * Subscribe on Stitcher to the Idea to Value Podcast: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=129437&refid=stpr * Subscribe on Google Podcasts to the Idea to Value Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9pZGVhdG92YWx1ZS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw  Want to rapidly validate new ideas and innovative products and GROW your online business? These are the tools I actually use to run my online businesses (and you can too): * The best email management and campaigns system: ActiveCampaign (Free Trial) http://www.activecampaign.com/?_r=M17NLG2X  * Best value web hosting: BlueHost WordPress http://www.activecampaign.com/?_r=M17NLG2X  * Landing pages, Sales Pages and Lead collection: LeadPages (Free Trial) http://leadpages.pxf.io/c/1385771/390538/5673  * Sharing & List building: Sumo (Free) https://sumo.com/?src=partner_ideatovalue  * Payments, Shopping Cart, affiliate management and Upsell generator: ThriveCart https://improvides--checkout.thrivecart.com/thrivecart-standard-account/  * Video Webinars for sales: WebinarJam and Everwebinar ($1 Trial) https://nickskillicorn.krtra.com/t/lwIBaKzMP1oQ  * Membership for protecting content: Membermouse (Free Trial) http://affiliates.membermouse.com/idevaffiliate.php?id=735  * eLearning System for students: WP Courseware https://flyplugins.com/?fly=293  * Video Editing: Techsmith Camtasia http://techsmith.z6rjha.net/vvGPv  I have used all of the above products myself to build IdeatoValue and Improvides, which is why I can confidently recommend them. I may also receive affiliate payments for any business I bring to them using the links above. Copyright https://www.ideatovalue.com

My guest today is David Schonthal, a Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches courses in new venture creation, design thinking, business acquisition, healthcare entrepreneurship, corporate innovation and creativity. He is also a Senior Director of Business Design at IDEO. The topic is his book The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas 1st Edition. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: New Ideas and Innovation The Human Element Improving the Idea Four Primary Frictions Apple Products Simplicity in Design Dating Apps Medical Innovations Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Most marketers, innovators, executives, activists, or anyone else in the business of creating change, operate on a deep assumption. It is the belief that the best (and perhaps only) way to convince people to embrace a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself. We instinctively believe that if we add enough value, people will eventually say “yes.” This reflex leads us down a path of adding features and benefits to our ideas or increasing the sizzle of our messaging – all in the hope of getting others on board. We call this instinct the “Fuel-based mindset.” The Fuel-based mindset explains so much of what we do, from adding countless trivial features to software, to bolting a sixth blade onto a shaving razor. By focusing on fuel, innovators neglect the other half of the equation – the psychological Frictions that oppose change. Frictions create drag on innovation. And though they are rarely considered, overcoming these Frictions is essential for bringing new ideas into the world. David Schonthal highlights the four Frictions that operate against innovation: Why their best ideas get rejected – despite their undeniable value. How to disarm the forces of resistance that act against change. How to transform the very Frictions that hold us back into catalysts for change. David Schonthal's The Human Element is an great resource to help people overcome the powerful forces of human nature that instinctively resist change. Bio: David Schonthal is a Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches courses in new venture creation, design thinking, business acquisition, healthcare entrepreneurship, corporate innovation and creativity. He is also a Senior Director of Business Design at IDEO. In this episode of Trend Following Radio: New Ideas and Innovation The Human Element Improving the Idea Four Primary Frictions Apple Products Simplicity in Design Dating Apps Medical Innovations

SummaryWhy do people resist new ideas, including inside organizations, and including with regard to organizational change initiatives? And what can we as change managers/leaders do about this?What's more important: making your new idea more 'shiny', more attractive, or removing obstacles that stand in the way of people accepting new ideas?Would resistance to new ideas play out differently in the nonprofit sector as compared to others?What does ‘neophobia' mean, and does it apply as much to the (international) nonprofit sectors as to the private sector and government sector?In this podcast episode which is of prime relevance to change managers and leadres, I interview Loran Nordgren of Northwestern University, USA, whose research together with David Schonthal, also at Northwestern, on why people resist new ideas, and the importance of removing friction. Loran focuses on individual-level psychology, more than on organizational or industrial labor relations fields of work. His research is cross-sectoral: he looks at change processes and the adoption of new ideas in the private sector, government sector, and nonprofits.Loran Nordgren's Bio:Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at NorthWestern University in Chicago, USACo-author of the book ‘The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas', to be published on October 5th, 2021, together with David SchonthalCo-founder of Creative Candor LLCPh.D. in Experimental Psychology at University of Amsterdam We discussed: Forces that propel a new idea forward: this is fuelWhen you want to change people's mind, or bring them to your side, including in organizational change processes, you need to not just focus on making the new idea more attractive, and increasing the incentives to adopt this new idea (the ‘fuel' or ‘ammunition') .  You need to also take away the sources of 'friction', the aspects that may make it difficult for people to adopt or accept your new idea or initiativeFriction becomes a drag on innovationStrategies for taking away friction: consider how the new idea stacks up in terms of: Effort: Does this idea represent a big or small change? If big, expect more resistance Does this change happen quickly, or gradually? The bigger and faster the change, the greater the inertiaDoes it take a lot of effort to implement the idea? Can you reduce the level of effort needed, as change manager?Does the idea create ambiguity among audience: if people don't know how to implement, and it requires discovery, it is harder to embraceEmotion: Does the idea represent a threat? (and neuroscience indicates humans experience change as ‘pain', as threat)  Resources:Loran NordgrenLinkedin profileCompany websitePersonal WebsiteShort Podcast (Kellogg School Interview with Loran)Book: ‘The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas' (out in October, 2021) Click here to subscribe to be alerted when new podcast episodes come out or when Tosca produces

On this episode of The Innovation Engine Podcast, we dive deep into the realm of innovation, change, and the human resistance to new ideas with David Schonthal, an award-winning professor at the Kellogg School of Management. David, co-originator of the revolutionary "friction theory," sheds light on why promising innovations often stumble before reaching their full potential.David and host Scott Varho explore the profound influence of human psychology on the acceptance and adoption of change. Why do people love the idea of innovation but dread the concept of change? David presents insightful real-world examples, highlighting the necessity of understanding the human element for successful innovation.As the discussion unfolds, listeners will be intrigued by the power of subtle shifts in approach, like shifting change management or marketing strategies to foster self-persuasion. It's an enlightening conversation that delves into the intricacies of introducing change, managing resistance, and ensuring that innovations don't just shine but also find their rightful place in the market.Tune in to discover the hidden challenges that await new ideas and how to navigate them successfully.Episode Highlights:The challenges faced by promising innovations and the nuances of "friction theory," including the four types of frictionThe significance of empathy in product development and the limitations of traditional marketing personasReal-world examples of subtle marketing techniques that can influence consumer perceptionResources:Learn more at davidschonthal.comRead: The Human Element by Loran Nordgren and David SchonthalConnect with David on LinkedInProduced by NOVA Media