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Sie wurde 1924 in Hamburg geboren, flüchtete 1938 mit ihrer Familie aus Deutschland, und würde dieses Jahr 100. Geburtstag feiern: Ruth Schönthal, später wurde sie Schonthal genannt, erlebte damals den typisch deutschen Weg für eine Deutsche aus jüdischer Familie, die bedrängt wurde und rechtzeitig in die USA emigriert ist. Die Pianistin und Komponistin ist heute kaum bekannt. Pianistin Marlene Heiß möchte das ändern: sie ist auf Ruth Schonthals Musik gestoßen und hat einige Klavierwerke gespielt. Über die Jubilarin erzählt sie mehr im Musikgespräch.
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.
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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In today's new era of digital commerce, it can be incredibly difficult for executives at brand manufacturers to know how to measure their performance on the digital shelf and to make decisions on what metrics to use. To answer these questions, the Digital Shelf Institute partnered with Profitero, a leading ecommerce Analytics Platform, and brand executives from the DSI Executive Forum, to create A DSI Member's Framework for Digital Shelf Measurement. This podcast is a rebroadcast of a DSI webinar featuring, Molly Schonthal, now CEO of the Digital Commerce Institute, Mike Black, CMO of Profitero, Wayne Duan, Vice President of Ecommerce and Digital Commerce, Constellation Brands, Dean McElwee, Director of International Ecommerce Strategy - Global Tools & Storage, Stanley Black & Decker. A rollicking conversation about how to start winning the ongoing battle to measure what you manage.
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).
The CPG Guys, PVSB and Sri are joined in this episode by Molly Schonthal Hamlin, Executive Director of The Digital Shelf Institute and Chris Perry, co-founder & Chief Learning officer at Firstmovr, a satellite center of excellence for eCommerce education.Follow Molly on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-schonthal-she-her-a989a9/Follow The DSI on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-shelf-institute/Follow The DSI online at: https://www.digitalshelfinstitute.org/Follow Chris on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisaperryFollow Firstmovr on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/firstmovr/Follow Firstmovr online at: https://firstmovr.com/DSI report on Total Growth Accountability: https://www.digitalshelfinstitute.org/shift-to-total-growth-accountability-executive-explainer?hsLang=enFirstmovr eBook “Sheared”: https://firstmovr.com/sheared/Molly & Chris answers these questions:1) Molly and Chris, I know you partnered together through the DSI community to lead and publish a research report last year entitled “Totally Growth Accountability.” Can you tell us more about the premise and what inspired your research?2) So what is Total Growth Accountability exactly?3) What are some of the realities that are driving this need?4) What are the best practices for shifting to Total Growth Accountability?5) Chris, I know you launched some complementary research at firstmovr in January through a free eBook, virtual event and resources that you called “SHEARED: Shedding Your Coat of Corporate Conformity in the Age of eCommerce.” What is this book about?6) How does SHEARED connect with Total Growth Accountability?7) What are some of your most important recommendations around actually driving digital transformation, eCommerce change and Total Growth Accountability?8) What would each of you recommend as the most important thing they could do to accelerate change within their organizations?CPG Guys Website: http://CPGGuys.comFMCG Guys Website: http://fmcgguys.comRetailWit Website: http://retailwit.comDISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.
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
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.
Second City Works presents "Getting to Yes, And" on WGN Plus
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.
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.
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.
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. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company. For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.
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. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company. For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.
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 […]
Idea to Value - Creativity and Innovation with Nick Skillicorn
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
When one ecommerce executive from a global brand tells you they are pushing for a radical rethinking of the beliefs that have driven growth for decades at their company, it's an interesting anecdote. When 10 executives tell you the same thing, it's a research project. When Molly Schonthal, founder of the Digital Shelf Institute Executive Forum, and Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, started hearing similar anecdotes and data points around shifts from members of the Executive Forum around the shifts their companies were making to maximize growth - consequential shifts in long-standing pricing strategies, assortment planning, org and budget, they decided to tackle bringing a forceful call to action in the market. This new research is titled The Shift to Total Growth Accountability, and Molly and Chris joined Peter to talk it through.
In today's episode we are talking about growth accountability. Total Growth Accountability is research that Molly and Chris have conducted with the valuable input and feedback from the Digital Shelf Institute's Executive Forum members. It lays out the barriers that stand in the way of maximum growth for brands and then posits the four shifts that are needed to maximize market share across all channels. Total growth accountability is a set of new practices that allows brands to achieve success in digital commerce. Make sure you tune in to find out more! Molly has been a pioneer in connecting technology to business growth including the first-ever mobile email solution (NOKIAOne), and one of first 30m + fan Facebook pages in the CPG industry. She has also built the first cross-functional (sales + marketing), cross-segment (confections, pet, food) global demand technology roadmap @ Mars, tripling central funding for these initiatives in just over 3 years. She now leads Salsify's customer, executive and industry communities. Chris Perry is on a mission to help empower first movers - both people and brands - to win in a disruptive marketplace. He is also the Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, eCommerce empowerment fueled by Community of Practice. As a CPG eCommerce practitioner, executive educator and advisor, he has led eCommerce at Reckitt Benckiser, WellPet and Kellogg's and was most recently VP of Executive Education at Edge by Ascential. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Connect with Kiri Masters Learn more about Bobsled Marketing Connect with Molly Schonthal Connect with Chris Perry Learn more about Salsify Learn more about firstmovr Download the report Shift to Total Growth Accountability
Make 2020 your year to grow a dream private practice! For a limited time, join the Boss Club for just $1 for the first 30 days! This Special Offer gives you access to everything you need to grow a thriving private practice, just like my guest Liz Schonthal. Register here with coupon code BOSSGIFT This episode of the Fearless Practitioners Podcast welcomes Boss Club Member, Liz Schonthal, MS, RDN, LDN. Together we discuss her journey of building her private practice. Are you making your dream of starting a private practice or business a reality? Are you fully equipped with all the necessary resources? Do you feel guided, supported and encouraged? Our talented guest, Liz, discusses her journey of becoming a dietitian, how she finally decided to pursue starting a private practice, and why and how she’s sticking with it! Running a private practice isn’t always easy, but it’s so worth it to stay positive, seek support, and ride the wave of this messy, but fulfilling journey. If you have any desire at all to begin your own business or private practice, this episode is for you! But, even if you don’t right now, just like many other of our amazing guests, Liz drops some wisdom bombshells that will inspire and benefit anyone! ABOUT LIZ SCHONTHAL, MS, RDN, LDN Liz has worked with a large variety of patients and clients in outpatient, corporate, clinical, in-home, and virtual settings. While she has worked extensively with people who have had bariatric surgery and diabetes, her recent passion is helping women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) achieve health, nutrition, and fertility goals through nutrition counseling. Liz opened up her practice, Your Nutrition Partner, LLC in March of 2019, and primarily works with women with PCOS. She encourages clients to follow an Intuitive Eating approach, which includes letting go of strict diet rules and learning to listen to your body’s hunger, fullness, and satisfaction signals. Liz loves to help this population of women feel supported with practical, evidence-based nutrition advice. Liz has her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Penn State University and her Masters of Science degree in Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania with her husband, Eric, and her two and a half year old daughter, Josie. [click_to_tweet tweet="Dietetics school teaches us how to be practitioners, but doesn’t really equip us to be business people. Listen to this episode of the #FearlessPractitioners #podcast to learn how to be both! ~ @AdrienPaczosa #RDchat #RDtobe" quote="Dietetics school teaches us how to be practitioners, but doesn’t really equip us to be business people. Listen to this episode of the #FearlessPractitioners #podcast to learn how to be both! ~ @AdrienPaczosa #RDchat #RDtobe"] TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE: How participating in the Fearless Practitioners Boss Club has enhanced her practice. The importance of investing in yourself through coaching. Encouraging yourself as your own boss. The benefits of the Fearless Practitioners Boss Club community. MORE FROM LIZ Website: Your Nutrition Partner, LLC Connect with Liz on Facebook and Instagram Decoding Insurance, HIPAA and Billing for Private Practice Owners Coming in early 2020! If you're in private practice, or starting one next year, this is special training you simply don't want to miss. Join the waitlist and get advanced notice when this Special Workshop opens for registration. Click HERE to secure your spot! RESOURCES FROM ADRIEN Free Download - Planning out 2020 7 Simple Strategies to Get More Clients in your Private Practice All the Resources and Tools that I LOVE Boss Club is Open! Schedule Your FREE 15 Min Fearless Steps Call Fearless Practitioners Instagram Fearless Practitioners Facebook Subscribe & Review on iTunes Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I encourage you to do that today, so you don't miss an episode. I’ll be adding an episodes each week and if you’re not subscribed there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here to subscribe in iTunes! Now if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. I will be highlighting some of the reviews on future podcasts so be sure to listen and see if yours is featured. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!
How can thinking like a designer help you create better products, better services, and better solutions? On this episode, Kellogg Clinical Associate Professor David Schonthal, a senior director at IDEO, shares the three simple steps that can let anybody harness their inner designer and get results.
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law's effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book's penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal's arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies,
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law’s effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book’s penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal’s arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law’s effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book’s penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal’s arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law’s effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book’s penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal’s arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law’s effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book’s penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal’s arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law’s effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book’s penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal’s arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his recent monograph, Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Benjamin Schonthal examines the relationship between constitutional law and religious conflict in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Situating his study alongside broader conversations in the field of constitutional law and specifically debates about law’s effects on religion, Schonthal challenges the widely-held idea that constitutional law, properly administered, is a useful tool for reducing conflict between and within religious communities. Drawing on unpublished and previously unexamined archival materials written in Tamil, Sinhalese, and English, Schonthal argues that in the case of Sri Lanka constitutional law has actually hardened pre-existing religious conflicts and encouraged religious actors to use the law and courts to frame a variety of legal fights in explicitly religious terms. The pyrrhic constitutionalism in the subtitle of the book is the term that Schonthal has coined to describe how, in this case, the practice of constitutional law actually exacerbates the very problems it was designed to resolve. In the first half of the book, Schonthal details the fascinating history of two of Sri Lankas most important constitutions–an initial one in 1948, and a revised version ratified in 1972–focusing specifically on the section that addresses Buddhism and religion. Many familiar with the post-independence history of Sri Lanka might interpret this section as but a product of Buddhist chauvinism and Sinhala nationalism. However, by looking at an impressive number of drafts and archival materials, Schonthal reveals that the process of drafting this religious clause was in fact a messy back-and-forth between several competing parties, including those who wanted the government to completely remove itself from religious affairs, those who wanted the government to proactively protect religious rights, and those who hoped the state would grant Buddhism a special, protected status in post-colonial Sri Lanka. He further shows that even among those who wanted Buddhism to enjoy special protection there was much disagreement about how the government should execute such protection, and to what degree the government should assume responsibilities traditionally allocated to the saṅghas elders or sometimes to the king. The second half of the book provides case studies that detail precisely how it is that constitutional law exacerbates extant conflicts within and between religious groups. After providing a number of examples of the way in which the Buddhism and religion clause created an incentive for Buddhist groups to use the courts as a space for publicly airing their grievances, Schonthal then moves on to the case of a monk who applied for a driving license but, after a long legal process, was eventually denied. Scholars of Buddhism will find this case fascinating regardless of their area or period of expertise, for this highly contentious case, which captivated the Sri Lankan media and public, gets to the heart of a perennial issue within Buddhist societies, namely the degree to which secular rulers should be involved in enforcing Buddhist monastic rules. In the book’s penultimate chapter, Schonthal looks at Buddhist anxiety over religious conversion–specifically cases of Buddhists converting to Christianity–and again argues that constitutional law has inadvertently intensified this controversy. In the interview we barely scratch the surface of the book, and listeners interested in following Schonthal’s arguments in greater detail and reading the case studies, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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