Podcasts about tendayi viki

Welcome to the What's Next! Podcast with Tiffani Bova.    This week on the What's Next! Podcast, I'm bringing back a conversation with Tendayi Viki that I think is extremely valuable to re-listen to from time to time.    If you don't know Tendayi, he's an academic, the co-designer of Pearson's Product Lifecycle, which won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York, and is on the shortlist for the Thinkers 50 Innovation Award. He's also a contributing writer for Forbes and is the author of The Corporate Startup: How Established Companies Can Create Successful Innovation Ecosystems.    THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… bigger companies who want to act like a startup.    TODAY'S MAIN MESSAGE… to act small, companies must first think about their innovation ambition.      The first step is to create an innovation thesis and understand your minimum viable ecosystem – maybe that means conducting a small workshop instead of jumping straight into a 2-day event. Second, become clear about key trends.  Ask, who do we want to innovate for? Then, run through problems and challenges that could make life easier for your customer. Throughout the process, always measure everything against this question: Is this aligned with our innovation thesis?     As Tendayi says, “Figure out whether or not you have the right solution and then figure out whether or not you have the right business model.”    WHAT I LOVE MOST… a reoccurring theme has swept over the podcast: embrace non-traditional diversity. Make sure the middle management, legal, and the MBAs are involved; build teams with diverse thinking styles; and get out of the ordinary environment to be creative.     Diverse teams create creative tension and avoid internal silos – all good things.     Running Time: 34:37   Subscribe on iTunes   Find Tiffani Online: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn   Find Tendayi Online: Website  LinkedIn  Twitter    Tendayi's Book:  The Corporate Startup  

This week, we lost an icon of the sports world, Dick Fosbury. The pioneering Olympic champion who changed the high jump forever. He is a symbol of challenging the status quo. In this micro-lesson, I showcase an insight from Tendayi Viki, an author and innovation consultant who holds a PhD in Psychology and an MBA, about thinking differently. It's a great reminder to get started on our big ideas and that failure is an integral part of success. As a listener to the show, use the code PODCAST100 to get 1 free month on Sporting Edge Membership here, which includes 24/7 access to over 900 insights and high performance strategies.Links mentioned:Mastermind: Tendayi Viki

Our guest for this episode is Tendayi Viki, an Associate Partner at Strategyzer, a leading innovation consultancy. Tendayi has helped numerous large companies innovate for the future while running their core business. He previously served as Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, where he co-designed and implemented Pearson's award-winning innovation framework. Tendayi holds a PhD in Psychology and an MBA and is the author of three books on innovation, including "The Corporate Startup" and "The Lean Product Lifecycle." He is also a regular contributor to Forbes Magazine. Join us as Tendayi shares his insights on corporate innovation, entrepreneurship, lean startup, and more, drawing from his experience working with companies such as Unilever, American Express, and Airbus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How would you feel, if you had just become the leader of a company you'd worked for, for years, and your first order of business is to cut costs by 60% and make people (your friends) redundant? How would you manage your emotions, maintain your energy and passion to create the vision of the business? My GENIUS guest Tara Honeywell shares her lived experience of this challenge and many more, here's what we dig into in this episode: Bringing an agency back from the brink and into profit. Creating the space to innovate, break silos and create positive change. Building a compelling plan that is deliverable Shaping a commercial arm for one of the oldest and largest Charities in the UK: Barnardo's. The critical support when building and launching new ventures globally. Tune in and you will learn: How you can identify your strengths and use them for maximum impact. What you need to keep front and centre to stay focused and on track. Why long term planing has got to go! 5 effective ways to manage your stress How your biggest challenges today are preparing you for what's next. How ideas make the grade and expert communication puts ideas into practice. Stay tuned to the end to learn why expert communication and your ability to market your ideas will enable you to build and launch any venture and tackle any challenge. Resources: Four Thousand Weeks: Time management for mortals – Oliver Burkeman The Corporate Start-Up by Dr Tendayi Viki, Dan Toma The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn from the insights of Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer and an award-winning innovator in his own right. As coaches, we hear a lot about innovation from our executive clients. In this episode, Tendayi explains how innovation interacts with long term value creation - and the implications this has for the coaching industry.Tendayi understands what's required to achieve a successful innovation. Here, he explains to Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal why a great product or technology isn't enough to fulfill his strict criteria. He also shares his perspective on different business models and how they can help ensure innovations are both profitable and scalable.Having experienced a pivotal moment in business history in Silicon Valley 2009-2010, Tendayi knows firsthand what differentiates startups from already-established businesses. He takes time in this episode to debunk some myths and misconceptions about what it means to be a startup, and he also advises coaches on how they can effectively support different kinds of companies.Many coaches have observed a trend towards more decentralized business models and wondered how this shift might require us to adjust our practice. Tendayi has invaluable advice for coaches who are involved in this process so they can nurture more innovative ecosystems.Listen in to find out how you can facilitate the necessary conversations to balance innovation, transparency, and sustainability in all types of organizations. 

My good friend Alexander Osterwalder, the inventor of the business model canvas (one of foundations of the Lean Methodology) has written a playbook (along with his associate partner Tendayi Viki,) From Innovation Theater to Growth Engine to explain how to build and implement repeatable innovation processes inside a company. Here's their introduction to the key concepts inside the playbook.

Most leaders know Innovation and Creativity are important for corporate survival, but this desire for Innovation often creates a new problem, When faced with the level of investment needed in terms of time and resources, most leaders baulk and look for shortcuts. Our guest today has seen them all and is with us to share "The Top 10 Innovation Shortcuts Company Leaders Should Avoid".  He is a friend of the show, a leading consultant with the Strategyzer crew and the author of “Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation", Tendayi Viki, welcome back. Find Tendayi here: https://tendayiviki.com/the-top-10-innovation-shortcuts-company-leaders-should-avoid/ 00:01:49 Shortcut #1. There Is No Innovation Strategy 00:02:42 Shortcut #2. The CEO Has No Time 00:03:20 Shortcut #3. We Are Working On Only Two Ideas  00:04:07 Shortcut #4. Innovation Has No Power  00:04:57 Shortcut #5. We Don't Want To Talk To The Core Business 00:05:39 Shortcut #6. We Reward Hitting Revenue Targets 00:06:26 Shortcut #7. Innovation Teams Work Part Time  00:08:39 Shortcut #8. We Want Detailed Business Plans 00:09:07 Shortcut #9. There Is No Innovation Skills Building  00:09:49 Shortcut #10. An Excessive Focus On Ideation

If you are focused 100% on your daily operations as a leader...STOP! Learn how to innovate for the future while managing the core business..

Well-established companies are born out of innovation and will continue to thrive with innovation. But why do big companies sometimes struggle to innovate and break new boundaries?  This week on Innovation Storytellers we have Tendayi Viki, Author of Pirates In The Navy and Associate Partner at Strategyzer. In this episode, he shares the factors that make innovation work, what it takes to get people to rally behind an idea and the important role of corporate intrapreneurs in the pursuit of innovation. He also talks about creating business models and ecosystem designs for innovation.

About a year ago, our guest moved back to Harare, Zimbabwe after a noteworthy 20+ years of work as an educator, innovator and consultant for various global organizations such as The World Bank, Unilever, Pearson Vue and General Electric. Tendayi Viki began his journey as a high achiever in school and stepped into his early work-life as a reputable educator in the United Kingdom. As his interests shifted towards helping large companies innovate for the future, Tendayi confronted the shift in career trajectory with a firm awareness of his key values and a deep passion for changing the narrative around innovation within the evolving workspace. Through his most recent book 'Pirates In The Navy', Tendayi highlights the value of creating spaces that support intrapreneurship, the urgent need for a progressive take on innovation and how essential it is to remain authentic in your work. Find Tendayi's Book here: https://tendayiviki.com/ 'Helping Elephants Do Ballet' video by Tendayi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQijPhrQMug&ab_channel=Thinkers50 'How To Make Wealth' article by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html Support our podcast further by subscribing to our Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/boardroombanter?fan_landing=true

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... Product Mastery Now with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  Is your organization innovative? Is innovation part of the culture and an aspect of the organization's reputation? Or is innovation something that is just talked about, but you know real action isn't taking place—what's been called Innovation Theater. If so, today we are talking about changing that—how organizations can be more innovative and the action leaders need to take to make it happen. To help us is Tendayi Viki. He is a returning guest, having joined us in episode 308. Tendayi is an author and innovation consultant. He holds a PhD in Psychology and an MBA. He is also an Associate Partner at Strategyzer, where he helps large organizations innovate for the future while managing their core business.

Innovate for the future – for product managers Is your organization innovative? Is innovation part of the culture and an aspect of the organization's reputation? Or is innovation something that is just talked about, but you know real action isn't taking place—what's been called Innovation Theater. If so, today we are talking about changing that—how […]

“It's time to start a movement that transforms how innovation is managed” At a time when it's more important than ever to get the greatest possible value from innovation, listen again to our Fan Favorite episode 191. Scott and I speak with Tendayi Viki, an award-winning thought leader, author and corporate innovation expert. We discussRead More The post The CEO's Key Role in Increasing Innovation ROI — with guest Tendayi Viki appeared first on Business Advancement.

“It's time to start a movement that transforms how innovation is managed”

At a time when it's more important than ever to get the greatest possible value from innovation, listen again to our Fan Favorite episode 191. Scott and I speak with Tendayi Viki, an award-winning thought leader, author and corporate innovation expert. We discuss insights from his third book, “Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation,” and how they apply to increasing innovation ROI. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, Tendayi works with companies to develop their internal ecosystems so they can innovate for the future while managing their core business. He was shortlisted for the 2021 Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes. You'll gain insights on: Why continuous innovation in an established company (beyond start-up) can be so challenging The myths of leading innovation and how they can decrease value Three immediately useful ideas for CEOs and top leadership to create a greater ROI for innovation

Tendayi Viki is an author and innovation consultant who holds a PhD in Psychology and an MBA. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, he helps large organizations innovate for the future while managing their core business. Tendayi has written three books based on his research and consulting experience, ‘Pirates In The Navy', ‘The Corporate Startup' and ‘The Lean Product Lifecycle'.  In this Mastermind episode, I pick out some key insights from a conversation I had with Tendayi. Tune in to learn more about what makes a successful innovator, hiring people that think differently through cognitive diversity, the important role of failure in innovation, and how leaders need to be purposeful but patient.  If you'd like to join the Sporting Edge Members Club to get 24/7 access to over 900 insights to accelerate your personal and professional development, apply the discount code PODCAST100 in the checkout https://www.sportingedge.com/membership/ (here) to get your first month free. Links mentioned: Join our first Podcast Community Q&A - https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvfuutrDwiE9eqMr_VFM7LE_vnMFZ5Ne6Y (Inside the Mind of Champions – Q&A with Jeremy Snape) Tendayi's Links https://tendayiviki.com/ (Tendayi's Website ) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pirates-Navy-Innovators-Lead-Transformation/dp/178352894X (‘Pirates In The Navy' by Tendayi Viki) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporate-Startup-Established-Successful-Innovation/dp/9462761507 (‘The Corporate Startup' by Tendayi Viki) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Product-Lifecycle-playbook-products/dp/1292186410 (‘The Lean Product Lifecycle' by Tendayi Viki) Previous episode https://www.sportingedge.com/podcasts/episode-55.html (Mastermind: David Smith MBE) Connect with Jeremy Contact hello@sportingedge.com  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremysnape/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremysnape/)  Twitter https://twitter.com/thesportingedge (https://twitter.com/thesportingedge) Facebook http://www.facebook.com/TheSportingEdge (http://www.facebook.com/TheSportingEdge) Website https://www.sportingedge.com/ (https://www.sportingedge.com/)

Interview video available here: https://youtu.be/F3X1BC_HQws  Bio Bruno Pešec helps business leaders innovate profitably. He is the rare innovator who can claim that he's worked on a regulation-defying freight train and an award-winning board game. In addition to his corporate experience with brands like DNV, DNB, and Kongsberg Group, Bruno runs a community of entrepreneurs of several thousand members. Longer version of bio available at https://www.pesec.no/about/ Websites/ Social Media Bruno's website: pesec.no Playing Lean site: https://www.playinglean.com/ LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pesec/ Books The 9 Big Don'ts of Corporate Innovation by Bruno Pešec https://www.pesec.no/9-big-donts-of-corporate-innovation/ The Corporate Startup by Tendayi Viki https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporate-Startup-Established-Successful-Innovation/dp/9462761507 The Game Changing Strategy by Constantinos Markides https://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Changing-Strategies-Established-Industries-Breaking/dp/0470276878    To Better Thinking by Linda Elder https://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Thinking-Living-Through-Critical/dp/0133092569 The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig https://www.amazon.co.uk/Effect-Business-Delusions-Deceive-Managers/dp/1476784035 Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Surprising-Truth-about-Motivates/dp/B004N74VBK   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Guest Intro: Hello everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. My guest today is Bruno Pešec. He is one of those rare innovators and coaches whose focus is on helping business leaders innovate profitably. I had lots of learning moments and ‘aha' moments speaking with Bruno and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. I learnt a lot as well. I have no doubt that you will also get some useful nuggets from this episode, so enjoy. Ula Ojiaku:  I have with me here, Bruno Pešec. And, Bruno, welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, it's a great pleasure and honour to have you here on the show. Bruno Pešec:  Thank you very much, Ula. And I also want to give my special gratitude and thanks for perfectly pronouncing my surname. Ula Ojiaku:  Oh, well, I am very happy about that. I actually wrote it out, you know, phonetically on a piece of paper. But thanks, you taught me well, great. Now let's go straight into the questions we have for you today. So, who is Bruno Pešec? Bruno Pešec:  So, Bruno Pešec is, I will describe an Innovator, Martial Artist and Engineer, that probably sums up like parts of my life that I'm proudest, and that I engage with the most. So, I started my studies as a young engineer, and what I was really fascinated with are problems, wicked problems. Usually wicked problems are described as a collection of problems that don't really have a clear cause, clear root cause, and there is no clear-cut solution, the only thing you can try to do is tame them a little bit, and I was fascinated with that as engineer. That's why I studied industrial engineering, which is a combination of systems and humans. I started my career in defense, and I had the good fortune of working on some very, very difficult products. And one of the projects that I was working on was an innovation completely based on product and technology. We made such a product that was by far the best in the whole world, it was so good, no one believed us. And it was ridiculous, but for me, it was a great learning experience, because, you know, we were a young group of engineers that said, like, hey, let's just do everything we can to make the best product we can, and we succeeded, and nobody on the market believed us. So, what happened, our sales department had to send our product on a tour across the globe. And with a lot of engineering products and solutions, they can be copied by sufficiently proficient engineers, and that is what happened after a few years. It wasn't such a leading product anymore. But for me, it was a very important learning lesson, because I realised that innovation isn't just about this technical side, but also about the human side, you must understand how to talk about innovation, you must understand how narratives form, how stories form and how people interact. And that is kind of how I started to slowly expand my own knowledge beyond just being an engineer, to also invest in a lot of time and effort to understand psychology, human nature, emotions, not just to reading, but also to try to be different myself, whatever that might mean. And it wasn't always pleasant. Ula Ojiaku:  I totally empathise - wow! Could you tell us a bit more about the product? What was the product all about? Bruno Pešec:  So, since I was working in industry, that's, you know, very limited with NDAs. So unfortunately, I can't really go into great specifics, but let's say that innovations were based on the physical properties. And I can say, you know, people expect that the products made out of steel have a specific weight, what we were able to do is, through a lot of engineering trades, using numerical simulations, very advanced computation, a lot of testing in actual manufacturing whole, we were able to make a product that has varying thickness of steel panels, and that reduce the weight of the product and increase the functionality of the product. And that's why I say, when a smart engineer sees the solution, they can easily copy it, but the challenge is seeing the solution, coming to see that. So, we did the heavy working of finding the new improvement, and then it was easy to take over. And if we connect it to what a lot of companies and startups mess up, when they spend their time and effort to educate the market and then somebody else comes and actually picks up the market. So that is, you know, when you have the whole discussion, is it good to be first to the market? Yes, if you can afford to capture it. Ula Ojiaku: Yes. Yes. Very true, because you have the fast followers who just sit back, let you do the heavy lifting and then they, because they have maybe a wide range of resources and deep pockets, are able to mass manufacture what you spent years to put together. Wow! Bruno Pešec: Exactly. Ula Ojiaku: So, what were the key lessons, because you said you now realise that it's not just about having a fantastic product, you also had to focus on the human psychology. So, what's different between then and now? Bruno Pešec: So, one of the things, reflecting here in the moment, one of the very important lessons, for me personally, was that alignment is much more important and valuable than being the most correct person in the room, or following the perfect or the ideal process. So for myself, you know, I have a decade of experience innovating and inventing, not just in defense, but also in transportation in oil and gas, in entertainment, you know, in different industries. And without trying to sound arrogant, I have a good grasp of what it takes to, you know, develop, invent something and take it to the market, which is not necessarily always true. So, when I work, you know, with clients or different teams, I'm usually the person who knows the innovation process, but that doesn't matter a lot if I cannot help those people in the room to actually get from A to B. And that sometimes includes, I don't want to say compromises, but negotiations, both internal implicit, but also external, you know, when do you stop focusing on just the theory and when do you move to, okay, in practice being pragmatic, and moving on. And I would say that Agile and Innovation and Lean and Lean Startup and a lot of these fields, they're guilty of being extremely dogmatic and paradigmatic, and then you have this whole conversation around, okay, when is it about dogma and when is it about flow, customer, value, outcomes? So, that, to me was part of my learning journey, like, sometimes harsh lessons. Ula Ojiaku: I totally am nodding because I experienced this every day, as you know, as an Agile Coach, it's really about, you might know things, you know, but it's also about working with people, because finally, at the end of the day, it's all about people and you need to work with people, you need to establish the relationship, the trust. And for me, a policy is I want to work with people in a way that they would want to work with me over and over again. And sometimes this may be about losing a battle so that you know, everyone can together win the greater war, you know, from time to time. One statement you made now that really stood out to me is that; “Alignment is more valuable than being the most correct person in a room”. That's a great quote. Okay, so can you tell us about your game Playing Lean? I understand you developed the game, how did it come about and what do you currently use it for? Bruno Pešec: So yes, it's called Playing Lean, and I'd be happy to tell you a bit more. So, it's funny, it came through part of this learning experience as well. So, I'm not the only one, it was also Simen Fure Jørgensen, he is the guy that actually started it as well. So, the starting point was very simple. You have a group of people, and you want to introduce a new concept. In this case, it was Lean Startup. And you know how it will go, if you tell two groups of people where here's a book, read it, let's talk in a week. So, maybe there's one person that reads it, the rest might skim it, and the, you know, the other third won't even open it. And what we were inspired with was using games. We were actually inspired with Get Kanban if you know the game for teaching Kanban in software development. And back in that time, Simen just tried to find a similar game for teaching Lean Startup Innovation, entrepreneurship, and there was none, and that was the trigger. So, it was scratching our own need, and what I love and what I'm the proudest was that we used the Lean Startup principles to develop the game itself. That was very important to us, and to the listeners that maybe have heard about Lean Startup but aren't as familiar. So, Lean Startup is a methodology for developing businesses through experimentation, iterative development, and it basically relies on Agile body of knowledge, customer development and business modeling. So, in our case, we decided after we have iterated a lot on the functionality and the desirability of the game, we decided to go down a crowdfunding route. And what happened, it was a big failure. So, we didn't manage to reach our goal, but when we were reviewing, so it wasn't zero, but it was not enough money to actually take us, so, we used Kickstarter as a platform, which is all or nothing, you must reach the goal, otherwise, you receive no funds, but you can see the data. And what we noticed is that the people that were supporting the campaign actually weren't who we thought the players are, but who would use the game to teach Lean Startup. And that is when we realised, hey, our customer segment isn't really the people that will play the game to learn lean startup, but our customer segment is actually people like you and me, Ula, that consult and coach and help others. Now when we realised that, we started focusing, okay, what do these people need? What are their jobs to be done, what is important to them? And then tweak the product, what we learned is to them, what's really important is that the product is extremely polished, they need to be proud of it, it shouldn't look like you know, Microsoft clipboard, or clipart, whatever, it needs to look very professional. So, we partnered with Holger who is one of the best illustrators in the world, he illustrated Business Model Generation and other things like that. So, we partnered with him, the game looks spectacular. Okay, then we said it needs to be reputable. So, we partnered with Ash Maurya who wrote Running Lean, we partnered with Alexander Osterwalder who wrote Business Model Generation and few other books in the series, that was important. And then what was also the thing is the facilitators and coaches and consultants, they're not buying the game, they're buying a new product for their coaching or consulting portfolio. So, our value proposition is the game, plus the facilitating materials, plus the marketing materials, plus everything. So, a lot of learning happened, you know, in that one failed campaign. And then we kept iterating on that, and they usually say the rest is history, I hope it's still not history. But you know, we won awards, first game was completely sold out, we made a new one, that one is also almost sold out, we have a global community of 200 Facilitators. So, it's been going pretty well. And all of this, you know, learning, learning, learning, adjusting, learning, adjusting, learning, adjusting, learning, adjusting. Ula Ojiaku:  You're basically applying the, you know, the Lean Startup cycle as well, because you're adjusting, you learn, you take the learning you're adjusting, and you make an improvement on what's existing. Congratulations. Now, that's an amazing story. And the fact that you said, you know, the Kickstarter failed, it wasn't a failure, it was more of a redirection, because you now got to focus on the right customer, the person who needs the product. Yeah and so, I also understand from your website that you sort of run, Train the Trainer sessions on Playing Lean, is that correct? Bruno Pešec: That's correct. That's correct. Ula Ojiaku: Okay, and when is your next one? Do you have any scheduled in the near future, or, you know, should listeners just go to the website and register? Bruno Pešec: So, listeners can go to playinglean.com. And what we decided to do because of COVID, obviously, and the global situation, so we have a completely self-paced part. So, you can take it any time, and then when you complete it, we schedule, so we have batches of people. So, let's say that you immediately go, you hear this show, and you go, you can take it, you can listen to all the theory or the facilitation, Playing Lean facilitator training. And then when there's four or six, we schedule a private session where we play the game together, and you know, let's say, finish the training, and we came to that because it's pretty flexible for people. And as I said, our customer segments are consultants and coaches, and the thing that they really don't want is to lose their precious billable time. Ula Ojiaku: Yes, yes. And will the follow up sessions, will they have to be in person or have you devised a way of doing it virtually? Bruno Pešec: So, everything is completely virtual for the time being. So, we're using Mural, but any of these can work. And what we basically did is we took and we recreated the whole game in that setup, and I was a bit skeptical at first. I wasn't 100% sure that, you know, it would work in such a setting because it is a board game, Playing Lean is a physical board game, and we purposefully designed it to be physical. Before all this happened, we rejected to make it digital, because there's a special connection when you're doing that together. And so I wasn't sure if we go with, we move it online, but people were asking so much, like, they want to play, they want to attend it. So, we said okay, let's give it a try. What we actually found out was that it works in some cases better, and in some worse. So, one thing that you lose is people cannot talk at the same time.  I'm sure that everybody noticed that now with all zoom and Teams and all the meetings is, it's very difficult, you cannot talk at the same time, which does happen in physical meetings, you might have small groups of people either whispering or saying something. Here, that doesn't work, so, you must facilitate and arrange everything differently. You can have breakouts, but again, you cannot see it as a facilitator. When you coach team, you know, if you tell two of them have a discussion, you can slightly overhear. Yeah, now, you lose that. So, there are some challenges in this. But I'm pleasantly surprised, you know, thinking back 10 years ago, how many digital tools we have today and they're good. They work. Ula Ojiaku: True, true, I mean, that's why we're speaking although we're in different geographical locations. So yeah, definitely. Right, so, I know that you also recently published the book, an E-book, “Nine Big Don'ts of Corporate Innovation: How to Spot and Avoid Costly Innovation Mistakes”, can you tell us a bit more about this? Bruno Pešec: I'd love to. So, the starting point for this, were something that's usually called survivor bias. And I'll just share two stories to kind of illustrate the survivor bias. And funnily, both include aviation. So, in one case is Aeroplane Inspectors, so whatever is their formal title, were investigating plane crashes, and survivals. And what they noticed was that it wasn't the most important, how physically prepared people in the plane were, it didn't matter if they are obese, or if they're healthy, unhealthy, or whatnot, the only thing that mattered, was if people stopped to take their belongings before evacuating the plane. So, everybody who stopped to try to get their, you know, things from the overhead department perished. And that is why you always hear that boring message, back in the time when we were flying much more often, you know, take oxygen first in case of evacuation, ignore your belongings, go out. So, and they discovered it by focusing on all those that perished, not those that actually did manage to run out and escape before the plane caught fire. A similar story, but from wartime, was when they were looking into reinforcing fighter crafts. So, they were looking, they were charting, when the crafts returned, they were charting all the holes on the body of the plane. And then their initial idea was to focus on all the parts where the holes were. But one guy observed and said, “No, that's wrong. Because those planes return, let's take look where there are no holes, because where there are no holes, those planes did not return”. And then they reinforced that and that increased the survivability of the plane. So, this is, it's almost like inversion of thinking. And that survivor bias at the core is, hey, sometimes there is value in looking at all those that failed, and understanding why did that fail, and avoiding the things that they were doing? And that was the logic, that was something that started me here. So, I worked with hundreds of innovators with, I don't, I can't say hundreds of companies, but when you work with a large company, you know, it's easily several hundred people. And I continue to see the same mistakes again, and again and again. And I said, you know, it's not about trying to copy Amazon, or Google or whoever you think is the most innovative company in the world. Stop, pause and take a look at all the failed innovations. And that was kind of the trigger that is, so from experience and observation, I decided to share mine. I will not go into great details of all mine, because everybody who listens to this can get the e-book for free in your show notes, they will be able to find it. If not, they can reach out to you, to me, whoever, we're going to help them. But one that I want to share with your listeners is one of maybe a little bit shocking ones that I say is don't invest in orphans, orphan ideas, and what do I mean by that is ideas by themselves are worthless. We keep hearing that, but we don't take action on that. So, an idea doesn't come out of nowhere, someone must have recommended it, and on the management level, a common mistake is when, let's say there's a group or strategy retreat, and they hire some consultant, they come up with brilliant ideas, but they don't execute on it, they give it to someone else to do it. So, there is a discrepancy, there is this idea, it came from Ula, but suddenly it was thrown to Bruno, go do it. I never met Ula in my life, I'm supposed to be passionate about this? Ula Ojiaku: Exactly. You don't know the context behind the whole idea? How did it come about? But, no, these things happen and I'm thinking of a recent example. Bruno Pešec: But it is, it you know, it is something that resonates, and people are aware of it, but they don't think about it this way, and then they don't realise how damaging this is. And especially, so I don't want to sugarcoat it. Innovation, in a large company, is a very painful process, it is very punishing on people, it's very rarely rewarding, and people that do deal with innovation in companies, they don't do it to get tapped on the back, they do it because they derive pleasure from it, they derive joy from it. But that does not mean that they shouldn't be rewarded, but those people that are like that, they're rare. So usually, you know, I see that happen again, and again, a company decides ‘we want to be innovative'. Everybody, you know, there's a training for everybody in the company, and we will have like, big company meeting from today on, you must be innovative, and, you know, it's forced down the throat. And suddenly, people, you must work on this project, it's very difficult. It's difficult to force people to go through such pain for nothing. Ula Ojiaku: Like you said, innovation is not something you force down people's throats, it has to align with their intrinsic motivation, I believe it was Daniel Pink that wrote the book Drive about what motivates people. And, at the very least, they have to know what's in it for them, which goes back to, you know, your earlier statement about, you're dealing with human beings, you need to understand the psychology, how do you get people's buy in? How do you make sure that they want to do it, even if you're not there watching them? Yeah. Right. So, you've shared one of the don'ts, which is don't invest in orphans, do you want to share maybe one or two more of those ‘don'ts' in corporate innovation? Bruno Pešec: So, the last one, don't make how much time, effort and money you have spent so far, guide your decision. That is also a very common one, it happens to all of us in private life, in business life, I'm sure you experienced this, well, you know, when you're sitting there, the project isn't going as it should be going. And then somebody says, well, we've been going at this for two years, we spent, you know, so much money, we hired people for this, you know, let's keep on doing it, and if that is your only reason to keep on doing it, I'm sorry, this probably doesn't have a very bright future. And the same goes for innovation projects and companies, you know, after some time, you should just cut the losses. It's kind of if you've spent two years and there is no traction in the market, it's just not attracting attention. It's better, you know, to stop leaking more funds, and even worse than that is people's time, like, as far as we know, time goes in only one direction, we can make money again. But to me, especially in large companies, what every leader has is additional responsibility for the time of their employees. The most disrespectful thing you can do is waste somebody's time. It happens, unfortunately, often because people don't understand that it's happening. But when you walk into a room, and you tell someone that they've spent two years on something that's at a dead end, what you did, you threw away two years of their life, they could have been doing something else. Ula Ojiaku: True, true. And there's nothing more demoralising than you know, you're going on a road that's a dead end, and everybody knows it, but nobody wants to say, you know, “are we actually headed in the right direction?” And there's a phrase, I mean, this is in in the scaled agile framework, which is one of the, you know, popular scaling agile frameworks. One of the principles there is to ignore sunk costs. And you know, that's basically, you don't base decisions for the future based on how much time, money, effort, resources, that you've put into it. You have to evaluate it based on the results you're getting - are you getting the outcomes? I mean, if you had if you had made a hypothesis, has the hypothesis been validated or not, if it's not been validated, and you're getting, your indications are contrary to what you expected, it's either you pivot or you kill it. You don't just go on for sentimental reasons. So, no, great one. Yeah. Do you want to add anything else about your e-book? Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience? Bruno Pešec: Well, we could probably go for several hours discussing everything in it. But what I can just say is that, besides just discussing these different don'ts, I also offer specific countermeasures. So, that is something for example, for the sunk cost I completely agree with what you shared. Unfortunately, the side effect is, if you run into someone that doesn't want to see exactly how you describe it, so like, no, no, no, no, that experiment wasn't done correctly, or I wasn't involved in that hypothesis, then one easy countermeasure is to immediately agree on the spot, okay, I see, I understand that you're very involved in that you, you know, your ego is in this. So, let's make an agreement right here, right now. What is it? What terms are we giving to this? What terms are we giving to this to continue? So, we, for example, this is a real one, but I'm removing the details, because of confidentiality. With one executive, he had exactly that problem. He was working on something for three years and he was afraid that if he would stop this, that his career would suffer as well. So, we sat down with his management team, and we said, okay, we are not now ready to immediately kill it, even though we have spent so much, but we're going to give it exactly three more months, and A, B and C, if that happens, it continues. As clear as that, signed by everybody, not for legal reasons, but for psychological reasons. You know, I put my name on this, I commit to these terms. Three months later, they kill it, we didn't even discuss it for five minutes. It was, you know, this is what we said, it didn't happen. Bam! I was shocked, I was shocked how easy that went. So that is, you know, an easy one, because people need to own that, I cannot tell people go and kill it, they must see like, oh, we really should stop this. Ula Ojiaku: Exactly. And there's something about a public commitment as well, it kind of, you know, makes it easier for all parties involved. You know, there is a rational reason for killing it and a rational reason for stopping an initiative, if that makes sense. Now, I'm going to ask you a question as a, you know, you teach innovation and entrepreneurship. Have you ever been in a situation where you've been asked to coach, you know, maybe a team or a particular area, so you have like the leadership buy in, and you've been asked to coach the team, but the team are kind of a bit closed to getting input from you? If so, what have you, you know, could you share with the audience what you've done to win them over or, and get them to actually get to a point where they are seeking and actively drawing your input into what they're doing? Bruno Pešec: So, I had that happen both at the management level and at the team level. So, in one case, I walked in with a team, and the guy immediately told me as I walked through the door, Bruno, this is bull****, I'm here, just because I was commanded to be here. You know, you have three minutes. And I just completely ignored him, I just looked at him, I was like, okay, so, and started the discussion. Why are we here? What do we want to get? In my case, I usually try to avoid confrontation in that sense, because people are, they have the right to be frustrated. Like, if they have really been commanded and just said, "You be here”. You know, it's kind of, I might recognise that and say, okay, I understand that, I'm not here to do innovation theatre, so I don't, how could I say, I don't really do training. When I'm brought in, I do very specific things. So, in this case, I'm really relying a lot on my background as engineer because they can see that I'm one of them in most of the cases, so I'm not like a manager or a sales guy or something like that, I'm very curious. I'm curious about their work, and this is where we start. We start talking about their specific product or service. Understanding that, and I just let them talk, and that's the easiest one, it's kind of, I'm not there to be smarter than them, I'm there because I'm good at the part of the process, and together, we're going to figure out what needs to be achieved, and sometimes they have very strong feelings. I know exactly what needs to be done, but no one in management is listening to me, and then I go, okay, I'm here, I'm listening to you, now share. And we just start from there. And people usually do have, and it is a great starting point, they will say, you know, this product sucks, because of A, B, and C, what needs to happen is X, Y, and Z. And then I start probing, it's like, okay, the things that you said that it sucks, why is that so? Okay, and you say that this will be a solution, why do you think so? And I ask them, we start to have a whiteboard, we start mapping it, if we don't know, we have this conversation, we start going to very specific things. Because what I strongly believe in is go harsh on problems, go harsh on issues, but be gentle with people. So, if you and I, you know, I will always have my utmost respect for Ula, but when we have a problem in front of us, when I go harsh, I'm not going to harsh on Ula, I'm going harsh on the problem. Ula Ojiaku: Don't take it personally. Bruno Pešec: Exactly. I want to rip the problem apart. That's our job as innovators, you have an idea, it's not about kissing that idea on the cheek, it's about breaking it seeing you know, what, if we do this, is it going to hold? What if we do this is it going to hold? What if we do that, is it still going to hold? If not, well maybe this is worth doing, it has nothing to do with you as a person. You and I, we are in a partnership about solving that problem, that issue, and for me, it works because it's genuine and people can feel that. So, I'm, you know, I'm being authentic, I'm being myself. And that is why I also say when people ask me, okay, Bruno, how can I coach like you? How can I, you know, repeat the same thing? I tell them, don't try to copy, you know, I am me, you are you, play to your strength. If you're a quiet person, if you're a gentle person, play to that, you know, be like water, be like river, wear them out, you know, wear them out with kindness, always go back to what you're discussing, be yourself. It's so tiring trying to be somebody else, it's so tiring trying to copy somebody else. It won't always work, but you will know that you were yourself, you did the best you could what's then there left to regret, even if it goes bad. Ula Ojiaku: True, true. I'm beginning to get suspicious that you've been eavesdropping on me, because I recently this week, gave a talk on being yourself and being that perfectly, so it's almost like, hmm, did Bruno eavesdrop on my speech? But hey, well said, well said. Now, let's just round up with a few more questions. This has been a fantastic conversation, I definitely have enjoyed speaking with you. Are there any books that you'd say you've drawn inspiration over the course of your career? You know, if so, what books are these? If you can share? Bruno Pešec:  Since the topics we have discussed today, were about innovation and a little bit of thinking better, I'll share three specific books. So, one for innovation. That is The Corporate Startup by Dan Toma, Esther Gons and Tendayi Viki, it is a great book, it's currently I would say one of the best books on both Innovation Practice and Innovation Management. So, I would definitely recommend it to everybody. It's a bit thick, but you know, you get actually two books in one. And another one, because to me, both Lean Agile Innovation, you know, they're all means to an end. If they become an end in itself, then that's when they become dogmatic. And what ties them all together is, you know, strategy. And the book I would heartily recommend, it's a, I would say, it's a bit underappreciated, is Game Changing Strategies from Constantinos Markides. It's a great book, so, he's a professor from London Business School, I think, or London School of Economics, I don't know, I keep mixing them. And he writes very well for an academic, you know, it's easy to consume a lot of examples. He makes business model innovation come to life. It's not just some theory, but it's specific examples, and for me, it's great because it shows you how to adapt. It doesn't have a lot of modules or anything, so it's more like looking at it and seeing okay, this worked, this didn't work, what's my case? And the third one, to better thinking. So, one great thing I read was that employees can make a bad CEO look great, so, employees can make anything work, bad decisions, bad management policies, you know, if they want to, they will make it work. At the same time, employees can also make the best strategies and policies go to nothing if they want to sabotage them. So, the last book is more on, I would say, for managers and leaders, and it's The Halo Effect from Phil Rosenzweig. What he talks about is exactly like what I mentioned with the survivor bias, but he talks about different views. Let's say that the gist of his book is by focusing on, you know, those perfect leaders with their halo, you become blinded, and leaders themselves become blinded, because they get confused, because they think that it is their ingenuity that created the result and not the employees and their skill. And you know, was Steve Jobs, the one who created everything? Ula Ojiaku: No Bruno Pešec: No, he definitely had some things that were good, he had some things that are horrible, but he had great people around him, they didn't come out of nowhere. Obviously, you could say the same for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or all the people that we consider, look at that that person, the halo around them. The risk for every leader and manager is to get deluded by their own success. And it's a lovely short book that will show you all these biases and delusions that can happen. I'll stop here. I think three books are enough. Ula Ojiaku:  I've had The Corporate Startup on my reading list, but the other ones, Game Changing Strategy, The Halo Effect definitely have gone onto my reading list now, which is already like this long. So, thanks for sharing those. Now, how can the audience reach you? How can the audience reach you, Bruno, are you online on social media? Bruno Pešec: So, I write a lot about innovation, strategy, experimentation, entrepreneurship, as well. You can find all of that on my website, www.pesec.no. It will be in your show note, as well, so you can find it there. I publish a lot of free resources, templates, sessions like this, webinars, writings, an E-book, etc. So, you can find everything there. I invite everybody who would like to connect on LinkedIn as well, but if you do then then please just drop in “Ula sends me.” Ula Ojiaku:  Well, more like “I listened to your episode on the podcast, and I'm reaching out.” Bruno Pešec: Right? They can make it as detailed as they wish. So, keeping it simple, that is where I share everything, and it's open and free. And I'm happy to share. You know, if you heard something in this conversation, please reach out to Ula or reach out to me if you would like any questions or any specific materials or whatever. Ula Ojiaku: Sounds great Bruno, thanks for that. Now, any final words for the audience before we wrap this up? Bruno Pešec:  Well, before the audience, for you, thank you very much. This has been a great conversation, very engaging. So thank you for creating this atmosphere and making this a very easy conversation. I believe, I mean, I enjoyed it so much, I would be surprised if the listeners don't take a little bit of our energy and conversationA and to the listeners, I just have one thing. So, you heard today a lot of stuff. There's a lot of great stuff to hear from Ula's other episodes, but the most important thing is start immediately, today, don't wait for the perfect moment. Take just one thing from today, and immediately discuss it tomorrow with the team or yourself, just one thing, it doesn't matter what, just immediately try it out. One step at a time. And, you know, a year from now we will look back and see what an amazing year you had. Don't wait for the perfect moment. Just start. Ula Ojiaku:  Fantastic. Well, that's very inspirational, I'm motivated to just go and conquer the world right now. Bruno it's been a pleasure speaking with you and I hope you would want to come back another time for us to have another conversation on this show. So, thank you so much Bruno. Bruno Pešec: Thank you, Ula, would be lovely. Ula Ojiaku: Great! Outro: That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show.  I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless.  

Many organizations struggle to balance managing the core business with exploring white space opportunities.  Consequently, they tend to kill good ideas that don't fit the core, and see their competitive edge slowly decline. In this episode of SCIP IntelliCast, we talk with Tendayi Viki, award-winning author and corporate innovation expert about:Innovation tools companies can use to design, test, and iterate white space ideasCommon mistakes that lead to great ideas getting killed too soonWhy Competitive Intelligence professionals need to monitor Disruption riskGood, Bad, and Ugly uses of the Business Model Canvas

In this episode we're joined by Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer. In addition to his work at Strategyzer, Tendyai has authored two books on innovation, 'The Corporate Startup' and 'Pirates in the Navy'.Tendayi also co-designed the 'Pearson's Product Lifecycle', an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York.In this episode, we discuss:How far in advance is 'the future'?The difference between creativity and innovationThe importance of structure in creative processesWhat are 'Pirates in the Navy'?What is innovation philosophy?The difference in cultivating innovation in start-ups vs large corporationsShould everyone in a company be responsible for innovation? Referenced on this episode:[Book] The Corporate Startup by Tendayi Viki: https://amzn.to/3unOQJH[Book] The Lean Product Lifecycle by Tendayi Viki: https://amzn.to/3NmHNcL[Audiobook] Pirates in the Navy by Tendayi Viki: https://amzn.to/3tE0NvM CONNECT WITH TENDAYI/STRATEGYZER:https://www.strategyzer.com/https://tendayiviki.com/ CONNECT WITH SCOTT:scott.colenutt@sitevisibility.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/scottcolenutt CONNECT WITH SITEVISIBILITY:https://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/https://www.youtube.com/user/SiteVisibilityhttps://twitter.com/sitevisibilityhttps://www.facebook.com/SiteVisibilityhttp://instagram.com/sitevisibility If you have feedback, you'd like to be a guest, you'd like to recommend a guest or there are topics you'd us to cover, please send this to marketing@sitevisibility.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

This week on Innovation Storytellers, we welcome the return of Tendayi Viki, Author of Pirates In The Navy and Associate Partner at Strategyzer. We last spoke to him in episode 20 about how to be an Innovation Pirate in the Corporate Navy. Today, we learn how his path began in Zimbabwe, and how his journey took him to the UK and Stanford University, where he caught the innovation bug. Tendayi discusses how innovation succeeds because it's a passionate person pushing it through. But the truth is, especially in a corporate context, that innovation thrives through collaboration across functions. He also argues that anything that involves creativity or bringing something new into the world will consist of a hit-and-miss process. But that process can also be systematic.  Tendayi believes we are surrounded by the secrets to repeatable innovation success everywhere we look. Listen to our inspiring conversation now, and don't forget to leave a review!

Esther Gons is the CEO and Co-founder of GroundControl, the reporting tool and software platform for disruptive corporate innovation. She is the co-author of The Corporate Startup and Innovation Accounting and the winner of the 2019 Golden Axiom Business Book Award as well as the 2018 Management Book of the Year Award. Esther is the CEO and Co-founder of NEXT Amsterdam, the Founder and Managing Partner of NEXT Startup Ventures, and an investor at European Super Angels Club. She is also an international speaker on corporate innovation, entrepreneurship, innovation accounting, customer development, business models, and lean methodology. Esther joins me today to discuss corporate startups. She highlights the topics covered in her playbook, The Corporate Startup. She reveals challenges and threats that corporations face and what it takes to innovate for the future. She discusses the dilemma of moving individuals in redundant positions across to the innovation team to prevent employee turnover. Esther defines innovation, startups, corporate venturing, and entrepreneurship.  “You need a strategy and a vision that's connected to your core and core innovation strategy to pull innovation off successfully.” - Esther Gons This week on Innovation Talks: What is driving companies to do corporate venturing The challenges, threats, and opportunities for corporations How to pull innovation off successfully by focusing on opportunities in the near future The surge versus execute business model and methodology Why it's important to connect your resources to internal startups to overcome external threats The kinds of people necessary for your innovation team and where to source them Esther's definitions of innovation, startups, corporate venturing, and entrepreneurship. Resources Mentioned: Podcast: Necessity for Innovation Accounting Connect with Esther Gons: GroundControl NEXT Amsterdam Book: The Corporate Startup: How Established Companies Can Develop Successful Innovation Ecosystems by Esther Gons, Tendayi Viki, and Dan Toma Book: Innovation Accounting: A Practical Guide For Measuring Your Innovation Ecosystem's Performance by Esther Gons and Dan Toma Esther Gons on LinkedIn Esther Gons on Twitter This Podcast is brought to you by Sopheon Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Innovation Talks. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | GooglePlay | Stitcher | Spotify | iHeart Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and share your favorite episodes on social media to help us reach more listeners, like you. For additional information around new product development or corporate innovation, sign up for Sopheon's newsletter where we share news and industry best practices monthly! The fastest way to do this is to go to sopheon.com and click here.

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.

In order to face change straight up you can't do things the usual way. You need a new, unusual approach to doing business. In this conversation with Joy van Baren, the Growth Acceleration Director at Ordina, we discuss the importance of the right mindset, the new way of looking at risk as a risk of missed opportunity. We investigate how important is brutal honesty to stay innovative and how to create a safe place for it.  We also wonder what the success rate is for innovative projects.LINKS“Pirates in the navy” by Tendayi Viki

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Esther Gons, CEO and Co-founder of Ground Control and Author of the upcoming book, Innovation Accounting. Esther and Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Cofounder, talk about the ins and outs of innovation accounting, and what companies should be doing to track and measure their innovation initiatives. 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 into 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. Interview Transcript with Esther Gons, CEO and Co-founder of Ground Control and Author of Innovation AccountingBrian 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 Esther Gons. She is CEO and co-founder of Ground Control, which is a software platform that helps companies measure innovation and co-author of the corporate startup, and upcoming book Innovation Accounting. Welcome Esther to the show. Esther Gons: Thank you, Brian. I'm really happy to be here. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. We've had Dan Toma, your co-author of the Corporate Startup and Tendayi Viki on the show in the past. How did you get involved in this innovation space?Esther Gons: I think for me, it's been a journey of entrepreneurship. So, my background is basically being an entrepreneur, starting startups, helping startups. So, I've always been an entrepreneur. And one of my first things that I did when I still was actually in my studies of Information Science was starting a business.And one of the things that I was asked to do by one of the bigger computer companies was building something completely new around their selling of computers. And I think that was one of the first corporate startups that I did, but it wasn't called that way, way back when. But I build over the course of two years, a platform with personal logins, with all sorts of new technologies and things that you could do just to sell their computers, to be able to be working from home. So, blog posts that weren't called blog posts. That was just content from people saying your employees will be so loyal. If you have them working from home, all these kinds of things. I even had other vendors ramped up with furniture, stuff like that. It was an amazing platform. And after two years and a lot of money when we finally launched nothing really happened.And the computer company didn't understand because there were no sales whatsoever and they just simply pulled the plug. But for me, that was a really important event because I was asking myself what went wrong there? What was the risk involved? Was it too early? How could I have known? And that was a search that put me on the path of pioneering and innovation and understanding how you could deal with that. So obviously that platform that failed was 20 years too early. If we look at the situation right now and we needed a COVID pandemic to get there. But yes, that got me into the puzzle, discovering things like the Lean Startup methodology when Steve Blank wrote about it and then working with other entrepreneurs to get it working. To evolve it. To make sure that startups heard about it. So that was when I started to volunteer for a lot of startup activity in Amsterdam. And got involved in that in the tech scene, since I've always been a tech entrepreneur. Brian Ardinger: Your first book, the Corporate Startup really gave corporations that inside look on what it was like and what it is like, to think and act, and move like startups. And create new business models from scratch. And it was a great opportunity to provide a framework for how corporations think about that. Your new book, Innovation Accounting, I'd love to start there. What is innovation? Accounting, and why is it so important? Esther Gons: A lot of corporates asked for metrics. You're absolutely right. But they usually ask for the one metric to rule everything, right? So how are we doing in terms of innovation? And then they use innovation as a catch-all phrase. We want to know about all of our innovation, right? We want to see everything in our portfolio. So, what we've seen with working with a lot of clients, because we like to be practical about things that we write.We want to know that it works. Is that for that startup kind of innovation, which is different from what you do in terms of innovation in the rest of your company, you could be doing a digital transformation. You could be optimizing your current processes with startups. It's all innovation, but if you truly want to do new business model innovation. Breakthrough in disruptive innovation. Then you actually need something else than the processes and the accounting systems that you have in your current company. And we noticed that if people didn't have that new system in place and they were trying to do Lean Startup and they were trying to build new business models, if they didn't have the whole system, the whole package, then it all turned back into incremental innovation again.So, then we thought, well, we have to let people know that if they truly want to do new business model innovation, this kind of disruptive innovation, they can measure that with the indicators that they have in their current company with that current system. Because then it will always fail or turn back into incremental innovation again.So, let's talk about that word innovation accounting, that Eric Ries, once coined as being the system that teams needed to have to be accountable for the decisions they made based on data. And talk about how that evolved into something else. And then what do you need inside a company? What kind of system do you need, need inside of a company to actually measure that kind of innovation?Brian Ardinger: I think that's such an important point that corporations really need to define innovation and understand the spectrum of it. You know, everything from, like you said, the stuff close to the core of that optimization of what they're currently doing and how that differs significantly from transformational innovation when you're trying to come up with a brand new business model. Why do you think it's so difficult for companies to understand this distinction and be able to do something about it? Esther Gons: For a company, it's ingrained in their system, that their goal is to optimize and grow their current system. Right? That's what they are there for. The CEO has been appointed by the shareholders to do that specific thing. So that means that their whole existence, their future is based on, on executing on that core thing. And that also means that everything that they have gathered around it, their processes, their culture, their people, are based around that. And it's hard to understand something that isn't there yet. Something that is probably really risky. So, if you can't see it, then it's harder to understand and to act around it. So, I think it's actually a good point that you're making Brian, because what we've seen is that if you do not make it visible by either a new system with innovation accounting, or in any other way, then top level, it's hard to make that distinction because you can't see it. You're just seeing the investment that you're making, but you can see what you're doing. And what I always say is that you have to look at it in terms of buckets, right? There's buckets that do not have a really high risk, and that have business goals that are aligned with your core business. So fine, you can do that with the current systems and your investment will have to return something in probably a year, because that's what you're used to.But if you're investing in a high-risk bucket, startups are high risk. I'm a investor myself. So, most VCs know this. This is a high-risk profession, right? You don't know how many will return, what kind of money. And the timelines are vague, could be three years, could be 12 years. So, these high risk buckets needs to have a different approach.But you need to have some sort of visibility in terms of control. So, if you make the bet in your strategy, just that saying, okay, I have business models that are fading. I need to look at the future. Then at least you should have some sort of visibility of what you are doing with that future. So are you betting on a specific innovation thesis like we've described in the Corporate Startup. So, then you want to understand how that is going along. Are we doing well? Are we turning that strategy into, into something really practical? Is your funnel turning into a portfolio? So, you need all kinds of indicators to be able to understand that without falling back to your financial indicator. Because naturally, if you're looking for something that is really new, you're searching and your core business is learning, which means that you do not have a return in Dollars or Euros. You have a return on insights and learnings, and that's what you work for. The Ewing Marion Kauffman FoundationSponsor Voice: The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private, nonpartisan foundation based in Kansas City, Missouri, that seeks to build inclusive prosperity through a prepared workforce and entrepreneur-focused economic development. The Foundation uses its $3 billion in assets to change conditions, address root causes, and break down systemic barriers so that all people – regardless of race, gender, or geography – have the opportunity to achieve economic stability, mobility, and prosperity. For more  information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect with us at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn.Brian Ardinger: So, let's talk about some of those particular metrics. Traditional metrics might be things like profitability, number of customers, things like that. When you get into, on the innovation front, especially transformational innovation, what are some of the early metrics that you should be looking at? Esther Gons: That sounds really simple, right? And I can give you like three indicators, but it makes sense to sort of understand first that what we understand in terms of innovation accounting is like a whole package of indicators. Because you do not only want to understand every single individual team and how that idea is turning into a business model, right. Because we're talking about that journey from idea to business model, and that is a risky journey because you're searching. But you also want to understand how all of the teams are doing inside of the program that you have. Then you want to understand if you have enough ideas to turn that into future portfolio products or services. Is that going along? Do we need more ideas? Is everything stopped at, I don't know, stage two then we definitely have to look at what's going on here. And then you need to also understand from a strategic level, if your bets for the future are doing well. And if your total investment in the future is turning into something that you want for the company. So, these are three levels of indicators or different kinds of indicators that have some sort of abstraction from each other, right? So, at a team level, you need to understand things. Then the manager needs to understand things in terms of how are the teams doing? That is abstracted from the team indicators and strategy level.They don't want to understand how every team is doing, but they do want to understand how that is translated into their portfolio strategy, for instance. So, I think it's important to understand that where Eric Ries said innovation accounting is for the teams. If you want to do it within a corporate situation, you want to do it in a different setting. So, you need to manage all these things and you need be sort of aware or in control of how all of these investments are doing. And if there is some return, I don't know, in the future. Brian Ardinger: So, if I'm part of an innovation team and I'm trying to understand if I'm making progress, what should I be looking at? Should I be looking at the number of ideas I'm working on, the number of assumptions that I'm testing? Where should I start? Esther Gons: For me, the most important thing for, for this kind of innovation is understanding that your core business is learning. So that means there need to be teams that are doing a unified way of working and validating with experiments. Methodically de-risking that business model. Right. So that means that you want to understand if they're learning well. So how many learnings did they have? Maybe you can look at a experiment learning ratio so that every experiment have a learning or not. Or are we doing experiments for the sake of experiments, for instance. If you put that against time or against cost. Because learning for teams is essentially the core business. Brian Ardinger: So, the idea of measuring that against velocity, how fast do they learn, and the cost of that learning. Is that what you're looking at?Esther Gons: So as soon as you put learning the core, you can look at these things, right? So, what is the learning philosophy? What is the learning ratio? What is the velocity cost ratio? How much time do they spend in a certain state, for instance, doing the learnings? That makes sense if you look at the learnings. That is their core business. But I wouldn't ramp up everything if you start. And just look at the core business and what you want to improve, because you have these indicators to be able to steer and improve of them.Brian Ardinger: So, at the organizational level, what are some of the metrics at that portfolio level that companies should be using to know if they're making progress? Esther Gons: That's the top level. You mean the strategic level? I think it's important to understand if you look at that strategic level. The indicators are basically, framed around questions. So, from a strategic point of view, what you're doing is trying to understand how much your company is really under risk of disruption. Right? So is your current business model under threat of, or fade or disruption? Then that is really important to understand. So, we always say, if you look at your portfolio to understand how much you should invest in this kind of innovation, then look at your portfolio in terms of business models and not in terms of products. People usually look at it, in terms of products, right? But then if you look at it, in terms of business models, most of these products are, have the same business model, especially in product driven companies. But the question is my company under the risk of disruption, or is innovation driving growth in the company, that will give you an answer into how much of your investment should actually go to disruptive innovation.And that could then translate into indicators like portfolio fade, stuff like that. And the other questions you should ask yourself is how does my company future look like, right? Am I betting in the right direction? So how is the innovation thesis doing in terms of progressing towards newer stages. Or how efficient is my innovation ecosystem, if I look into the average speed of these innovation going through the stages or are my investment returning something in so many years. Brian Ardinger: So, looking at things like how much of my revenue is coming from new initiatives, things along those lines?Esther Gons: Things along those lines, but that's the easiest one. And that's one that corporates usually want to see that. So that's why I usually stay away from those in questions like this, because in essence, of course you want to understand how much of your growth is driven by revenue from these kinds of disruptive innovations. If you are starting out with innovation accounting right now, you won't be seeing that until three years or four years from now.I think it's then better to look at different kind of indicators on a funnel level. So, what is going on in the funnel? How many of these ideas are actually starting? And how many end up in different stages. Is that progressing well. With one of your innovation theses that you defined, because you wanted to bet in that specific future, nothing is happening after the second stage, you should ask yourself, is this the right pieces? Should we look at it again? So, you need to have some insight depending on the maturity level of your innovation ecosystem, to be able to steer towards a better ecosystem. Brian Ardinger: The last topic I want to talk about is you're based in Amsterdam, so I'd love to get your insights, and I'm curious to know what you're seeing as it pertains to European companies and their approach to innovation and how it may differ from what's going on in the U S. Esther Gons: So, the things I've seen in Europe, but maybe in the Netherlands specifically, is that the Lean Startup and the Lean Startup Methodology is a little bit farther ahead than it is in the U S maybe, especially in terms of the systematic approach towards the Lean Startup and how to do that within a corporate. Which I'm really happy about because that sort of helps me with the innovation accounting. And then the other way around in the U S there is within startups, I'm not sure how that is in a corporate world. But within startups, there's far more appetite for risk investment. So, in Europe, we tend to be a little bit risk averse. Show me first, and then can you at least show me a revenue first before we do any kind of innovation? So, you're dependent on really early-stage angels, if you want to prove that revenue first. But that differs in country per country. But if you look at ten European investment funds, that those tend to be a little bit more risk averse then the U S. And you can see that back into the amount of investments. So, if you compare VC investments, in terms of numbers, US are higher than they are in Europe. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: Well, I can't wait to go a copy of Innovation Accounting. Your books are always so great because they're visual and they're tactical with templates and guides and that. If people want to find out more about your book or about yourself, what's the best way to do that? Esther Gons: For the book, definitely go to InnovationAccountingBook.com, where we have the table of contents and you can download the resources and also look where you can order, and pre-order the book. If you want to know more about me or my company, then simply go to ToGroundControl.Com or might be a little bit more difficult as EstherEmmelyGons.NL. Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you Esther, for being on Inside Outside Innovation. I look forward to continuing to have these conversations about what makes innovation so great and appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you. Esther Gons: Love to be here Brian.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 Esther Gons, CEO and Co-founder of Ground Control and Author of the upcoming book, Innovation Accounting. Esther and Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Cofounder, talk about the ins and outs of innovation accounting, and what companies should be doing to track and measure their innovation initiatives. 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 into 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. Interview Transcript with Esther Gons, CEO and Co-founder of Ground Control and Author of Innovation AccountingBrian 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 Esther Gons. She is CEO and co-founder of Ground Control, which is a software platform that helps companies measure innovation and co-author of the corporate startup, and upcoming book Innovation Accounting. Welcome Esther to the show. Esther Gons: Thank you, Brian. I'm really happy to be here. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. We've had Dan Toma, your co-author of the Corporate Startup and Tendayi Viki on the show in the past. How did you get involved in this innovation space?Esther Gons: I think for me, it's been a journey of entrepreneurship. So, my background is basically being an entrepreneur, starting startups, helping startups. So, I've always been an entrepreneur. And one of my first things that I did when I still was actually in my studies of Information Science was starting a business.And one of the things that I was asked to do by one of the bigger computer companies was building something completely new around their selling of computers. And I think that was one of the first corporate startups that I did, but it wasn't called that way, way back when. But I build over the course of two years, a platform with personal logins, with all sorts of new technologies and things that you could do just to sell their computers, to be able to be working from home. So, blog posts that weren't called blog posts. That was just content from people saying your employees will be so loyal. If you have them working from home, all these kinds of things. I even had other vendors ramped up with furniture, stuff like that. It was an amazing platform. And after two years and a lot of money when we finally launched nothing really happened.And the computer company didn't understand because there were no sales whatsoever and they just simply pulled the plug. But for me, that was a really important event because I was asking myself what went wrong there? What was the risk involved? Was it too early? How could I have known? And that was a search that put me on the path of pioneering and innovation and understanding how you could deal with that. So obviously that platform that failed was 20 years too early. If we look at the situation right now and we needed a COVID pandemic to get there. But yes, that got me into the puzzle, discovering things like the Lean Startup methodology when Steve Blank wrote about it and then working with other entrepreneurs to get it working. To evolve it. To make sure that startups heard about it. So that was when I started to volunteer for a lot of startup activity in Amsterdam. And got involved in that in the tech scene, since I've always been a tech entrepreneur. Brian Ardinger: Your first book, the Corporate Startup really gave corporations that inside look on what it was like and what it is like, to think and act, and move like startups. And create new business models from scratch. And it was a great opportunity to provide a framework for how corporations think about that. Your new book, Innovation Accounting, I'd love to start there. What is innovation? Accounting, and why is it so important? Esther Gons: A lot of corporates asked for metrics. You're absolutely right. But they usually ask for the one metric to rule everything, right? So how are we doing in terms of innovation? And then they use innovation as a catch-all phrase. We want to know about all of our innovation, right? We want to see everything in our portfolio. So, what we've seen with working with a lot of clients, because we like to be practical about things that we write.We want to know that it works. Is that for that startup kind of innovation, which is different from what you do in terms of innovation in the rest of your company, you could be doing a digital transformation. You could be optimizing your current processes with startups. It's all innovation, but if you truly want to do new business model innovation. Breakthrough in disruptive innovation. Then you actually need something else than the processes and the accounting systems that you have in your current company. And we noticed that if people didn't have that new system in place and they were trying to do Lean Startup and they were trying to build new business models, if they didn't have the whole system, the whole package, then it all turned back into incremental innovation again.So, then we thought, well, we have to let people know that if they truly want to do new business model innovation, this kind of disruptive innovation, they can measure that with the indicators that they have in their current company with that current system. Because then it will always fail or turn back into incremental innovation again.So, let's talk about that word innovation accounting, that Eric Ries, once coined as being the system that teams needed to have to be accountable for the decisions they made based on data. And talk about how that evolved into something else. And then what do you need inside a company? What kind of system do you need, need inside of a company to actually measure that kind of innovation?Brian Ardinger: I think that's such an important point that corporations really need to define innovation and understand the spectrum of it. You know, everything from, like you said, the stuff close to the core of that optimization of what they're currently doing and how that differs significantly from transformational innovation when you're trying to come up with a brand new business model. Why do you think it's so difficult for companies to understand this distinction and be able to do something about it? Esther Gons: For a company, it's ingrained in their system, that their goal is to optimize and grow their current system. Right? That's what they are there for. The CEO has been appointed by the shareholders to do that specific thing. So that means that their whole existence, their future is based on, on executing on that core thing. And that also means that everything that they have gathered around it, their processes, their culture, their people, are based around that. And it's hard to understand something that isn't there yet. Something that is probably really risky. So, if you can't see it, then it's harder to understand and to act around it. So, I think it's actually a good point that you're making Brian, because what we've seen is that if you do not make it visible by either a new system with innovation accounting, or in any other way, then top level, it's hard to make that distinction because you can't see it. You're just seeing the investment that you're making, but you can see what you're doing. And what I always say is that you have to look at it in terms of buckets, right? There's buckets that do not have a really high risk, and that have business goals that are aligned with your core business. So fine, you can do that with the current systems and your investment will have to return something in probably a year, because that's what you're used to.But if you're investing in a high-risk bucket, startups are high risk. I'm a investor myself. So, most VCs know this. This is a high-risk profession, right? You don't know how many will return, what kind of money. And the timelines are vague, could be three years, could be 12 years. So, these high risk buckets needs to have a different approach.But you need to have some sort of visibility in terms of control. So, if you make the bet in your strategy, just that saying, okay, I have business models that are fading. I need to look at the future. Then at least you should have some sort of visibility of what you are doing with that future. So are you betting on a specific innovation thesis like we've described in the Corporate Startup. So, then you want to understand how that is going along. Are we doing well? Are we turning that strategy into, into something really practical? Is your funnel turning into a portfolio? So, you need all kinds of indicators to be able to understand that without falling back to your financial indicator. Because naturally, if you're looking for something that is really new, you're searching and your core business is learning, which means that you do not have a return in Dollars or Euros. You have a return on insights and learnings, and that's what you work for. The Ewing Marion Kauffman FoundationSponsor Voice: The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private, nonpartisan foundation based in Kansas City, Missouri, that seeks to build inclusive prosperity through a prepared workforce and entrepreneur-focused economic development. The Foundation uses its $3 billion in assets to change conditions, address root causes, and break down systemic barriers so that all people – regardless of race, gender, or geography – have the opportunity to achieve economic stability, mobility, and prosperity. For more  information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect with us at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn.Brian Ardinger: So, let's talk about some of those particular metrics. Traditional metrics might be things like profitability, number of customers, things like that. When you get into, on the innovation front, especially transformational innovation, what are some of the early metrics that you should be looking at? Esther Gons: That sounds really simple, right? And I can give you like three indicators, but it makes sense to sort of understand first that what we understand in terms of innovation accounting is like a whole package of indicators. Because you do not only want to understand every single individual team and how that idea is turning into a business model, right. Because we're talking about that journey from idea to business model, and that is a risky journey because you're searching. But you also want to understand how all of the teams are doing inside of the program that you have. Then you want to understand if you have enough ideas to turn that into future portfolio products or services. Is that going along? Do we need more ideas? Is everything stopped at, I don't know, stage two then we definitely have to look at what's going on here. And then you need to also understand from a strategic level, if your bets for the future are doing well. And if your total investment in the future is turning into something that you want for the company. So, these are three levels of indicators or different kinds of indicators that have some sort of abstraction from each other, right? So, at a team level, you need to understand things. Then the manager needs to understand things in terms of how are the teams doing? That is abstracted from the team indicators and strategy level.They don't want to understand how every team is doing, but they do want to understand how that is translated into their portfolio strategy, for instance. So, I think it's important to understand that where Eric Ries said innovation accounting is for the teams. If you want to do it within a corporate situation, you want to do it in a different setting. So, you need to manage all these things and you need be sort of aware or in control of how all of these investments are doing. And if there is some return, I don't know, in the future. Brian Ardinger: So, if I'm part of an innovation team and I'm trying to understand if I'm making progress, what should I be looking at? Should I be looking at the number of ideas I'm working on, the number of assumptions that I'm testing? Where should I start? Esther Gons: For me, the most important thing for, for this kind of innovation is understanding that your core business is learning. So that means there need to be teams that are doing a unified way of working and validating with experiments. Methodically de-risking that business model. Right. So that means that you want to understand if they're learning well. So how many learnings did they have? Maybe you can look at a experiment learning ratio so that every experiment have a learning or not. Or are we doing experiments for the sake of experiments, for instance. If you put that against time or against cost. Because learning for teams is essentially the core business. Brian Ardinger: So, the idea of measuring that against velocity, how fast do they learn, and the cost of that learning. Is that what you're looking at?Esther Gons: So as soon as you put learning the core, you can look at these things, right? So, what is the learning philosophy? What is the learning ratio? What is the velocity cost ratio? How much time do they spend in a certain state, for instance, doing the learnings? That makes sense if you look at the learnings. That is their core business. But I wouldn't ramp up everything if you start. And just look at the core business and what you want to improve, because you have these indicators to be able to steer and improve of them.Brian Ardinger: So, at the organizational level, what are some of the metrics at that portfolio level that companies should be using to know if they're making progress? Esther Gons: That's the top level. You mean the strategic level? I think it's important to understand if you look at that strategic level. The indicators are basically, framed around questions. So, from a strategic point of view, what you're doing is trying to understand how much your company is really under risk of disruption. Right? So is your current business model under threat of, or fade or disruption? Then that is really important to understand. So, we always say, if you look at your portfolio to understand how much you should invest in this kind of innovation, then look at your portfolio in terms of business models and not in terms of products. People usually look at it, in terms of products, right? But then if you look at it, in terms of business models, most of these products are, have the same business model, especially in product driven companies. But the question is my company under the risk of disruption, or is innovation driving growth in the company, that will give you an answer into how much of your investment should actually go to disruptive innovation.And that could then translate into indicators like portfolio fade, stuff like that. And the other questions you should ask yourself is how does my company future look like, right? Am I betting in the right direction? So how is the innovation thesis doing in terms of progressing towards newer stages. Or how efficient is my innovation ecosystem, if I look into the average speed of these innovation going through the stages or are my investment returning something in so many years. Brian Ardinger: So, looking at things like how much of my revenue is coming from new initiatives, things along those lines?Esther Gons: Things along those lines, but that's the easiest one. And that's one that corporates usually want to see that. So that's why I usually stay away from those in questions like this, because in essence, of course you want to understand how much of your growth is driven by revenue from these kinds of disruptive innovations. If you are starting out with innovation accounting right now, you won't be seeing that until three years or four years from now.I think it's then better to look at different kind of indicators on a funnel level. So, what is going on in the funnel? How many of these ideas are actually starting? And how many end up in different stages. Is that progressing well. With one of your innovation theses that you defined, because you wanted to bet in that specific future, nothing is happening after the second stage, you should ask yourself, is this the right pieces? Should we look at it again? So, you need to have some insight depending on the maturity level of your innovation ecosystem, to be able to steer towards a better ecosystem. Brian Ardinger: The last topic I want to talk about is you're based in Amsterdam, so I'd love to get your insights, and I'm curious to know what you're seeing as it pertains to European companies and their approach to innovation and how it may differ from what's going on in the U S. Esther Gons: So, the things I've seen in Europe, but maybe in the Netherlands specifically, is that the Lean Startup and the Lean Startup Methodology is a little bit farther ahead than it is in the U S maybe, especially in terms of the systematic approach towards the Lean Startup and how to do that within a corporate. Which I'm really happy about because that sort of helps me with the innovation accounting. And then the other way around in the U S there is within startups, I'm not sure how that is in a corporate world. But within startups, there's far more appetite for risk investment. So, in Europe, we tend to be a little bit risk averse. Show me first, and then can you at least show me a revenue first before we do any kind of innovation? So, you're dependent on really early-stage angels, if you want to prove that revenue first. But that differs in country per country. But if you look at ten European investment funds, that those tend to be a little bit more risk averse then the U S. And you can see that back into the amount of investments. So, if you compare VC investments, in terms of numbers, US are higher than they are in Europe. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: Well, I can't wait to go a copy of Innovation Accounting. Your books are always so great because they're visual and they're tactical with templates and guides and that. If people want to find out more about your book or about yourself, what's the best way to do that? Esther Gons: For the book, definitely go to Innovation Accounting Book.com, where we have the table of contents and you can download the resources and also look where you can order, and pre-order the book. If you want to know more about me or my company, then simply go to ToGroundControl.Com or might be a little bit more difficult as EstherEmmelyGons.NL. Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you Esther, for being on Inside Outside Innovation. I look forward to continuing to have these conversations about what makes innovation so great and appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you. Esther Gons: Love to be here Brian.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.  

Well-established companies are born out of innovation, and will continue to thrive with innovation. But why do big companies sometimes struggle to innovate and break new boundaries?  This week on Innovation Storytellers we have Tendayi Viki, Author of Pirates In The Navy and Associate Partner at Strategyzer. In this episode, he shares the factors that make innovation work, what it takes to get people to rally behind an idea, and the important role of corporate intrapreneurs in the pursuit of innovation. He also talks about creating business models and ecosystem designs for innovation. GUEST BIO Tendayi Viki is the author of Pirates In The Navy and Associate Partner at Strategyzer where he helps large companies to innovate for the future while running their core business. Tendayi was previously the Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, A FTSE100 global education company. He co-designed and helped implement Pearson's Product Lifecycle which is an innovation framework that won Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. Tendayi holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and an MBA, and has written three books: Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup, and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes Magazine.

Tendayi Viki likes to say that innovation is just about management, but it's a different kind of management than business leaders are probably used to, which is why many of them need help with the process. That's why they call Tendayi, an Associate Partner at Strategyzer and the author of the book Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle and his specialty is helping large companies innovate for the future.  On this episode of Future of Tech, Tendayi breaks down what the future of innovation looks like and he explains why innovation starts at the top with a leader who is willing to do things a little differently. Tendayi says that leaders who want to bring innovation into their organization need to be comfortable not knowing which bets will be the winners and instead find a way to create an environment where winning ideas can emerge on their own and prove themselves as worthy of investment. Tendayi also gives a warning about intrapreneurship and explains why the No. 1 thing you have to look for in an intrapreneur is not how creative or brilliant they are, but how well they can form relationships. And,  he reveals the four key questions that innovation needs to be asking if they want to have any chance of success. Enjoy this episode! Main Takeaways: It Starts At The Top: More often than not, the biggest problem with driving innovation comes from a lack of leadership. When leaders lean on the same tools, behaviors and metrics they use to run their business in order to drive innovation, they will fail because innovation takes a different kind of approach to get right. Leaders have to set forth an innovation strategy that fosters creativity and encourages employees to think and work differently. Small Bets: When you are looking to foster innovation, you have to make a lot of small bets not knowing which ones will pay off. Give a lot of people a lot of runway to experiment and prove their ideas, and then when one or two emerge as real contenders with measurable impact and ROI, invest big in those and cut your losses on the others. Then start the process again. The Core Four: Innovation teams need to focus on four key areas: desirability, feasibility, viability, and adaptability. They need to constantly ask, does anyone want this? Do we have the capability of making this? Can we make this in a profitable way? Can this idea scale? --- Future of Tech is brought to you by Amdocs Tech. Amdocs Tech is Amdocs's R&D and technology center, paving the way to a better-connected future by creating open, innovative, best-in-class products and continuously evolving the way we work, learn and live. To learn more about Amdocs Tech, visit the Amdocs Technology page on LinkedIn.

Tendayi Viki is an author and corporate innovation expert. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, he helps companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books: Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He previously served as Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, where he co-developed an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. Tendayi has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes. In this episode, Tendayi discusses with Kaihan why innovation has to follow strategy and how you can become a pirate in the Navy (or an employee entrepreneur) to create new innovative solutions.__________________________________________________________________________________________"One of my pet peeves is when I meet heads of innovation and they say, 'My job is to let a thousand flowers bloom. There's no such thing as a bad idea.'and I just think that it sounds good in a sense that you want to democratize innovation, and yet it's very rare that I've ever found any innovation that is succeeded without some strategic connection."-Tendayi Viki__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Introducing Tendaya Viki + The topic of today's episode1:20—If you really know me, you know that...2:04—What is your definition of strategy?3:07—What got you interested in strategy?5:13—Which comes first—strategy or letting ideas bloom?6:18—What would you say you're most known for?8:15—What story best illustrates why your concept is so important?9:47—Could you explain your concept of "Pirates in the Navy?"12:09—What framework or idea has been most impactful for you?12:56—What's your favorite framework or tool that you like to use?14:40—What are you working on now?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources:Tendayi's Books

Tendayi Viki is an author and corporate innovation expert. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, he helps companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books: Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He previously served as Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, where he co-developed an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. Tendayi has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes. In this episode, Tendayi discusses with Kaihan why innovation has to follow strategy and how you can become a pirate in the Navy (or an employee entrepreneur) to create new innovative solutions.__________________________________________________________________________________________"One of my pet peeves is when I meet heads of innovation and they say, 'My job is to let a thousand flowers bloom. There's no such thing as a bad idea.'and I just think that it sounds good in a sense that you want to democratize innovation, and yet it's very rare that I've ever found any innovation that is succeeded without some strategic connection."-Tendayi Viki__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Introducing Tendaya Viki + The topic of today's episode1:20—If you really know me, you know that...2:04—What is your definition of strategy?3:07—What got you interested in strategy?5:13—Which comes first—strategy or letting ideas bloom?6:18—What would you say you're most known for?8:15—What story best illustrates why your concept is so important?9:47—Could you explain your concept of "Pirates in the Navy?"12:09—What framework or idea has been most impactful for you?12:56—What's your favorite framework or tool that you like to use?14:40—What are you working on now?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources:Tendayi's Books

Welcome to episode #781 of Six Pixels of Separation. Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation - Episode #781 - Host: Mitch Joel. When it comes to innovation, the thinking (and work) of Tendayi Viki is unparalleled. He is also an author and innovation consultant. Currently, he is an Associate Partner at Strategyzer (home of Alex Osterwalder), where he helps large organizations innovate for the future while managing their core business. Tendayi co-designed Pearson's Product Lifecycle which is an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. He has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. Tendayi has written three books based on his research and consulting experience, Pirates In The Navy (his latest), The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. Enjoy the conversation... Running time: 59:11. 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 Tendayi Viki. Pirates In The Navy. The Corporate Startup. The Lean Product Lifecycle. Strategyzer. Follow Tendayi on LinkedIn. Follow Tendayi on Twitter. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'.    

“The best way to find good ideas is to have loads of ideas.” Humanity is facing a challenge to develop new approaches to involving the public in solving social problems. And they want to do it through innovation based on collaboration and cooperation. Consequently, there is an urgent requirement to shape a favorable environment for innovation. But why is that? On this live call, innovation expert Tendayi Viki and Jason Marc dig into the sociological aspects in the workspace and how to adjust and make entrepreneurs innovate more. Listen out for: The story of how Tendayi became an innovation expert. How to nurture innovation in your company. The perfect innovation model. The reason behind Tendayi’s book name. Advice for an innovative person in the corporate world.  Bonus:  Subscribe to Mindvalley All Access to discover 30+ Mindvalley Quests – at a surprisingly low annual fee. You can also watch our podcast sessions live, interact with the guests, connect with the world’s best teachers and find your community here

John Mestelaar, co-leader of Innovation Institute at The Conference Board interviews Tendayi Viki on his latest book “Pirates in the Navy”. Listen in as Tendayi gives us a taste of some the insights this book provides. Tendayi endeavors to arm innovators with practice tools and guidance to navigate the choppy water of corporate politics while successfully transforming their companies.

In this Forever Employable Story, Jeff Gothelf talks to Tendayi Viki who made the major leap from Academia into tech after noticing a need for usability researchers and to stem the concern about being able to rely on traditional employment. Because often, opportunity meets preparation, Tendayi dove deep into the lean start-up community, volunteering his time and expertise to establish his authority and reputation as an expert which, over time, allowed him to develop his own content, audience and practice as an innovation consultant. You'll hear Jeff and Tendayi talk about: How Tendayi reinvented himself after leaving Academia  Leveraging the Stanford name and relationships into Silicon Valley boardrooms.  Mitigating the risks that comes with changing careers. The importance of reputation building and how to make it part of your regular schedule. Transitioning to more virtual work during the coronavirus pandemic. Why you need to recognize blessings when they come – and work with them. In the Forever Employable podcast, host Jeff Gothelf shares stimulating, impactful stories and interviews with successful professionals as he prepares to launch his new book. It is his aim to provide listeners with the actionable insights to take them from professionally fit to forever employable.  Watch the full conversation between Tendayi and Jeff. Resources Jeff Gothelf on LinkedIn | Twitter JeffGothelf.com Pirate in the Navy and The Corporate Startup by Tendayi Viki Tendayi Viki on LinkedIn | Twitter

In this episode, Jeff is thrilled to speak with Tendayi Viki, PhD, Partner at Strategyzer, and author of Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation. Jeff and Tendayi dive into the role of the “intrapreneur” within organizations, and the ways in which their ideas and innovations can gain greater traction with key organizational decision-makers. Tendayi talks about how “raising the pirate flag” can lead to great things. But, for innovation to succeed, it often requires layers of buy-in from executives and heavy collaboration. Jeff and Tendayi discuss the importance of asking the right questions at the right time, and key ways innovation teams can benefit from some degree of separation from the core business, without becoming isolated. We hope you enjoy this in-depth discussion on the power of channeling innovation within organizations.  

Today’s guest Tendayi Viki, author of Pirates in the Navy and the Corporate Startup and associate partner at Strategyzer, the global leader in enterprise growth & innovation services. Tendayi shares how his path to thought leadership involved leaving Zimbabwe for the UK and teaching forensic psychology before transitioning to social psychology. We discuss how Alexander Osterwalder created Strategyzer and how the platform was designed to deliver consistent results for clients by well-trained consultants allowing the model to be scalable and consultants to create plug-ins that add to and modify the platform. Tendayi and Peter discuss the danger of the personality of a thought leader is a cliff that can be hard to climb and how if used properly you can instead be a platform to raise up others. We wrap up our conversation discussing the changes Strategyzer went through to flourish during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the initial panic that everyone felt they quickly transitioned their offerings to digital formats, creating high-level engaging content that presented the same value. Three Key Takeaways: When creating a platform for your thought leadership is sure the content is scalable and deliverable by others. If your thought leadership is only based on your personality you risk overshadowing your own content. When creating virtual content you need to find ways for your thought leadership to deliver the same value you present in person.

We speak with Tendayi Viki, an award-winning thought leader, author, and corporate innovation expert. We discuss insights from his third book, “Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation.” As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, Tendayi works with companies to develop their internal ecosystems so they can innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes. You’ll gain insights on: Why continuous innovation in an established company (beyond start-up) is so challenging The myths of leading innovation and how they can decrease value Three immediately useful ideas for CEOs and top leadership to create a greater ROI for innovation

“It's time to start a movement that transforms how innovation is managed” Listen to episode 191 and find out why our guest believes this. Scott and I speak with Tendayi Viki, an award-winning thought leader, author and corporate innovation expert. We discuss insights from his third book, “Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation.”Read More The post How CEOs Can Increase the Value of Innovation — with guest Tendayi Viki appeared first on Business Advancement.

Faced with the choice of starting a company or joining a large corporation, Steve Jobs believed that it was 'more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy'. But for innovators inside established companies, making a distinction between being a pirate and joining the navy is a fallacy. We have to figure out a way to become pirates in the navy! There is nothing harder in business than trying to innovate within large corporations. Innovators in big companies often face internal opposition as well as their external competitors. It is the management of the core business that tends to get in the way of innovation. If you work in corporate innovation, if you run an innovation lab or work in one, if you are a pirate I'm the navy, there is so much in this episode, there are some hard truths to face, some butter pills to swallow, I certainly know I've made some of the mistakes our guest identifies. More about Tendayi here: https://tendayiviki.com

Tendayi Viki: Pirates in the Navy Tendayi Viki is an author, innovation consultant, and Associate Partner at Strategyzer, helping large organizations innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He's written three books based on his research and consulting experience, Pirates In The Navy*, The Corporate Startup* and The Lean Product Lifecycle*. The Corporate Startup * was awarded the CMI Management Book Of The Year In Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is also a regular contributing writer for Forbes. In this conversation, Tendayi and I discuss how innovators often take on the role of pirates in the navy. We explore the mindset that innovators inside organizations need to avoid the common mistakes in advancing new ideas. Plus, we discuss why innovators should ignore detractors early on, parter with early adopters, and use early wins to move forward. Key Points Middle managers may stifle innovation, but often that’s because of internal pressure from those at the top to keep results coming. Innovators should beware basking in the glow of the CEO. It’s essential to engage other stakeholders in the business. Partnering with early adopters is essential for innovators. These are the managers who have existing frustrations with the status quo and are already trying new things. Celebrate early wins through blog posts, workshops, success stories, interviews, and even external conferences. These help you gain credibility. Beware basking too much in early wins. The point of early wins is to give you credibility to move on to the next stage. Resources Mentioned Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation* by Tendayi Viki The Corporate Startup: How Established Companies Can Develop Successful Innovation Ecosystems* by Tendayi Viki, Dan Toma, and Esther Gone The Lean Product Lifecycle: A Playbook for Making Products People Want* by Tendayi Viki, Craig Strong, and Sonja Kresojevic In Defense Of Middle Managers Who Stifle Innovation by Tendayi Viki Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes The Way to Nurture New Ideas, with Safi Bahcall (episode 418) How to Start Seeing Around Corners, with Rita McGrath (episode 430) How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470) How to Pivot Quickly, with Steve Blank (episode 476) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.

Tendayi Viki: Pirates in the Navy Tendayi Viki is an author, innovation consultant, and Associate Partner at Strategyzer, helping large organizations innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He's written three books based on his research and consulting experience, Pirates In The Navy*, The Corporate Startup* and The Lean Product Lifecycle*. The Corporate Startup * was awarded the CMI Management Book Of The Year In Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is also a regular contributing writer for Forbes. In this conversation, Tendayi and I discuss how innovators often take on the role of pirates in the navy. We explore the mindset that innovators inside organizations need to avoid the common mistakes in advancing new ideas. Plus, we discuss why innovators should ignore detractors early on, parter with early adopters, and use early wins to move forward. Key Points Middle managers may stifle innovation, but often that’s because of internal pressure from those at the top to keep results coming. Innovators should beware basking in the glow of the CEO. It’s essential to engage other stakeholders in the business. Partnering with early adopters is essential for innovators. These are the managers who have existing frustrations with the status quo and are already trying new things. Celebrate early wins through blog posts, workshops, success stories, interviews, and even external conferences. These help you gain credibility. Beware basking too much in early wins. The point of early wins is to give you credibility to move on to the next stage. Resources Mentioned Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation* by Tendayi Viki The Corporate Startup: How Established Companies Can Develop Successful Innovation Ecosystems* by Tendayi Viki, Dan Toma, and Esther Gone The Lean Product Lifecycle: A Playbook for Making Products People Want* by Tendayi Viki, Craig Strong, and Sonja Kresojevic In Defense Of Middle Managers Who Stifle Innovation by Tendayi Viki Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes The Way to Nurture New Ideas, with Safi Bahcall (episode 418) How to Start Seeing Around Corners, with Rita McGrath (episode 430) How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470) How to Pivot Quickly, with Steve Blank (episode 476) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.

How do you truly operationalize a mandate to become more innovative? There are plenty of resources that talk about the importance of innovation, but over the year's I've really grown to appreciate author & innovation consultant Tendayi Viki's pragmatic advice. On this week's episode, we talk about his work and walk through companies at different points in their innovation evolution and Tendayi offers practical advice he'd offer their leadership teams.

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Tendayi Viki, who is an author and corporate innovation expert. He's also an associate Partner at Strategyzer, helping companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. In our discussion, Tendayi talked to me about: Why innovation project portfolio success is a better measure than individual success The three types of innovation projects to include in a balanced portfolio That there is no innovation without relationships Listen to the podcast to learn more. Show Notes and Blog The Podcasts See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this conversation with Daniel, you hear from two people who are really fascinated with understanding conversations. We take a practical and philosophical journey thinking about and exploring our current thoughts on conversations.Here are some of the things that stood out for me in this conversation.We are designing conversations all the time.If you have ever asked a friend to read an email, you are about to send. If you thought to yourself “how should I say this?” If you have ever done anything similar to that, you were designing a conversation. We design conversations all the time. The challenge is that we are not often intentional about designing our conversations. In this conversation, Daniel gives some great tips on how you should approach designing conversations. In his words, “We’re all designed in conversations to try and titrate and clarify our intent in hopes of achieving our goals.” You should also visit his website: The Conversation Factory to read his book and download some great material. We have conversations all the time, yet we spend very little time thinking about them.Daniel spends a lot of time thinking about and designing conversations. We communicate every day, yet very few of us thinking about this action we take that builds our future. One of the ways to design a conversation is to be as specific as possible.Conversations have structure.Spaces influence the conversations we have. This space can be physical, or it can be the space between words. All our conversations have a structure. Most of the times, we are not aware of the structure. Space is just one example of the elements that influence our conversations. In his book, Daniel outlines what he calls the Nine Elements of the Conversation Operation System. The elements are:PeopleInvitationPowerTurn-TakingInterfaceCadenceThreadingGoalsError and Repair.I strongly suggest reading his book. It is both a great introduction to conversations and an excellent summary of help frameworks for designing conversations.What are you tuning into in a conversation?In conversation, we tune into things. Sometimes we are intentional about what we tune into. However, most of the time, we are unintentional. There is considerable value in paying attention to what you are attending to in your conversations.Design your conversationsWe set up our spaces to have conversations. The spaces in which we have conversation speak to the kinds of conversations we can have. One of the things that Daniel has helped me do is to double down on my belief that people should be designing their conversations. He helps people do it for a living. In the same way that we work on other skills, we should strive to have better conversations.Designing the conversations starts before the conversation.In the podcast, we talk about designing conversations within a facilitation setting. This principle, however, is one that I believe should apply to any important conversation. If you have a conversation that matters, try designing it before you enter the conversation.There is value in silence.One of the easiest ways to design your conversations is by leveraging silence. There is, however, a caveat, most of us respond after about two hundred milliseconds. In conversations, if we take longer than that to respond, our brains interpret that as trouble ahead. So ask permission to think for a bit. Having said that, silence can give you tremendous control in conversations. Use it wisely. Before we segue off of this point, here is something to think about. We can think at 4000 words per minute, yet we speak at 125 words per minute. What does this mean? It mainly means that you are getting only a small portion of what they are thinking when someone is speaking. Silence can transform conversations.What do we mean by design?In my view, design usually starts with a question. In the best cases, it is focusing question. In our conversation, four conversational design questions stood out for me:Daniel talked about how design asks you to notice the choices that you are making. What are the implications of the choices that you are making? What if versus what is? Are you thinking about who is attached to which question? Are you thinking about who has a vested interest in exploring one question over the other?Are we having the same conversation?How adaptable are you? A question inspired by the Tendayi Viki who appeared on episode 61.I am going to continue to think about these questions.Midwifery and Palliative careFor regular listeners, you may notice that theme of Palliative care and Midwifery has appeared again. Daniel talks about it within the context of grief and that people need to grieve the loss of whatever is changing. There are three parts in all change contexts: what is being midwifed into existence, what needs palliative care, and the bridge between the two. It is also important to think about or visit the Berkner to Loop model which Daniel also references in his bookAre we having the same conversation?Daniel used a nice metaphor to talk about what designed conversation does. From our perspectives, designed conversations give us more clarity and focus. They help ensure we are having the same conversation and not speaking past each other. Take some time and imagine you were to open a door and I am trying to close the door from the other side. What happens to the door? Whoever is stronger gets their way. If, however, we’re both trying to open the door together or close the door together, then we’re going to be working together. The door will open or close with more force, with more acceleration. I love this metaphor, and it reminds me of my conversation with John Robinson and his sailboat approach to change and disruption Check out episode 69 here.Speed and cocreation are more durable.This notion is something that really resonated with me. I cannot count the number of times people have not had the patience for co-creation, yet cocreation produces much better results. If we are going to have something owned by everyone, it is going to take more time. We are addicted to the expert, and although Daniel does not say this, I think it has to do with our perceived notion that an expert can get us there faster and our addiction to silver bullets.Light touches make it hard to demonstrate your value.Something I often struggle with is as a coach, is that I believe that when you are doing your best work, the client feels like they did it themselves. This always poses a question to the value you bring, but it is an important way to continue working.To learn more about Daniel Stillman visit:The Conversation Factory: https://theconversationfactory.com/

Pirates in the Navy with Tendayi Viki Interview by Jess Larsen --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Today I am joined by Tendayi Viki, an Associate Partner at Strategyzer. He’s also the best-selling author of the new book, Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation. In our conversation, we discuss what it takes to create a culture of innovation in established conversations and the role product leaders play in driving that process. We also discuss the differences between doing real progress vs. innovation theatre, the signs innovators should look for to know whether innovation has potential at their company, or, if they should look for another job. If you’re trying to drive innovation forward in your company don’t miss out on this insightful discussion!   Episode Details: Product Leaders are often Pirates in the Navy with Tendayi Viki: “Even large companies need to be able to innovate. And in order for them to innovate, they have to adopt start-up practices.” — Tendayi Viki   About Tendayi Viki: Tendayi is an Associate Partner at Strategyzer where he helps large companies innovate for the future while running their core business. He is also a contributor at Forbes and an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Kent. He was previously Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson (an FTSE100 global education company), a Managing Partner at Benneli Jacobs and Company, an Associate Partner at EYBOX, and a Lean Innovation Coach at GlobalPETS Community.   Topics We Discuss in this Episode: Tendayi Viki’s career background and his current role at Strategyzer About his book, Pirates In The Navy, and the key lessons it shares What is causing the need for organizations to focus on innovation now more than ever What innovation theatre is and how to recognize it What the goals should look like for large organizations when it comes to innovation How to avoid innovation theatre and make real progress through innovation Tendayi’s advice for innovators working with their leaders to achieve strategic alignment within the organization How to pitch innovation to leadership The importance of having a shared language within your organization How to create a culture of innovation so that innovation can thrive within your organization Building innovation vs. building a culture of innovation How to create real value through innovation The difference between building processes at scale vs. building innovations How to know whether innovation has potential at a certain company or if you should look for another job   Product Leader Tip of the Week: If you are a product leader who is not gaining traction with innovation, you may be one of two options: 1) You’re in a desert (i.e. there’s not a single person in your company that is interested in innovation at all). If this is the case, you should find another place to work. 2) You have decided to do the wrong thing first. If you are arguing with the leaders in your organization that are not early adopters of the innovation, it won’t work. In most organizations, there are always at least a few leaders who really “get it.” You need to identify those early adopters and work with those people first. If you work with them first, you’ll be able to do one of the most important things in a transformation: get an early win. This credibility opens up many doors.   To Learn More About Tendayi Viki: Tendayi Viki’s LinkedIn Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation, by Tendayi Viki Tendayi Viki on Forbes   Related Resources: Value Proposition Canvas | Strategyzer DanielElizalde.com/Template — Download Daniel’s free IoT Product Strategy Template here!   Want to Learn More? Sign up for my newsletter at DanielElizalde.com/Join for weekly advice and best practices directly to your inbox! Visit DanielElizalde.com/Podcast for additional information, show notes, and episodes. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts so you don’t miss out on any of my conversations with product and thought leaders!  

If you are wondering how to drive and succeed with corporate innovation, then you want to listen to today's episode, as I speak to the well-known innovation leader, Tendayi Viki, about just that.Tendayi is an associate partner at strategyzer, an academic, a winner of the prestigious thinker50 award, a regular contributing writer to Forbes, an innovator an award-winning author of three books, the Corporate Startup, the Lean Product Lifecycle, and the book which we are discussing today, Pirates In The Navy. In today's episode, we speak about,Tendayi's favorite definition of innovation.What distinguishes entrepreneurs from corporate innovators?The myths of innovation Why large corporates struggle with innovation and how to fix that?What do leaders need to do to drive innovation successfully? Approaches to fast-track innovation Why culture of innovation matter?Why corporate innovators leave and how to fix that?In defense of middle managers who stifle innovation When Innovation Centres become like a theatreLinks:Pirates In The NavyIn Defense Of Middle Managers Who Stifle InnovationThe invincible companyOriginals 

Tendayi Viki is a corporate innovation expert who helps companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He is an associate partner at Strategyzer. And he is author of a new book called Pirates in the Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation. There are so many takeaways for this conversation. Here are just a few.  You must decide: Do I want to be a pirate in the navy? Self-awareness is key Escape innovation theater The product of innovation is the process not the product It’s not innovation unless it creates a new business model and repeatable value creation The question is not, can you do it? The question is, can you do it again (and faster and/or better)?  Just so you know…I have decided. I am an intrepreneur, and I have decided to be a pirate in the navy.   More about Tendayi: The book: Pirates in the Navy: How Innovators Lead TransformationTendayi’s websiteStrategizerHis Forbes article: Can you do it again? Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

The New P&L TO THE POINT is a new weekly podcast series where, in around 10 minutes each Friday, we break down the key elements of our The New P&L weekly conversations with industry leaders and entrepreneurs. We offer an opinion on the key points from the conversations and how our listeners may practically apply them in their businesses. Today, The New P&L TO THE POINT analyses this week's The New P&L conversation with innovation powerhouse, Tendayi Viki. The New P&L TO THE POINT considers the definitions of innovation and how they affect the success of it within a business; why innovation should be focused on value creation not product development; the challenges when there is no bridge between the free thinking corporate innovation lab and the business that it is doing the free thinking on behalf of; and why leaders should consider their companies as a 'portfolio' and what that means for how they align innovation, intrapreneurship and collaboration across the business. www.principlesandleadership.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/principlesandleadership/message

A focused and passionate commitment to innovation has to be one of the prevailing themes that drives all businesses. If you fail to continually focus on genuine innovation – in your creative thinking, in your people, your processes, your products; over time in the inevitable will come to pass – declining revenues, irrelevant products, disillusioned employees and leaders, frustrated shareholders. It's ironic then that something that is so critical to business is also so misinterpreted, misunderstood and so often misaligned with the businesses it is there to serve. This week, The New P&L – Principles & Leadership in Business podcast series speaks to the innovation powerhouse that is Tendayi Viki. Author of ‘Pirates in the Navy' and Associate Partner at Strategyzer, Tendayi has helped some of the biggest and most successful global brands to reinvigorate and realign the principles that define their corporate innovation. We discuss with Tendayi how to address the issue that many corporate innovation labs are not fit for purpose when it comes to the demands placed upon them; how you can determine a company's true commitment to innovation by the reporting structure that exists between the Lab and the CEO; and how unspoken expectations and assumptions within senior management about both the role and the output of a corporate innovation lab can set it up for failure before it has even begun. www.strategyzer.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/principlesandleadership/message

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  Our guest says that organizations need pirates. These are the people who make entrepreneurship a legitimate part of the business. They are the innovators and transformers. Pirates design value propositions and business models that scale.  Our guest’s name is Dr. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer, helping companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books, and his latest book is Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation.

If you're wondering how you can find time from everyday business operations to do innovation, today's guest, Tendayi Viki, is the guy you want to listen to. He's an award winning author and corporate innovation expert. He's also been recognised by Thinkers50 as one of the world's foremost business strategic thinkers, and he's the author of three books, the latest of which is Pirates In The Navy. Tendayi's biggest bugbear is innovation theatre, those companies that look like they're doing innovation, but aren't, and so he shares his thoughts on how to innovate properly. What you don't need, says Tendayi, is an entrepreneur in residence. Having a startup mindset doesn't require you to actually employ a startup founder, nor do you need to install ping pong tables either. What you actually need, if you're going to innovate, if you're going to come up with another big idea that's going to drive the revenue of your business in the long term, is to figure out how to structure it, how to staff it and how to measure its success. So to find out how to innovate in your business, because let's face it, any business that stands still gets left behind, download and listen to this latest episode. It's a great conversation. On today's podcast:Why businesses suck at innovationHow to become a pirateCorporate intrapreneursWhy you don't want startup innovation theatre The metrics to measure innovationThe companies doing innovation wellHow to spot core business troublesLinks:The Corporate StartupThe Lean Product LifecyclePirates In The Navy

Tips on driving innovation within organizations for product managers and leaders Our guest says that organizations need pirates. These are the people who make entrepreneurship a legitimate part of the business. They are the innovators and transformers. Pirates design value propositions and business models that scale.  Our guest's name is Dr. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at […]

Tips on driving innovation within organizations for product managers and leaders Our guest says that organizations need pirates. These are the people who make entrepreneurship a legitimate part of the business. They are the innovators and transformers. Pirates design value propositions and business models that scale.  Our guest’s name is Dr. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at […]

I discovered Tendayi Viki during a Strategyzer masterclass on building resilient companies. We talked about: What company cultures are more likely to ride the wave of disruption well. We discussed sustainability, growth and transformation What type of pirate we should be to make changes happen. Tendayi Viki is an author and corporate innovation expert. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, he helps companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books; Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He previously served as Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, where he co-developed an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. Tendayi has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes.   

Karl Fitzpatrick interviews Tendayi Viki about juggling the need to innovate with the demands of managing a business, the importance of intrapreneurs driving innovation within a company and creating effective corporate innovation ecosystems. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to innovate inside companies? Dr. Tendayi Viki talks intrapreneurship, his new book Pirates in the Navy, what companies & innovators need to know generally & in pandemic times to survive & stay viable.

Innovation is hard. It takes more than a clever idea to make a business. Tendayi Viki works with entrepreneurs in startups and large corporates who are looking to innovate. Here he presents 8 business model questions to consider when attempting to innovate, followed by a Q&A with some great questions about innovating in a large corporate. Recorded live at Business of Software Conference Europe 2018. For more great talks, visit businessofsoftware.org/videos --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-of-software/message

Innovation Theater.    Have you ever been guilty of performing innovation theater?   My guest today, Tendayi Viki, is a partner at Strategyzer (the company behind the business model canvas and other innovation tools) and defines Innovation Theater simply as:   ACTIVITIES THAT LOOK LIKE INNOVATION BUT THAT CREATE NO VALUE FOR COMPANIES   So: A workshop that creates enthusiasm with no follow up. A Hackathon that doesn't solve real challenges. Training everyone in Design Thinking but changing no internal policies to encourage experimentation and prototyping.   I've been guilty of it.    How can we all do better? This is a delicate topic, because it's not wrong to want more people in your organization to “get” innovation and the practices that drive innovation. Then we'll have buy-in to do more, right?   Support The Podcast As A Conversation Factory Insider https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider   Full Transcript at: https://theconversationfactory.com/listen Links and Resources Tendayi on the web https://tendayiviki.com/ Tendayi at the Innov8ers Conference: https://innov8rs.co/beyond-the-sticky-notes-aligning-innovation-with-corporate-strategy-tendayi-viki/ Tendayi's latest book: Pirates in the Navy https://www.strategyzer.com/

This week’s guest, Tendayi Viki, is an Associate Partner at Strategyzer. A prolific author, he has written three books and is a regular contributor to Forbes magazine. His most recent book, Pirates in the Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation, is a manifesto on how to drive corporate innovation in large organisations. He and Barry O’Reilly chat about how he helped organizations drive and scale innovation, including key unlearning moments along the way.   Good Enough Is Better Than Perfect In an interesting twist of fate, Tendayi ended up in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business under the tutelage and mentorship of innovators like Steve Blank. He says that this was the turning point for him to converge his psychology training with entrepreneurship and innovation. He recounts two major unlearning moments, the major one of which was his tendency to over-edit. Barry describes this as a classic trap: we want our product to be perfect before we publish, but the better approach is to make it good enough, put it out there and start the conversation. In the academic world, Tendayi points out, your ideas evolve in private; but the innovation world is the opposite as your ideas evolve in public. This makes you vulnerable and takes courage, but the feedback you receive makes your product better. Earn the Right to Criticize You have to earn the right to criticize, according to Tendayi. People will only follow you when they see you as a partner on their journey, when they feel that you understand their struggle and have their best interests at heart. Helping Successful Ideas Evolve There’s no way to tell which of your ideas will succeed, so invest in many ideas and see which ones pan out. Tendayi remarks, “The fundamental theory of innovation is the theory of an entrepreneurship ecosystem… and in that ecosystem the evolution of successful ideas is actually pretty random. We don't know what's going to succeed and what’s not going to succeed. What we do is just throw things at the wall: we invest in a whole bunch of stuff and then we see what succeeds and what fails.” He emphasizes that you cannot choose winning ideas yourself on day one. He tells leaders that they have to provide the context for the best ideas to bubble up. Double down once you see what works. Coaching the Team Training is not enough: build organizational habits that allow the training to become a repeatable process within your organization. Tendayi explains why he uses this approach when working with large organizations. Coaching the team - both the leaders and employees - involves helping them incorporate this new mindset into their daily routine. Leaders in particular need to be deliberate about what they say and the questions they ask. Their questions should help to bring out the best in the team. What Lean Startup Is Not Lean startup is not a way to make any idea you have work. In fact, the majority of times it will tell you what doesn’t work. “What lean startup does is it allows you to find things that don't work, quicker and cheaper, so you can stop working on that stuff and double down on the things that work,” Tendayi says. He shares practical tips for incorporating the lean startup culture into a large organization, including creating artificial scarcity, which instills the discipline of focusing on what you need to do to be successful. Looking Ahead Tendayi is working on completing ongoing projects, including the Insight Strategyzer tool and a new book entitled Right Question Right Time. His next step, he says, is to return to his academic roots to research the psychology of uncomplacency. Resources TendayiViki.com Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation

Achieving Innovation through Creativity and Play. In this episode, William Laitinen is joined by Tendayi Viki, Academic, Associate Partner of Strategyzer and Author of Pirates in the Navy to discuss innovation in teams and achieving innovation through creativity and play. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date with all the Fintech and Insurtech news. William Laitinen YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4znfBsKevmb8u7v4WrCg0Q/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/search-with-purpose-insurtech-&-fintech/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-laitinen-93282/ Website: https://www.exigeinternational.com/ Tendayi Viki LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tendayiviki/ Website: https://www.strategyzer.com/ Pirates in the Navy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pirates-Navy-Innovators-Lead-Transformation-ebook/dp/B07ZLXP7LP See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Steve Jobs once said it’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy. Pirates refer to startups, built by nimble teams. Large organizations, which are slower to innovate, are compared to the bureaucratic Navy. But how do corporate innovators fall into this metaphor? In this installment of Innovation Answered: Essentials, Tendayi Viki explains. Molli DeRosa from Innovation Leader also reads a passage from Viki’s most recent book, Pirates in the Navy. 

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with Tendayi Viki, innovation expert and associate Partner at Strategyzer. See the full article at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1s8  We talk about his new upcoming book Pirates in the Navy, and how to build an innovation culture where intrapreneurs can flourish. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:30 How intrapreneurs need to act like pirates and privateers within a company 00:03:30 The problem is that if you act like a pirate, you will have people rooting for you to fail 00:05:30 Building an innovation portfolio 00:07:45 What distinguishes a pirate from a privateer, who works on behalf of the organisation 00:10:00 What helps change a company's innovation culture is to get an early win 00:12:30 How to figure out where a company's innovation successes have been 00:15:00 Building a bridge to the core to build an ambidextrous organisation Links mentioned in today's episode: Book: Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Lead Transformation https://amzn.to/2RAZKco Tendayi's website: https://tendayiviki.com/ 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

Tendayi Viki is co-author of The Corporate Startup, an Associate Partner at Strategizer, and one of the major influencers in the world of lean startup and corporate innovation. On this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Tendayi about the evolution of the Lean Startup movement, how corporations are developing the skills to compete and become more innovative, and about Tendayi's brand new book called Pirates in the Navy. Find the Interview transcript and more at insideoutside.io.

Tendayi Viki is co-author of The Corporate Startup, an Associate Partner at Strategizer, and one of the major influencers in the world of lean startup and corporate innovation. On this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, talks with Tendayi about the evolution of the Lean Startup movement, how corporations are developing the skills to compete and become more innovative, and about Tendayi's brand new book called Pirates in the Navy. Find the Interview transcript and more at insideoutside.io.

In our debut episode, host Andrea Kates interviews Tendayi Viki on his upcoming book "Pirates in the Navy - How Innovators Lead Transformation" due out May 14th, 2020. Message: There is nothing harder in business than trying to innovate within large corporations. Innovators in big companies often face internal opposition as well as their external competitors. It is the management of the core business that tends to get in the way of innovation. Most intrapreneurs recognise that innovation can’t be carried out as a series of one-off projects that always have to jump through political hurdles. They realise that there is a need for innovation to happen as a repeatable process. But how can they achieve this? This is a step-by-step guide to getting continuous innovation done in companies and reshaping them in the process. It is for anyone involved in corporate innovation and driving company change. Category: Business & Digital Transformation

Consulting firms struggle in developing their personal brand, not knowing that it is the key ingredient in creating leverage and building authority in the consultancy field. As successful companies grow, they tend to forget this key ingredient which then leads to laxity. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer, holds a bird’s-eye view of this tight spot. Author of The Corporate Startup, Tendayi shares how his books paved the way to build his personal brand and reveals the three things that hinder people from writing. Giving nuggets that would help consultants to develop their personal brand, he touches on Dorie Clark’s three pillars of being a thought leader. In this episode, discover Tendayi’s pricing strategy and why most successful companies have to worry about the future. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Consulting Success Community today: consultingsuccess.com

Consulting firms struggle in developing their personal brand, not knowing that it is the key ingredient in creating leverage and building authority in the consultancy field. As successful companies grow, they tend to forget this key ingredient which then leads to laxity. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer, holds a bird’s-eye view of this tight spot. Author of The Corporate Startup, Tendayi shares how his books paved the way to build his personal brand and reveals the three things that hinder people from writing. Giving nuggets that would help consultants to develop their personal brand, he touches on Dorie Clark’s three pillars of being a thought leader. In this episode, discover Tendayi’s pricing strategy and why most successful companies have to worry about the future. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Consulting Success Community today: consultingsuccess.com

Consulting firms struggle in developing their personal brand, not knowing that it is the key ingredient in creating leverage and building authority in the consultancy field. As successful companies grow, they tend to forget this key ingredient which then leads to laxity. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer, holds a bird’s-eye view of this tight spot. Author of The Corporate Startup, Tendayi shares how his books paved the way to build his personal brand and reveals the three things that hinder people from writing. Giving nuggets that would help consultants to develop their personal brand, he touches on Dorie Clark’s three pillars of being a thought leader. In this episode, discover Tendayi’s pricing strategy and why most successful companies have to worry about the future.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!Here’s How »Join the Consulting Success Community today:consultingsuccess.com

Welcome to episode #652 of Six Pixels of Separation.  Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation - Episode #652 - Host: Mitch Joel. Innovation is a big word. It's a tough word and many businesses claim to be doing it... but few can demonstrate it (well). I was fortunate to be introduced to Tendayi Viki via the good people at Thinkers50 (where Tendayi is writing a crowd-sourced book in partnership with them). Tendayi is an author and innovation consultant. He holds a PhD in Psychology and an MBA. He helps large organizations develop their ecosystems, so that they can innovate for the future while managing their core business. Through his company Benneli Jacobs, he has given keynotes, run workshops and worked as a consultant for several large organizations including American Express, Unilever, Airbus and many more. Tendayi has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He has written two books: The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. The Corporate Startup was awarded the 2018 CMI Management Book Of The Year In Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is currently working on another two books, Right Question, Right Time and Pirates in The Navy. Enjoy the conversation... Running time: 50:38. Hello from beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at iTunes. 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 Tendayi Viki. The Corporate Startup. The Lean Product Lifecycle. Right Question, Right Time. The Lean Product Lifecycle. Benneli Jacobs. Thinkers50. Follow Tendayi on Twitter. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'.

“Business plans serve to crush your dreams.”In this talk, Tendayi Viki explores how corporate leaders can go beyond creating physical spaces and innovation labs in order to provide real space for everyone within the organisation to innovate. He presents innovation as someone giving you a bag with pieces of a puzzle, but without a picture of what the puzzle actually looks like. He also talks about the importance of providing people with tool boxes and coaches to create innovation, because it’s a privilege to have both tools and tutors.

Tendayi Viki joins me to talk about how to successfully launch, promote, and manage a corporate innovation lab. He also shares some of his thoughts on start-ups and how to best manage stakeholder expectations.

Tendayi Viki is one of my favourite innovation thinkers, authors, and educators. In this episodes, we hear his wonderful insights on innovation and strategy. One of the comments that stood out for me in this episodes was, “it is that it is better to be lucky than to be smart.” I suspect that Tendayi love of this quote is driven by his observation that the moment you start winning, you start losing.It is insights like these that make Tendayi one of my favourite innovation thinkers.Another example is his observation that disruptors are not rebels without a cause. They are people who set out to create value in a specific way, and along the journey, they learned that in order to create the value they wish to create, they need to change the sector or system. Disruption is never really the main goal. It is a consequence of trying to change the world.Tendayi spends his days supporting disruptors. The fundamental questions that seem to guide him how might we:Create the right environment to support innovation?What are the right tools for supporting innovation?How do we make the right investment?What is the right decision making frameworks?How can managers ask the right questions at the right time?I love questions. If people were better at asking questions we would see more innovation. Too often our organizational structures stifle innovation and pull disruptors way from the things they should be focused on if they are to generate innovation.Throughout this episode, we explore several aspects of disruption and disruptive conversations. One example that stood out for me was the challenge of creating a sense of urgency among managers. Especially among managers who are well paid and sit in the leading positions of successful companies. For Tendayi, innovation is about doing finding new things to succeed at. Convincing managers that the bridge is burning before it starts burning is a difficult task. It is what I call a disruptive conversation and it takes great skill to navigate these conversations. Managers need to help create the conditions for innovation.  Tendayi offers another insightful when he explains that he does not make a distinction between an entrepreneur and intrapreneur. For him, innovation and disruption succeed when you create value and there are people out there in the world who are willing to pay for that value. This value creation can come from an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur. The goal is to create value for others.  I hope you enjoy this episode with Tendayi Viki.Links:http://www.tendayiviki.com/

Tendayi Viki is one of my favourite innovation thinkers, authors, and educators. In this episodes, we hear his wonderful insights on innovation and strategy. One of the comments that stood out for me in this episodes was, “it is that it is better to be lucky than to be smart.” I suspect that Tendayi love of this quote is driven by his observation that the moment you start winning, you start losing.It is insights like these that make Tendayi one of my favourite innovation thinkers.Another example is his observation that disruptors are not rebels without a cause. They are people who set out to create value in a specific way, and along the journey, they learned that in order to create the value they wish to create, they need to change the sector or system. Disruption is never really the main goal. It is a consequence of trying to change the world.Tendayi spends his days supporting disruptors. The fundamental questions that seem to guide him how might we:Create the right environment to support innovation?What are the right tools for supporting innovation?How do we make the right investment?What is the right decision making frameworks?How can managers ask the right questions at the right time?I love questions. If people were better at asking questions we would see more innovation. Too often our organizational structures stifle innovation and pull disruptors way from the things they should be focused on if they are to generate innovation.Throughout this episode, we explore several aspects of disruption and disruptive conversations. One example that stood out for me was the challenge of creating a sense of urgency among managers. Especially among managers who are well paid and sit in the leading positions of successful companies. For Tendayi, innovation is about doing finding new things to succeed at. Convincing managers that the bridge is burning before it starts burning is a difficult task. It is what I call a disruptive conversation and it takes great skill to navigate these conversations. Managers need to help create the conditions for innovation.  Tendayi offers another insightful when he explains that he does not make a distinction between an entrepreneur and intrapreneur. For him, innovation and disruption succeed when you create value and there are people out there in the world who are willing to pay for that value. This value creation can come from an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur. The goal is to create value for others.  I hope you enjoy this episode with Tendayi Viki.Links:http://www.tendayiviki.com/

In this podcast brought to you in partnership with the Brightline Initiative, Des Dearlove discusses Tendayi Viki and 1508 ’s new report, Innovation Made Tangible. Tendayi and 1508 maintain that in the last several years innovation has become the most important part of many business leaders’ toolkit, and over 70% of C-Suite leaders view innovation as the most important capability for the future sustainability of their companies.

Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova. This week, I have Tendayi Viki on the podcast. He’s an academic, the co-designer of Pearson's Product Lifecycle, which won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York, and is on the shortlist for the Thinkers 50 Innovation Award. He’s also a contributing writer for Forbes and is the author of The Corporate Startup: How Established Companies Can Create Successful Innovation Ecosystems. THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… bigger companies who want to act like a startup. TODAY’S MAIN MESSAGE… to act small, companies must first think about their innovation ambition.  The first step is to create an innovation thesis and understand your minimum viable ecosystem – maybe that means conducting a small workshop instead of jumping straight into a 2-day event. Second, become clear about key trends.  Ask, who do we want to innovate for? Then, run through problems and challenges that could make life easier for your customer. Throughout the process, always measure everything against this question: Is this aligned with our innovation thesis? As Tendayi says, “Figure out whether or not you have the right solution and then figure out whether or not you have the right business model.” WHAT I LOVE MOST… A reoccurring theme has swept over the podcast: embrace non-traditional diversity. Make sure the middle management, legal, and the MBAs are involved; build teams with diverse thinking styles; and get out of the ordinary environment to be creative. Diverse teams create creative tension and avoid internal silos – all good things. A PIECE OF ADVICE… create a business model canvas.  This is an excellent strategy for visual learners (me!) to see what’s written down and think through the idea. What is the business model canvas? It's chart paper on the wall that walks you through customer segments and value proposition.  Write one idea for each section on a post-it note and decide whether that idea is based on knowledge or an assumption. Put a big red X through every assumption you don't have evidence for. Then, build up lean startup techniques to turn your assumptions into knowledge. That’s how you act small but still keep the customer top of mind.   Running time: 34:40   Subscribe on iTunes   Find Tiffani on social: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn   Find Tendayi on social: Website LinkedIn Twitter

Oprichter Abbie Moore van Adopt-aPet over "getting the team to work lean". Alexander Osterwalder over hoe grote bedrijven zich kunnen beschermen tegen disruptie. Tendayi Viki vertelt over "innovation rhythm" en The Corporate Startup. Eric Ries legt de drie stadia van transformatie uit. En een kortingscode om deel te nemen aan http://emea.leanstartup.co!

This talk will cover how innovators can track and measure success using the right tools and metrics. It will explore how teams in the trenches can track the success of their business models via the experiments they will be running, as well as how innovation accounting can be done at the management and strategy levels. Learn how leaders at management level can make ongoing investment decisions of whether to double-down or divest from specific innovation projects. At the strategy level, learn how company leaders can measure the impact of innovation on their company as whole. Practical tips and guides, as well as examples from several companies, will be provided.

Dan Toma is a co-author of the book "The Corporate Startup" along with Tendayi Viki and Esther Gons. He got his start as an entrepreneur working in and around startups and then in accelerators. The book came out of one of his first corporate innovation jobs with Deutsche Telekom, which is the third largest carrier in the world. Dan and Josh talked about some of the trouble spots for corporate innovation teams, how to measure results for optimization and innovation differently, and some examples of what those different innovation accounting measures look like. Find his book on Amazon and find Dan on LinkedIn. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with Tendayi Viki on what exactly "Lean Innovation" is. https://www.ideatovalue.com/podc/nickskillicorn/2017/05/podcast-014-tendayi-viki-lean-innovation/  Tendayi is a popular innovation and strategy consultant and is one of the authors behind the recently released book "The Corporate Startup", which helps large companies understand all of the underlying mechanisms behind lean innovation to bring down the costs and risks of running innovation projects. Things we discuss in today's episode: What lean innovation is, "Doing the right things at the right time" (02:30) The dangers of premature scaling (03:45) The main hurdles to implementing Lean Innovation, and how startups handle it more effectively than large companies (05:00) How to build organisational capabilities needed for Lean Innovation (07:00) In his view, innovation is the combination of creative ideas with sustainably profitable business models (07:45) How the Lean Product Lifecycle can help companies release funds for innovation projects incrementally and more effectively (09:00) The difference between startups and established companies (11:30) Thinking about your portfolio of products and projects (12:30) How to divide your resources and budget across a portfolio of innovation projects (13:30) Why large companies do not let their projects fail (15:30) How to make multiple small investments to validate ideas through experiments (16:00) Getting more people involved in innovation (18:00) The problem with most innovation labs (19:30) How you can spot a bad idea (21:00) The tension between MBAs and Creatives within companies (21:30) Links mentioned in today's episode: http://www.tendayiviki.com/  The Corporate Startup Book Bonus: This episode was made possible by our premium members and the Deep Creativity training system. Sign up now to get exclusive creativity exercises every single day and take your ability to generate ideas to the next level. Use coupon code PODCAST for 25% off your first month. Find out more at https://www.ideatovalue.com/deepcreativity/  https://www.ideatovalue.com/  * 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 Stitcher to the Idea to Value Podcast: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=129437&refid=stpr 

For many established organizations, the problems are clear: disruption from more nimble startups, waterfall processes that waste time and resources, and a culture that rewards playing by inflexible rules over running customer-driven experiments. The solutions are less obvious. How do organizations launch and scale internal startups? How do you systemize intrapreneurship? How should you change the way you hold employees accountable to encourage continuous innovation? Our Lean Enterprise experts Tendayi Viki and Janet Bumpas have actionable solutions to these questions and many others haunting Lean Enterprise practitioners. In this webcast, which will be moderated by six-time entrepreneur David Binetti, Tendayi and Janet will share case studies and actionable takeaways and answer your burning questions.