Inside Outside

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Tom Daly, founder of Relevant Ventures. Tom and I talk about the challenges big companies have when trying to navigate technology and market changes. And what you can do to avoid some of the common obstacles and barriers to innovation and transformation. 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. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript  with Tom Daly, Founder of Relevant VenturesBrian 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 Tom Daly. He is the founder of Relevant Ventures. Welcome Tom. Tom Daly: Thank you very much, Brian. Pleasure to be here, speaking with you. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. You have had a lot of experience in this innovation space. You worked with companies like UPS and ING and I think most recently, Coca-Cola and a lot of the innovation efforts around that world. So I am excited to have you on the show to talk about some of the new things you're doing and I think more importantly, some of the things you've learned over the years.Tom Daly: I started doing this work before people called it digital transformation or innovation. The Earth cooled, at about the same time I began getting my head around this. I'm an advertising guy to begin with, and I can't prove it, but I think I created the world's first dedicated 30 sec TV commercial to a website. UPS. In that process, I picked up some vocabulary and I learned some things about how websites, quote unquote work, so that when people started calling, you know, back in the mid-nineties wanting to talk to somebody about the web or the internet, the calls came to me. And it was during that process where I started to build new networks within UPS, learn about new things going on at UPS and discover some of the opportunities. It's been a while. Brian Ardinger: You talk a lot about this ability to turn big ships in small spaces. Talk a little bit about what that means to you and, and what the challenges really are for corporations in, in this whole innovation space. Tom Daly: The idea of turning big ships in small spaces actually goes back to my boss's boss at UPS who noticed I was toiling. UPS has a reputation as a conservative company. A little bit unfair, there's some truth to that, but not quite what people think.It's actually a very, very innovative company and has been for its entire history, but it is collaborative. There's a lot of debate and a lot of discussion. So getting new things done, driving new ideas that my boss to encourage me, you'll get there, Tom, but it's like turning a battleship in the Chattahoochee.So, I don't know where listeners are, but imagine a pretty darn small body of water and a really big ship that you're trying to turn. So, a lot of back and forth, a lot of kissing babies, shaking hands, and just getting, you know politics, but in a good positive way to kind of really understand interests and concerns and build a better program, a better idea.So that's the idea, and it was encouraging to me. So, this notion of turning big ships in small spaces, it seems to be, to the degree I have any superpowers, that's the one I'm able to kind of figure out how to help larger organizations figure out how to extract value from, you know, kind of what's coming up around the corner.Brian Ardinger: Obviously you've seen a lot of changes, whether they're technology changes or business model changes that have happened over the years. Where do companies typically run into the problems when they see something on the emerging horizon and they're saying, we've gotta do something about this. What goes through their mind and what can they do to better prepare for some of these drastic changes?Tom Daly: The thing companies can do to help themselves most be prepared for big ships in the world that we all live and compete in, is, you know, the twin keys of openness and acceptance. Being open to an idea is really important, but it is only half the battle. Being accepting of the implications of those ideas is really key and the classic example would be Kodak. You know, Kodak early in, open to the idea of digital photography. But equally unaccepting of its implications. So they didn't jump in, they didn't do the things they needed to do, and as a result, very different company Blockbuster would fit in that category.Certainly, they understood the implications of streaming technologies and the web and the ability to distribute content. Given the retail heavy business, the land heavy business, they just weren't accepting, or at least not accepting fast enough to be able to secure position in the next evolution of how people consumed content. So those two ideas, being open and accepting both in equal measures is critical to getting yourself in a good spot. Brian Ardinger: Well, you touched on an interesting point. You read about the stories of companies failing or being disrupted, and from the outside it looks like, well, they didn't pay attention, or they didn't know what was going on.But it seems like, from the stories and the people that I've talked to, it's not that they weren't aware of what was going on. Or the fact that it was going to have a major impact or that they should do something about it. It was more to that line of it, like you said, acceptance of, well, how do we actually do this knowing that we're going to have to change our business models, change the way we make money, change everything about what we currently do to make this radical shift. And it's that classic innovator's dilemma. Are you seeing that changing nowadays, now that people are kind of more familiar with the concept of this and, and as more and more changes hit corporations, so you're getting faster at having to adapt to this. Are you seeing the world changing or are you still seeing the same problems exist?Tom Daly: You know, anybody in this space, Brian, doing what I've been doing for as long as I've been doing it, you need to be an optimist. You need to believe that, you know it's all going to happen. That said, the conversations I'm having today in 2023 are pretty darn close to the conversations I was having in the middle, you know, of the nineties, right?So, whether it was the dawn of, you know, this graphical overlay on the internet, the web, and when browsers enabled, or the introduction of now advertising and marketing opportunities on the web, which didn't really happen at the beginning of the browser era, that followed a little bit later. Or the introduction of mobile phones and then smartphones and all the, it's the same conversations. And they all come from a place of gaps.I won't say a lack because in some places there is confidence and acceptance and alignment with what's going on. But it's not uniform within organizations. Right. Then there are pockets of people within departments, IT people, marketing people, salespeople. They see the same opportunities. But there are also folks who do not see the future in the same way. And that's where that acceptance problem comes in. So I ask questions, I do a little survey. And I ask people really fundamental questions, one of them having to do with innovation. Now, where do you put your company in terms of new technologies and how quickly they would be used. Like you see yourself among the first to use emerging technologies?I'm asked almost around 2000 people this question. And interestingly, overall, 16% of people would say, yes, our company is among the first. But if you drill down into that, you see CEOs of the C-suite at 36% believe they are the first to use technology, but only about 19% of VP and director level. So that gap needs to be studied.It could be that CEOs are both open and accepting, but just can't bring their organization along with them. And get people to the same head space. Or it could be that the, you know, VP director level folks see something different. We're not among the first, and it’s this overconfidence among the C-suite, who happen to believe, but it may not be the reality of what you don't see it. What you're looking at C-Suite is really not what's going on. Regardless of how you interpret that gap, there is a gap. And understanding it, managing it, dissecting it, interrogating it is kind of what's really important. Brian Ardinger: You know, a lot of this change and the, the ability to accept change and, and adapt to it comes down to incentives. What are you seeing or what have you seen that's worked when it comes to incentivizing teams or even the C-Suite to put new things into place and to react and adapt to new changes? Tom Daly: It's going to happen; it's going to change. My technique, it may be more patient than others. I don't know how to make it go super-fast. I just know that lots of back and forth. You know, I think that the thing to do is demonstrate that this is real. I'll tell you an example, a little technique that I used back before the advent of mobile payments. Before people using their phone to buy things was really as prevalent as it is today. It was possible, but not a part of many people's experience.So, at the time I was at Coca-Cola, our products were sold in a lot of retail environment where these capabilities were being slowly introduced. But I was also working among a group of people, none of them are ignorant, they just didn't believe it was happening. I organized what I called a mobile payments safari.I got a local little tour bus. And planned out a route to Coca-Cola Company customers. Dunkin Donuts, local Burger Joint, Home Depot. All of these companies using Mobile payments in one way, shape, or form. And I made everybody kind of get the appropriate app, sign up for the appropriate services. They paid early days of Square. I didn't pay for this bus ride out of my own budget. I had each participant use Square to see how that worked. Took them to Dunkin Donuts to go get their coffee or Coke and donut. Talk to the counter, see customers, so on and so forth throughout the day. Now, by the end of the day, it wasn't Tom's opinion, my language I gave everybody the same inputs that I had. With the benefit of those same inputs. They reached the same output. They reached the same conclusion, alignment gaps closed. People started to realize, oh yeah, that's, it is happening in the world, you know where I live. Brian Ardinger: That's a great exercise, and I think more and more folks need to pay attention to that. You know, we talk a lot about the customer discovery process and that. Especially when we're working with startups, because at that early stage, they're trying to figure out who their customers are. Is their market and everything else. I think the challenge when you get to a kind of an established company is they think they know who their customers are or they, you know, read about it or hang out with the same competitors. And so, there's a natural tendency to think they know what's going on in the world and that ability to step outside the office and see what's really going on. And, you know, firsthand knowledge I think is so important for whether you're launching a new product or just trying to, like you said, understand a new technology set and how that's impacting or could impact your current business. Tom Daly: Brian, I think there's a lot to that and it's incredibly helpful, but the other thing that you need to be able to do is tell the stories around that and help people understand it in a way that's digestible. Before I organized this local payments safari, I circulated a couple of case studies, one of which super impactful I think you know, that again, back to a square example, the, Salvation Army, you know, that famous red kettle collecting coins around the holidays. There was a early and really interesting experiment where Salvation Army was using Square to accept payments. Why? Not because everybody was using their phone to buy stuff, but they were using credit cards. They were not using cash. So, they didn't have change in their pockets, and you know, felt bad in the Red Kettle. So, they said, well, we got to find a way to get some money. You know, the storytelling that I created was, you know that the coins that go on the kettle in December, are the coins that go on a vending machine in July.And if people don't have the money to put into that red kettle, they're going to be the same dilemma. And we just got to catch up with us. So, we have to find ways to remove that payment friction. Then I happen to be focused on mobile technology at the time. The point is the storytelling and finding ways to connect these trends and whether it's super easy. Nope, no language, no technical stuff. You didn't have to understand just, oh yeah, I get it. No coins. Brian Ardinger: So, I'd love your insight into how important it is to get buy-in across the organization, or how difficult is it for the average manager within a company to help push the transformation agenda forward. Versus having corporate buy-in and, and everybody aligned. Can you talk a little bit about what are the skill sets, tool sets, things that people need from a manager level to make this stuff happen? Tom Daly: I wish I had the one silver bullet to tell you some new blinding revelation. I don't. It's the usual suspects, Brian. You know, you need to be informed. You kind of need to know a little bit about how the watch is made. Not just sort of the superficial part of kind of what you saw. This, your technologist is probably more likely to understand a little bit of the underlying technology, but you may not have the language or experience or vocabulary to talk about how that interacts with people. If you're a marketing person, you probably have the skillset to talk about the stories and the like, but you don't have the technical knowledge. Whether you're coming at innovation, regardless of the perspective that you're coming at an innovation discussion or transformation discussion knowing both is important. You can't just kind of say, oh yeah, and well payments, you kind of have to know a little bit about how the watch is made. So certain amount of curiosity, critical, tenacity, perseverance. You know, we've captured my personal style, that big ship, small spaces constantly creeping towards the destination.Other people will have different styles at different techniques. But it is all captured by the same notion of perseverance, tenacity, persistence, et cetera, et cetera. So, no unique, I do have a couple of resources though that would be helpful for folks. You know, first thing folks might want to do is wherever they buy their books, great book written by a fellow named Kumar Metta, who wrote something called The Innovation Biome. And the Innovation Biome is a book capturing case studies from cultures of innovation, big companies. You know, Amazons of the world, Apples. What do they do culturally to enable these environments? You know, you'll use a reference, a culture will Yes, within Amazon. So it's not the manager's job to say no. Sort of the manager's job to say, okay, but yes, but let me help you get this through so you can get the information that you need.So, you know, I've worked with folks in the past, you know, who facilitate meetings that allow executives to get together, break out of the day-to-day. Some of the techniques we've already touched on, talk to customers, walk around where people are living and doing their day-to-day thing to see where your ideas fit. Where there are problems that you can solve. Simple stuff. But if you don't do it and you spend your time looking for that silver bullet, you're gonna miss it. Just do it. Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. The last topic I want to talk about is, obviously again, you've been in a lot of different industries and that. You pay attention to a lot of the trends that are going on. Obviously in the, in news this week, in, in the past few weeks, the whole AI movement and chat, GPT-4, and I'm, I'm talking to a lot of different companies saying hey we see this thing coming, we have no idea how to attack it or use it or whatever. What are you seeing when it comes to the AI trend and what is your input for helping companies try to navigate that early stage? Tom Daly: We would agree. A generative AI overall kind of a a big deal. Going be super transformative. This book that I mentioned, the Innovation Biome. The author Kumar Metta talks about the fallacy of the next big thing, and he picks apart you know, the first fallacy is that, you know, it's the next thing. So generative AI is here. But it's like day one, right? I mean, not literally, but you know, broadly speaking. So, what it will truly become, who knows, right? I mean, so don't get too fixated on it as a thing at this moment in time. Allowing yourself to just project forward and imagine scenarios down the road of what a future could look like, because eventually it will get there. Lots of folks you know, back in the day of 56 K modems. Nobody will ever buy you anything. Music won't ever happen. And this blockbuster streaming thing. Well, 56 became 124. 124 became EF whatever. And you know, here we are on our phones doing things that were unimaginable really not that long ago. Generative AI is only important if it turns into a billion-dollar idea for you.If you set that standard, you're going to miss it. Right. Think about small, quick little wins things that you can do today. Learn the technology. Introduce it into your organization. Become familiar with it, and don't worry about the long ball, right? Singles and doubles. Three yards caught. Where are your sports? Whatever you're thinking. Start with what you can do and don't despite what I just said about learning how the watch is made, you'll be overly focus on a specific thing, right? Chat Gpt, GPT-4, whatever it is, open up the aperture. Think more broadly about where these things, what's the real root essence of it? Not a specific manifestation of it. If you give yourself that latitude, it's important to you even if it only saves two seconds a day for somebody. If it saves two seconds for somebody, maybe it saves two seconds for everybody. A company that matters. It'll magnify itself if it's real.Brian Ardinger: I also find that you mentioned opening up the aperture, and I think a lot of times when I'm talking to C-suite folks or team leaders and that they oftentimes think that they have to have all the answers. And especially in larger organizations, you have a lot of people in the depths of the organization that I believe are curious and restless in and around these particular topics. And sometimes all it takes is opening that up and saying, hey, who else in the organization has access or information or insight or a desire to help us figure this kind of stuff out?And if you opened up the conversation, I think that sometimes takes the pressure off of the lead team to have to have all the answers or figure it out all themselves. I think what you'll find is there are people and pockets within the organization that can help you move faster if you just allow them to help you do that.Tom Daly: Brian, that's what I was trying to get to with the kissing babies and shaking hands and politics isn't a bad thing. It's not a bad word. It's people. It's sitting down, grab a cup of coffee with your colleagues, you know, share your idea. Why you might be enthusiastic or excited about a particular opportunity, but be open and, and listen when they tell you why that might work.Big organizations, a lot of specialized skills and capabilities and these are intricate machines built over a long time and my clever little idea looks like a bit of grit. No, it's just going to come up the work style. They'll do it. Tell me why. Partner? Why is it going to go up the works? That'll help me think about it more deeply.Come back to you and say, well, I think I've solved that problem. What's next? Oh, okay, you have. Good now. Hey, let's go rope in this other person. And then you just build that consensus. Now again, in smaller organization, that cycle goes faster. But the principles say if you just show up with an idea when you went home on Friday, we did it this way.Here we are Monday morning. We're doing it a totally different way. Gaps in alignment, confidence and trust are going to come back and bite you. My analogy is turning a big ship. That's the rocks. Those are the rocks that are going to sink you. You're going to get stuck. It's just a lot more work to get unstuck. And had you just charted the course a little bit more methodically?For more informationBrian Ardinger: Makes a lot of sense. Well, Tom, we live in fascinating times. I appreciate you coming on and, and sharing your thoughts and insights over the past couple decades of how to navigate this changing world that we're living in. If people want to find out more about yourself or about relevant ventures, what's the best way to do that?Tom Daly: Best way would be just to visit relevantventures.com website. Of course, you'll find me, you know, a couple of Slack channels here and there. You'll find me on LinkedIn. I am wide open to sharing these ideas. It's how I learn and how I get better. And I hope someone has an idea that they want to discuss, because I love to share what I've learned along the way.Brian Ardinger: Sounds great. Well, Tom, thanks for bringing on Inside Outside Innovation. Looking forward to continuing the conversation. Tom Daly: Thank you. 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.  

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.

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Chris Shipley, co-author of the new book, The Empathy Advantage. Chris and I talk about the changing forces driving the great resignation to the great reset, and how empathetic leadership will be the key to navigating change in creating value today and in the future. 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. It's time to get started.Transcript of Podcast with Chris Shipley, Co-author of The Empathy Advantage.Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. In fact, this guest has been on the show before. It is Chris Shipley. She's the co-author of the new book, The Empathy Advantage: Leading The Empowered Workforce. Welcome back Chris.Chris Shipley: Hey, I'm glad to be talking to you again.Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm excited to have you on as always. You've been so gracious to be part of the Inside Outside community for so many years, whether it's speaking in our events or the last time we spoke, you had your first book out, the Adaptation Advantage. And that came out right during the middle of Covid.And so, I wanted to have you back on with this new book, to talk about what's changed and and where we're going. You've got a new book out called The Empathy Advantage. Tell us a little bit about why you had to write a book coming out of Covid? Chris Shipley: As you said, The Adaptation Advantage, our first book with Heather and I, it launched in April of 2020. So, we had all of these plans having finished the book at the end of 2019 to do all the things you do to launch a book. And the world came to a stop. We had to adapt ourselves to really get that book out into the world. But what we recognized or what happened is it kind of became this accidental guide to leading through the pandemic, because everybody was without.We continued to read and write and work on understanding what was happening and changing in the workplace. During the pandemic, what became really, really clear is that the pandemic didn't cause this disruption. It felt very disrupting, but it was, it amplified, it put a lens on what had been happening for a long time.So, for example, the idea of the great resignation that really took hold about a year ago, people started talking about it. Well, that's been going on since about 2009. The pandemic created; we had a lens to see it maybe more clearly. It wasn't a new idea. And so what we realized is that the amplifying effect of the pandemic combined with a workforce that was sent home, given a lot of autonomy, a lot of agency, in how they would do their jobs, they're not gonna come back into an office place and say, oh, you know, all of that stuff that trust you had in me, nevermind micromanagement again, I'll be fine with that. A new kind of leadership is required to move people sort of back into a mainstream new frame of work that really embraces the way in which these workers are more empowered, they have more autonomy and agency. And we think that the bottom line is it's a change in leadership that centers on empathy.Brian Ardinger: I wrote a book. I started writing it right before the pandemic, and this idea of disruption and changes are coming and how do you start preparing for it? And then Covid hits, and it made it real. Obviously, for everybody in a way that talking about it and seeing it hitting in different industries might not have.But nowadays we're coming back into the place where, so we've had a couple of years of practice, so to speak to how do we become adaptive in that. But it still seems like there's a lot of folks getting it wrong or trying to go back to the old way and that. So, what are you seeing when it comes to this natural pull to try to go back to quote unquote normal. Chris Shipley: We're never gonna go back to normal. And I don't think really we ever do go back to a normal, right? We, there's a new normal and it's, it exists for now and then tomorrow it'll be another normal. And that really speaks to being adaptive. And so I think one of our challenges is that there's kind of a new mold for leadership, but we're still trying to shove the old ways into it. Right, that being a leader meant I needed to know how everyone worked. I needed to be the absolute decision maker. I needed to be the one who could see everything and guide everyone and manage people to some greater profitability and, and productivity. That just doesn't fit in the mold now. So, we need to recognize it if, and everything has, so much, has changed through the pandemic.That what worked, that got us to where we are as leaders is not going to work to take us forward with this newly empowered workforce. And so, being able to, as a leader say, you know what? I don't know. But let's find out. Let's learn together. Let's work together to find this new way. You know, that's really hard for a lot of folks who have been ingrained with this idea that I'm the boss I should be all knowing.Well, you know what? You can't know everything. Things are moving way too quickly. There's too much. No one holds all the knowledge to, to get some, you know, to get work done today. And so, creating an environment of, of collaboration rather than a, an environment of competition means that people can come together, and problem find and problem solve in a way that you as a leader become more of a conductor or a coach, or a, of a mentor. that empowers and enables workers rather than commands and controls them. Brian Ardinger: And that's a great point. I was working with a company early in the pandemic and they were talking about, well, how do we adapt to this new hybrid approach? And one of the leaders was like, it's not really our core people that are having to adapt much, it's, it's us as managers that have to learn how to manage differently. And look at how do we create productivity and guidance and everything around that communication with our people because they seem to be adapting fine as far as getting the work done. It's us as managers that are having the challenge or trying to adapt on how do we manage differently. Chris Shipley: Yeah. I was reading recently in a piece that a large percentage of managers think that they need to closely manage their hybrid workers. That that will make their workers more productive, increase performance, increase profitability, and the data doesn't support that.Data supports giving people clear direction. Pushing decision making through the organization to cross your team. Being, you know, very clear on desired outcomes, actually produces the kind of performance that, that you're looking for. And in fact, the more there is a sense of oversight, and you know, keyboard tracking and all of the, you must be sitting at a desk in this work space, between these hours that actually tempers performance. It becomes a, you know, a bone of contention frankly, with workers who, like you trusted me a couple of years ago when, when we all got sent home to figure this thing out. Why are you not trusting me now? Brian Ardinger: So, back to the book. What does an empowered workforce look like? And maybe what's the mindset of an empowered workforce. Chris Shipley: Enforced by, or a reckoning that came because of the pandemic. It was just for many families it was an existential crisis, right? How are we going to get by? Our work has changed, maybe our income has changed. We've lost family members. We're homeschooling our, our children, you know, all of the things that we all know, and we all wrestled with repositioned where work fits in our lives. And we used to talk about work life balance. And I think the biggest shift now is that people are thinking about life work balance. I do my work around the things in my life that are important. Family, my physical health, my mental wellbeing, and I will make decisions as a worker that favor my family and my wellbeing over my employer and his business, or her business and their profitability because I matter most now.My family matters most. And so that worker, you know, combined with labor shortages and all sorts of other, other issues are just having to say it's not worth it. It's not worth it for me to sacrifice my personal time. My family, my health to work in many cases in an environment where I feel I'm not being paid appropriately. In conditions that aren't conducive to health and wellbeing.Pick any number of factors. That evaluation is happening in the minds of workers. And they are recognizing that they now have the power to say no. They have the power to leave that work and to go find some job somewhere else that's going to help them be in the right place in their priorities. Brian Ardinger: And you talk about this in the book, but it's a movement towards employees and people in general wanting to have more impact. You know, they've realized that things can have a major impact on their own lives, but this movement towards how do I have an impact in the work that I do. And I have a choice now to be able to make those from a company perspective, you got to make sure that employees really understand the mission and, and align that as well because impact seems to be driving a person's commitment to the organization versus almost anything else. Chris Shipley: It would be easy to say, ah, damn, these, these empowered workers, and they want to fulfill their purpose and be cynical about it. The truth is that's your greatest secret weapon. If I can tap somebody's, their passion for whatever they want their impact to be, that becomes an intrinsic motivator.I no longer have to, you know, cajole my workers to work a little bit longer or provide incentive to work on a different project. I put them behind the thing that they most want to do and they outperform. I think if you can, as a leader, make the shift from they work for me to, I work for them. I figure out how to tap that power that's within them to be their best self and to do their best work. That's a win for the company. That's a win for my leadership. Brian Ardinger: Well, and the environment is such now that maybe it used to be in the past where you had to pull your talent from a local base. You might not find everybody in your local base that align to what you are trying to build or the impact you're trying to have.But now you have access to a global workforce that's been trained on working remotely or otherwise, and so you almost have an advantage to being able to find those tribes of people that you know resonate with what you're trying to build and have an opportunity to find different talent or cultivate different talent than you had in the past as well. Chris Shipley: I think that's absolutely right. So, you've got a global workforce, so it's both harder and easier sometimes to navigate. But you've got a lot of other options now. So do your employees. Right. They have lots of other places they can turn and so really taking that time to hire well and to engage with your current workforce to, to understand do we have alignment of purpose?And recognizing that there, that's magic. And when there's not, then your job as a leader is to help those people find a place where they can be more purposeful so that you can focus back to the mission of your own organization. You know, and it's tough, much harder in many ways to be that coach and conductor than it is to be a command-and-control leader because I've got absolute authority do as I say, and I can go home and have my steak for dinner and, and be happy that I was a good leader today.To think here we are in a hybrid situation, and I want people to come into the office, but not to come into the office to do the same work they could do from home without the commute, without the hassle of getting ready for work every day. What's that experience going to be like? I could in the past just call a meeting and expect everyone to show up in a conference room.Now they have to really think about what's that meeting's purpose and how do we get everyone to prepare and to understand our goals so that when we do come together to think together, it's actually to a specific purpose. And not just, wouldn't it be nice to see everybody around the same conference room again. That's a much more deliberate piece of leadership than we ought to have a meeting so that everyone can round robin about, you know, what's on their to-do list today. Brian Ardinger: One of the things I like about the book, you talk about the superpowers that the new management slash companies need to have as far as if you're going to be a good leader, what are some of those superpowers that you need to start embracing. You know, vulnerability of not knowing and awareness and candor. I don't know if you want to speak to some of the superpowers that people should be cultivating when it comes to leading in this new world. Chris Shipley: It boils down to one, I think, which is be human. When we can connect with people in our humanity, when we can recognize that the people who work for us are complex, messy human beings, and we are complex, messy human beings. And we can lead with empathy to understand that, then the powers that it comes from transparency, from vulnerability, from honesty and candor, those kind of flow naturally. When I think about superpowers, it's really how do we give ourselves as leaders permission to be fully human and to engage with the people who work for us in a fully human way? Brian Ardinger: What do you think the costs are? If you ignore this shift. Chris Shipley: You're going to be constantly trying to hire people and train people, and hire people, and train. You'll put yourself in that revolving door of building workforce rather than being in a place where you're building the capacity of the people who are coming to work. Do you want to spend your leadership time as a hiring manager trying to fill the position for someone who was not well aligned and for whom you did not well care? Or do you want to open up yourself to the risk, be a little bit vulnerable about your own humanity and their humanity and make those adaptations as you need to in order to really empower people to do good work. Brian Ardinger: So, you've had a chance to work out in Silicon Valley and other places and that who's getting it right now. Are you seeing any shining examples of folks that seem to be getting this more right than others? Chris Shipley: I think we're in a period of great experimentation. And I think that there are some companies that are trying hard. I think that Airbnb and his email to staff or at the beginning of the pandemic, which was essentially, I don't really know, but as I know, I'll share what I know.It's hard to be the person at the vanguard to say, I have no idea where this is going, but hey, follow me anyway. You can get people to follow if you are open and candid about that. I think so many challenges that leaders had during the pandemic were, I don't know, so I'm going to wait until I know. Rather than to say, okay, today we're going to act on this bit of information that we have. And when that information changes, here's how we'll make decisions again. Kind of that framework rather than, rather than absolute decisions, here's the framework that we're going to use to make decisions. You kind of mitigate as much uncertainty as possible.I may not know how things are going to work, but I know how I'm going to make decisions around new information, new knowledge. Sharing that out with a team helps to bring the level of stress down because I can watch for those same indicators and have a better sense of where we're going to go as an organization. I think the companies that are doing that, the leaders who were able to do that, to give their people frameworks to understand and frameworks for decision making were in a far better position than those who felt like they had to give an absolute answer, but then changed in a week. And then it changed the week after that. Leaving people to think that my management's wishy-washy. They making decisions all in whoop saw back and forth. That became very frustrating. Leaders, we think we have to know it all, and one of the toughest things to do is to say, I don't know, but here's how we're going to learn together. Brian Ardinger: Do you think the potential for the pendulum to swing back, I'm thinking through like an Elon Musk on Twitter and, and the way he's manhandled, the taking back of that company and bringing back people in the office and firing them and going back with a more autocratic way of governing a company. Do you think that the pendulum is potentially moving back that way, or is that a anomaly, or what are you seeing? Chris Shipley: I think I really appreciate Elon Musk and his leadership style for making it painfully clear to everyone else just how not to do workforce management. What we have seen reporting out of Twitter in the sort of random firings, because he's in a mood one afternoon, is the kind of arbitrary leadership. It's crippling for an organization; it's paralyzing for an organization. And so, thank you for that example, because we'll know what not to do. The challenge here is that, and you know, we've talked about this before, change is happening so quickly that you just don't know and so I don't know where you have a choice but to be vulnerable about that lack of knowing.Heather and I talk about this all. Are we wrong? Is there some other way to lead that looks like the models that we all grew up with and they keep coming back to no. The only way to lead now is with a heavy dose of human empathy because we're all in this together and it is a grand experiment. And some companies are going to work their way through it more quickly. Others are going to really struggle, but I think again, with an empowered workforce, workers will navigate to the experiments that are working.Brian Ardinger: Let's say I'm a manager or a leader in an organization and I'm struggling with this new world. Are there resources or hints or tips that I can implement tomorrow that would help me figure this out a little bit faster or more effectively?Chris Shipley: Well, by next Wednesday there will be this new book on the market called The Empathy Advantage. I think that's a good place to start. Of course. I guess I would start with your people. What do your people need? Even, you know, over the years as I didn't make tough decisions or have difficult conversations, what became the most motivating factor for me in doing hard things was recognizing that the people that I lead really do know the answers.And they're waiting for me to, to do the right thing. Recognizing that you don't lead alone. You lead among a group of people who you have entrusted with your business in some fashion. And the kinds of conversations that tap into their knowledge and their insight about themselves, about you and your organization is extraordinarily valuable.I think that ability to, again, put aside the, I need to know it all. And go speak to your people. What do they need? What are they seeing? That I think is probably the best first step for any leader.Brian Ardinger: It almost seems like you're opening up your team to becoming leaders themselves and co-leading or co-creating and, and that speaks back to, you know, the motivations. If I'm an employee and I'm given the opportunity to both speak my mind and have a contribution, that should go a long way in making me want to be part of that organization moving forward as well. So it's almost to your best interest because you are effectively growing your, your next leadership team as well.Chris Shipley: Yeah, I mean, people want to be valued and valued for what they know and for what they see and what they experience. Why would you not want to tap that value that plays back into a workforce that is more engaged, that is a shared sense of purpose and driving to the same outcomes. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: Chris, I appreciate you coming on Inside Outside Innovation again to talk to us about what you're seeing in the world. I always appreciate your insights and that. If people want to find out more about yourself or, or the new book, what's the best way to do that? Chris Shipley: Drop by my website, which is cshipley.com. Drop by your local book seller and ask for The Empathy Advantage. I think those are both good places to start, but I would say also just listen to your podcast. I think you, you deliver great value to your readers and I'm happy to be part of it today. Brian Ardinger: Well, thanks Chris. I appreciate you being a friend and colleague of the changing world we're living in and looking forward to having you back on the show soon. Chris Shipley: Thanks very much. 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 Maisha Leek, Managing Director of Forum Venture Studios. Maisha has had an amazing career in corporate innovation, company building and venture capital, and we talk about the new Venture studio model and some of the things that she's seeing in the world of venture. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is 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. It's time to get started. Interview Transcription with Maisha Leek, Managing Director of Forum Venture StudiosBrian 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 Maisha Leek. She's the managing director of Forum Venture Studios. Welcome to the show, Maisha. Maisha Leek: Thank you Brian. I'm excited to be here.Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you because you've spent a lot of time in all the different cross sections of innovation. So corporate innovation, company building, venture capital. Can you tell us about your path and journey in this innovation space? Maisha Leek: Sure. I'd love to say it was all brilliantly planned. There's a lot of trial error, error, error, error, and then trial again. I actually got into this world in the interesting route. I was for a long time in Washington DC. I was a policymaker and a fundraiser. And in DC we had oversight of most of the science and innovation agencies. So, everything from NASA to Noah to National Science Foundation, which is about the $54 billion proposition, which is a lot of responsibility. And we work with your tax dollars, placing the best bets we could to jumpstart the economy or to just position the United States to be competitive. And so that turned in everything from investing in commercial space flight. You see that now with SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and other companies. Those aren't the only ones. And investing in the advancement of batteries, which leads to all of the electric vehicles that we have now and, and sort of their ability to compete with their combustible counter parts.I knew I was far from all the action that everybody was in, in Silicon Valley and wanted to get closer to it, but by happenstance, met the founder of United Masters. Which was a music and tech company. And did not know what I was doing, except that I was an operator. I knew how to build out teams and build out a company and spent my time doing that. And we had the right as Silicon Valley goes investors. So had Ben Horowitz on our board. And David Drummond on our board. And was really active in managing those relationships. And when I was thinking about what to do next after spent some time at that startup, I had an executive coach and friends, they were like, you got to get into venture.And I'm like, that sounds really boring. And their suggestion I think is really apt for folks who are thinking about it. They suggested I would be good in the space because I had experience to do this on Capitol Hill, operating across a range of subject matters. And knowing to be sort of a generalist that can go deep in certain areas and analyze information and make quick judgements.My first experience was at Adventure Studio at Human Ventures. And that really influenced what I decided to do after that. And most of my time in the venture space, outside of being an angel investor or participating SPVs has really been in the venture studio space. I love it because of the close connection you can have with the founder and the founding team. It's not sort of like write a check. I'll call you once a month kind of thing. We're in it with them. But it also leans into the place where I'm strong. Which is I'm a really great operator and being able to do that with founders and helping them not make the same mistakes I've made in other companies that I've built or independent of that, also gives me great joy.So, I've done four Venture Studios - Nike Valiant Labs, Human Ventures, New Lab, which are across the series of categories. New Lab is Frontier Technology. Nike is really best to describe with CPG. Human Ventures, which is in large part direct to consumer. And Forum, which is B2B SaaS. And they all have their challenges. But again, I love the model. I'm an evangelist for the model. Brian Ardinger: Let's talk about that model. You know, people who've followed the show and that have heard more and more about Venture Studios, and if you've been in the space, you're hearing different flavors of what Venture Studios are. So can you talk about what is a venture studio from your definition and what were the differences between the different ones that you've started and where you're at currently with Forum. Maisha Leek: The term studio, when it's combined with venture, actually originates from Hollywood, which I did not know. Essentially, like the idea that the studio from ideation to putting it into theaters would be responsible for the build. Like they collaborate with some folks, but they wanted to sort of own the vertical of the product that went out to market. And Venture Studios do just that in a venture context. We are building small businesses as fast as possible.You do different things depending on the category, and there are few ways the model sort of shows up. On one extreme, they're starting with just the idea and there's no founder. On the other extreme, you've built out a business and you're hiring in a CEO. Most of the venture studios I've worked with sort of lean to the front end where we really are interested in and get really excited about the founder. And really help them determine what to build.And that's really a question of what the problem is that they want to solve. It's not really starting with a solution. And then we take them through a process to de-risk it, diligence it, figure out who the real customers are. What needs to be true for the MVP, and then bring it out to market. Most venture studios do that.I think that where we get variation is the degree to which the idea is evolved before the team that's going to live with the problem goes out into the world. I think that's where folks tend to have differing points of view about what's most important. And a lot of it's logical. Venture Studios exist because we have a better risk profile than a founder doing it on their own.I can get into why that is, but you can imagine it's just our expertise. And depending on the Venture Studio and their point of view about what they have to offer in terms of the early ideation, you have some organizations or groups who really want to use every insight that they have and stand up a company. And others who believe that the founder who's taking the risk should do most of that work. That's how folks are making those choices from what I've seen. Brian Ardinger: Yeah, that seems to be some of the key differentiation. It's how much additional resources perhaps are put towards it. So, some venture studios are very much hands-on. They have a team of developers that the founder can work with to build out, you know, early-stage prototypes and things along those lines. All the way to, obviously capital's involved.But it, it's interesting to see even the last three or four years, how that model has evolved. You know, some of the earlier venture models, you know, High Alpha out of Indianapolis or Highland Beta Toronto, they're looking at different models. You've got Nobody's Studios out in New York and the Philippines. And then you've got, obviously some of these, what were more traditional startup accelerator programs, whether it's Techstars or others that are, are looking at kind of a venture model where again, it seems to be how do we find the early founder with some magic sauce. And then put the magic sauce together to create companies together. Rather than looking for a company out there, which would be more, I guess, a traditional venture model in general.Maisha Leek: It's interesting. I love how you put that last point. The debate, I think, amongst people who are in the venture studio space is like, well, what matters more, the idea or the founder. I think that the way they're setting up venture studios is really an answer to that individual group's point of view on that question. I personally believe that the founder is the one thing you cannot de-risk. Human beings are human. And you know, you can pivot a company, you can pivot a strategy, you can change who is sitting where. But when it comes to the founder, you really wanna have conviction before you build. And I think a ton of folks are seeing that as the whole game. In large part, because early-stage investors are only looking at the team, right? So, it stands to reason that where venture studios can really play the game super, super well is making sure they've got that really, really tight, and then getting into the idea and the problem space from there.Brian Ardinger: And that makes perfect sense. You know, at the earliest stages, most ideas are crap, and they have to be worked through. And so the uncertainty itself, you're looking for somebody who can work through that uncertainty and adapt to the changing things that they learn along the way. Maisha Leek: A hundred percent. And somebody also who has a game plan for themself, which I find doesn't come up as much. But you know, I was talking to a founder this morning that was having a rough day, early on a Monday. And essentially, am I making the right choice for my life? How do I do that? Having a plan for all of those rough moments, it's like one of the most important things an investor or even a studio or a founder can put together before they even dig into the idea, because it's your right. The way a business shows up today. Fifteen years from now, it's going to be completely different. And really having a game plan for how to address the uncertainty, the significant amount of volatility that you'll face and keep your head is probably some of the most important details about being a founder that I don't think get enough of your time.Brian Ardinger: So obviously a founder's a core component to creating any new company. What are some of the ways that you both source founders and what do you look for. Maisha Leek: This is the best question. It's also the hardest. There are a range of approaches. I think that over time you start to build a network of founders that trust and know you.And when you say that you're standing up the studio and that you want to build, they tend to refer people that they're really excited about. Just starting from scratch. I mean, you really do want to spend time doing what we're doing right now. Demonstrating your capabilities in conversations and writing. Really posting a ton. Trying to draw people in.Being a judge at competitions. Talking to your network of other investors. There are a ton of folks that are further down the line and they meet founders who are too early for them to consider for their deals. I've talked to my entire network about getting folks to refer those folks to us. And then also not being afraid to look in places that you don't suspect. And so at the studios that I've worked with, we always have a complete open door. We do not require a warm intro for you to engage us. That's intentional. You're a needle in a haystack. I don't want to have the door closed. And when I have talked to every and anyone about the studio model, about what we can offer, about how to think about joining us.From a profile perspective, there's what I'm looking for and then there's like where those people are. I have the same challenge any startup has. Who is your customer? Right? I went to the first one. There are about like three types of people, right, that are very stages of availability. There are folks that are experienced founders who seek out venture studios because they've had to do it alone before. And they know that doing it alone is not worth it. it's not efficient. They want to move quickly, understand if there's real meat to their idea, and dig into that fast. They tend to come to venture studios actively, actively always talking to founders despite how deep they are into their build. It's just going to be top of mind for them. There's a ton of people who don't see themselves as founders but have all the experience. These are my favorite to cajole and to taking the risk. They tend to be a human, we used to call them the person behind the person, right? These are folks that have COO roles or Head of Biz ops or revenue, or chief of staff roles. They spent a significant amount of time learning how to build a business by being the number one, number two, or the sidekick to the person that's doing it.They've got to learn the category really well. They have a ton of insights, and they might be thinking, well, my next role is to sort of be the number two. Invariably though, based on that experience, they have strong points of view about what's missing from the market. They just had to do it. And they have all the experience of an experience founder, and I'd like to almost always pull those people in and have them think about what it might look like if they were in a leadership chair.Brian Ardinger: In that particular environment, are founders coming to you with an idea or a series of ideas that they want to explore? Or are they coming to you saying, hey, what do you know out there? What are you seeing from an opportunity perspective? And I'll sift through that and pick one that might resonate with me. Or what's that, I guess, spectrum of coming in with an idea versus coming in with a blank slate.Maisha Leek: it's a mix of both. The last like profile of somebody who might come to us as like an entrepreneur, someone who's been inside a big company, and they're always the first task with standing up the new thing. And so, you're hearing the mechanics like that folks have internalized. To your point about ideas, it depends on the studio, right? But I've seen folks come in with a strong point of view. I know exactly what I want to build. I know exactly the problem I want to address. Sometimes that's exciting. Sometimes that's problematic. Our process in the early days is designed to tear your idea apart. And so, if you're wedded to it, it can be a bit challenging.And then folks that don't have an idea, I've spent time with a number of business designers helping them think through the problem that they're really excited about and pulling out the thread that might be the one that we want to dig into. The trick of all of that in terms of founders is like, you should have a strong point of view about a problem space. You don't have to have the idea fully formed. So, you should know I'm fired up about logistics. I've spent 10 years as like the head of business development here and I really want to pull this apart. I have less experience than that, but I have actively been tinkering. Because I think that this problem that I've experienced is really a challenge. Those are the best people. They're ready to go. They've got a chip on their shoulder and something that they want to address. And Venture studios a really great place for them. Brian Ardinger: Yeah. I often talk to founders and that, and like you want to find those founders that want to spend time with that problem and or customer segment because not necessarily having a solution around it, but you know, they know they're going to be spending 5, 7, 10 years of their lives. You want to get up every day focused on that and really digging into it versus, I'm just chasing the next greatest trend because it sounds like the next thing to do. Maisha Leek: Fastest way to burn yourself out or to get frustrated really quickly. Because we're talking about years and years of your life. You got to love the problem or the customer.Brian Ardinger: You mentioned on the corporate entrepreneur side of things, and have you seen different flavors of this Venture Studio model being deployed, I guess within a company versus externally Forum Ventures? Maisha Leek: I have, yeah. I have a ton of friends that are leading innovation teams inside big companies, and they frequently connect up with Venture Studios primarily because we can help them move faster. Internally for the corporates, what can be an amazing opportunity can also be your challenge. The innovate team, is a great opportunity to build against the problems either facing the business internally, like so you're building for inefficiencies within the business, and you want to build tools, services, platforms, whatever.And then some who are only thinking externally around mark, market cap or market share. It's like, all right, we are really tight with these customers. We want to expand to these others. Let's build out small brands that can go help us expand our reach, essentially. And the challenge for folks inside a highly matrixed organization that are building a studio or building an innovation team is really like who amongst your colleagues can actually play in that sandbox?It's not always what you think. They are of the generals. The guys and gals who've been around the company forever. They know where all the bodies are buried. The new sandbox has switched on. They're like, great. I want to jump in there and play. They're the deal maker inside the company. Not always. They're great, right? But not always the profile, the founder you want to look for. You're really looking for folks that really are ambitious about standing up something new. Are great storytellers inside the company but aren't wedded to company culture in a way that will slow them down. There are a ton of tricks for leaders of innovation teams that are internal on how to draw those people in and protect yourself from the rest. That's a story for another time. Brian Ardinger: The other topic I want to dig into, obviously venture studios require money or capital and, and they differ than a traditional, I guess, fund investment and that. Can you talk about the Venture Studio model from the investor side. And why that particular path versus, I guess, a traditional fund. And what's different and, and what's good or bad about the different approaches?Maisha Leek: Like I've heard people describe it a few ways. Some LPs describe it as like investing into an index fund. When you get a batch of companies at a cheaper rate. That's fine. Feels a little off brand. I think that for investors in large part, the value is that you get a de-risk asset faster and equity in that de-risk asset cheaper than you would finding a company on your own.And so, I find that LP is into venture studios have been brought along on that narrative journey. They can see the numbers. I mean, Venture Studios at this point have so much track record. I mean, we're perhaps like maybe 20 years in in terms of Venture Studios being around. Don't quote me on that. And essentially the track record, you know, suggests right that companies that come out of venture studios have like a 30% higher success rate than the ones that are stood up on their own.They return to fund faster, they have a 72% chance of raising their subsequent rounds C day and CB that, you know, all of the conditions are really right to make it something that's super, attractive as an investment. And investors into studios I think are, are dialed into that. And more and more now that more and more venture students are coming online across a series of categories.Brian Ardinger: Talk a little bit about how you see the Venture Studio, the life cycle of a company. So, if it's one thing, if you build it yourself and you go out and raise venture capital, you're building all your teams yourself, you're scaling it. Where in the Venture Studio model, obviously kickstart it and stand it up, does the company itself, when does it go on its own or does it continue with the studio or talk about those inflection points. Maisha Leek: Yeah, I think it's a, that's actually a strategic question for the studio, and also a good opportunity to provide advice to founders that might be listening in. Essentially, the best studios in my experience, have a time boxed plan for your journey. Doesn't have to be rigid. There's less likelihood of success when it's a sort of a meandering X metric that we'll move you through. I mean, really strong venture studios have a plan for after your company is built, the MVP, the number of people that you need on your team, how we're going to prepare you to go into the market to raise money, the number of customers we want you to have, and then move you through.Your question was about like what's the long tail of support? Really great Studios show up in the way that great funds would. Once you're a portfolio company, our interests are aligned with yours. We are a hundred percent dialed into your success. If you need something. Phone home kind of approach. And I think that having the staffing or the plan for that is really helpful for a founder to hear when they're evaluating venture studios that they might engage with.Right after I have my set of customers, after I've done my raise, what is our relationship going to be is the right question to ask there. But I've seen a range of folks on how they navigate that. Sometimes it's ad hoc, the GP is the only person interacting and sometimes it's, there's a real plan with a platform team that folks are tapping into as they're on their growth journey.Brian Ardinger: What are you excited about? Are the particular trends or the particular things that you're really digging into in 2023 and beyond? Maisha Leek: Yeah. I am personally super excited about logistics and transportation. I think that personally that it's an exciting moment for a few reasons. One, the technology allows us to do this more efficiently than we ever had. The migratory patterns that we saw post covid are pretty fascinating. We once had Class A, class B, class C cities. It's sort of turned that entire dynamic on its head. It's sending people your way, Brian. Brian Ardinger: Exactly. Maisha Leek: Yeah, and I love that. I don't know what that means, but I love it. I'm very excited about it. From a macro perspective, you know. I'm a millennial, right? So, this is like, I guess the fourth or fifth global crisis that I've lived through. What's really exciting about that, to the degree that can be exciting, is I think that folks are in a very salt of the earth, meat and potatoes way, rethinking their relationship with work and their responsibility for their own careers and lives.And I think it's going to lead not surprisingly to a surge of people starting their own businesses because they want to be, they want to take ownership right for their futures. And I'm really excited about that. I also think that the conversations that younger generations, gen Z, for example, are having around work, will lead to hopefully the resurgence of labor unions.I think that there is a period of time where we sort of walked away from that because you know, the worker and the employer were really at a better eye to eye level sense. I think that we're seeing a lot of the convulsions out of the tech sector teach us that that's not the case. And we do need a fair arbiter to make that work.I come from a long line of union workers. And so, in the venture world, I'm excited that venture studios are no longer taboo. I was mentioning earlier when I first told people I worked at Venture Studios, they were like, oh, it's not a fund. And now all, every day I hear somebody talking about getting into the space. I think that's great. I think Venture Studios will be the really strong gateway to capture those other three trends that I mentioned. You know, people are reconsidering their relationship with work, their expectations of what good company stewardship have changed, and just our needs from an infrastructure perspective have shifted because our behavior and venture studios are going to be best suited to dig into those problems and questions for us. So that's what I'm really excited about. We'll see, I'll watch this back in five years and see if I was right about anything. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: I'm excited about it because anybody who can help move ideas faster into the ether and create value along that way, that's what we're all about. So, I'm excited to hear your journey in the future. And in the interim, if people want to find out more about yourself or about Forum Ventures, what's the best way to do that? Maisha Leek: I am hyperactive on LinkedIn and getting more and more active every day. Definitely DM me. Definitely reach out. I'm also an angel investor. I'm standing up a syndicate in the next little bit here. I'm really, really, really obsessed with small businesses and founders. I mean, my family has come from five generations of entrepreneurs. It's really game changing work, and I'd love to be a part of that. So hit me up there. Brian Ardinger: Excellent. Well, Maisha, thank you again for being on Inside Outside Innovation. Looking forward to continuing the conversation and best of luck. Maisha Leek: Thank you, 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.  

Barry O'Reilly, author of Unlearn and Lean Enterprise and co-founder of the new Venture Studio, Nobody Studios talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation about the ins and outs of a new model for creating and investing in startups called Venture Studios. We also discuss the power of collaborative innovation. For more innovation tools, check out insideoutside.io.

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Stephen Taylor, Chief Innovation Officer at Untold Content. Stephen and I talk about the importance of storytelling, failure narratives, and its impact on the innovation culture of companies. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is a 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. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Stephen Taylor, Chief Innovation Officer at Untold ContentBrian 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 Stephen Taylor. He is the Chief Innovation and Chief Financial Officer at Untold Content, where he focuses on helping organizations accelerate innovation through the power of storytelling. Welcome to the show. Stephen Taylor: Thanks Brian. Glad to be here.Brian Ardinger: This whole concept of innovation storytelling, it's becoming more and more popular as people are trying to understand like, how do I actually get movement on my innovation initiatives? And a lot of it comes down to, you know, the stories that you tell. So, I wanted to have you on the show, because you have a company that focuses on this. Why don't we talk about the definition? What is innovation storytelling? Stephen Taylor: Yes. Innovation storytelling is something that is near and dear to my heart. So, I am a chemist by training. I did my PhD in chemistry, did a postdoc. Went out into industry and was there for about a decade. And I felt the pains of how you actually get buy-in, even within a smaller organization. I think we had 250 people. But how do you actually get buy-in on ideas. Or how do you kill ideas that don't fit? You know, how do you find out what is the right decision. And so that was something that I became very passionate about. And so, when I left industry and joined Untold, I really wanted to spend a lot of time focusing on how do innovators communicate, even as a scientist. How do scientists communicate?So, what we found through our research is that innovation storytelling is the art and science of communicating strategic narratives and personal stories around innovation objectives in order to drive them forward. It really works on trying to make things that are very strategic, but also bring those personal experiences in.Because what we found is that organizations have overall these strategic narratives that, that they're trying to force. When you have an idea or something that you're trying to bring forward, you have to ensure that there's good alignment between those stories and that narrative. And so, they really play in concert together. So that's why we include both those as a part of the definition. Brian Ardinger: Yeah, part of it's like that translation service almost. Sometimes it's a technical translation of, what the heck are you talking about? It's more about how do you align that with the other stories that are being told in the organization so that you can make sure that people understand what you mean.I think, you know, when I go out and talk to companies, you know, one of the first things I like to do is how do you define innovation? Because I think that alone, causes problems with a lot of organizations. It's like, well, for me it means, you know, creating the next flying car. Where another person in the organization may mean that innovation is creating something new with our existing customers. And so, right. You know, if you don't have alignment from that perspective, you can go sideways really quickly. Stephen Taylor: We spend time talking about story led innovations versus innovation led stories. So, story led innovation is essentially a project that you may get from your advisor. Or from your boss. And so, a project comes in, the story's already aligned, so it's easy to prioritize that work.And so, you're just working on communication at that point, a strategic communication. But if you're working on a innovation led story, that's where you come and you find something. Well, now how do you get it in line? How do you make something that's new, that has potential that's maybe adjacent? How do you decide, how do you try to create that alignment narrative? And so those are, those are things that we teach as a part of our curriculum. Brian Ardinger: That brings up a couple of interesting questions I have around this idea of innovation usually is in this uncertain area. You know, it's, it's a new idea that you want to create in the world that doesn't always align to the execution side of the business. But yet you have to try these things and do a lot of things to move that idea forward, and a lot of times you're going to fail at that. So, can you talk a little bit about power of failure and, and how do you translate that from a story perspective to let people understand that that's part of the process? Stephen Taylor: Yeah, that's a really good question. So, there's a lot of ways that you can go with this. One way that we think about failure is actually relates back to the Hero’s Journey. So, when it comes to the Hero’s Journey, you know, you can take the whole 17 step process from Joseph Campbell and his original work on the Hero’s Journey, or you can really try to simplify it.And the way that I like to think about it is you receive the call for a journey. You go out through a transition called the transition from the known to the unknown. You then go on your journey, you do your discoveries, whatever. You collect the boons from the journey, which are the gifts to be given back. You then bring those back through that transition point back to your community.And then the hero is recognized with monuments and statues and everything. Joseph Campbell's work was really based around tribal behavior. And when you think about tribal behavior, there's a lot of analogies to the innovation groups that are out there in the unknown trying to find what's next.For the heroes they get these large statues and monuments, but for the failures, they put together rituals. And because the rituals are points where we come back together and actually share best practices, share things that we've learned, to take those learnings from failure and use those to bless back to the community. And so, what we've seen through our research is that there are many points where people are starting to implement these failure rituals.And so, there's several different examples. There's a classic one, Ben and Jerry's. Ben and Jerry's Failure Graveyard is a classic failure ritual. There's Miter. Miter does Failure Cake. So, within Failure Cake, what happens is that they basically bring out a sheet cake into a cafeteria and they say, If you want a piece of cake, you need to share a failure story. And it's really to get those stories of failure being shared in those best practices and lessons learned.Then there's also DuPont. DuPont's doing an Annual Dead Project's Day around Halloween. And so, the whole point is to get lots of their innovators and their scientists together to share their experiences. But you have to have those points of sharing. And what we found in parts of our research is that 83% of large organizations share innovation stories, but only 26% share stories of failure.But because a lot of innovations fail, you lose so much. And so, implementing these, these rituals into their yearly practices can go a long way to capturing those insights, but also unifying their community. Brian Ardinger: So, do you have any tactics of, let's say I'm working in an organization, and I buy into the fact that I need to celebrate these failures and at least tell these stories so that you know that not everything's going to be a success when you go through something new. How do you get buy-in to even have a ritual, like a failure cake, or things along those lines? Stephen Taylor: A lot of times getting buy-in for that is showing the value that's created. So being an innovator, trying something first. And so, a lot of times what we've found is that people are really actually excited to share these failure stories. Because it's things that they hold onto that really drive them.And so, them being able to share those with the group is really strong. But one of the biggest values is actually hearing someone who is, let's say for instance, you have a hero because within the Hero’s Journey, you have people that basically go out onto their journey, they come back and then they may never go out on a journey again.But that's not the life of an innovator, of a scientist. They constantly have to go back to the bench or go out and do stuff again. So, to hear someone who maybe is a hero from one project, and they have war that's existing for them. For them to say, hey, you know, here's a failure story of mine. Think of how that sounds to someone who's a new scientist or a new innovator that's really gung-ho on their first project.You know, to be able to hear that, you know, this may not work out and that's okay. I've had a whole slew of failures throughout my career. I'm still here and still doing great stuff. You know, that's really helpful and it helps people be able to realize like this is not my baby. You know, this is a project that I'm working on. We're going to push it as far as we can. We're going to try to achieve the goal, and if it doesn't work out, there's going to be the next thing. Brian Ardinger: So, let's talk a little bit about the process that a company can go through to tell better stories and to put this actually into practice. Are there particular methodologies or tactics that companies should be looking at or walk me through the process.Stephen Taylor: We had a podcast called Untold Stories of Innovation. And in that podcast, there was a qualitative research study. And one thing we wanted to hear is like how people utilize stories in their innovation cultures, but then also listen to the stories and dissect them. And we heard several different story frameworks used time and time again. And the two that are most prevalent are ABT and CAR.CAR is very well known. It has a lot of different names to it, but it's Challenge Action Results. And the importance of Challenge Action Results from a natural language processing standpoint is that it alleviates cognitive tension. Basically, says like, here is the challenge. Here's the action we took. Here are the results that we got.But in order to alleviate cognitive tension, we had to create cognitive tension. And that cognitive tension is actually created through a framework called ABT. That ABT (And, But, Therefore) is popularized by Randy Olson. The framework for ABT is ordinary world and something at stake, but there's some type of tension, there's some problem, there's something that's preventing us to realize the value that's there.Therefore, here's our proposed solution. And when those two get paired together, you basically have a framework to present and solve a problem. But then you can interlace into that lots of different story patterns. To make storytelling one very strategic and very mission focused, but also very purposeful and concise.Brian Ardinger: So, is this something that product teams and that at the beginning of the project start literally mapping out what story they think the new idea is going to go on? Or how does this actually work in practice? Stephen Taylor: It really works in practice by understanding who your audience is and what you're trying to get out of what information that you're needing, what buy-in you're needing. I'm really trying to map the story that you're sharing with that audience. Because there is no one story framework that rules 'em all. You know, you can talk about brand story, you can talk about Hero’s Journey. There's a variety. And so, the more that you practice and practice from a standpoint of trying to understand your audience and what it is that they need in order to make a decision that you're hoping for them to make, that really helps you with crafting something that really gets at that goal. Brian Ardinger: So, I would imagine that the teams need to develop different types of stories. So, for example, inside stories where they're trying to communicate to management or other collaborators within the organization and that story of what they're building and why. May be different than an outside story, which would be maybe to the marketplace or to the consumers. Am I reading that correctly? Stephen Taylor: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So prime example, we had an interview with Jim Murkowski from Ecolab. And they told a story about this new technology that they had developed for detecting Legionella, for Legionnaire's disease.And it was, you know, we do this whole breakdown of the story in our courses. He uses a framework, he uses CAR because it was in the past, we're informing people. So, it's challenge, action, results, and just it is the most clean, obvious innovation to do. They basically took a process that took two weeks to get results and now people can actually get that result in minutes. And make you know, really good decisions based on the information.But that story that you tell external is nowhere near what happened actually internal to that organization. Because Eco Lab was the group who actually did all the water testing. And so internally it was a story of self-disruption. Because you can imagine the feedback they got when they came out with this new technology and say, hey, we don't need to do testing in the lab anymore. You know, we don't need water samples. They can do it on their site. Everything was fear pushback. Like, oh, you know, the quality. Oh, you know, can you really trust them to do it right. You know, all these things. Because it was going to disrupt a lot of systems that they already had in their organization. So, the storytelling can't be the same because the challenge that you're trying to solve is fundamentally different.Brian Ardinger: How would you go about testing your stories to know if you have the right story to the right audience? Are there particular ways that you should be testing your stories or talk a little bit about that. Stephen Taylor: Having those ritual opportunities, there's a lot of these already built in. You know, groups have group meeting pretty often. You know, you get feedbacks through your emails when you're sharing information. There's lots of these points, but you had to look at them as being strategic. Innovators spend 30% of their work week in some form of storytelling. We put out a survey. We had a hundred people fill out the survey. It was 12 hours a week. We've worked with probably 300 to 500 innovators so far in the last year. They've completed the same survey. Theirs was like 12 to 15 hours a week. So, you're spending a lot of time either crafting stories, sharing stories, or listening to stories. And if you take that time very seriously and start thinking about it very strategically, you can start using those opportunities as a way to get feedback on the stories that you're sharing and seeing what is resonating, what is not resonating. So, these meetings, the emails, the water cooler conversations, those are all strategic points that you have where you can actually build up these skills. Brian Ardinger: One of the biggest challenges that I've seen working with companies is oftentimes you have different business units that value innovation differently. And so, telling that initial story that innovation is important, often sometimes falls on different audiences. So, do you have any advice or thoughts on how do you get alignment on just the concept of why innovation is important and the stories you need to tell around that? Stephen Taylor: Yeah, so, so that's a really good point. Always within any project, you know, project teams do this naturally is identify who are the stakeholders. But then are you actually going out and spending time with the stakeholders?Do you take a day? How much time could we save in our storytelling, if we took a very slow step, first, went and spent a day with our consumers or with our stakeholders and just heard the things that they talk about, you're not there to make decisions. You're just there to observe. What do they do? What are the major discussion points?Am I actually presenting information to them that they really care about. Or am I just throwing information out there that is not aligned with the conversations that they're having? If we can use storytelling to create those points of alignment between those business units that have different priorities, which most of them will, you can make the time that you're spending communicating more effective and more efficient. Brian Ardinger: How can someone learn to be a better storyteller? Are there particular things they should be reading or looking at, or resources they should be delving into? What's a good way to become a better storyteller? Stephen Taylor: Obviously at Untold, we have a course that's entirely built upon innovation storytelling. We really are the first group to really look at storytelling from an innovation perspective. We bring in a lot of peer review literature and really try to paint this cohesive, basically try to pull a lot of the information together on what is the best practices to date. And then how do we use these strategic frameworks and these patterns? So that's the first thing is that I'm going to plug in ourselves because I think that the experience that we create and the outcomes from the experience are really, really impactful.And what I'm going to say is that, again, storytelling is something that is evolutionary. You become a better storyteller. So you go through the trainings, but you don't stop there. You constantly look for new resources. And so one of the things that we give out as a part of our course once you complete it, is that you get a book on storytelling. But it could be something like the Fearless Organization because psychological safety has big impacts on people feeling like they can share stories.So, there's lots of books and there's lots of literature out there that you can continue to dive into. There are things like pep decks that have little introductory parts for storytelling. But it's one of those things that us as innovators who are not afraid to go out into the wilderness, into the unknown and take the first step is that we have to be able to do that with our education and realize that this is a journey as well.And the more that we learn about storytelling, the more that we see ourselves as innovators within these larger organizational narratives and also within our own personal story. Continue learning. Don't stop at one. Lots of perspectives out there on storytelling that are fantastic. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: Well, that's a great way to end because one of the last questions I always ask is, how can people, if they want to learn more, reach out to you and your company? Stephen Taylor: www.untoldcontent.com. You can also reach out to me. My name's Stephen Taylor. My email is [email protected]. So, you can reach out to us in those ways. The other thing that I would recommend everyone look at is a new venture that we are starting up called Narratize.So, you can go to Naratize.com and at Narratize we are working on developing a storytelling platform for busy professionals. A communication platform for busy professionals. The idea is can you create a white paper in a day or in a couple hours. It's an AI-based tool that really helps you share the insights that you know to create these deliverables that you have to work on. So, it is currently a pitch builder. But it is quickly evolving into lots of other points of content. You can check us out at naratize.com as well. Brian Ardinger: Obviously the world is changing quite a bit with AI and Chat GPT and all these kinds of things and makes it easier and harder at the same time to tell your story. So yes, Stephen, I appreciate you coming on Inside Outside Innovation to share your insights on that. I look forward to continuing the conversation and hearing more stories in the future. So, thanks very much. Stephen Taylor: Awesome. Thanks Brian. I really appreciate it.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.   

Paul Skinner, Author of the Purpose Upgrade and Brian Ardinger, Cofounder of Inside Outside Innovation talk about how companies can use purpose to find better problems to solve, build better solutions, and achieve better outcomes. For more resources on innovation, check out insideoutside.io.

Tim Bottke, author of the new book Digital Transformation Payday and Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Cofounder talk about the challenges of digital transformation initiatives and how companies can better approach the implementation and measurement of them. For more information, check out insideoutside.io.

Sarah Stein Greenberg, Executive Director of Stanford's d.School and Brian Ardinger, Cofounder of Inside Outside Innovation, talk about her new book, Creative Acts for Curious People and dig into a number of the exercises and activities that innovators can use to move ideas forward faster. For more innovation resources, check out insideoutside.io.

Kevin Leland, CEO and Founder of Halo and Matt Muller, Director of Applied Innovation at Baxter talk with Brian Ardinger, Cofounder of Inside Outside Innovation about the changing world of open innovation and what it takes to connect and collaborate, to solve big industry problems. For more innovation resources, check out insideoutside.io