Dropping Knowledge Bombs on the Innova.buzz Podcast

‍

Transcript:

hi I'm your host joggen Strauss from Anova Biz and I'm really excited to Welcome to the Inova Buzz podcast today

from Brooklyn in New York the USA of course Danny Nathan who's founder and

CEO of Apollo 21 and a prominent voice in The Innovation and product design

space Danny has dedicated his career to guiding organizations through the

complexities of innovation collaborating with clients ranging from startups to

Fortune 500 companies welcome to the Innova Buzz podcast Danny it's a real privilege to have you as my

guest oh thanks for having me I'm excited for our chat as we start our conversation I'm really eager to delve

into your journey in The Innovation landscape and particularly your insights on the challenges that large

organizations face in fostering creativity and Agility which is something that I've lived through in a

couple of instances U to kick things off what impact do you aim to make in the

world and how do you envision that work contributing to your

mission wow nothing like starting off with an easy one um uh impact in the world so I really

focus on helping companies understand what Innovation

means and to help them think differently about why Innovation is important how to

bring it to life and and then what the impacts of those strategies and those efforts are on primarily technology

products that companies are trying to create all with an eye towards um how do you add value for customers in a manner

that creates a viable business and it's sort of you know two sides of the same coin or two sides of the operating

system where um you know companies have to make money to run and all of that fun stuff it's why they exist but at the

same time the best companies are those that that really add value to people's lives and so that's kind of my guiding

principle in all of this and the more that we can help uh companies and

organizations figure out how to make people's lives better and that can be

you know socially professionally whatever it is it doesn't have to be a big you know um goal but just something

that makes people's lives easier and makes them go wow I wish more stuff worked like that because it does what I

needed to do well there's a lot to unpack there and um from what exactly is innovation how

do you drive Innovation and and uh the idea of providing value in a sustainable

way for the business itself as well so let's start with the what how do you how

do you define Innovation you know that's something

that um I am in the process of sort of reconsidering um I've been I've been on

a re-education path and sort of going back back through uh old books that I've read or books that I haven't read and

just thinking more about uh what Innovation means through the lens of you

know my world and my career today and for the moment at least and I will uh

sort of Lee myself the leeway to to change opinion and change definition but for me Innovation is really about

thinking through opportunities to better utilize the tools and resources at our

disposal to create new and interesting ways to add value for both customers and

businesses and I realized that sounds sort of General in a high level but I think that it almost has to be because

the idea of what Innovation means and how it comes to fruition is so different

for every company every organization and every sort of business unit that the more you try to Define it the harder it

gets to fit into sort of the constraints of of various organizations yeah it's um

it's interesting isn't it that different people have kind of different ideas of what Innovation is and then there's the

the concept you mentioned before providing value which is something that

I was always fascinated by that uh in the corporate world certainly there are some people that oh we need to innovate

on this we need to do something different um we need to change the way we're doing this and and I would always

ask why and I would always be surprised and you're you're the person champing Innovation here why are you challenging

us and I say well you know we're not innovating for the sake of innovating we're innovating because it adds value

somewhere and and it's sustainable which is the other part of the equation you mentioned and I was having a

conversation yesterday with one of my guests and their approach was well if

you have a problem to solve and there's either no way to solve it right now or

the existing ways are flawed in some ways and there's

there's a better way to do it that's Innovation I thought oh that's a pretty neat thing so talk to us a little bit

about that in the context or or talk to us about the value side of the

equation uh so the value side to me breaks down into basically value for customers and value for the business and

often it is the value for the business that drives I think the initial need or

interest in Innovation it is you know as you sort of nodded to companies looking around going okay how could we do this

better how could we do it more efficiently how can we uh really ring every last dollar out of every penny

that goes in and I think that where a lot of companies tend to stumble is in

the other side of the equation and figuring out where those efforts add

value for their customers in addition to adding value for their business and I think that it's important to always sort

of keep those two in check and keep them in mind as you're pursuing those Innovation efforts and it's not to say

that Innovation can't focus on one or the other but knowing which one you're focused on and what the impacts of that

Focus are on sort of the other side of that coin so if you're you know if you're focused on operational Innovation

for example understanding that that is a primarily internal innovation but still

keeping in mind what the value is that it will create for your customers even if that's two or three steps Downstream

so you know if your if your efficiency play allows you to free up resources to

come up with something new and interesting for your customers then ultimately they will benefit it might just take a couple more steps to get and

the the flip side of that coin also is I I experienced quite a few of these where

um there was an internally focused Innovation initiative that oh this is going to save us a lot of money or this

is going to make our life easier but it actually added a layer of complexity to customers and it made things more

difficult for customers to deal with this and I say well you know we need to balance these two things off in fact I

would I would say that customer part of the equation perhaps is the more important of the

two I would happen to agree all right um so talk to us a little bit about the

difference because I mentioned at the start how you work with startups and you also work with large organizations

what's is there a difference in approach that the two organizations should be taking and what would that look

like I I think that there's definitely a difference and a lot of that difference is grounded in the operational realities

of what it means to be a large organization versus the flexibility that you have as a startup and so when you

think about how large organiz are structured and the ideals around

efficiency for example and the um the goals around things like quarterly

earnings and shareholder value that those companies are aimed at addressing

and increasing over time what you end up with is a huge series of processes and

ultimately a culture that is all built around a certain style of decision-making and the benefit of being

a startup or a small organization is that often much of the the process and the culture hasn't really been defined

and ingrained yet and so it frees you up to have the opportunity to focus on

smaller more experimental wins that can lead to more unique uh evolutions of

what a product is or what the value is that you're driving for your customers so I guess in simple terms startups have

a lot more freedom and flexibility to fail and fail quickly whereas larger organizations are beholden into certain

metrics that limit their ability to move as quickly and to think as broadly about

uh what Innovation might mean for them and then you know the last part of that equation is really just the scale at

which those companies are operating and if you think about the goals of a large organization and what it means to drive

growth for example for a large organization the orders of magnitude that they have to aim for to really have

an impact to to grow the bottom line by 10% or 20% end up being so massively

different than the goals that startups need to aim for that it really

determines uh which has an ability to play in What markets and so I think

that's where the startups in their own right have an advantage of being able to define success on a smaller scale and

still be successful doing so yeah it's fascinating isn't it the I see this as

in some way a Continuum so on the one hand you have the organization that

perhaps isn't even organized that has no structure and has the ultimate flexibility to say ah today we're going

to change everything and do things differently do things Innovative because this might work better and this might

give us a big win quickly and on the other hand you've got big organization that's got everything documented and

anytime somebody comes up with an idea there's usually the oh we don't do that

this way this is this is the way we do things around here and that doesn't fit um yes how do you kind of bring those

two things together because they're the both extremes are wrong aren't they the the startup with no structure at all

might work for a short amount of time but is possibly doomed to failure if they don't Implement some form of

structure along the way right right I think that um the

balance has to come with awareness of where on that Spectrum you sit and what

the limitations are based on your your kind of positioning there and so you know as I said if you're a large

organization and you're looking for growth growth has a very different meaning and as somebody operating within

that system you have to sort of understand that meaning in the context of your organization specifically and

then leverage what you can to make Innovation or new ideas a viable Pursuit

and then of course there are you know the questions of what happens if you can't do that or what happens if the

opportunity that you see doesn't fit with the growth trajectory of a large organization and you start thinking

about um you know larger companies that are building um Venture Studios internally for example or corporate

Venture efforts that allow them to play at a smaller scale in interesting ways without distracting or diluting the

interests of the organization as a whole um and then of course at the other end of the spectrum you've got startups that

are ultimately trying anything and everything they can to find product Market fit and to figure out what's

going to work so that they provide themselves the opportunity to grow up and to find the structure that then

continues moving them forward and it's in some ways it's a self-fulfilling prophecy you know as a successful

startup as you grow down that that Spectrum towards the bigger company end of things then inevitably you do end up

with processing culture and limitations that are defined by that and you know you end up sort of becoming the thing

that you started out to disrupt yes that's uh that's the irony of it in some

ways isn't it um yeah yeah it really is so how do how does an organization kind of find that

balance and build that culture of innovation both into the I guess existing business and

existing processes whilst not disrupting those

and at the same time have that separate entity or can't remember what you called

it now but that that uh little group that might operate more like Venture

capitalists right um I think that a lot of it well to

start off with in my mind it comes from the top down um you have to have a an Executive Suite that understands and

values the ideals of innovation and the cultural impacts that that type of of

commitment will require and so when I think about you know what it means to create a culture of innovation I think

about opportunities for exploration and um the idea of strategic oversight so

that everybody feels like they're marching in the same direction and knows what the ultimate goal is well

maintaining the freedom for people to experiment and ultimately you know what

it always comes down to for me is enabling people to fail without the fear of repercussion and without the

sensibility that failure is inherently a bad thing for which somebody will be

penalized if an experiment I don't even want to say goes wrong because there is no right or wrong in an experiment but

you know if an experiment um doesn't yield positive returns let's put it that

way if it doesn't you know lend itself to the to the ultimate growth of the business it doesn't make it wrong nor

does it make it you know a waste of time or resources it means that you've learned something and so

uh ultimately I think that what it comes down to is creating an environment where learning and experimentation and failure

can all take place without fear and startups do a really good job of that

larger corporations usually do a less good job with that and so there's a lot of uh there's a lot of sort of sharing

of mentality and thinking about how the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence to consider as you're

building out those cult C and thinking about how that culture will Define the way that people approach problem solving

within your organization yeah I love the idea of treating new ideas and trying something

new as an experiment so there's no right or wrong answer there's an outcome that you you're um postulating at the start

and if that outcome doesn't happen well then you've learned something and I always love this story can't remember

was it Jack Welsh at GE that um there was a one of his

Executives um did did something U

ultimately it failed in inverted commas and and cost cost millions of dollars

and and the person fronted the CEO I think it was Jack wel

and said well I guess I guess you're going to fire me now for that mistake and um the response

was not at all I've just invested $5 million or whatever it was in your

education why would I fire you yeah it's a great answer I haven't

heard that particular story from Jack but uh he is he's definitely someone to follow and someone to uh to learn from

when yeah when it comes to that Outlook um with with your work is there a specific

example you could share with us of a project where you know that culture of innovation whether it's in a small

organization or a large organization um led to some unexpected results perhaps

and and what were some of the lessons from that experience yeah um the first example

that comes to mind uh we had a client in the western Sports space of all things so think Cowboys and rodeos and bull

riding and all of that stuff which uh is not usually a place where one kind of

thinks about Innovation and technology which to be frank was part of what made it a ton of fun to work on um and so you

know the the organization that we worked with was uh committed to being data

driven in a space that is not traditionally data driven and we're really looking for opportunities to

think innovatively about how to make western Sports more approachable to a

growing audience that hadn't sort of come up through um through Cowboy States

if you will so you know there's a lot in our culture that over the last few years has has created an interest in

the space uh shows like Yellowstone and things like that that have drawn people in um and so it really set the tone for

a project that allowed us to flex our muscles in terms of thinking about how

to go through the lean customer development process how to learn from the people that would be benefiting from

the things that we're creating and one of the best examples that I can give you from that project um we were asked to We

Were L asked to create two mobile applications one for Rodeo fans and one

for Rodeo athletes and throughout the research base as we were preparing to

figure out what those applications should look like um we had the benefit of interviewing both fans and athletes

uh through this organization and we came to a really interesting discovery which was that you really can't draw a hard

and fast line between a rodeo fan and a rodeo athlete because often the fans who

are attending a professional Rodeo event are also amateur Rodeo Riders on the

weekends and things like that and really especially in Rodeo that's how you become a professional is you come up

through the amateur ranks and you know it's not unlike other sports but it is it feels more direct it's not not nearly

as difficult as it would be to get drafted into the NBA for example and so

ultimately um that LE learning led to a change in strategy we ended up creating a single app that was designed to kind

of run the spectrum of fans to athletes and to really take into account the idea

that a fan is an athlete and an athlete might be a fan of other athletes Etc and

uh really changed the way that we ended up kind of building that experience so that it served the needs of both parties

and created a really tight connective tissue between the two so that um people

felt like they had a very personal connection to the athletes that they were following and the events that they were either viewing or participating

it's an interesting observation because I was thinking as you were speaking there's there's actually quite a lot of

sports where that is definitely the case um for example I'm a I'm a keing cyclist now I

just do it for a hobby and I go out with a bunch of other guys and girls that um

we the social aspect is important as well and every now and then we get quite

competitive with one another and there's a and we have a lot of fun but uh and

some some of the Riders do race in amateur races but you know at at our age

most of them are in the veterans veteran sphere U and there's one or two that are

quite good that compete at National level but most of us are really just hobby cyclists And yet when the big

professional events uh running where keenly watching what's going on there

and studying the form and following all the strategy and of

course having conversations about who should be doing what to improve their position and so on so I imagine that's

fairly common across a a lot of sports and then the other thing

that your your observation prompted in me was that I see a lot of sports that I

follow where that tight integration between fans and the professional athletes is

actually part of the social Fabric and and part of the culture that really

appeals to fans in some ways because they see the professional athletes as in

some way kind of accessible a little bit if you

like yes and I think that that's one of the key key kind of points of differentiation especially were're

talking about um sports that are a little bit smaller on the Spectrum so you know if we look at uh at least here

in the States you know uh baseball basketball football and hockey are referred to as the big four and there is

much more of a a Gap a celebrity versus uh you know amateur fan type of

moment in those particular sports but I think you've really nailed it in that um as Sports get a little bit smaller and

Tighter the line between fan and athlete really begins to and creates unique

opportunities to feel a um an affinity for what's happening in that sport

because it it becomes immediately more relatable wonderful all right um let's

talk a little bit about um qualities of the leaders you talked about Innovation

having to come from the sea Suite top down so what are some of the qualities that leaders need to have or need to

build on to cultivate that environment of innovation within their

organization um I think that having a realistic understanding of what it takes

to create something new that is of value and the steps that are involved in

getting there helps people in a leadership position understand the thought processes of those that are kind

of on the front lines uh on a daily basis and really helps DW dve the

sensibility around um kind of what you described in the Jack Welsh story of you know

investing in those people and allowing them the freedom or encouraging them to

take actions that will help them learn over time for the benefit not only of the individual but also of the

organization at large and you know so often um people within especially larger

organizations are worried that anything that appears as a failure will

immediately devalue them within the organization and I think the more that

leadership can do to um help people understand that that isn't the case and

of course that requires it to not be the case um you know to build an organization that that doesn't penalize

people for Learning and for experimenting um is probably the most

important aspect of in my mind what a leader can do to help Foster innovation

and a culture that supports it and so not to sound like a broken record but you'll hear me talk about failure all

the time and to me it's one of those things that um is ingrained from a very

young age that failure has a distinctly negative connotation primarily because we go through school and if you you know

you fail a class for example you have to retake it you have to do it again there's a clear and direct indicator

that you didn't learn and as we get older I think that failure begins to

take on a new meaning and um begins to change in that failure becomes more of a

learning experience and has an opportunity to be more of a learning experience than a a past fail mentality

like you get at a young age and so enabling that and encouraging that and

helping people get over the deeply ingrained moment of failure equals bad I

think is a a highly desirable Cod leadership trat that a lot of people

yeah that's um and and at the same time I mean guard rails are always good because um having people run a mar of

course not not good for the business of course and I'm not suggesting yeah I'm not suggesting that

guardrails shouldn't be in place and you know it's really interesting if you read up on some of the research that has been

done around the notion of failure um there's a woman uh from Harvard named

believe it was Dr Amy Edmonson and she defines failure along a spectrum that

basically starts with a failure in process for example and works itself all

the way up to a um a failure that is intentional and I think that you know

the guard rails help to protect against the intentional failures whereas

processes and things um when they fail leave us the opportunity to explore and

expand and change those processes in a way that create those learning experiences and so

I yes guard rails are important and creating a culture that both understands the guardrails and helps people learn

where they are but then also enables people to sort of bump up against them

um you know much like the kind of gutter bumpers and bowling um you know I think

that that creates a healthy environment where uh people have the opportunity to learn and to sort of figure out where

the guard rails are so that they can play to the extremes without stepping out side yes there's um I think that's

the other side of that is what can individuals do themselves

to experiment more and and perhaps overcome this fear of failure that that

you know the school system perhaps has has educated us all to believe is is a

bad thing always I to me it in many ways comes

down to question everything and I don't necessarily mean question everything in

terms of why why should I do it that way why bother whatever but more um just

because a rule is in place or a guard rail is in place learn to ask why learn to think carefully about um you know

what the intentions of the guardrail are and then how you can act within the guard rails in a manner that allows for

testing and experimenting and thinking about um the application of new ideas or

new business models things like that that um enable people to really sort of

take a unique perspective and be celebrated for it as opposed to um as

opposed to penalized for yeah and also um I like in addition to the why

question I like the whatif question as well the looking at what if because it kind of invites the idea of exploring

possibil ities and yes I know I mean when you talk

about Innovation and you you quote some of the classic examples of products that

that came about through Innovation I mean one of the examples that I always think of is the Post-it notes which is

you know that came about because they failed in what they were trying to do and so and and I'm sure at some point

somebody because what they were trying to do was create an adhesive that was permanent that was strong that um

enabled things to stick together and this material that they manufactured clearly

wasn't and I'm sure somebody asked what if we what if we use it for something else and and it's yeah right yeah if we

didn't want it to stick to something forever yeah yeah absolutely the other thing that um that I've been thinking a

lot about myself lately and just sort of forcing uh forcing myself to kind of

make a part of my interrogation process is um not only what if but who else so

you know if we're looking at a potential Innovation you know one way to look at your Post-It note example is uh you know

well we're building a glue for people who need things to stick together forever and another way to look at that would be well we don't have a glue that

causes things to stick together forever who else might need a thing that is movable and removable and you know so on

and so forth and so the idea of thinking about uh who else in the ecosystem might benefit from the thing that you're

playing with and how it differs from what they're using today um I think is another really interesting kind of

framework for exploring and discovering um ways to make use of things that

otherwise feel like they might be broken really good point all right well it's a fascinating conversation I could go

talking um go on talking Innovation forever and and of course our our Buzz

round is is next um it's the same five questions I Ask of every guest and it's all about Innovation so we're continuing

the conversation awesome the idea is you'll give us some really insightful answers that'll Inspire The Listener to

go and do something awesome today as a result oh no pressure all right I got to

sit forward for this okay well the first one is pretty much Innovation what's the number one thing anyone needs to do to

be more Innovative fail fail more be comfortable

the idea of um and and you mentioned it earlier the idea of an experiment um it

appeals to my scientific background as well but I remember in in school you'd start off in the exercise book and you

write up the top hypothesis um if I do this yeah I expect X to happen you know

and then then you record the results and you say well X didn't happen y happened

and then you have a discussion and you say well here's what I learned from this yeah yeah why did why happen what can I

do with that what should we do differently next time yeah experimentation is is incredibly powerful all right um what's the best

thing you've done to develop new ideas uh never stop exploring to me I'm

I am just constantly looking at what's new and trying it out and trying to figure out ways to uh integrate new

lines of thinking new products new technologies Etc into what I do not necess necessarily because I always want

to have the newest and shiniest but I simply want to understand what is possible today that wasn't possible

yesterday so that I can discover how I might make use of that or how it might impact my business or the value that I'm

creating for somebody I love that um it's kind of the similar to always be

learning approach or lifelong learning yeah yes always exploring things and yes

being curious about stuff so do you have a favorite resource you

use most often oh

um I have like three answers for that um lately it's been books I've been on a

huge reading kick and I go through stints where I'll not read for a while and then I'll end up with a big stack of

books in front of me and So lately I've been on a big stack of books spent and um it's always sort of an exciting way

to to put the pieces together and think about things differently um and then the

other one that I'll throw out there is AI because you know in the vein of never stop exploring it is the thing to

explore these days and so I've been excited to figure out sort of where the

limitations of AI are and how it can be made useful today versus what we think

it will do for us so that's got me really excited and for excitement

started probably about 18 months two years ago when I first when people first

started talking about it and you were able to get onto some of the playgrounds and I thought this is quite interesting

and um yeah fascinated and I'm still excited by it and one of the things that we've talked about is something that I

quite often do on AI is is ask it hey

what would happen if I did this and and if you did that in Google you don't

really get much useful information whereas with AI it actually collates whole lot of information that's related

to what you've just asked and it it it'll actually put it together in a way

that is more of a thought starter and it's almost a thought experiment you can continue that

conversation yes I have found that I use AI often is almost like a thought

partner um and know kind of similar to what you're describing around you know what would happen if I did this or help

me come up with some initial ideas for blank and sort of figure out you know

where it helps me guide my thinking process not because I want the AI to you know Define the final output but because

sometimes it will throw in you know things that I just hadn't thought of or hadn't considered and so it's a great way to to sort of expand a single mind

and create a uh create a thought partner if you're sitting in a in room all right

um when you're working with someone what's the best way to keep a client on

track manage expectations help them understand where you're trying to go how

long you think it will take and then be communicative at every step as as things change because inevitably they will yeah

I love that as manage expectations and and certainly a lot of people don't do

that from upfront and and that's where I think that's yeah expectations diverge

right at the beginning it's really hard to bring them back oh yes very much so all right and

finally in the buzz round what's the number one thing anyone can do to differentiate

themselves interesting have a

perspective have something that you know that you believe in that you're willing to talk about and be open to being

challenged about it and have a conversation but have a stance don't just sort of you know flow with the wind

and swing whatever which way somebody is is pointing you at any given time so um

you know and I think a lot of that comes out of uh exploring and learning and

trying things and being willing to fail ultimately what you end up with is a perspective of well this way makes sense

to me and you know I again be willing to compromise be willing to share be

willing to to look at other people's perspectives but have one these yeah

that's um that's a really good point and and also it comes back to a little what

we're talking about earlier the fear of failure in in going Innovative isn't it

that people um say that well if I take a really

strong stand on this particular issue it might um might annoy a whole bunch of

people and they won't want to do business with me for example and and I

always argue that well maybe they're not the people you want to do business with then exactly exactly it it having a

perspective makes for a very good filter in determining sort of where you fit in the world and who you align excellent

well thanks for getting us through the buzz round Danny and um thanks for the conversation so far it's been really

great now where can people find out more about you about Apollo 21 and I haven't even asked you about why the name so

that in a minute um and the work you do maybe get touch and so thanks for what you

shared yeah absolutely so uh easiest place to find us is our website which is Apollo

2.io and if you're interested in sort of learning more about our perspectives on the world of innovation and disruption I

would encourage folks to sign up for our newsletter which is innovat disrupt or die.com all right and of course we'll

have those links in the show notes as well so yeah Apollo 21 has a lot of

space themes and astronaut themes there how did that come

about uh I was thinking through you know company naming and it's always such a

Greenfield opportunity it's exciting and scary and you feel like you sort of have one chance to get it right and um for

better or worse I I started thinking about moonshots as kind of startup parlaments and what that meant and that

led me to the thought around the Apollo program being one of the original moonshots quite literally of course

um and it was spurred by the fact that I was watching I don't remember a movie or a TV show or something at the time that

was talking about the Apollo program and that kind of planted the seed for me and so after doing some research what I

found was that Apollo 20 was the last scheduled Apollo Mission and uh Apollo

21 would have been next we launched in 2021 and so it created this nice kind of alignment and you know I was just trying

to think how many Apollos were there actually but yeah you've answered that now so there were 20

yeah so 17 was actually the last one that that launched the last three missions were scrub for financial

reasons all right well great story yeah um so finally Danny what action would

you like our listener to take out of our conversation today oh I've got two the greedy one is

go subscribe to our newsletter please um and tell us what you think about it but the uh the perhaps more helpful one is

um hearkens back to what we've already talked about but think carefully about what failure means to you and how you

can reframe the idea of failure and what experiments will lead you to interesting

and beneficial failures as opposed to uh grade school failures yes no grade

school failures here all right well thanks so much Denny for sharing your wisdom and your insights and stories

with us so generously today I've really enjoyed the conversation and all the best for the future and to stay in

touch absolutely thank you so much for having me it's been a

pleasure e

‍