Baby Got Back – Sir Mix-A-Lot Rocks Benaroya Hall

I recently got an email from GeekWire in which their managing editor, Taylor Soper, shared a hilarious video showing how the Seattle Symphony teamed up a few years back with Seattle’s own legendary rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot.  As part of their critically acclaimed Sonic Evolution project, the Symphony commissioned composer Gabriel Prokofiev to write a new composition inspired by Sir Mix-A-Lot, and orchestrated two of the rapper’s most famous hits, including “Baby Got Back.”

I’m sharing the video of their performance because it’s so full of joy.  And we can all use a little levity in our lives right now.  But I also want to make a point about how we as marketers can approach brand collaborations in a more innovative and powerful way.

The Symphony’s stated goal for the Sonic Evolution project is, in their words,

“To create a bridge between the Symphony and Seattle’s reputation as a launchpad for some of the most creative musicians on the popular music scene.”

This project is central to their strategy of bringing in new, younger audiences.

Compare the Symphony’s approach with a more classical (ahem) approach to brand collaborations.

U Can’t Touch This – PepsiCo’s Brand Partnership With Rapper M.C. Hammer

PepsiCo has always been an expert at brand collaborations.  When I was at Pepsi Cola International in the 90’s, Pepsi launched a hugely successful music sponsorship with M.C. Hammer.  It featured the rapper singing his mega-hit “U Can’t Touch This” in a new execution of their Pepsi: The Choice of a New Generation advertising campaign.

Pepsi Sponsors M.C. Hammer

PepsiCo brought M.C. Hammer back this year to introduce Cheetos Popcorn during Super Bowl 2020, reprising his signature hit.  Because everyone knows that if you eat Cheetos U Can’t  …

M.C. Hammer reprises his hit “U Can’t Touch This” for Cheetos Popcorn

Which Brand Collaboration Approach is Right for You?

Both collaborations involved a well established brand joining forces with a super-hot rap star to demonstrate relevance to a new, younger generation.  Both approaches were highly successful.  But they differ in how innovative the collaborations were.

At PepsiCo we used what we called “borrowed equity” to associate brand Pepsi with the most popular artists in the music scene, to appeal to younger soft drink consumers.  This strategy has served the brand well over the years. But everyone understands these are commercial tie-ins for money.

IMO, the Seattle Symphony achieved something more profound. They could have just presented rap music artists “in concert with … “ and left it at that.  But their relationship with Sir Mix-A-Lot was an authentic collaboration.  Both parties participated in creating something genuinely new, leaving both parties changed, and energizing their audience. That’s alchemy.

So when you are considering a brand collaboration, ask yourself, how can you go for alchemy?

Of course there are other ways to collaborate!  If you want to read about collaborating with customers, here you go …

This past January I was at WeWork Labs to present to a group of maritime startups.  Just before I stood up to speak, my sponsor Elizabeth Scallon casually mentioned that I would be presenting using a digital whiteboard.  She told me I should just mark up the board with comments, and she’d send everyone the meeting notes with the full discussion.

Now normally I misunderstand or break virtually anything even vaguely mechanical.  So I was not expecting this to go well.  But the overall experience proved incredibly intuitive.  I asked Elizabeth where she found the whiteboard.  Turns out the company, Vibe, is another WeWork Labs startup; they had launched in July and were looking for user feedback.  So I wrote and asked if I could try one out.  They very kindly delivered one portable smartboard to my house for me to play with (break).

I’m sure many of you have been following the news about the spread of the Coronavirus, and the resulting advice being offered businesses.  Avoid travel, avoid in person meetings, work from home.  But the need for collaboration doesn’t stop.

I was planning to play with Vibe more before writing about it.  But given these recent headlines I thought it made more sense to let you know about the company now.  You decide if this is something you might find useful.

Didn’t mean to erase that

Whiteboards have been around since the 90’s and are used to solve problems, visualize ideas, and define workflows.

Vibe board was designed from scratch to fill a gap left behind by Samsung, Microsoft, and Google whose solutions tend to be expensive and/or restrictive. Vibe features a digital whiteboard, video conferencing, wireless screen-casting, and integrates with a wide range of third party applications (e.g. Slack, Google Drive, Office, Dropbox, Zoom) to allow teams to collaborate remotely and seamlessly at a more affordable price (under $3000).  Teams can share Vibe boards easily through a simple code – no Vibe device necessary – and Vibe keeps the content safe in the cloud.

Here’s Vibe’s take on how they compare.

Vibe feels your pain

Source: Vibe

“The problems we set out to solve were the same problems that we faced ourselves. Before Vibe was created, we used a stack of independent apps and software to collaborate across China and U.S. We wanted to create one tool – an immersive virtual environment that could enable effortless communication from anywhere, all with a dash of magic — kind of like our product’s namesake, the “vibes” of the Harry Potter universe.”  Charles Yang, founder and CEO

Vibe is actively working with customers on new feature requests.  So if you have been considering using a digital white board for collaborating during Coronavirus, now might be the time to act.

*This Nobel Prize winner wrote Love in the Time of Cholera which is well worth reading.

Marine biology program.  Emergency physician practice. Technology to extract contaminants.  Data and insights platform. Trucking app and online platform. Fishing gear recycling program.  Least-cost ballast water treatment system.  White fish jerky.  Zero-emission electric outboard motor. Battery-powered energy storage system. Exhaust gas after treatment system.

Okay, the headline may have tipped you off. They are all innovations from startups participating in the Maritime Blue Innovation Accelerator, the first of its kind in Washington State.

About the Maritime Blue Innovation Accelerator

On January 6, WeWork Labs, the Port of Seattle and WA Department of Commerce’s Maritime Blue kicked off their Maritime Blue Innovation Accelerator.  The program aims to establish the region as an innovation hub for maritime tech.  They also want to make the industry more environmentally friendly.

The program is highly competitive. Out of 100 applications, only 11 companies were selected.

WeWork Labs of Seattle is housing these startups and will provide programming over an accelerated 4-month period.  Participating startups will receive mentorship from Maritime Blue’s coalition of industry experts. They will get opportunities for enterprise pilots and sales. And they will leave with strong connections to the vast, global maritime industry.  The program concludes in April with a demo day, where the startups will pitch to investors and government officials.

I had the opportunity to lead the innovation accelerator’s first program session, Conducting Market Research. We covered four key research questions startups must address, and some approaches they could take.

I was struck by how quickly they were able to start helping each other. Participants generously offered insights, resources and contacts.  Because they share the same eco-system and a commitment to doing something larger for the environment, the conversations were immediately fruitful.  I have no doubt these relationships will prove valuable over time.

Come On In – The Water’s Warm(ing)!

Focusing on a single industry also brings important critical mass.  It’s heartening to see what can be accomplished when we apply tech and innovation resources to mature industries.  Innovation potential is everywhere.  And future startup accelerators should consider more approaches like this.

For a full list of participants, and more details about the program please see the Port of Seattle’s announcement here.

Photo courtesy of WeWork. Thanks to Esther Lee, WeWork Labs’ Head of Curriculum; Lauren Levy, WeWork Labs’ Operations Coordinator; and Elizabeth Scallon, WeWorks Lab Head of Northern California (SF) & Northwest.

Their top customization trends for June 2018 lists 25 of the most popular products now being customized – everything from haircare systems targeting your personal hair goals to “alphabet” eyewear you can use to communicate messages from the comfort of your (raised?) eyebrows.  One of my favorites:  Woolly, out of Portland, got Kickstarter funding to build an interface that enables people to customize their wallets by choosing leather colors, stitching, pattern and inscription.  284 backers pledged $25,116 to help bring this project to life.

Source:  Woolly

Why is customization so popular?

Customization taps into deeper Trend Hunter–identified mega trends of personalization, co-creation, and curation.

Customization is also important because Millennials see customization as a form of luxury.  According to a MindSwarm study, Millennials perceive luxury differently than previous generations.  They recognize “True luxury” – think ultra-expensive Rolex watches – still exists but is not yet attainable.  But they also demand “My luxury,” where they can curate everyday experiences and products to make them their own.

So if Millennials are important to your business, customization could be an innovation opportunity.

Customization as an innovation opportunity

A client of mine, Knack, is disrupting the gift industry by enabling customers to create custom gift sets for just about any occasion:  employee appreciation programs, corporate events, thanking clients for their business, birthdays, wedding party gifts, college care packages, housiversaries (really, this is starting to become a thing in real estate) and even bad breakups.

When Knack looked at the market, it seemed saturated with gift baskets, florists, and “slap your corporate logo on this coffee mug” companies.  But nothing struck them as particularly innovative or fresh.  They researched giving from a number of different angles and learned, among other things, that when it comes to gifts, employees and customers really don’t want company swag, and that a lot of people care about where exactly their gifts come from.  Knack developed an ecommerce site that enables gift givers to custom tailor gifts by occasion, recipient, interest / product category, and ethos (local, handmade, sustainable, women entrepreneurs, < 10 employees).

They have been in business since 2014 and are getting great traction.

One of the most exciting parts about scaling a business is there are a lot of strategic choices to make.  That leads to a number of questions that Knack continues to revisit.

7 questions to ask when inviting your customers to design their own products:

• Are Millennials important to your business, either as direct purchasers or influencers? If so, how satisfied are they with existing solutions in your industry?
• What target segments are most important to prioritize, when it comes to customization?
• Who in your industry – or adjacent to your industry – is offering customization? What lessons can you learn from them?
• What dimensions should you customize on? Consider product features, how made, where made, and by whom.  What else?
• How much choice should you offer? Where’s the sweet spot?
• Will customers need help making a selection? What customer service is required?
• What technology is needed to make the user experience seamless and enjoyable?

I think regardless of industry, customization will continue to be an enduring trend.  I would love to hear about your experiences and share best practices.

Let me know!

This post was originally published by the American Marketing Executive Circle.

Jamie Neely, Trend Hunter

One of the highlights of the day was the opportunity to meet Jaime Neely, their Chief Culture Officer.  She told me that Trend Hunter has been perfecting an innovation assessment tool that helps individuals and teams understand their innovation archetypes and recommends specific tactics to help them realize their innovation potential faster.

Why is that helpful?

Because the reason companies fail at innovation isn’t necessarily that they don’t have good ideas. (Well, that can be true, too).  But another important reason is that the people and teams tasked with innovation may be unaware of how their personal innovation styles affect each other, for good or evil.

This explains so much.

(Here is where I apologize to anyone in my past who I may have tortured, bludgeoned, or end-run in my quest to get that new product out the door.)

Yes, Virginia, you have an innovation archetype

Here is a quick look at Trend Hunter’s framework.  Each trait represents a trade-off between a Hunter and a Farmer tendency.  The value in this framework, for me, is that it suggests that there are many different innovation “styles.”  And each has its place in a successful innovation culture.

Trend Hunter Innovation Archetype

Sometimes the impediment to innovation is … me.  Whoops.

I wish I had understood what archetype I fell into when I was first starting out in my career.  Had I known I was an Ambitious Visionary, driven by curiosity and willing to destroy the status quo, AND understood that the people who had to approve my proposals were almost certainly NOT that way (and for good reason) it would have saved me – and my upper management – a lot of grief.

Jaime Neely seems to have understood this from the start.  When I reached out to let her know I would be blogging about their assessment, this is what she had to say:

“We launched the assessment to help people better understand the ways they approach creativity and innovation. We like to think that everyone today is an innovator — there are simply different types and styles. It’s been incredible hearing how clients and teams across different industries are using the results to better understand those they work with, and to strategize accordingly when it comes to their innovation goals and objectives.” 

If you want to learn more click here.

I am dying to get under the hood to see how Trend Hunter derived this framework.  Meanwhile I encourage you and your team to take the test for yourselves and see what conversations it sparks.

Let me know!

This post was originally published by the American Marketing Executive Circle.

Hal Conick wrote an enlightening and useful article, How Marketing Can Make Mergers and Acquisitions Easy, in which he referenced the AOL / Time Warner merger.  According to Conick, Time Warner executive Ted Turner said the transaction was “better than sex.” We now know, of course, that this particular merger was not successful.

Marketing topics might not rise to the top of the list of issues entrepreneurs typically think of when negotiating acquisition terms. But discussing these topics before you sign on the dotted line increases your chances of a successful acquisition.

Branding and Product Portfolio

• Which brands should you keep as stand-alone brands? Which should you rebrand, or absorb into the acquiring company’s brands? What is the basis for this decision?
• What process should you follow to ensure an orderly transition? This needs to be driven by what prospects, customers and other stakeholders require.
• Which trademarks should you keep, sell or abandon?

Marketing Strategy and Planning

• What role will the acquired company play in the overall marketing strategy of the acquiring company?
• Will the acquired company continue to operate separately, or will it be integrated into the business operations of the acquiring company? If the latter, what will this transition look like?
• Who approves final strategy? What initiatives should you continue, reexamine and change, or stop? What is the approval process for individual initiatives?
• Who controls the marketing budget going forward?

Strategic Partnerships

• Which partners should you continue to pursue under the new ownership? Do any conflict with the acquiring company’s partnerships? And if so, how should you handle the situation?
• Which relationships will change, and in what way? How can you strengthen them?
• Who owns each relationship?

Marketing Team

• Who should you keep on after the acquisition, who will need to be managed out and what would be the fairest way to do this?
• How will you need to change the roles of the remaining marketers? What possibilities are there for them to grow professionally within the new company?  And what will be necessary to retain them?
• Which outside consultants and agencies should you keep?  How should their roles change? And which should be transitioned, when and how?

Announcing the Acquisition

• Who should you notify, and what is the right process?
• What messages must you communicate to all stakeholders, including employees, customers, partners, and investors? What’s in it for them?
• What tangible actions should the company take right away to show how the acquisition delivers value?

This is a partial list based on my experience working with startups and enterprises undergoing mergers and acquisitions. The main point is to have these marketing conversations up front, to improve your chances of a successful acquisition.

Look forward to your thoughts.

This post was originally published by the American Marketing Executive Circle.

(Main photo source: Unsplash.com)

It occurred to me that these tensions aren’t unusual. In fact, they are common.

Since many of you who thrive on innovation may at this point in your careers be considering starting your own companies – or joining a startup board – I thought it might be useful to get some advice on what can go wrong between CEOs and their boards so you can avoid these common pitfalls.

I turned to a colleague who has seen these issues from multiple sides. In his 30+ year career Robert Bismuth has served as CEO of 5 startups, as a Board Observer or Board Member of 7 startups plus 4 major industry consortiums, and advised about a dozen others. He currently serves as VP of Business Development and Strategy for STOIC, a software company based in Palo Alto, and as Director General of its hardware spinoff, SAS Fermat, based in Paris.

Bismuth was kind enough to document some of his favorites, below. Names have been omitted to spare all concerned.

4 Lethal Pitfalls

• “Helping” the CEO
• Controlling the “Baby”
• Cult of Personality versus Cult of Vision
• Dilution, Crushing and Crafting the Exit

“Helping” the CEO

Frequently members of a board will decide to “help” a CEO in her or his decision making, hiring, strategic direction, sales pipeline, brand, technical development or any of the multiple dimensions all startups struggle with as they establish themselves. Sometimes help is truly needed – even asked for. Sometimes it is not.

For example, a board may decide that a sales pipeline needs to be more robust and the issue is recruiting a VP of Sales to help the CEO develop customers. If the company’s products or services are at a suitable state of maturity then such a hire can be very useful. Typically, this would be after initial proof of concept customer engagements have led to production deployment and initial revenue.

If, however, the maturity of the company and its product/services is not yet established, this move is generally not good. It burdens the company with a significant cost in terms of executive compensation and introduces a cultural change. Frequently such a badly timed move is interpreted negatively by the CEO who takes the incoming executive as the “board’s person” and therefore trust issues develop between the CEO and his/her board.

I have seen this type of “helping” activity destroy more than one company. In one prime example, the board decided that in order to avoid losing time in the market, the company needed to develop and enterprise sales and consulting organization so that when its product was ready, it could hit the ground running.

What the board didn’t realize was that the cost of those organizations would significantly impact the overall spending of the company which forced the CEO to reduce spending on engineering. The spiral that resulted eventually caused conflict: the board blamed the CEO for overspending while the CEO distrusted the board because it had pushed forward expensive executive hires. The CEO left the company and the board eventually sold the company for pennies on the dollar.

Controlling the “Baby”

Investors typically look for companies that have a great team, excellent idea (the best being disruptive to their target markets) and a somewhat believable path to market that will eventually produce meaningful financial projections that will allow an eventual exit for early investors with a healthy return on their investment. One of the dimensions that is critical in evaluating the probability of success is the passion behind the company – particularly the passion of the CEO. Is she/he willing to sacrifice everything to see their “baby” born and then continue to sacrifice as the “baby” matures and develops?

That level of passion is truly like the passion a parent has for his or her child. Imagine a parent being told that they are doing something wrong raising their child – or worse, being threatened with having that child given to a foster parent. Good parents will do anything and everything they can to cling on to the child and bring it up “their way.”

That’s exactly the issue that rises in a company with a truly passionate founder CEO when her or his board tries to interfere with his or her vision, strategy or tactical decisions. Sometimes that interference is justified as the CEOs can – and do – lose sight of their responsibilities to their investors. After all, it is not the CEO’s money that is on the line and the board represents the investors.

In many companies the battle for control truly wreaks havoc. The board of a company holds the ultimate power in that struggle and often agonizes over whether to step in and exert control over a company that is not moving forward as expected. Sometimes the board is correct in doing that. Sometimes the board is not. A misjudgment can have disastrous results, ultimately destroying shareholder equity in when becomes a non-recoverable death spiral.

A board exerting its control of a company is never a good sign. It means something has broken in one or more areas – strategy, customer engagement, product development, fiscal responsibility, etc. Unless the board is particularly good at diplomacy, it almost always results in a breakdown in trust between company management and its board. This typically leads to two outcomes: replacing the management and/or selling the company.

In either case, the value of company decreases precipitously.

It is easy to spot companies that have endured this type of control issue: just look for companies that have had a remarkable number of CEOs within a relatively short period of time. One example is a public company which is current being sold by its board. With 10 or so years that company has had around 5 CEOs including its founder, who was brought back. The founder and his board could not decide who had control and so he left again. The current CEO is clearly not experienced enough for the job, though the board tried to pull back and let the CEO manage the company.

The result was a continued decrease in the company’s market share while burning through cash reserves. Eventually the board stepped in, however they left the CEO in place while they proceeded to get a buyer for the company. This was actually one of the few times they should have replaced the CEO but they became trapped in a logic put forward by that CEO: best leave me in place to do the deal or it will be worth less than if an acting CEO were put in place.

Again, control was muddled: sometimes the CEO has been in control and sometimes the board. In reality, when the latest CEO failed so badly, the board should have removed the CEO and put in place a temporary CEO with one goal: sell the company thereby providing the buyer with a much cleaner purchase since the buyer would not have to pay out a severance package to a poor CEO who could not successfully deal with the control issues that resulted from the board’s activities.

Cult of Personality versus Cult of Vision

Often times a founder CEO is so passionate about her or his vision that she or he drives the formation of the company through the very force of her or his personality. The initial team are frequently skilled professionals who know the CEO quite well and almost worship his or her personality. That personality becomes stamped on the initial culture of the company.

If the CEO comes in conflict with his or her board, the cult of personality issue becomes problematic: taking steps to control, aid, limit or even replace such a CEO is very risky as the entire start-up workforce is essentially there because the CEO talked them into joining and any admission of fault or shortcoming on behalf of the CEO becomes a personal issue for workers. Board who take such action do so at great peril to the company and to the shareholders they represent.

Many of the largest, most successful companies in the world were born of a cult of personality around the founder CEO – Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and even old school companies such as GE, IBM, FEDEX, UPS, Intel, etc. However, in all these cases the cult of personality successfully transitioned to the cult of vision. In some cases this happened very smoothly (GE, IBM, Microsoft or Intel for example) and in some cases the transition was extremely bumpy. Apple is a prime example of a difficult transition which eventually happened but had several false starts over the preceding decades.

A good CEO seeks to move his or her company into a cult of vision. This is the only way a succession plan, or exit plan for the investors, can reliably work. If a CEO does not accept that goal or if a board moves before the goal is achieved, the result is a waste of shareholder value and ultimately the demise of the company.

I know of one start-up in which the major shareholder lost faith in the CEO and decided to remove the CEO too soon. What that shareholder failed to understand was that the majority of the company were in the mode of working for the CEO and not for the vision that the company was working to achieve. When the CEO was escorted out of the company, both the engineering and financial teams resigned completely within a week. The shareholder was left with a company that did not have a completed product and without any sense of the company’s financials.

Needless to say, that company never recovered and its assets, such as they were, disintegrated before they could even be sold.

Dilution, Crushing and Crafting the Exit

At any stage in the development of a start-up, the issue of funding, investment and exits are always on the table for a company’s current investors. When will more cash be needed? Will the company manage that through free cash flow? If more investors are needed, what terms and valuation would be offered up for attracting their capital? What’s the eventual exit strategy?

Each class of investor (Angel, VC, Corporate, etc.) has different priorities in all these (and other) dimensions. A company’s CEO also has his or her own priorities, usually starting with trying to minimize any dilutive impact on her or his equity position. CEO’s who focus on that issue will sooner or later find themselves at odds with their boards if they fail to be flexible. At the end of the day, it is a company’s board that will make such decisions and not the CEO. Company management may advise or offer opinions but the end decisions around funding, exit, etc. will be in the hands of the external directors – many of whom will possess special rights based on when and how they became an investor.

CEOs frequently get into trouble with this – particularly if they have a deteriorating relationship with their boards. One company whose board I sat on in which the CEO had lost faith in the board. This was mirrored as the board had lost faith in the CEO but was doing its best to give the CEO as much chance as possible to turn the company around. The CEO’s solution was to solicit an acquisition offer from a private equity firm which, if accepted, would have taken out the board.

The CEO was fired and a new turn around CEO brought in. It was painful for all involved. Ultimately that company was merged into a much larger concern and the investors walked away with a reasonable return.

The CEO was never able to raise sufficient investment capital for any future venture and left the private sector.

These are just some of the issues I have seen as a CEO, as a board member and as a strategic advisor to both company management and boards.

Being a CEO is a tricky thing: you have to balance your daily single minded commitment/passion for your current direction with an ability to take input and work collaboratively with those trying to help you.

Advice to new CEOs and board members

I found it fascinating to hear Bismuth’s take on this subject because usually I only get to hear from one side or the other. Here are the lessons I took from his examples – I’m sure you’ll take others as well.

When you become a CEO:

1. Understand you’ll be working for your Board, and manage up accordingly.
2. Choose your Board members carefully. Go beyond looking at their skills and networks, and check out what their communications styles are. Do they have a track record of working well with their CEO’s? How have they handled conflicts with the CEO’s they have worked with in the past?
3. Check yourself out using the same criteria 😉 Consider getting a coach if you have any concerns about your soft skills.
4. Check your ego at the door, but not your passion.
5. Actively work to build trust with your board. Determine in advance, together, how you’ll resolve your differences.

When you become a board member, the mirror image of these points apply:

1. Understand startup CEO’s may think their company is their baby and will sometimes be blinded by this. Understand how well they collaborate with others, how well they listen to advice.
2. Choose the boards you serve on carefully. How well do they function today? What conflicts are they wrestling with?
3. Think when and how to give advice, when to suggest v. when to push.
4. Actively work to build trust with your CEO and your other board members so when conflicts arise you can have safe discussions.

As Bismuth commented, many companies succeed with flexible CEOs who have managed growth well, taken their boards’ advice and allowed their “babies” to grow in paths they did not expect. Other CEOs fail in conflict with their boards.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

(Main photo source: http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-founders-are-getting-rich-before-they-exit-2014-12)

We started the meeting with Startup X updating me on the new features they had built – and almost immediately I found myself utterly … lost. In five seconds that felt like five minutes my inner monologue raced along something like this:

What the ??? What’s that acronym? What does this new feature actually do? I have no idea what they are talking about. Should I ask? Will they think I am an idiot?

I put my ego aside, held up my hand and said, simply, “I gotta tell you guys, I have no idea what you just said. Could you try that again and put it in words a ten-year-old can understand?”

They were thrilled!

At the end of the meeting, the Startup X CEO pulled me aside and thanked me for being open with his team. He went on to confess he’d noticed puzzled reactions from one of his most important customers when he’d tried to present the new features. But because they’d said nothing, he didn’t know exactly how to bring the conversation to the right place without possibly embarrassing them. So both parties left the room without knowing whether Startup X’s new features could have been valuable.

The problem for innovators is often that they are so deep into their invention, so well versed in their subject, they can’t imagine what it’s like to hear about it for the first time. So they tell you ever-y-thing.

The problem for enterprises wanting to find the next best great innovation for their organization is that some of the most potentially useful innovations are just disruptive enough to be … strangely hard to understand. And the people in the room don’t ask enough questions because they are afraid they’ll sound stupid.

The importance of open communication to innovation

In their recent article for Harvard Business Review, Leadership May Not Be the Problem with Your Innovation Team, authors Daniel Dworkin and Markus Spiegel reported on the extent to which organizations create conditions that favor successful innovation. Based on their survey of approximately 1500 HBS readers representing organizations across industries at different stages of maturity they teased out four important innovation conditions: constant energy, creative friction, flexible structure, and purposeful discovery.

Looking into some of the underlying factors, I found a couple that really resonated:

“People working together share opinions and ideas openly with one another.”

“People make an effort to understand different perspectives.”

Turns out, according to the survey respondents, neither happens very often.

And if people aren’t communicating well when they’re doing the innovating, I bet it’s not happening when they’re evaluating someone else’s innovation.

7 questions that might sound dumb but are actually very helpful

As someone who evaluates a lot of new technologies, I have learned that active listening is vital. And that means asking questions.

Here are 7 “dumb” questions that I have found useful when looking to understand new innovations:

1.    Help me out – what’s that mean, in English?  (my favorite)

2.    What problem(s) does this solve, or what unmet need does this fill – and who really cares?  Give me an example of a real person having this problem.

3.    What’s really at stake for them beyond the obvious problem / need? Will they die? Lose face? Fail to get the girl (or guy)?

4.    What solutions do you think they are trying today?  What’s wrong with them?

5.    Why is the solution you’re proposing superior? How do you know?

6.    Can you show me a concrete example of how this works?  Lead me through it step by step – pretend I’m the person using it and I’ve no idea what it is.

7.    What’s the simplest way we can try this out?

This is a short list, and I am sure you have many other questions that work for you. The main point I want to make is this:

You have to help the people who are bringing you innovations. And that means having the courage to ask questions.

Especially if you think they might sound dumb.

This post was originally published by the Marketing Executive Networking Group.