AI Boosts Exploitative and Exploratory Innovation

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how change is changing, the IKEA effect on MVPs, and how AI is making companies more ambidextrous. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero’s, Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact.

Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and my co-host Robyn Bolton is with me. Hello Robin. How are you?

[00:00:45] Robyn Bolton: Hello, Brian. I'm great. How are you?

[00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We are in the middle of December.

[00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: And hard to believe that the year is, it's almost over.

[00:00:58] Brian Ardinger: Well, I'm ramping up for 2026. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about for the conference that we're going to be planning. Yes. We'll talk to you a little bit more about that, but let's just jump in. We've got some articles to discuss, some things that we've been seeing out there in the ether when it comes to innovation.

Innovation and AI in 2026. Setting the Stage for Change

The first article is Change is Changing How to Meet the Challenge of Radical Reinvention, published by McKinsey. There's a lot of things I want to dive into this. Obviously, McKinsey's probably in the wheelhouse of disruption, as their game is going to be changed. So, I read this article with two lenses.

One, the lens of what they are telling their clients, and then two, are they eating their own dog food when it comes to this? So, for reference, the McKinsey article talks about, you know, when change becomes everywhere, every, everything everywhere, all at once. How are companies dealing with this? And it's no wonder that the average employee experiences all these particular changes and is worn out.

And I think one of the things they quoted was the number of new experiences that the average employee faces is fivefold increase than a decade ago. The fact that organizations and leaders have all new types of tools and skills and methods to navigate this changing, complex state, and those old tools don't necessarily apply today. So I love your first insight, and we'll go from there.

Radical Reinvention and Innovation Strategy. Rethinking Change at Scale

[00:02:13] Robyn Bolton: McKinsey turns out great stuff and great frameworks and all that stuff. And also, as someone who's been a consultant for entirely too long, they also make me laugh. Like in a super nerdy consultant way. Because one of the things that's laid out this article is the four Cs of change.

You know, it starts with C1 execute, C2 mobilize, and then we get to C3 transform, which was the buzzword of, I feel like the last five years. You know, we're transforming everything. But now we have a new one. It is level four change, and it is reinvention. And I just loved when we rebrand things that are the same thing we've always talked about, but we've rebranded it, and now there's a different diagram, so it's completely new, and you need to buy from us.

But there is good content in here. And you know this idea of creating value with the new identity. Talk about way easier said than done. Like every organization has an identity. When you ask someone like, what do we do here? The answer is the organization's identity and to change that is about as easy as changing an individual's identity, which is to say not at all.

Organizational Identity, Leadership, and Innovation Fatigue in the Age of AI

[00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: Well, and I found that part of the article actually the most intriguing because I think when you think of McKinsey, again, a lot of stuff they've focused on is how do you optimize and execute on your model? They're not very focused on reinvention. And kind of blowing it up and starting over from that perspective.

So, I thought that was an interesting take, that either they have to recognize the fact that the companies that they're working with and the companies out there in general are going to have to reinvent themselves. It's no longer table stakes just to, you know, do what you've been doing and make it better, faster, stronger, cheaper.

It's how do we navigate and potentially reinvent what we've done in the past. And then the other key aspect of it that really resonated with me was the fact that how do you create a culture such that change is not a drain to the organization? But as a source of energy, again, coming from a consulting background, that's often not the things you talk about.

Like how do you actually create change that energizes and excites people, and provides a source of energy around what you're doing? So those are the two things that stuck out in my mind when it comes to this, and I'm seeing it in the companies that I talk to. I think there is this conversation going on, like, we don't know how to do this. We know we have to do this, but the guardrails and the tools that we've used, we just are starting from scratch in a lot of ways.

Culture, Participation, and Human-Centered Innovation Beyond Top-Down Change

[00:04:44] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and what made me kind of laugh is that a lot of the advice in this article, you know, you read it and McKinsey's talking about you have to put identity shifts at the center of the change.

You need to see new possibilities and let go of the past. And yet the article, when it gets into recommendations, is all about the leaders at the top. And you talk about how do you help people get through change? How do you use change to even energize people? And when change is thrust upon you, you're going to get exhausted.

And so, the whole mechanism for change, for reinvention, I think personally, is you have to involve people in it. So that it's not being thrust upon them, which is a very, very different approach than the typical hierarchical top-down where McKinsey and a lot of other firms thrive. So, I'm very interested to see how this works.

[00:05:40] Brian Ardinger: The last thing that I want to throw about this is, again, when you talk about reinvention, a lot of it comes down to understanding your customers and that. And it'll be interesting to see what McKinsey customers and clients want from the next change reinvention of what consulting is. What are the expectations, and I think that alone will be some interesting articles and things that come out in the future of what does it mean to have a consultant look at your stuff, and help you along that path.

What are the things that the customer actually demands and needs when a lot of the tools are now easily accessible by the people that were paying millions of dollars before to have that delivered to them. 

[00:06:14] Robyn Bolton: The cobbler's children have no shoes, is a popular phrase for very good reasons, so we shall see.

MVPs, Innovation Bias, and the IKEA Effect in Product Development

[00:0...