Inside Outside Innovation

(Replay of Nov 20, 2018 episode) Amy Radin is the author of The Change Maker’s Playbook: How to Seek, Seed and Scale Innovation in Any Company. She was previously a Senior Executive at American Express, Citi, and ETrade. Amy’s experience includes leading the digital transformation of Citi’s credit card business ($5b bottom line). Today, Amy enjoys being on the outside of big companies and startups, to help connect the dots between growth aspirations and outcomes. Amy and Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, discuss startup and corporate collaboration, measuring innovation, and the future for financial services. Key Takeaways in Brian Ardinger’s Interview with Amy: - The human condition is set up to stop things that haven’t happened before. - Big companies have everything they need, but can’t see the near-term value of innovation. Startups bring speed and agility but lack understanding of scale. Magic is when they can work together. - To “seed” ideas, take concepts and put them out to potential users. Then use the project to translate user reaction into a business model. The mistake is trying to predict too closely what people will do. - To kill innovation is to apply traditional metrics to ideas. Can’t expect results immediately. Instead ask, what are assumptions to get x% of market share. As you move forward, refine your benchmarks and results. - To be customer-centric, understand needs that make economic sense. What’s the problem we want to solve for the people we want to serve? - Basic business model for financial services hasn’t changed. Innovation is happening on the front end, but little is happening on the back end. Finance companies are asking the same questions as 15 years ago. - Innovation is solvable. It’s not a pipe dream, even in the most complex organizations. It’s all about execution. - Utilize the Seek, Seed, Scale framework. BONUS: DOWNLOAD FREE TOOLS at www.amyradin.com/insideoutside, including concepts from her book, an infographic on Seek, Seed, Scale framework. and take a quiz about your innovation readiness and ideas where you can personally focus. If you liked this podcast, you might also like: Ep. 148 – Francesca Gino, Harvard Professor and Author of Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break All the Rules in Work and in Life Ep. 138 – Mural’s Ajay Rajani on Building a Portfolio Career Ep. 123 – Gatorade’s Xavi Cortadellas on Breakthrough Innovation GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get 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 HERE   For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Thales Teixeira is an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and Author of Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, talks with Thales about innovation, consumer disruption, and decoupling. They also discuss Thales new HBR article titled Disruption Starts with Unhappy Customers, Not Technology. Key Points  - Economics of Attention - To help companies understand consumer attention - Where, how and why. - www.economicsofattention.com - Understanding Digital Disruptors - Customers Disrupt Markets. - Startups are just faster at delivering needs and understanding customers. - Why do large companies think they KNOW and adapt to their customers. - Large companies are obsessed with their competitors, but should be focused on their customers. - Inside Outside Innovation Summit - Oct 2-22, 2019 - www.theiosummit.com - Customer problems might not be big enough for large companies. This creates an opening for startups. Unlocking Customer Value Chain - New Book - Wave 1 - Unbundling products - Wave 2 - Disintermediation - Startups cutting out the middleman - Wave 3 - Startups are looking at customer value chain and breaking up links and taking one activity at a time - Decoupling - e.g. - Best Buy moved to price matching & charging manufacturers for shelf space. Supports show rooming activity and doesn’t fight Amazon.  Decoupling is happening as a result of consumers looking for lower costs of goods and services. Startups, with new business models and tech, are reducing costs. To improve relationships with customers: create value, reduce value eroding activities or reduce value charging activities.  For More Information For more information or to connect with Thales, check out Decoupling.co For similar podcasts, check out: Ep. 151 – Jeff Dyer, Author of Innovation Capital: How to Compete–and Win–Like the World’s Most Innovative Leaders Ep. 148 – Francesca Gino, Harvard Professor and Author of Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break All the Rules in Work and in Life Ep. 112 – Ralph Welborn, Author of Topple on Corporate Innovation Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get 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 HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Jeff Gothelf, Co-Author of Sense and Respond, Lean UX, & Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about building a Culture of Innovation.  Key Ideas - Shifting from outputs to outcomes. - Changing incentives. - Find the person and team with the political capital to prove out the validity and scalability.  - Reward learning in a way that focuses on ideas that are likely to succeed.  - Incentivize learning and being transparent.  - Story telling and marketing of efforts. - Overcoming National Cultural Traits. - Language and ideas are universal, but hard to implement.  - Failure of the Corporate Innovation Lab. Create an innovation path.  For More Information For more information, check out Jeffgothelf.com.  If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Ep. 37 – Josh Seiden & Jeff Gothelf, authors of “Sense and Respond” Ep. 90 – Teresa Torres w/ Product Talk Ep. 103 – Andi Plantenberg on Entrepreneurial Capabilities in Teams Ep. 140 – Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap Author and Produx Labs CEO Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get 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 HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Taylor Ryan, CMO of Valuer.ai, talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about Startup-Corporate Matchmaking. Valuer.ai matches startups with corporates, accelerators, and investors based on AI and crowdsourcing. Key points - Valuer.ai - HQ in Denmark. Taylor Ryan, from the US, is a six time co-founder, writer, growth hacker, and startup junkie. - Corporate/Startup matchmaking new to Europe. - Customized searches on Valuer.AI combines Crowdsource and data collection to find the right startups both locally and internationally.  - Uses qualitative data of founders to determine if startups are investible.  - Finding different skill sets of founders - data, block chain and finance are skills corporates are looking for.  - Internal corporate innovators can use to find new ideas.  - Need more education on looking to startups as long-term solutions for problems within corporations. - Trends in startup world - Different European hubs have different flavor. - Drift in European Tech to go after 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - Corporate Social Responsibility. For More Information For more information or to connect with Taylor, check out Valuer.ai  For similar podcasts, check out: Ep. 131 - Sean Moffitt of WikiBrands & Author of WikiBrands: How to Reinvent Your Business in a Customer Connected Marketplace Ep. 142 - Neil Soni, Author of The Startup Gold Mine and Estee Lauder Innovator Ep. 152 - Acceleprise’s Olivia O’Sullivan on Investing in Corporate/Startup Collaboration Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play. FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get 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 HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Brock Blake, Co-founder and CEO of Lendio on Financing Entrepreneurs at Scale   Interview with Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside Innovation Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. Brian Ardinger, founder of insideoutside.io, a provider of research, events, and consulting services helps innovators and entrepreneurs build better products launch new ideas and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week Brian Ardinger gives you a front-row seat to the latest thinking, tools, tactics, and trends in collaborative Innovation. In this podcast, Brian interviews Brock Blake, founder and CEO of Lendio the largest online marketplace for small business loans in America. For more information and a transcript of their talk, check out http://insideoutside.io/the-feed/ Inside Outside Innovation Summit - Talent, Technology, & The Future Of Innovation Mark your calendars for October 20th -22nd, in Lincoln, NE. Experts from the world of Disney, Facebook, American Express, and Nike, will talk about innovation, disruption, startups, and the world that we live in today. Check it out at the theiosummit.com For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Mike McDerment is Co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world’s number one cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals. Mike talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about building and scaling a company, product development, and his free e-book called Breaking the Time Barrier. Mike built a simple tool to solve his accounting problem, and now 20 million people have used the tool. He could see the value of the tool, but he hadn’t built and scaled a company. It was the great unknown which excited him. Suddenly, Mike saw the value of the tool for everyone. He wanted to bring it into the world. After building the first version for himself, he soon added a software designer. They worked on the product for nine months to a year, then added another co-founder and hired employees. Mike’s team became very connected to their customers, always showing the product early in development. They started to understand the market and the most impactful parts of what to build.   Bootstrapping the Company  - Raising capital is not success. A better strategy is to find customers and fund yourself - Over ten years, FreshBooks de-risked the market, product, team, and model.   - The first round of venture money was $30 million.   Obstacles and Things That Almost Killed FreshBooks - Check out Blog post: https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/7-ways-ive-almost-killed-freshbooks  - Listen to advisors, but trust yourself.   - Sometimes you move fast, but some areas you need to slow down, especially with product-market fit. Don’t Rush.   Breaking The Time Barrier - Breaking the Time Barrier, Mike’s book for his customers doing client services work explains how to price services.   - Focus on value-based billing instead of on the number of hours worked. Understand how big the problem is and how expensive it is.   - Nobody cares about tech. They care about the value they get from tech.   Product Development  - Better to focus on building benefits like time savings, revenue generation, or performance. Brings more value for your customer.   - Frame pricing on value. e.g., $50 a month will save 20 hrs, or for less than a cup a coffee, you can have this service.   What’s different for a company at scale?  - Culture - How does a company respond when challenged with something? - Customer-obsessed How do you maintain the freshness of a company? - Combo of direction and constraints for motivation.   - Creates a condition for taking chances. For More Information For more information on Mike McDerment or FreshBooks check out freshbooks.com.  If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get 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 HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Olivia O'Sullivan is the Head of Corporate Engagement at Acceleprise, a B2B SaaS accelerator. Accelerprise invests in early-tech companies building enterprise technology. Olivia's focus is on mid-market and enterprise companies interested in collaborations with startups. Her background includes work in advertising and on product and innovation teams for McDonald's and Dow Jones.  Olivia spoke with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about corporate/startup matchmaking, trends and Acceleprise's future. Key factors in selecting startups include: - Understanding the founding team. Can they solve the challenge?  - Traction and product market fit. Want to accelerate growth.  - Thresholds and levels of expectations.  - Collaboration on the product.  Emphasis on the initial period where you make introductions. The missing piece is how to transition into providing impact.  - Make sure two groups of people are set up to participate with each other and engage in a partnership.  - Provide long-term strategic support.  - Innovation doesn’t happen in a silo. Need a long-term strategy. Participate in the ecosystem before you see change.  Corporations are in different places in innovation - Companies wanting roundtables and market intelligence. - Companies with established processes and venture teams.  New Trends  - Ten years ago, there were lots of corporate accelerators. Now a lot of established independent accelerators doing great work.  - Now more meaningful partnership doing co-collaboration with startups. - Financial services companies are partnering with startups.  - Health tech - Unlocking the power of data in the health world.  What are the core skills for entrepreneurs? - Long-term vision and steps to get there.  - Someone who will get the work done to get over hurdles.  - People who are connectors on the corporate innovation side.  What’s next for Acceleprise - Kick off upcoming programs in SF and NY - Investing in another 20 companies. Already invested in over 100. - Opening office in Toronto.  For More Information For more information on Acceleprise or to connect with Olivia check out https://acceleprise.vc If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get 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 HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Jeff Dyer is the author of Innovator’s DNA, Innovator’s Method, and Innovation Capital. He talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, about innovative leaders and how they generate creative ideas.  In Innovator’s DNA, Jeff identifies characteristics of innovative entrepreneurs, including questioning, observing, networking and experimenting. In Innovator’s Method, Jeff identifies a process to test ideas for investment: 1) Generating idea, 2) Is someone willing to pay, 3) Rapid prototyping, and 4) Find right business model. Finally, in Innovation Capital, Jeff interviews innovation leaders and how they secure research and support to move on innovative ideas.   Innovative Leaders are Judged on Three Things Human capital, social capital, and reputation capital (track record).  Forward thinking, problem-solving, and persuasion.  Innovation Capital can De-risk Innovation Leadership Innovators paradox: You have to take novel risky ideas forward. Look at INC 50 each year. What are new companies, with new business models, doing?  Social Capital Most people think your strongest 150 ties are most important. Your weak social ties are likely to be much more important. How do you connect to those weak ties?  Human Capital Innovation skill sets are becoming more important because it’s critical to know how to move ideas forward and create value.  For More Information: For more information about Jeff or Innovation Capita, check out https://innovatorsdna.com/ If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Ep. 137 – Deloitte’s Michael Frankel on Growth, Hybrid Talent & Corporate/Startup Collaboration Ep. 136 – Simone Ahuja, Author, Disrupt-It-Yourself: Eight Ways to Hack a Better Business Ep. 124 – Amy Radin, Author of The Change Maker’s Playbook & FinTech Guru Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get 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 HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Alain Sylvain is the founder of Sylvain Labs, a strategy and design company helping corporations like Google, Spotify and Nike, think about their future. Alain Sylvain talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation founder, about how to create new ideas that solve for business and consumer needs. Innovation is evolving  - The fetishization of innovation. Define what innovation means within the corporation - e.g., transformational, new products? - Innovation groups within large companies are outsourcing their innovation needs.  - Innovation is the creation of new value. What are good or bad practices of innovation? - The company wants to be "sprint" focused. Not possible if the company doesn't have that spirit. Look at how the company changes to be more innovation focused. - When do you bring in design? Early.  Is it essential for companies to look outside and work with startups? - Necessary to look for external points of view. Innovation in a silo will not get game-changing innovation.  - Founders mindset vs. corporate mindset. At Patagonia, innovation comes from the founder's perspective of the end user.  How essential is the C-Suite vs. individuals within the organization? - Both perspectives are important. Low appetite for risk. Can you create a culture of innovation where all ideas are valid - Create an open culture of ideas. Enable people's side hustles to thrive. - Acceptance of failure. Pull out what worked. Fear of risk is internal perception. The test is in the marketplace. For more Information For more information or to connect with Alain, check out sylvainlabs.com If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy: Ep. 136 – Simone Ahuja, Author, Disrupt-It-Yourself: Eight Ways to Hack a Better Business Ep. 120 – Digital Intent’s Sean Johnson talks Corporate Innovation Strategies Ep. 86 – Carie Davis, Your Ideas Are Terrible   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get 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 HERE Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Paul Skinner is the author of Collaborative Advantage: How collaboration beats competition as a strategy for success and founder of Agency of the Future. His work has always been about helping people create a collaborative advantage.  Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside founder, talks with Paul about using a collaborative advantage approach at every level. What is collaborative advantage? - Collaborative advantage is the business advantage from harnessing value creation potential outside and inside the business. It has been overshadowed by competitive advantage. Helps us to grow our businesses more quickly.  - Businesses need to be improving people’s lives, if not, why should they exist? - See customers as primary value creators or non-profits help to create social change Examples of companies/communities/organizations moving towards collaborative advantage? - Rotterdam - Connected to other cities through the port. City water scheme is a reusable water bottle with a financial contribution to water systems in other parts of the world. Then you get access to refill bottle from city pipes. Pipes provide business sponsorship opportunities. Also, Rotterdam has a gym called Pay More/Train Less. However, If you work out more, you pay less.   What are the obstacles to embracing collaboration? - Including collaborative advantage in strategies and having a collaborative framework. - Idea of competitive advantage has become so dominant. Can hold us back. Too often a 0 sum game. Can extract value from both businesses or can be used to prioritize shareholder advantage. Most significant disruptions don’t come from competitors. - The dominant story of competition and competitiveness causes us to miss advantages. Reinforces that only value is created inside.  - Value can be created by customers and is a collective process. Orientate ourselves around our customers so we can co-create value.  Collaborative Advantage Framework - “Outside In” Framework - Audit provided within book.  1. Find Common Purpose - See as an enabler of change instead of a deliverer of change. What do we do to enable people to do better? E.g., Amazon changed the competitive model and let customers choose between all the options.  2. Make innovation more useful - Structure right opportunities for people to pursue that purpose. Put it at the heart of divisions or missions. e.g., Argentinian Shopping Center - Instead of an advertising campaign, they built a world-class bridge.  3. Make engagement more effective by designing an environment conducive to the purpose you are enabling - Choices are influenced by the environment like the social, customer, and internal environment. 4. Iterate and accelerate - Work with early adopters to better understand and respond to their needs as revealed in practice instead of what people say that they will do. E.g., Coke 5. Build partnerships to help us scale over what we can do alone - Look outwards in the same direction. Clearly understand the end-user purpose. Align interests around purpose. Adapt over time to unlock collective value. Does adopting a collaborative advantage framework have to be top-down driven? - Collaborative advantage begins by defining our core purpose differently. There is a role for leadership to play. Better to mobilize towards this mission. Can be applied at all levels of an organization.  - Evaluated sustainability programs at Eden Project, an Eco-Tourism development in Cornwall. The most exciting part of the presentation was by the cleaning staff. They bought into the sustainability mission. They knew the most sustainable ways to clean a toilet. Made adjustments to make cleaning processes to be more environmentally friendly.  For More Information To find out more about Paul Skinner or his book Collaborative Advantage, conn...