Read the full transcript of Alexandre Janssen’s talk titled “Why Innovation Is All About People Rather Than Bright Ideas” at TEDxFryslân 2015 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Power of Technology and Innovation
Are you aware of the fact that the little device in your pocket gives you more communication power than President Kennedy had? That’s only 50 years ago. Now, this shows that technology is giving us a whole new world with whole new opportunities.
If you look at, for example, the phone – the time it took before half of the population in the United States actually had one took more than 50 years. A century later, the first wireless phone was introduced, and that only took 16 years before half of the population owned one. And then a few years later, the first smartphone came. That only took six years.
Now, what does this show us? This shows us that not only is technology developing itself at an exponential pace; it also shows us that the adoption time – the time it takes for you to adopt something new – is decreasing dramatically.
The Impact on Business and Society
This has huge implications on us, on society, but also on our whole business landscape. It means organizations that want to stay relevant in the future really need to start innovating.
Luckily, most of the CEOs in large organizations actually say – according to a study – that innovation is a key priority. However, saying so is not the same as doing so. It’s all about execution. It’s not about having a bright idea of how to innovate; it’s about what you do with it.
In the same study, they actually looked at how successfully these organizations managed to innovate. Unfortunately, only one-fifth of the same CEOs put innovation as a key strategic priority on their agenda.
The Challenges of Innovation
Now, it is hard to innovate.
And why is that? If as an organization you really want to drive change, it’s very difficult to do so because of a couple of reasons.
Firstly, innovation is, by definition, doing something new, something different. Most of the larger organizations nowadays are not set up for new and different things. They have – I would call it an “immune system.” So the corporate antibodies will come and attack those new and different things or people.
Secondly, innovation is about long-term results versus most of the organizations are all driven by very short-term KPIs and results.
Thirdly, even though a lot of these organizations say, “Of course, you’re allowed to fail in our organization,” employees don’t feel it that way. Failure is not an option in most of these organizations.
I’m not surprised to see that – if you look at a study from Oxford that looked at the biggest 500 organizations in our world, they predict that almost half of them will no longer exist by 2020. That’s five years from now. Imagine the biggest corporations, organizations that you know of five years from now will maybe no longer exist. Why? Because they simply won’t be able to cope with this increasing speed of change due to technology.
Now, this has huge implications. How do you cope with this change? How do you remain an innovative organization?
The Key to Innovation: People, Not Processes
The interesting thing here is that most of these organizations are trying to solve 21st-century problems; however, they were designed in the 20th century or maybe even in the 19th century.
I truly believe to be innovative as an organization – and I’ve been in the innovation space for a couple of years now – it’s not about finding the new bright ideas. It’s not about having all these processes in place or having innovation in your strategy. It’s about finding the right people around you, people that are passionate about what they do and want to drive a change.
A Success Story: Rob’s Innovation
Let me give you an example. In the organization that I work for, there’s a guy called Rob, and Rob was, or is, an accountant. Now accountants, as you might know, do financial checks and statements. They check the balances of companies. And he’s been doing so for over 10 years. He’s a young, enthusiastic guy, full of enthusiastic and bright ideas as well.
One day, his wife said, “Listen, I have this great app. I downloaded it from the App Store. And look, I can just put in some data of kids in the hospital, and it tells me how the dosage of morphine should be.” And he said, “Well, that’s interesting. How do you actually know that what the app tells you – the technology – is true?” And she said, “I don’t know. I downloaded it from the App Store, so it should be right, right?”
So he said, “Well, why don’t we go from doing accountancy for financial statements to doing the accountancy on medical apps? Let’s check these apps!”
Now, you can imagine the corporate antibodies in the organization when he went to his bosses. They said, “Sorry? What – what are you saying? Medical apps? Why don’t you just continue doing what you’ve always done, which is checking financial statements?”
Then he came to us, the innovation department, and said, “Listen, I have this great idea! We should do something with medical apps.” And we said, “Okay, we’ll offer you a job. Come and work for us, and let’s build this.”
Now, did we hire this guy because he had the skills to do this? No. Did we hire him because he had a great track record of entrepreneurship? Nope. Did we hire him because he was very passionate and because he believed in what he wanted to do? Definitely.
Nowadays, this guy, Rob, where he never used to talk to public audiences, gives guest lectures and is every week on stage at one or the other conferences on health topics. Where he was used to sitting in a room and do the checks, he now leads a team, does his own product development, and sells his own stuff.
So just by giving him the right conditions, he is now been opening a whole new market for this organization and finding a wide area that we couldn’t have found before.
Creating the Right Conditions for Innovation
This is easy to explain as an example, but it’s not that easy to do so in reality. We have also started, in our organization, with doing all these processes: ideation, generating a lot of ideas, brainstorm sessions. You’ve probably all heard that innovation is about creativity. But basically, it’s really about finding and fostering the right people.
And if you give them the right conditions, you will see that they can drive a tremendous change. Now, what are these conditions? Because passionate people are people that don’t see obstacles; they see possibilities. They don’t see impossibilities; they see opportunities. They don’t work because their boss tells them to; they work because they believe in something. They don’t work for a salary; they work because they have a purpose.
Now, as a large organization, to really be and remain innovative, it’s very crucial to give these people the right conditions. So let me share with you the three conditions that I feel are valuable.
Hire people based on their passion and not on their skills. Now, why is it when we look at a resume, we hire people based on that while the only thing a resume does is look back? It doesn’t look forward on what it is you want to do or what you want to achieve as a person. So hire passion instead of skills.
Create a safe environment for these people. It makes no sense to have passionate people if these corporate antibodies attack them. You need to create a place where they can fully spend their time and dedication working on whatever they feel is the most valuable for the organization.
Introduce and give them an “I fucked up” card. Now, what is the “I fucked up” card? It’s not when they make a stupid mistake and they say, “Oh, sorry.” No, it’s for them to stimulate their failure and the entrepreneurship mentality in the organization. So how it works – you give them a card. If they don’t use it within a year, you fire them. And it stimulates them to try something new which they otherwise wouldn’t have tried. And if it goes wrong, you, as their boss, take responsibility.
Now, if you look at the impact that it had on our organization when we did this, it’s tremendous.
Conclusion: The True Source of Innovation
My point is that it’s about people. Remember I said you had a device in your pocket that gave you more communication power than President Kennedy had. It is worthless if you don’t have the right people around you that can make it work. You need people that truly believe in something.
If you want to do, as an organization, something different, if you want to change, if you want to remain relevant in the future and don’t be part of that half of the organizations that will no longer exist, make sure you hire people based on their passion. Make sure you give them the full freedom to do whatever they believe in and give them the “I fucked up” card.
Now my question to you. You will all receive one when you walk out of this room. Who are you going to give it to? And what are you expecting him or her to do? But I can guarantee you there will be something that will amaze you.
True innovation is not about bright ideas, processes or KPIs. It’s about finding the right people: people that believe in something and people that have a true passion.
